Nekhludoff had four matters to attend to in Petersburg. The first was the appeal to the Senate in Maslova’s case; the second, to hand in Theodosia Birukoff’s petition to the committee; the third, to comply with Vera Doukhova’s requests—i.e., try to get her friend Shoustova released from prison, and get permission for a mother to visit her son in prison. Vera Doukhova had written to him about this, and he was going to the Gendarmerie Office to attend to these two matters, which he counted as one.
The fourth matter he meant to attend to was the case of some sectarians who had been separated from their families and exiled to the Caucasus because they read and discussed the Gospels. It was not so much to them as to himself he had promised to do all he could to clear up this affair.
Since his last visit to Maslennikoff, and especially since he had been in the country, Nekhludoff had not exactly formed a resolution but felt with his whole nature a loathing for that society in which he had lived till then, that society which so carefully hides the sufferings of millions in order to assure ease and pleasure to a small number of people, that the people belonging to this society do not and cannot see these sufferings, nor the cruelty and wickedness of their life. Nekhludoff could no longer move in this society without feeling ill at ease and reproaching himself. And yet all the ties of relationship and friendship, and his own habits, were drawing him back into this society. Besides, that which alone interested him now, his desire to help Maslova and the other sufferers, made it necessary to ask for help and service from persons belonging to that society, persons whom he not only could not respect, but who often aroused in him indignation and a feeling of contempt.
When he came to Petersburg and stopped at his aunt’s—his mother’s sister, the Countess Tcharsky, wife of a former minister—Nekhludoff at once found himself in the very midst of that aristocratic circle which had grown so foreign to him. This was very unpleasant, but there was no possibility of getting out of it. To put up at an hotel instead of at his aunt’s house would have been to offend his aunt, and, besides, his aunt had important connections and might be extremely useful in all these matters he meant to attend to.
“What is this I hear about you? All sorts of marvels,” said the Countess Katerina Ivanovna Tcharsky, as she gave him his coffee immediately after his arrival. “Vous posez pour un Howard. Helping criminals, going the round of prisons, setting things right.”
“Oh, no. I never thought of it.”
“Why not? It is a good thing, only there seems to be some romantic story connected with it. Let us hear all about it.”
Nekhludoff told her the whole truth about his relations to Maslova.
“Yes, yes, I remember your poor mother telling me about it. That was when you were staying with those old women. I believe they wished to marry you to their ward (the Countess Katerina Ivanovna had always despised Nekhludoff’s aunts on his father’s side). So it’s she.Elle est encore jolie?”
Katerina Ivanovna was a strong, bright, energetic, talkative woman of 60. She was tall and very stout, and had a decided black moustache on her lip. Nekhludoff was fond of her and had even as a child been infected by her energy and mirth.
“No, ma tante, that’s at an end. I only wish to help her, because she is innocently accused. I am the cause of it and the cause of her fate being what it is. I feel it my duty to do all I can for her.”
“But what is this I have heard about your intention of marrying her?”
“Yes, it was my intention, but she does not wish it.”
Katerina Ivanovna looked at her nephew with raised brows and drooping eyeballs, in silent amazement. Suddenly her face changed, and with a look of pleasure she said: “Well, she is wiser than you. Dear me, you are a fool. And you would have married her?”
“Most certainly.”
“After her having been what she was?”
“All the more, since I was the cause of it.”
“Well, you are a simpleton,” said his aunt, repressing a smile, “a terrible simpleton; but it is just because you are such a terrible simpleton that I love you.” She repeated the word, evidently liking it, as it seemed to correctly convey to her mind the idea of her nephew’s moral state. “Do you know—What a lucky chance. Aline has a wonderful home—the Magdalene Home. I went there once. They are terribly disgusting. After that I had to pray continually. But Aline is devoted to it, body and soul, so we shall place her there—yours, I mean.”
“But she is condemned to Siberia. I have come on purpose to appeal about it. This is one of my requests to you.”
“Dear me, and where do you appeal to in this case?”
“To the Senate.”
“Ah, the Senate! Yes, my dear Cousin Leo is in the Senate, but he is in the heraldry department, and I don’t know any of the real ones. They are all some kind of Germans—Gay, Fay, Day—tout l’alphabet, or else all sorts of Ivanoffs, Simenoffs, Nikitines, or else Ivanenkos, Simonenkos, Nikitenkos, pour varier. Des gens de l’autre monde. Well, it is all the same. I’ll tell my husband, he knows them. He knows all sorts of people. I’ll tell him, but you will have to explain, he never understands me. Whatever I may say, he always maintains he does not understand it. C’est un parti pris, every one understands but only not he.”
