Resurrection
the false charge which she knew he would certainly have heard about. But
when she began to justify herself she felt he did not believe her, and
that her excuses would only strengthen his suspicions; tears choked her,
and she was silent.
Maslova still thought and continued to persuade herself that she had
never forgiven him, and hated him, as she told him at their second
interview, but in reality she loved him again, and loved him so that she
did all he wished her to do; left off drinking, smoking, coquetting, and
entered the hospital because she knew he wished it. And if every time he
reminded her of it, she refused so decidedly to accept his sacrifice and
marry him, it was because she liked repeating the proud words she had
once uttered, and because she knew that a marriage with her would be a
misfortune for him.
She had resolutely made up her mind that she would not accept his
sacrifice, and yet the thought that he despised her and believed that
she still was what she had been, and did not notice the change that had
taken place in her, was very painful. That he could still think she had
done wrong while in the hospital tormented her more than the news that
her sentence was confirmed.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE ASTONISHING INSTITUTION CALLED CRIMINAL LAW.
Maslova might be sent off with the first gang of prisoners, therefore
Nekhludoff got ready for his departure. But there was so much to be done
that he felt that he could not finish it, however much time he might
have. It was quite different now from what it had been. Formerly he used
to be obliged to look for an occupation, the interest of which always
centred in one person, i.e., Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff, and
yet, though every interest of his life was thus centred, all these
occupations were very wearisome. Now all his occupations related to
other people and not to Dmitri Ivanovitch, and they were all interesting
and attractive, and there was no end to them. Nor was this all. Formerly
Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff’s occupations always made him feel vexed
and irritable; now they produced a joyful state of mind. The business at
present occupying Nekhludoff could be divided under three headings.
He himself, with his usual pedantry, divided it in that way, and
accordingly kept the papers referring to it in three different
portfolios. The first referred to Maslova, and was chiefly that of
taking steps to get her petition to the Emperor attended to, and
preparing for her probable journey to Siberia.
The second was about his estates. In Panovo he had given the land to
the peasants on condition of their paying rent to be put to their own
communal use. But he had to confirm this transaction by a legal deed,
and to make his will, in accordance with it. In Kousminski the state of
things was still as he had first arranged it, i.e., he was to receive
the rent; but the terms had to be fixed, and also how much of the money
he would use to live on, and how much he would leave for the peasants’
use. As he did not know what his journey to Siberia would cost him, he
could not decide to lose this revenue altogether, though he reduced the
income from it by half.
The third part of his business was to help the convicts, who applied
more and more often to him. At first when he came in contact with
the prisoners, and they appealed to him for help, he at once began
interceding for them, hoping to lighten their fate, but he soon had so
many applications that he felt the impossibility of attending to all of
them, and that naturally led him to take up another piece of work, which
at last roused his interest even more than the three first. This new
part of his business was finding an answer to the following questions:
What was this astonishing institution called criminal law, of which the
results were that in the prison, with some of the inmates of which
he had lately become acquainted, and in all those other places of
confinement, from the Peter and Paul Fortress in Petersburg to the
island of Sakhalin, hundreds and thousands of victims were pining? What
did this strange criminal law exist for? How had it originated?
From his personal relations with the prisoners, from notes by some of
those in confinement, and by questioning the advocate and the prison
priest, Nekhludoff came to the conclusion that the convicts, the
so-called criminals, could be divided into five classes. The first were
quite innocent people, condemned by judicial blunder. Such were the
Menshoffs, supposed to be incendiaries, Maslova, and others. There
were not many of these; according to the priest’s words, only seven per
cent., but their condition excited particular interest.
To the second class belong persons condemned for actions done under
peculiar circumstances, i.e., in a fit of passion, jealousy, or
drunkenness, circumstances under which those who judged them would
surely have committed the same actions.
The third class consisted of people punished for having committed
actions which, according to their understanding, were quite natural,
and even good, but which those other people, the men who made the laws,
considered to be crimes. Such were the persons who sold spirits without
a license, smugglers, those who gathered grass and wood on large estates
and in the forests belonging to the Crown; the thieving miners; and
those unbelieving people who robbed churches.
To the fourth class belonged those who were imprisoned only because they
stood morally higher than the average level of society. Such were the
Sectarians, the Poles, the Circassians rebelling in order to regain
their independence, the political prisoners, the Socialists, the
strikers condemned for withstanding the authorities. There was,
according to Nekhludoff’s observations, a very large percentage
belonging to this class; among them some of the best of men.
The fifth class consisted of persons who had been far more sinned
against by society than they had sinned against it. These were
castaways, stupefied by continual oppression and temptation, such as the
boy who had stolen the rugs, and hundreds of others whom Nekhludoff had
seen in the prison and out of it. The conditions under which they lived
seemed to lead on systematically to those actions which are termed
crimes. A great many thieves and murderers with whom he had lately come
in contact, according to Nekhludoff’s estimate, belonged to this class.
