Resurrection
uncomfortable, and, walking faster than his wont, he hurried out of the
door opposite the entrance.
“That is Bay, a most estimable man,” Fanarin said to Nekhludoff, and
then having introduced him to his colleague, he explained the case that
was about to be heard, which he considered very interesting.
The hearing of the case soon commenced, and Nekhludoff, with the
public, entered the left side of the Senate Chamber. They all, including
Fanarin, took their places behind a grating. Only the Petersburg
advocate went up to a desk in front of the grating.
The Senate Chamber was not so big as the Criminal Court; and was more
simply furnished, only the table in front of the senators was covered
with crimson, gold-trimmed velvet, instead of green cloth; but the
attributes of all places of judgment, i.e., the mirror of justice, the
icon, the emblem of hypocrisy, and the Emperor’s portrait, the emblem of
servility, were there.
The usher announced, in the same solemn manner: “The Court is coming.”
Every one rose in the same way, and the senators entered in their
uniforms and sat down on highbacked chairs and leant on the table,
trying to appear natural, just in the same way as the judges in the
Court of Law. There were four senators present--Nikitin, who took the
chair, a clean-shaved man with a narrow face and steely eyes; Wolf, with
significantly compressed lips, and little white hands, with which he
kept turning over the pages of the business papers; Skovorodnikoff,
a heavy, fat, pockmarked man--the learned lawyer; and Bay, the
patriarchal-looking man who had arrived last.
With the advocates entered the chief secretary and public prosecutor, a
lean, clean-shaven young man of medium height, a very dark complexion,
and sad, black eyes. Nekhludoff knew him at once, in spite of his
curious uniform and the fact that he had not seen him for six years. He
had been one of his best friends in Nekhludoff’s student days.
“The public prosecutor Selenin?” Nekhludoff asked, turning to the
advocate.
“Yes. Why?”
“I know him well. He is a fine fellow.”
“And a good public prosecutor; business-like. Now he is the man you
should have interested.”
“He will act according to his conscience in any case,” said Nekhludoff,
recalling the intimate relations and friendship between himself and
Selenin, and the attractive qualities of the latter--purity, honesty,
and good breeding in its best sense.
“Yes, there is no time now,” whispered Fanarin, who was listening to the
report of the case that had commenced.
The Court of Justice was accused of having left a decision of the Court
of Law unaltered.
Nekhludoff listened and tried to make out the meaning of what was going
on; but, just as in the Criminal Court, his chief difficulty was
that not the evidently chief point, but some side issues, were being
discussed. The case was that of a newspaper which had published the
account of a swindle arranged by a director of a limited liability
company. It seemed that the only important question was whether the
director of the company really abused his trust, and how to stop him
from doing it. But the questions under consideration were whether the
editor had a right to publish this article of his contributor, and what
he had been guilty of in publishing it: slander or libel, and in what
way slander included libel, or libel included slander, and something
rather incomprehensible to ordinary people about all sorts of statutes
and resolutions passed by some General Department.
The only thing clear to Nekhludoff was that, in spite of what Wolf had
so strenuously insisted on, the day before, i.e., that the Senate could
not try a case on its merits, in this case he was evidently strongly
in favour of repealing the decision of the Court of Justice, and that
Selenin, in spite of his characteristic reticence, stated the opposite
opinion with quite unexpected warmth. The warmth, which surprised
Nekhludoff, evinced by the usually self-controlled Selenin, was due to
his knowledge of the director’s shabbiness in money matters, and the
fact, which had accidentally come to his cars, that Wolf had been to a
swell dinner party at the swindler’s house only a few days before.
Now that Wolf spoke on the case, guardedly enough, but with evident
bias, Selenin became excited, and expressed his opinion with too much
nervous irritation for an ordinary business transaction.
It was clear that Selenin’s speech had offended Wolf. He grew red, moved
in his chair, made silent gestures of surprise, and at last rose, with
a very dignified and injured look, together with the other senators, and
went out into the debating-room.
“What particular case have you come about?” the usher asked again,
addressing Fanarin.
“I have already told you: Maslova’s case.”
“Yes, quite so. It is to be heard to-day, but--”
“But what?” the advocate asked.
“Well, you see, this case was to be examined without taking sides,
so that the senators will hardly come out again after passing the
resolution. But I will inform them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll inform them; I’ll inform them.” And the usher again put something
down on his paper.
The Senators really meant to pronounce their decision concerning the
libel case, and then to finish the other business, Maslova’s case among
it, over their tea and cigarettes, without leaving the debating-room.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE APPEAL DISMISSED.
As soon as the Senators were seated round the table in the
debating-room, Wolf began to bring forward with great animation all the
motives in favour of a repeal. The chairman, an ill-natured man at
best, was in a particularly bad humour that day. His thoughts were
concentrated on the words he had written down in his memoranda on the
occasion when not he but Viglanoff was appointed to the important post
he had long coveted. It was the chairman, Nikitin’s, honest conviction
that his opinions of the officials of the two upper classes with which
he was in connection would furnish valuable material for the historians.