At this moment a footman with stockinged legs came in with a note on a silver platter.
“There now, from Aline herself. You’ll have a chance of hearing Kiesewetter.”
“Who is Kiesewetter?”
“Kiesewetter? Come this evening, and you will find out who he is. He speaks in such a way that the most hardened criminals sink on their knees and weep and repent.”
The Countess Katerina Ivanovna, however strange it may seem, and however little it seemed in keeping with the rest of her character, was a staunch adherent to that teaching which holds that the essence of Christianity lies in the belief in redemption. She went to meetings where this teaching, then in fashion, was being preached, and assembled the “faithful” in her own house. Though this teaching repudiated all ceremonies, icons, and sacraments, Katerina Ivanovna had icons in every room, and one on the wall above her bed, and she kept all that the Church prescribed without noticing any contradiction in that.
“There now; if your Magdalene could hear him she would be converted,” said the Countess. “Do stay at home to-night; you will hear him. He is a wonderful man.”
“It does not interest me, ma tante.”
“But I tell you that it is interesting, and you must come home. Now you may go. What else do you want of me?Videz votre sac.”
“The next is in the fortress.”
“In the fortress? I can give you a note for that to the Baron Kriegsmuth.Cest un tres brave homme. Oh, but you know him; he was a comrade of your father’s.Il donne dans le spiritisme. But that does not matter, he is a good fellow. What do you want there?”
“I want to get leave for a mother to visit her son who is imprisoned there. But I was told that this did not depend on Kriegsmuth but on Tcherviansky.”
“I do not like Tcherviansky, but he is Mariette’s husband; we might ask her. She will do it for me.Elle est tres gentille.”
“I have also to petition for a woman who is imprisoned there without knowing what for.”
“No fear; she knows well enough. They all know it very well, and it serves them right, those short-haired [many advanced women wear their hair short, like men] ones.”
“We do not know whether it serves them right or not. But they suffer. You are a Christian and believe in the Gospel teaching and yet you are so pitiless.”
“That has nothing to do with it. The Gospels are the Gospels, but what is disgusting remains disgusting. It would be worse if I pretended to love Nihilists, especially short-haired women Nihilists, when I cannot bear them.”
“Why can you not bear them?”
“You ask why, after the 1st of March?” [The Emperor Alexander II was killed on the first of March, old style.]
“They did not all take part in it on the 1st of March.”
“Never mind; they should not meddle with what is no business of theirs. It’s not women’s business.”
“Yet you consider that Mariette may take part in business.”
“Mariette? Mariette is Mariette, and these are goodness knows what. Want to teach everybody.”
“Not to teach but simply to help the people.”
“One knows whom to help and whom not to help without them.”
“But the peasants are in great need. I have just returned from the country. Is it necessary, that the peasants should work to the very limits of their strength and never have sufficient to eat while we are living in the greatest luxury?” said Nekhludoff, involuntarily led on by his aunt’s good nature into telling her what he was in his thoughts.
“What do you want, then? That I should work and not eat anything?”
“No, I do not wish you not to eat. I only wish that we should all work and all eat.” He could not help smiling as he said it.
Again raising her brow and drooping her eyeballs his aunt looked at him curiously. “Mon cher vous finirez mal,” she said.
Just then the general, and former minister, Countess Tcharsky’s husband, a tall, broad-shouldered man, came into the room.
“Ah, Dmitri, how d’you do?” he said, turning his freshly-shaved cheek to Nekhludoff to be kissed. “When did you get here?” And he silently kissed his wife on the forehead.
“Non il est impayable,” the Countess said, turning to her husband. “He wants me to go and wash clothes and live on potatoes. He is an awful fool, but all the same do what he is going to ask of you. A terrible simpleton,” she added. “Have you heard? Kamenskaya is in such despair that they fear for her life,” she said to her husband. “You should go and call there.”
“Yes; it is dreadful,” said her husband.
“Go along, then, and talk to him. I must write some letters.”
Hardly had Nekhludoff stepped into the room next the drawing-room than she called him back.
