Resurrection

"But we do nothing to destroy the conditions in which people like

these are produced; on the contrary, we support the

establishments where they are formed. These establishments are

well known: factories, mills, workshops, public-houses,

gin-shops, brothels. And we do not destroy these places, but,

looking at them as necessary, we support and regulate them. We

educate in this way not one, but millions of people, and then

catch one of them and imagine that we have done something, that

we have guarded ourselves, and nothing more can be expected of

us. Have we not sent him from the Moscow to the Irkoutsk

Government?" Thus thought Nekhludoff with unusual clearness and

vividness, sitting in his high-backed chair next to the colonel,

and listening to the different intonations of the advocates',

prosecutor's, and president's voices, and looking at their

self-confident gestures. "And how much and what hard effort this

pretence requires," continued Nekhludoff in his mind, glancing

round the enormous room, the portraits, lamps, armchairs,

uniforms, the thick walls and large windows; and picturing to

himself the tremendous size of the building, and the still more

ponderous dimensions of the whole of this organisation, with its

army of officials, scribes, watchmen, messengers, not only in

this place, but all over Russia, who receive wages for carrying

on this comedy which no one needs. "Supposing we spent

one-hundredth of these efforts helping these castaways, whom we

now only regard as hands and bodies, required by us for our own

peace and comfort. Had some one chanced to take pity on him and

given some help at the time when poverty made them send him to

town, it might have been sufficient," Nekhludoff thought, looking

at the boy's piteous face. "Or even later, when, after 12 hours'

work at the factory, he was going to the public-house, led away

by his companions, had some one then come and said, 'Don't go,

Vania; it is not right,' he would not have gone, nor got into bad

ways, and would not have done any wrong.

"But no; no one who would have taken pity on him came across this

apprentice in the years he lived like a poor little animal in the

town, and with his hair cut close so as not to breed vermin, and

ran errands for the workmen. No, all he heard and saw, from the

older workmen and his companions, since he came to live in town,

was that he who cheats, drinks, swears, who gives another a

thrashing, who goes on the loose, is a fine fellow. Ill, his

constitution undermined by unhealthy labour, drink, and

debauchery--bewildered as in a dream, knocking aimlessly about

town, he gets into some sort of a shed, and takes from there some

old mats, which nobody needs--and here we, all of us educated

people, rich or comfortably off, meet together, dressed in good

clothes and fine uniforms, in a splendid apartment, to mock this

unfortunate brother of ours whom we ourselves have ruined.