"Thanks, very much," said the president, lighting a cigarette.
"Which case shall we take first, then?"
"The poisoning case, I should say," answered the secretary, with
indifference.
"All right; the poisoning case let it be," said the president,
thinking that he could get this case over by four o'clock, and
then go away. "And Matthew Nikitich; has he come?"
"Not yet."
"And Breve?"
"He is here," replied the secretary.
"Then if you see him, please tell him that we begin with the
poisoning case." Breve was the public prosecutor, who was to read
the indictment in this case.
In the corridor the secretary met Breve, who, with up lifted
shoulders, a portfolio under one arm, the other swinging with the
palm turned to the front, was hurrying along the corridor,
clattering with his heels.
"Michael Petrovitch wants to know if you are ready?" the secretary
asked.
"Of course; I am always ready," said the public prosecutor. "What
are we taking first?"
"The poisoning case."
"That's quite right," said the public prosecutor, but did not
think it at all right. He had spent the night in a hotel playing
cards with a friend who was giving a farewell party. Up to five
in the morning they played and drank, so he had no time to look
at this poisoning case, and meant to run it through now. The
secretary, happening to know this, advised the president to begin
with the poisoning case. The secretary was a Liberal, even a
Radical, in opinion.
Breve was a Conservative; the secretary disliked him, and envied
him his position.
"Well, and how about the Skoptzy?" [a religious sect] asked the
secretary.
"I have already said that I cannot do it without witnesses, and
so I shall say to the Court."
"Dear me, what does it matter?"
"I cannot do it," said Breve; and, waving his arm, he ran into
his private room.
He was putting off the case of the Skoptzy on account of the
absence of a very unimportant witness, his real reason being that
if they were tried by an educated jury they might possibly be
acquitted.
By an agreement with the president this case was to be tried in
the coming session at a provincial town, where there would be
more peasants, and, therefore, more chances of conviction.
The movement in the corridor increased. The people crowded most
at the doors of the Civil Court, in which the case that the
dignified man talked about was being heard.
An interval in the proceeding occurred, and the old woman came
out of the court, whose property that genius of an advocate had
found means of getting for his client, a person versed in law who
had no right to it whatever. The judges knew all about the case,
and the advocate and his client knew it better still, but the
move they had invented was such that it was impossible not to
take the old woman's property and not to hand it over to the
person versed in law.