“Shall I write to Mariette, then?”
“Please, ma tante.”
“I shall leave a blank for what you want to say about the short-haired one, and she will give her husband his orders, and he’ll do it. Do not think me wicked; they are all so disgusting, your prologues, butje ne leur veux pas de mal, bother them. Well, go, but be sure to stay at home this evening to hear Kiesewetter, and we shall have some prayers. And if only you do not resistcela vous fera beaucoup de bien. I know your poor mother and all of you were always very backward in these things.”
Count Ivan Michaelovitch had been a minister, and was a man of strong convictions. The convictions of Count Ivan Michaelovitch consisted in the belief that, just as it was natural for a bird to feed on worms, to be clothed in feathers and down, and to fly in the air, so it was natural for him to feed on the choicest and most expensive food, prepared by highly-paid cooks, to wear the most comfortable and most expensive clothing, to drive with the best and fastest horses, and that, therefore, all these things should be ready found for him. Besides this, Count Ivan Michaelovitch considered that the more money he could get out of the treasury by all sorts of means, the more orders he had, including different diamond insignia of something or other, and the oftener he spoke to highly-placed individuals of both sexes, so much the better it was.
All the rest Count Ivan Michaelovitch considered insignificant and uninteresting beside these dogmas. All the rest might be as it was, or just the reverse. Count Ivan Michaelovitch lived and acted according to these lights for 40 years, and at the end of 40 years reached the position of a Minister of State. The chief qualities that enabled Count Ivan Michaelovitch to reach this position were his capacity of understanding the meaning of documents and laws and of drawing up, though clumsily, intelligible State papers, and of spelling them correctly; secondly, his very stately appearance, which enabled him, when necessary, to seem not only extremely proud, but unapproachable and majestic, while at other times he could be abjectly and almost passionately servile; thirdly, the absence of any general principles or rules, either of personal or administrative morality, which made it possible for him either to agree or disagree with anybody according to what was wanted at the time. When acting thus his only endeavour was to sustain the appearance of good breeding and not to seem too plainly inconsistent. As for his actions being moral or not, in themselves, or whether they were going to result in the highest welfare or greatest evil for the whole of the Russian Empire, or even the entire world, that was quite indifferent to him. When he became minister, not only those dependent on him (and there were great many of them) and people connected with him, but many strangers and even he himself were convinced that he was a very clever statesman. But after some time had elapsed and he had done nothing and had nothing to show, and when in accordance with the law of the struggle for existence others, like himself, who had learnt to write and understand documents, stately and unprincipled officials, had displaced him, he turned out to be not only far from clever but very limited and badly educated. Though self-assured, his views hardly reaching the level of those in the leading articles of the Conservative papers, it became apparent that there was nothing in him to distinguish him from those other badly-educated and self-assured officials who had pushed him out, and he himself saw it. But this did not shake his conviction that he had to receive a great deal of money out of the Treasury every year, and new decorations for his dress clothes. This conviction was so firm that no one had the pluck to refuse these things to him, and he received yearly, partly in form of a pension, partly as a salary for being a member in a Government institution and chairman of all sorts of committees and councils, several tens of thousands of roubles, besides the right—highly prized by him—of sewing all sorts of new cords to his shoulders and trousers, and ribbons to wear under and enamel stars to fix on to his dress coat. In consequence of this Count Ivan Michaelovitch had very high connections.
Count Ivan Michaelovitch listened to Nekhludoff as he was wont to listen to the reports of the permanent secretary of his department, and, having heard him, said he would give him two notes, one to the Senator Wolff, of the Appeal Department. “All sorts of things are reported of him, but dans tous les cas c’est un homme tres comme ii faut,” he said. “He is indebted to me, and will do all that is possible.” The other note Count Ivan Michaelovitch gave Nekhludoff was to an influential member of the Petition Committee. The story of Theodosia Birukoff as told by Nekhludoff interested him very much. When Nekhludoff said that he thought of writing to the Empress, the Count replied that it certainly was a very touching story, and might, if occasion presented itself, he told her, but he could not promise. Let the petition be handed in in due form.
Should there be an opportunity, and if a petit comite were called on Thursday, he thought he would tell her the story. As soon as Nekhludoff had received these two notes, and a note to Mariette from his aunt, he at once set off to these different places.
