THE JUDGES.
The president, who had to take the chair, had arrived early. The
president was a tall, stout man, with long grey whiskers. Though
married, he led a very loose life, and his wife did the same, so they
did not stand in each other’s way. This morning he had received a note
from a Swiss girl, who had formerly been a governess in his house, and
who was now on her way from South Russia to St. Petersburg. She wrote
that she would wait for him between five and six p.m. in the Hotel
Italia. This made him wish to begin and get through the sitting as soon
as possible, so as to have time to call before six p.m. on the little
red-haired Clara Vasilievna, with whom he had begun a romance in the
country last summer. He went into a private room, latched the door, took
a pair of dumb-bells out of a cupboard, moved his arms 20 times upwards,
downwards, forwards, and sideways, then holding the dumb-bells above his
head, lightly bent his knees three times.
“Nothing keeps one going like a cold bath and exercise,” he said,
feeling the biceps of his right arm with his left hand, on the third
finger of which he wore a gold ring. He had still to do the moulinee
movement (for he always went through those two exercises before a long
sitting), when there was a pull at the door. The president quickly put
away the dumb-bells and opened the door, saying, “I beg your pardon.”
One of the members, a high-shouldered, discontented-looking man, with
gold spectacles, came into the room. “Matthew Nikitich has again not
come,” he said, in a dissatisfied tone.
“Not yet?” said the president, putting on his uniform. “He is always
late.”
“It is extraordinary. He ought to be ashamed of himself,” said the
member, angrily, and taking out a cigarette.
This member, a very precise man, had had an unpleasant encounter with
his wife in the morning, because she had spent her allowance before the
end of the month, and had asked him to give her some money in advance,
but he would not give way to her, and they had a quarrel. The wife told
him that if he were going to behave so, he need not expect any dinner;
there would be no dinner for him at home. At this point he left, fearing
that she might carry out her threat, for anything might be expected from
her. “This comes of living a good, moral life,” he thought, looking at
the beaming, healthy, cheerful, and kindly president, who, with elbows
far apart, was smoothing his thick grey whiskers with his fine white
hands over the embroidered collar of his uniform. “He is always
contented and merry while I am suffering.”
The secretary came in and brought some document.
“Thanks, very much,” said the president, lighting a cigarette. “Which
case shall we take first, then?”
“The poisoning case, I should say,” answered the secretary, with
indifference.
“All right; the poisoning case let it be,” said the president, thinking
that he could get this case over by four o’clock, and then go away. “And
Matthew Nikitich; has he come?”
“Not yet.”
“And Breve?”
“He is here,” replied the secretary.
“Then if you see him, please tell him that we begin with the poisoning
case.” Breve was the public prosecutor, who was to read the indictment
in this case.
In the corridor the secretary met Breve, who, with up lifted shoulders,
a portfolio under one arm, the other swinging with the palm turned to
the front, was hurrying along the corridor, clattering with his heels.
“Michael Petrovitch wants to know if you are ready?” the secretary
asked.
“Of course; I am always ready,” said the public prosecutor. “What are we
taking first?”
“The poisoning case.”
“That’s quite right,” said the public prosecutor, but did not think it
at all right. He had spent the night in a hotel playing cards with a
friend who was giving a farewell party. Up to five in the morning they
played and drank, so he had no time to look at this poisoning case,
and meant to run it through now. The secretary, happening to know this,
advised the president to begin with the poisoning case. The secretary
was a Liberal, even a Radical, in opinion.
Breve was a Conservative; the secretary disliked him, and envied him his
position.
“Well, and how about the Skoptzy?” [a religious sect] asked the
secretary.
“I have already said that I cannot do it without witnesses, and so I
shall say to the Court.”
“Dear me, what does it matter?”
“I cannot do it,” said Breve; and, waving his arm, he ran into his
private room.
He was putting off the case of the Skoptzy on account of the absence
of a very unimportant witness, his real reason being that if they were
tried by an educated jury they might possibly be acquitted.
By an agreement with the president this case was to be tried in the
coming session at a provincial town, where there would be more peasants,
and, therefore, more chances of conviction.
The movement in the corridor increased. The people crowded most at
the doors of the Civil Court, in which the case that the dignified man
talked about was being heard.
An interval in the proceeding occurred, and the old woman came out of
the court, whose property that genius of an advocate had found means of
getting for his client, a person versed in law who had no right to it
whatever. The judges knew all about the case, and the advocate and his
client knew it better still, but the move they had invented was such
that it was impossible not to take the old woman’s property and not to
hand it over to the person versed in law.
The old woman was stout, well dressed, and had enormous flowers on her
bonnet; she stopped as she came out of the door, and spreading out her
short fat arms and turning to her advocate, she kept repeating. “What
does it all mean? just fancy!”
The advocate was looking at the flowers in her bonnet, and evidently not
listening to her, but considering some question or other.
Next to the old woman, out of the door of the Civil Court, his broad,
starched shirt front glistening from under his low-cut waistcoat, with
a self-satisfied look on his face, came the celebrated advocate who had
managed to arrange matters so that the old woman lost all she had, and
the person versed in the law received more than 100,000 roubles. The
advocate passed close to the old woman, and, feeling all eyes directed
towards him, his whole bearing seemed to say: “No expressions of
deference are required.”