He had written a chapter the day before in which the officials of the
upper classes got it hot for preventing him, as he expressed it, from
averting the ruin towards which the present rulers of Russia were
driving it, which simply meant that they had prevented his getting a
better salary. And now he was considering what a new light to posterity
this chapter would shed on events.
“Yes, certainly,” he said, in reply to the words addressed to him by
Wolf, without listening to them.
Bay was listening to Wolf with a sad face and drawing a garland on the
paper that lay before him. Bay was a Liberal of the very first water. He
held sacred the Liberal traditions of the sixth decade of this century,
and if he ever overstepped the limits of strict neutrality it was always
in the direction of Liberalism. So in this case; beside the fact that
the swindling director, who was prosecuting for libel, was a bad lot,
the prosecution of a journalist for libel in itself tending, as it did,
to restrict the freedom of the press, inclined Bay to reject the appeal.
When Wolf concluded his arguments Bay stopped drawing his garland and
began in a sad and gentle voice (he was sad because he was obliged to
demonstrate such truisms) concisely, simply and convincingly to show
how unfounded the accusation was, and then, bending his white head, he
continued drawing his garland.
Skovorodnikoff, who sat opposite Wolf, and, with his fat fingers, kept
shoving his beard and moustaches into his mouth, stopped chewing his
beard as soon as Bay was silent, and said with a loud, grating voice,
that, notwithstanding the fact of the director being a terrible
scoundrel, he would have been for the repeal of the sentence if there
were any legal reasons for it; but, as there were none, he was of Bay’s
opinion. He was glad to put this spoke in Wolf’s wheel.
The chairman agreed with Skovorodnikoff, and the appeal was rejected.
Wolf was dissatisfied, especially because it was like being caught
acting with dishonest partiality; so he pretended to be indifferent,
and, unfolding the document which contained Maslova’s case, he became
engrossed in it. Meanwhile the Senators rang and ordered tea, and began
talking about the event that, together with the duel, was occupying the
Petersburgers.
It was the case of the chief of a Government department, who was accused
of the crime provided for in Statute 995.
“What nastiness,” said Bay, with disgust.
“Why; where is the harm of it? I can show you a Russian book containing
the project of a German writer, who openly proposes that it should not
be considered a crime,” said Skovorodnikoff, drawing in greedily the
fumes of the crumpled cigarette, which he held between his fingers close
to the palm, and he laughed boisterously.
“Impossible!” said Bay.
“I shall show it you,” said Skovorodnikoff, giving the full title of the
book, and even its date and the name of its editor.
“I hear he has been appointed governor to some town in Siberia.”
“That’s fine. The archdeacon will meet him with a crucifix. They ought
to appoint an archdeacon of the same sort,” said Skovorodnikoff. “I
could recommend them one,” and he threw the end of his cigarette into
his saucer, and again shoved as much of his beard and moustaches as he
could into his mouth and began chewing them.
The usher came in and reported the advocate’s and Nekhludoff’s desire to
be present at the examination of Maslova’s case.
“This case,” Wolf said, “is quite romantic,” and he told them what he
knew about Nekhludoff’s relations with Maslova. When they had spoken
a little about it and finished their tea and cigarettes, the Senators
returned into the Senate Chamber and proclaimed their decision in the
libel case, and began to hear Maslova’s case.
Wolf, in his thin voice, reported Maslova’s appeal very fully, but
again not without some bias and an evident wish for the repeal of the
sentence.
“Have you anything to add?” the chairman said, turning to Fanarin.
Fanarin rose, and standing with his broad white chest expanded, proved
point by point, with wonderful exactness and persuasiveness, how the
Court had in six points strayed from the exact meaning of the law; and
besides this he touched, though briefly, on the merits of the case, and
on the crying injustice of the sentence. The tone of his speech was one
of apology to the Senators, who, with their penetration and judicial
wisdom, could not help seeing and understanding it all better than he
could. He was obliged to speak only because the duty he had undertaken
forced him to do so.
After Fanarin’s speech one might have thought that there could not
remain the least doubt that the Senate ought to repeal the decision of
the Court. When he had finished his speech, Fanarin looked round with a
smile of triumph, seeing which Nekhludoff felt certain that the case was
won. But when he looked at the Senators he saw that Fanarin smiled and
triumphed all alone. The Senators and the Public Prosecutor did not
smile nor triumph, but looked like people wearied, and who were thinking
“We have often heard the like of you; it is all in vain,” and were only
too glad when he stopped and ceased uselessly detaining them there.
Immediately after the end of the advocate’s speech the chairman turned
to the Public Prosecutor. Selenin briefly and clearly expressed
himself in favour of leaving the decision of the Court unaltered, as
he considered all the reasons for appealing inadequate. After this the
Senators went out into the debating-room. They were divided in their
opinions. Wolf was in favour of altering the decision. Bay, when he
had understood the case, took up the same side with fervour, vividly