First he went to Mariette’s. He had known her as a half-grown girl, the daughter of an aristocratic but not wealthy family, and had heard how she had married a man who was making a career, whom Nekhludoff had heard badly spoken of; and, as usual, he felt it hard to ask a favour of a man he did not esteem. In these cases he always felt an inner dissension and dissatisfaction, and wavered whether to ask the favour or not, and always resolved to ask. Besides feeling himself in a false position among those to whose set he no longer regarded himself as belonging, who yet regarded him as belonging to them, he felt himself getting into the old accustomed rut, and in spite of himself fell into the thoughtless and immoral tone that reigned in that circle. He felt that from the first, with his aunt, he involuntarily fell into a bantering tone while talking about serious matters.
Petersburg in general affected him with its usual physically invigorating and mentally dulling effect.
Everything so clean, so comfortably well-arranged and the people so lenient in moral matters, that life seemed very easy.
A fine, clean, and polite isvostchik drove him past fine, clean, polite policemen, along the fine, clean, watered streets, past fine, clean houses to the house in which Mariette lived. At the front door stood a pair of English horses, with English harness, and an English-looking coachman on the box, with the lower part of his face shaved, proudly holding a whip. The doorkeeper, dressed in a wonderfully clean livery, opened the door into the hall, where in still cleaner livery with gold cords stood the footman with his splendid whiskers well combed out, and the orderly on duty in a brand-new uniform. “The general does not receive, and the generaless does not receive either. She is just going to drive out.”
Nekhludoff took out Katerina Ivanovna’s letter, and going up to a table on which lay a visitors’ book, began to write that he was sorry not to have been able to see any one; when the footman went up the staircase the doorkeeper went out and shouted to the coachman, and the orderly stood up rigid with his arms at his sides following with his eyes a little, slight lady, who was coming down the stairs with rapid steps not in keeping with all the grandeur.
Mariette had a large hat on, with feathers, a black dress and cape, and new black gloves. Her face was covered by a veil.
When she saw Nekhludoff she lifted the veil off a very pretty face with bright eyes that looked inquiringly at him.
“Ah, Prince Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff,” she said, with a soft, pleasant voice. “I should have known—”
“What! you even remember my name?”
“I should think so. Why, I and my sisters have even been in love with you,” she said, in French. “But, dear me, how you have altered. Oh, what a pity I have to go out. But let us go up again,” she said and stopped hesitatingly. Then she looked at the clock. “No, I can’t. I am going to Kamenskaya’s to attend a mass for the dead. She is terribly afflicted.”
“Who is this Kamenskaya?”
“Have you not heard? Her son was killed in a duel. He fought Posen. He was the only son. Terrible I The mother is very much afflicted.”
“Yes. I have heard of it.”
“No, I had better go, and you must come again, to-night or to-morrow,” she said, and went to the door with quick, light steps.
“I cannot come to-night,” he said, going out after her; “but I have a request to make you,” and he looked at the pair of bays that were drawing up to the front door.
“What is this?”
“This is a letter from aunt to you,” said Nekhludoff, handing her a narrow envelope, with a large crest. “You’ll find all about it in there.”
“I know Countess Katerina Ivanovna thinks I have some influence with my husband in business matters. She is mistaken. I can do nothing and do not like to interfere. But, of course, for you I am willing to be false to my principle. What is this business about?” she said, searching in vain for her pocket with her little black gloved hand.
“There is a girl imprisoned in the fortress, and she is ill and innocent.”
“What is her name?”
“Lydia Shoustova. It’s in the note.”
“All right; I’ll see what I can do,” she said, and lightly jumped into her little, softly upholstered, open carriage, its brightly-varnished splash-guards glistening in the sunshine, and opened her parasol. The footman got on the box and gave the coachman a sign. The carriage moved, but at that moment she touched the coachman with her parasol and the slim-legged beauties, the bay mares, stopped, bending their beautiful necks and stepping from foot to foot.
“But you must come, only, please, without interested motives,” and she looked at him with a smile, the force of which she well knew, and, as if the performance over and she were drawing the curtain, she dropped the veil over her face again. “All right,” and she again touched the coachman.
Nekhludoff raised his hat, and the well-bred bays, slightly snorting, set off, their shoes clattering on the pavement, and the carriage rolled quickly and smoothly on its new rubber tyres, giving a jump only now and then over some unevenness of the road.
