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

gradually bolder. When the assistant left the cell and went into the corridor to give some order the man grew quite bold. The story was told with the accent and in the manner common to a most ordinary good peasant lad. To hear it told by a prisoner dressed in this degrading clothing, and inside a prison, seemed very strange to Nekhlúdoff. Nekhlúdoff listened, and at the same time kept looking around him⁠—at the low bedstead with its straw mattress, the window and the dirty, damp wall, and the piteous face and form of this unfortunate, disfigured peasant in his prison cloak and shoes, and he felt sadder and sadder, and would have liked not to believe what this good-natured fellow was saying. It seemed too dreadful to think that men could do such a thing as to take a man, dress him in convict clothes, and put him in this horrible place without any reason only because he himself had been injured. And yet the thought that this seemingly true story, told with such a good-natured expression on the face, might be an invention and a lie was still more dreadful. This was the story: The village public-house keeper had enticed the young fellow’s wife. He tried to get justice by all sorts of means. But everywhere the public-house keeper managed to bribe the officials, and was acquitted. Once, he took his wife back by force, but she ran away next day. Then he came to demand her back, but, though he saw her when he came in, the public-house keeper told him she was not there, and ordered him to go away. He would not go, so the public-house keeper and his servant beat him so that they drew blood. The next day a fire broke out in the public-house, and the young man and his mother were accused of having set the house on fire. He had not set it on fire, but was visiting a friend at the time.

“And it is true that you did not set it on fire?”

“It never entered my head to do it, sir. It must be my enemy that did it himself. They say he had only just insured it. Then they said it was mother and I that did it, and that we had threatened him. It is true I once did go for him, my heart couldn’t stand it any longer.”

“Can this be true?”

“God is my witness it is true. Oh, sir, be so good⁠—” and Nekhlúdoff had some difficulty to prevent him from bowing down to the ground. “You see I am perishing without any reason.” His face quivered and he turned up the sleeve of his cloak and began to cry, wiping the tears with the sleeve of his dirty shirt.

“Are you ready?” asked the assistant.

“Yes.⁠ ⁠… Well, cheer up. We will consult a good lawyer, and will do what we can,” said Nekhlúdoff, and went out. Menshóff stood close to the door, so that the jailer knocked him in shutting it, and while the jailer was locking it he remained looking out through the little hole.

LIII

Passing back along the broad corridor, among the men dressed in their light yellow cloaks, short, wide trousers, and prison shoes, who were looking eagerly at him (it was dinnertime, and the cell doors were open), Nekhlúdoff felt a strange mixture of sympathy for them, and horror and perplexity at the conduct of those who put and kept them here, and, besides, he felt, he knew not why, ashamed of himself calmly examining it all.

In one of the corridors, someone ran, clattering with his shoes, in at the door of a cell. Several men came out from here, and stood in Nekhlúdoff’s way, bowing to him.

“Please, your honour (we don’t know what to call you), get our affair settled somehow.”

“I am not an official. I know nothing about it.”

“Well, anyhow, you come from outside; tell somebody⁠—one of the authorities, if need be,” said an indignant voice. “Show some pity on us, as a human being. Here we are suffering the second month for nothing.”

“What do you mean? Why?” said Nekhlúdoff.

“Why? We ourselves don’t know why, but are sitting here the second month.”

“Yes, it’s quite true, and it is owing to an accident,” said the inspector. “These people were taken up because they had no passports, and ought to have been sent back to their native government; but the prison there is burnt, and the local authorities have written, asking us not to send them on. So we have sent all the other passportless people to their different governments, but are keeping these.”

“What! For no other reason than that?” Nekhlúdoff exclaimed, stopping at the door.

A crowd of about forty men, all dressed in prison clothes, surrounded him and the assistant, and several began talking at once. The assistant stopped them.

“Let some one of you speak.”

A tall, good-looking peasant, a stonemason, of about fifty, stepped out from the rest. He told Nekhlúdoff that all of them had been ordered back to their homes and were now being kept in prison because they had no passports, yet they had passports which were only a fortnight overdue. The same thing had happened every year; they had many times omitted to renew their passports till they were overdue, and nobody had ever said anything; but this year they had been taken up and were being kept in prison the second month, as if they were criminals.

“We are all masons, and belong to the same artel. We are told that the prison in our government is burnt, but this is not our fault. Do help us.”

Nekhlúdoff listened, but hardly understood what the good-looking old man was saying, because his attention was riveted to a large, dark-grey, many-legged louse that was creeping along the good-looking man’s cheek.

“How’s that? Is it possible for such a reason?” Nekhlúdoff said, turning to the assistant.

“Yes, they should have been sent off and taken back to their homes,” calmly said