Resurrection, Leo Tolstoy [top 5 books to read .txt] 📗

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. Nekhlúdoff said what he had been thinking, and at first his aunt, Katerína Ivánovna, seemed to agree with him, but at last she became silent as the rest had done, and Nekhlúdoff 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 menservants, a shopkeeper, a footman, and a coachman. Kiesewetter, a thickset, 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 Katerína Ivánovna 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 Katerína Ivánovna had assumed. Wolff’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—”

Nekhlúdoff 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.

XVIII

Hardly had Nekhlúdoff 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 Máslova’s case was examined in the Senate, if that would be soon. The telegram sent by Nekhlúdoff crossed him on the way. Having found out from Nekhlúdoff 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. “Wolff is a Petersburg official; Skovoródnikoff 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 Vorobióff today. I could not get an audience with him yesterday.”

“Do you know why he is Baron Vorobióff?” said the advocate, noticing the slightly ironical stress that Nekhlúdoff 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 a Baron Vorobióff, and very proud of the title. He is a dreadful old humbug.”

“Well, I’m going to see him,” said Nekhlúdoff.

“That’s good; we can go together. I shall give you a lift.”

As they were going to start, a footman met Nekhlúdoff in the anteroom, and handed him a note from Mariette⁠—

Pour vous faire plaisir, j’ai agi tout à fait contre mes principes et j’ai intercédé auprès de mon mari pour votre protégée. Il se trouve que cette personne peut être relaxée immédiatement. Mon mari a écrit au commandant. Venez donc disinterestedly. Je vous attends.

M.

“Just fancy!” said Nekhlúdoff 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