When Nekhludoff remembered the smiles that had passed between him and Mariette, he shook his head.
“You have hardly time to turn round before you are again drawn into this life,” he thought, feeling that discord and those doubts which the necessity to curry favour from people he did not esteem caused.
After considering where to go first, so as not to have to retrace his steps, Nekhludoff set off for the Senate. There he was shown into the office where he found a great many very polite and very clean officials in the midst of a magnificent apartment. Maslova’s petition was received and handed on to that Wolf, to whom Nekhludoff had a letter from his uncle, to be examined and reported on.
“There will be a meeting of the Senate this week,” the official said to Nekhludoff, “but Maslova’s case will hardly come before that meeting.”
“It might come before the meeting on Wednesday, by special request,” one of the officials remarked.
During the time Nekhludoff waited in the office, while some information was being taken, he heard that the conversation in the Senate was all about the duel, and he heard a detailed account of how a young man, Kaminski, had been killed. It was here he first heard all the facts of the case which was exciting the interest of all Petersburg. The story was this: Some officers were eating oysters and, as usual, drinking very much, when one of them said something ill-natured about the regiment to which Kaminski belonged, and Kaminski called him a liar. The other hit Kaminski. The next day they fought. Kaminski was wounded in the stomach and died two hours later. The murderer and the seconds were arrested, but it was said that though they were arrested and in the guardhouse they would be set free in a fortnight.
From the Senate Nekhludoff drove to see an influential member of the petition Committee, Baron Vorobioff, who lived in a splendid house belonging to the Crown. The doorkeeper told Nekhludoff in a severe tone that the Baron could not be seen except on his reception days; that he was with His Majesty the Emperor to-day, and the next day he would again have to deliver a report. Nekhludoff left his uncle’s letter with the doorkeeper and went on to see the Senator Wolf. Wolf had just had his lunch, and was as usual helping digestion by smoking a cigar and pacing up and down the room, when Nekhludoff came in. Vladimir Vasilievitch Wolf was certainlyun homme tres comme il faut, and prized this quality very highly, and from that elevation he looked down at everybody else. He could not but esteem this quality of his very highly, because it was thanks to it alone that he had made a brilliant career, the very career he desired, i.e., by marriage he obtained a fortune which brought him in 18,000 roubles a year, and by his own exertions the post of a senator. He considered himself not onlyun homme tres comme il faut, but also a man of knightly honour. By honour he understood not accepting secret bribes from private persons. But he did not consider it dishonest to beg money for payment of fares and all sorts of travelling expenses from the Crown, and to do anything the Government might require of him in return. To ruin hundreds of innocent people, to cause them to be imprisoned, to be exiled because of their love for their people and the religion of their fathers, as he had done in one of the governments of Poland when he was governor there. He did not consider it dishonourable, but even thought it a noble, manly and patriotic action. Nor did he consider it dishonest to rob his wife and sister-in-law, as he had done, but thought it a wise way of arranging his family life. His family consisted of his commonplace wife, his sister-in-law, whose fortune he had appropriated by selling her estate and putting the money to his account, and his meek, frightened, plain daughter, who lived a lonely, weary life, from which she had lately begun to look for relaxation in evangelicism, attending meetings at Aline’s, and the Countess Katerina Ivanovna. Wolf’s son, who had grown a beard at the age of 15, and had at that age begun to drink and lead a depraved life, which he continued to do till the age of 20, when he was turned out by his father because he never finished his studies, moved in a low set and made debts which committed the father. The father had once paid a debt of 250 roubles for his son, then another of 600 roubles, but warned the son that he did it for the last time, and that if the son did not reform he would be turned out of the house and all further intercourse between him and his family would he put a stop to. The son did not reform, but made a debt of a thousand roubles, and took the liberty of telling his father that life at home was a torment anyhow. Then Wolf declared to his son that he might go where he pleased—that he was no son of his any longer. Since then Wolf pretended he had no son, and no one at home dared speak to him about his son, and Vladimir Vasilievitch Wolf was firmly convinced that he had arranged his family life in the best way. Wolf stopped pacing up and down his study, and greeted Nekhludoff with a friendly though slightly ironical smile. This was his way of showing how comme il faut he was, and how superior to the majority of men. He read the note which Nekhludoff handed to him.