To this class Nekhludoff also reckoned those depraved, demoralised
creatures whom the new school of criminology classify as the criminal
type, and the existence of which is considered to be the chief proof
of the necessity of criminal law and punishment. This demoralised,
depraved, abnormal type was, according to Nekhludoff, exactly the same
as that against whom society had sinned, only here society had sinned
not directly against them, but against their parents and forefathers.
Among this latter class Nekhludoff was specially struck by one Okhotin,
an inveterate thief, the illegitimate son of a prostitute, brought up
in a doss-house, who, up to the age of 30, had apparently never met with
any one whose morality was above that of a policeman, and who had
got into a band of thieves when quite young. He was gifted with an
extraordinary sense of humour, by means of which he made himself very
attractive. He asked Nekhludoff for protection, at the same time making
fun of himself, the lawyers, the prison, and laws human and divine.
Another was the handsome Fedoroff, who, with a band of robbers, of
whom he was the chief, had robbed and murdered an old man, an official.
Fedoroff was a peasant, whose father had been unlawfully deprived of his
house, and who, later on, when serving as a soldier, had suffered much
because he had fallen in love with an officer’s mistress. He had a
fascinating, passionate nature, that longed for enjoyment at any cost.
He had never met anybody who restrained himself for any cause whatever,
and had never heard a word about any aim in life other than enjoyment.
Nekhludoff distinctly saw that both these men were richly endowed by
nature, but had been neglected and crippled like uncared-for plants.
He had also met a tramp and a woman who had repelled him by their
dulness and seeming cruelty, but even in them he could find no trace of
the criminal type written about by the Italian school, but only saw in
them people who were repulsive to him personally, just in the same way
as some he had met outside the prison, in swallow-tail coats wearing
epaulettes, or bedecked with lace. And so the investigation of the
reasons why all these very different persons were put in prison, while
others just like them were going about free and even judging them,
formed a fourth task for Nekhludoff.
He hoped to find an answer to this question in books, and bought all
that referred to it. He got the works of Lombroso, Garofalo, Ferry,
List, Maudsley, Tard, and read them carefully. But as he read he became
more and more disappointed. It happened to him as it always happens
to those who turn to science not in order to play a part in it, nor
to write, nor to dispute, nor to teach, but simply for an answer to an
every-day question of life. Science answered thousands of different very
subtle and ingenious questions touching criminal law, but not the one
he was trying to solve. He asked a very simple question: “Why, and
with what right, do some people lock up, torment, exile, flog, and kill
others, while they are themselves just like those whom they torment,
flog, and kill?” And in answer he got deliberations as to whether human
beings had free will or not. Whether signs of criminality could be
detected by measuring the skulls or not. What part heredity played in
crime. Whether immorality could be inherited. What madness is, what
degeneration is, and what temperament is. How climate, food, ignorance,
imitativeness, hypnotism, or passion act. What society is. What are its
duties, etc., etc.
These disquisitions reminded him of the answer he once got from a little
boy whom he met coming home from school. Nekhludoff asked him if he had
learned his spelling.
“I have,” answered the boy.
“Well, then, tell me, how do you spell ‘leg’?”
“A dog’s leg, or what kind of leg?” the boy answered, with a sly look.
Answers in the form of new questions, like the boy’s, was all Nekhludoff
got in reply to his one primary question. He found much that was clever,
learned much that was interesting, but what he did not find was an
answer to the principal question: By what right some people punish
others?
Not only did he not find any answer, but all the arguments were brought
forward in order to explain and vindicate punishment, the necessity of
which was taken as an axiom.
Nekhludoff read much, but only in snatches, and putting down his failure
to this superficial way of reading, hoped to find the answer later on.
He would not allow himself to believe in the truth of the answer which
began, more and more often, to present itself to him.
CHAPTER XXXI.
NEKHLUDOFF’S SISTER AND HER HUSBAND.
The gang of prisoners, with Maslova among them, was to start on the 5th
July. Nekhludoff arranged to start on the same day.
The day before, Nekhludoff’s sister and her husband came to town to see
him.
Nekhludoff’s sister, Nathalie Ivanovna Rogozhinsky, was 10 years older
than her brother. She had been very fond of him when he was a boy, and
later on, just before her marriage, they grew very close to each other,
as if they were equals, she being a young woman of 25, he a lad of 15.
At that time she was in love with his friend, Nikolenka Irtenieff, since
dead. They both loved Nikolenka, and loved in him and in themselves that
which is good, and which unites all men. Since then they had both been