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

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 Vorobióff you are going to see?”

The advocate gave the driver his directions, and the two good horses quickly brought Nekhlúdoff 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 Nekhlúdoff.

Nekhlúdoff 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 Nekhlúdoff, lightly stepping up to the door of the study and holding it open. When Nekhlúdoff came in, he saw before him a thickset 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 Nekhlúdoff 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 Nekhlúdoff 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,” Nekhlúdoff 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 Iván Micháelovitch was also going to speak about it.”

Nekhlúdoff 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 Nekhlúdoff 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.”

Nekhlúdoff 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 Nekhlúdoff’s mind.

XIX

The man on whom depended the easing of the fate of the Petersburg prisoners was an old General of repute⁠—a baron of German descent, who, as it was said of him, had outlived his wits. He had received a profusion of orders, but only wore one of them, the Order of the White Cross. He had received this order, which he greatly valued, while serving in the Caucasus, because a number of Russian peasants, with their hair cropped, and dressed in uniform and armed with guns and bayonets, had killed at his command more than a thousand men who were defending their liberty, their homes, and their families. Later on he served in Poland, and there also made Russian peasants commit many different crimes, and got more orders and decorations for his uniform. Then he served somewhere else, and now that he was a weak, old man he had this position, which ensured him a good house, an income and respect. He strictly observed all the regulations which were prescribed “from above,” and was very zealous in the fulfilment of these regulations, to which he ascribed a special importance, considering that everything else in the world might be changed except the regulations prescribed “from above.” His duty was to keep political prisoners, men and women, in solitary confinement in such a way that half of them perished in ten years’ time, some going out of their minds, some dying of consumption, some committing suicide by starving themselves to death, cutting their veins with bits of glass, hanging, or burning themselves to death.

The old General was not ignorant of this;