“Please take a seat, and excuse me if I continue to walk up and down, with your permission,” he said, putting his hands into his coat pockets, and began again to walk with light, soft steps across his large, quietly and stylishly furnished study. “Very pleased to make your acquaintance and of course very glad to do anything that Count Ivan Michaelovitch wishes,” he said, blowing the fragrant blue smoke out of his mouth and removing his cigar carefully so as not to drop the ash.
“I should only like to ask that the case might come on soon, so that if the prisoner has to go to Siberia she might set off early,” said Nekhludoff.
“Yes, yes, with one of the first steamers from Nijni. I know,” said Wolf, with his patronising smile, always knowing in advance whatever one wanted to tell him.
“What is the prisoner’s name?”
“Maslova.”
Wolf went up to the table and looked at a paper that lay on a piece of cardboard among other business papers.
“Yes, yes. Maslova. All right, I will ask the others. We shall hear the case on Wednesday.”
“Then may I telegraph to the advocate?”
“The advocate! What’s that for? But if you like, why not?”
“The causes for appeal may be insufficient,” said Nekhludoff, “but I think the case will show that the sentence was passed owing to a misunderstanding.”
“Yes, yes; it may be so, but the Senate cannot decide the case on its merits,” said Wolf, looking seriously at the ash of his cigar. “The Senate only considers the exactness of the application of the laws and their right interpretation.”
“But this seems to me to be an exceptional case.”
“I know, I know! All cases are exceptional. We shall do our duty. That’s all.” The ash was still holding on, but had began breaking, and was in danger of falling.
“Do you often come to Petersburg?” said Wolf, holding his cigar so that the ash should not fall. But the ash began to shake, and Wolf carefully carried it to the ashpan, into which it fell.
“What a terrible thing this is with regard to Kaminski,” he said. “A splendid young man. The only son. Especially the mother’s position,” he went on, repeating almost word for word what every one in Petersburg was at that time saying about Kaminski. Wolf spoke a little about the Countess Katerina Ivanovna and her enthusiasm for the new religious teaching, which he neither approved nor disapproved of, but which was evidently needless to him who was so comme il faut, and then rang the bell.
Nekhludoff bowed.
“If it is convenient, come and dine on Wednesday, and I will give you a decisive answer,” said Wolf, extending his hand.
It was late, and Nekhludoff returned to his aunt’s.
Countess Katerina Ivanovna’s dinner hour was half-past seven, and the dinner was served in a new manner that Nekhludoff had not yet seen anywhere. After they had placed the dishes on the table the waiters left the room and the diners helped themselves. The men would not let the ladies take the trouble of moving, and, as befitted the stronger sex, they manfully took on themselves the burden of putting the food on the ladies’ plates and of filling their glasses. When one course was finished, the Countess pressed the button of an electric bell fitted to the table and the waiters stepped in noiselessly and quickly carried away the dishes, changed the plates, and brought in the next course. The dinner was very refined, the wines very costly. A French chef was working in the large, light kitchens, with two white-clad assistants. There were six persons at dinner, the Count and Countess, their son (a surly officer in the Guards who sat with his elbows on the table), Nekhludoff, a French lady reader, and the Count’s chief steward, who had come up from the country. Here, too, the conversation was about the duel, and opinions were given as to how the Emperor regarded the case. It was known that the Emperor was very much grieved for the mother’s sake, and all were grieved for her, and as it was also known that the Emperor did not mean to be very severe to the murderer, who defended the honour of his uniform, all were also lenient to the officer who had defended the honour of his uniform. Only the Countess Katerina Ivanovna, with her free thoughtlessness, expressed her disapproval.
“They get drunk, and kill unobjectionable young men. I should not forgive them on any account,” she said.
“Now, that’s a thing I cannot understand,” said the Count.
