On coming into the Law Courts Nekhludoff met the usher of
yesterday, who to-day seemed to him much to be pitied, in the
corridor, and asked him where those prisoners who had been
sentenced were kept, and to whom one had to apply for permission
to visit them. The usher told him that the condemned prisoners
were kept in different places, and that, until they received
their sentence in its final form, the permission to visit them
depended on the president. "I'll come and call you myself, and
take you to the president after the session. The president is not
even here at present. After the session! And now please come in;
we are going to commence."
Nekhludoff thanked the usher for his kindness, and went into the
jurymen's room. As he was approaching the room, the other jurymen
were just leaving it to go into the court. The merchant had again
partaken of a little refreshment, and was as merry as the day
before, and greeted Nekhludoff like an old friend. And to-day
Peter Gerasimovitch did not arouse any unpleasant feelings in
Nekhludoff by his familiarity and his loud laughter. Nekhludoff
would have liked to tell all the jurymen about his relations to
yesterday's prisoner. "By rights," he thought, "I ought to have
got up yesterday during the trial and disclosed my guilt."
He entered the court with the other jurymen, and witnessed the
same procedure as the day before.
"The judges are coming," was again proclaimed, and again three
men, with embroidered collars, ascended the platform, and there
was the same settling of the jury on the high-backed chairs, the
same gendarmes, the same portraits, the same priest, and
Nekhludoff felt that, though he knew what he ought to do, he
could not interrupt all this solemnity. The preparations for the
trials were just the same as the day before, excepting that the
swearing in of the jury and the president's address to them were
omitted.
The case before the Court this day was one of burglary. The
prisoner, guarded by two gendarmes with naked swords, was a thin,
narrow-chested lad of 20, with a bloodless, sallow face, dressed
in a grey cloak. He sat alone in the prisoner's dock. This boy
was accused of having, together with a companion, broken the lock
of a shed and stolen several old mats valued at 3 roubles [the
rouble is worth a little over two shillings, and contains 100
copecks] and 67 copecks. According to the indictment, a
policeman had stopped this boy as he was passing with his
companion, who was carrying the mats on his shoulder. The boy and
his companion confessed at once, and were both imprisoned. The
boy's companion, a locksmith, died in prison, and so the boy was
being tried alone. The old mats were lying on the table as the
objects of material evidence. The business was conducted just in
the same manner as the day before, with the whole armoury of
evidence, proofs, witnesses, swearing in, questions, experts, and
cross-examinations. In answer to every question put to him by the
president, the prosecutor, or the advocate, the policeman (one of
the witnesses) in variably ejected the words: "just so," or
"Can't tell." Yet, in spite of his being stupefied, and rendered
a mere machine by military discipline, his reluctance to speak
about the arrest of this prisoner was evident. Another witness,
an old house proprietor, and owner of the mats, evidently a rich
old man, when asked whether the mats were his, reluctantly
identified them as such. When the public prosecutor asked him
what he meant to do with these mats, what use they were to him,
he got angry, and answered: "The devil take those mats; I don't
want them at all. Had I known there would be all this bother
about them I should not have gone looking for them, but would
rather have added a ten-rouble note or two to them, only not to
be dragged here and pestered with questions. I have spent a lot
on isvostchiks. Besides, I am not well. I have been suffering
from rheumatism for the last seven years." It was thus the
witness spoke.