Resurrection
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.
CHAPTER XVIII.
OFFICIALDOM.
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 is _Baron_ Vorobioff?” 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 a _Baron_ Vorobioff, 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.
CHAPTER XIX.
AN OLD GENERAL OF REPUTE.
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 insured 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 10 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; it all happened within his
knowledge; but these cases no more touched his conscience than accidents
brought on by thunderstorms, floods, etc. These cases occurred as a
consequence of the fulfilment of regulations prescribed “from above” by
His Imperial Majesty. These regulations had to be carried out
without fail, and therefore it was absolutely useless to think of the
consequences of their fulfilment. The old General did not even allow
himself to think of such things, counting it his patriotic duty as a
soldier not to think of them for fear of getting weak in the carrying
out of these, according to his opinion, very important obligations. Once
a week the old General made the round of the cells, one of the duties of
his position, and asked the prisoners if they had any requests to make.
The prisoners had all sorts of requests. He listened to them quietly, in
impenetrable silence, and never fulfilled any of their requests, because
they were all in disaccord with the regulations. Just as Nekhludoff
drove up to the old General’s house, the high notes of the bells on the
belfry clock chimed “Great is the Lord,” and then struck two. The sound
of these chimes brought back to Nekhludoff’s mind what he had read
in the notes of the Decembrists [the Decembrists were a group who
attempted, but failed, to put an end to absolutism in Russia at the time
of the accession of Nicholas the First] about the way this sweet music
repeated every hour re-echoes in the hearts of those imprisoned for
life.