“I know that you never can understand what I say,” the Countess began, and turning to Nekhludoff, she added:
“Everybody understands except my husband. I say I am sorry for the mother, and I do not wish him to be contented, having killed a man.” Then her son, who had been silent up to then, took the murderer’s part, and rudely attacked his mother, arguing that an officer could not behave in any other way, because his fellow-officers would condemn him and turn him out of the regiment. Nekhludoff listened to the conversation without joining in. Having been an officer himself, he understood, though he did not agree with, young Tcharsky’s arguments, and at the same time he could not help contrasting the fate of the officer with that of a beautiful young convict whom he had seen in the prison, and who was condemned to the mines for having killed another in a fight. Both had turned murderers through drunkenness. The peasant had killed a man in a moment of irritation, and he was parted from his wife and family, had chains on his legs, and his head shaved, and was going to hard labour in Siberia, while the officer was sitting in a fine room in the guardhouse, eating a good dinner, drinking good wine, and reading books, and would be set free in a day or two to live as he had done before, having only become more interesting by the affair. Nekhludoff said what he had been thinking, and at first his aunt, Katerina Ivanovna, seemed to agree with him, but at last she became silent as the rest had done, and Nekhludoff felt that he had committed something akin to an impropriety. In the evening, soon after dinner, the large hall, with high-backed carved chairs arranged in rows as for a meeting, and an armchair next to a little table, with a bottle of water for the speaker, began to fill with people come to hear the foreigner, Kiesewetter, preach. Elegant equipages stopped at the front entrance. In the hall sat richly-dressed ladies in silks and velvets and lace, with false hair and false busts and drawn-in waists, and among them men in uniform and evening dress, and about five persons of the common class, i.e., two men-servants, a shop-keeper, a footman, and a coachman. Kiesewetter, a thick-set, grisly man, spoke English, and a thin young girl, with a pince-nez, translated it into Russian promptly and well. He was saying that our sins were so great, the punishment for them so great and so unavoidable, that it was impossible to live anticipating such punishment. “Beloved brothers and sisters, let us for a moment consider what we are doing, how we are living, how we have offended against the all-loving Lord, and how we make Christ suffer, and we cannot but understand that there is no forgiveness possible for us, no escape possible, that we are all doomed to perish. A terrible fate awaits us—-everlasting torment,” he said, with tears in his trembling voice. “Oh, how can we be saved, brothers? How can we be saved from this terrible, unquenchable fire? The house is in flames; there is no escape.”
He was silent for a while, and real tears flowed down his cheeks. It was for about eight years that each time when he got to this part of his speech, which he himself liked so well, he felt a choking in his throat and an irritation in his nose, and the tears came in his eyes, and these tears touched him still more. Sobs were heard in the room. The Countess Katerina Ivanovna sat with her elbows on an inlaid table, leaning her head on her hands, and her shoulders were shaking. The coachman looked with fear and surprise at the foreigner, feeling as if he was about to run him down with the pole of his carriage and the foreigner would not move out of his way. All sat in positions similar to that Katerina Ivanovna had assumed. Wolf’s daughter, a thin, fashionably-dressed girl, very like her father, knelt with her face in her hands.
The orator suddenly uncovered his face, and smiled a very real-looking smile, such as actors express joy with, and began again with a sweet, gentle voice:
“Yet there is a way to be saved. Here it is—a joyful, easy way. The salvation is the blood shed for us by the only son of God, who gave himself up to torments for our sake. His sufferings, His blood, will save us. Brothers and sisters,” he said, again with tears in his voice, “let us praise the Lord, who has given His only begotten son for the redemption of mankind. His holy blood . . .”
Nekhludoff felt so deeply disgusted that he rose silently, and frowning and keeping back a groan of shame, he left on tiptoe, and went to his room.
Hardly had Nekhludoff finished dressing the next morning, just as he was about to go down, the footman brought him a card from the Moscow advocate. The advocate had come to St. Petersburg on business of his own, and was going to be present when Maslova’s case was examined in the Senate, if that would be soon. The telegram sent by Nekhludoff crossed him on the way. Having found out from Nekhludoff when the case was going to be heard, and which senators were to be present, he smiled. “Exactly, all the three types of senators,” he said. “Wolf is a Petersburg official; Skovorodnikoff is a theoretical, and Bay a practical lawyer, and therefore the most alive of them all,” said the advocate. “There is most hope of him. Well, and how about the Petition Committee?”
“Oh, I’m going to Baron Vorobioff to-day. I could not get an audience with him yesterday.”
“Do you know why he isBaronVorobioff?” said the advocate, noticing the slightly ironical stress that Nekhludoff put on this foreign title, followed by so very Russian a surname.
“That was because the Emperor Paul rewarded the grandfather—I think he was one of the Court footmen—by giving him this title. He managed to please him in some way, so he made him a baron. ‘It’s my wish, so don’t gainsay me!’ And so there’s aBaronVorobioff, and very proud of the title. He is a dreadful old humbug.”
“Well, I’m going to see him,” said Nekhludoff.
“That’s good; we can go together. I shall give you a lift.”
As they were going to start, a footman met Nekhludoff in the ante-room, and handed him a note from Mariette:
Pour vous faire plaisir, f’ai agi tout a fait contre mes principes et j’ai intercede aupres de mon mari pour votre protegee. Il se trouve que cette personne pout etre relaxee immediatement. Mon mari a ecrit au commandant. Venez donc disinterestedly. Je vous attends.
M.
“Just fancy!” said Nekhludoff to the advocate. “Is this not dreadful? A woman whom they are keeping in solitary confinement for seven months turns out to be quite innocent, and only a word was needed to get her released.”
“That’s always so. Well, anyhow, you have succeeded in getting what you wanted.”
“Yes, but this success grieves me. Just think what must be going on there. Why have they been keeping her?”
“Oh, it’s best not to look too deeply into it. Well, then, I shall give you a lift, if I may,” said the advocate, as they left the house, and a fine carriage that the advocate had hired drove up to the door. “It’s Baron Vorobioff you are going to see?”
The advocate gave the driver his directions, and the two good horses quickly brought Nekhludoff to the house in which the Baron lived. The Baron was at home. A young official in uniform, with a long, thin neck, a much protruding Adam’s apple, and an extremely light walk, and two ladies were in the first room.
“Your name, please?” the young man with the Adam’s apple asked, stepping with extreme lightness and grace across from the ladies to Nekhludoff.
Nekhludoff gave his name.
“The Baron was just mentioning you,” said the young man, the Baron’s adjutant, and went out through an inner door. He returned, leading a weeping lady dressed in mourning. With her bony fingers the lady was trying to pull her tangled veil over her face in order to hide her tears.
“Come in, please,” said the young man to Nekhludoff, lightly stepping up to the door of the study and holding it open. When Nekhludoff came in, he saw before him a thick-set man of medium height, with short hair, in a frock coat, who was sitting in an armchair opposite a large writing-table, and looking gaily in front of himself. The kindly, rosy red face, striking by its contrast with the white hair, moustaches, and beard, turned towards Nekhludoff with a friendly smile.
“Very glad to see you. Your mother and I were old acquaintances and friends. I have seen you as a boy, and later on as an officer. Sit down and tell me what I can do for you. Yes, yes,” he said, shaking his cropped white head, while Nekhludoff was telling him Theodosia’s story. “Go on, go on. I quite understand. It is certainly very touching. And have you handed in the petition?”
“I have got the petition ready,” Nekhludoff said, getting it out of his pocket; “but I thought of speaking to you first in hopes that the case would then get special attention paid to it.”
“You have done very well. I shall certainly report it myself,” said the Baron, unsuccessfully trying to put an expression of pity on his merry face. “Very touching! It is clear she was but a child; the husband treated her roughly, this repelled her, but as time went on they fell in love with each other. Yes I will report the case.”
“Count Ivan Michaelovitch was also going to speak about it.”
Nekhludoff had hardly got these words out when the Baron’s face changed.
“You had better hand in the petition into the office, after all, and I shall do what I can,” he said.
At this moment the young official again entered the room, evidently showing off his elegant manner of walking.
“That lady is asking if she may say a few words more.”
“Well, ask her in. Ah, mon cher, how many tears we have to see shed! If only we could dry them all. One does all that lies within one’s power.”
The lady entered.
“I forgot to ask you that he should not be allowed to give up the daughter, because he is ready . . .”
“But I have already told you that I should do all I can.”
“Baron, for the love of God! You will save the mother?”
She seized his hand, and began kissing it.
“Everything shall be done.”
When the lady went out Nekhludoff also began to take leave.
“We shall do what we can. I shall speak about it at the Ministry of Justice, and when we get their answer we shall do what we can.”
Nekhludoff left the study, and went into the office again. Just as in the Senate office, he saw, in a splendid apartment, a number of very elegant officials, clean, polite, severely correct and distinguished in dress and in speech.
“How many there are of them; how very many and how well fed they all look! And what clean shirts and hands they all have, and how well all their boots are polished! Who does it for them? How comfortable they all are, as compared not only with the prisoners, but even with the peasants!” These thoughts again involuntarily came to Nekhludoff’s mind.