LITMIR.BIZ

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questions to ask."

      He removed his elbow from the desk, and began to make notes. In reality, instead of making notes, he merely drew lines across his notes, having seen prosecutors and attorneys, after an adroit question, making memoranda of questions which were to crush their opponents.

      The justiciary did not turn immediately to the prisoner, because he was at the moment asking his associate in the eye-glasses whether he consented to the questions previously outlined and committed to writing.

      "What followed?" the justiciary continued.

      "I came home," Maslova continued, looking somewhat bolder, "and went to sleep. As soon as I was asleep our girl, Bertha, came and woke me. 'Your merchant is here again. Wake up.' Then he"—again she pronounced it with evident horror—"he wished to send for wine, but was short of money. Then he sent me to the hotel, telling me where the money was and how much to take, and I went."

      The justiciary was whispering at the time to his associate on the left, and did not listen to Maslova, but to make it appear that he had heard everything he repeated her last words.

      "And you went. Well, what else?" he asked.

      "I came there and did as he told me. I went to his room. I did not enter it alone, but called Simon Michaelovich and her," she said, pointing to Bochkova.

      "She lies; I never entered——" Bochkova began, but she was stopped.

      "In their presence I took four ten ruble bills," she continued.

      "And while taking this money, did the prisoner see how much money there was?" asked the prosecutor.

      Maslova shuddered as soon as the prosecutor began to speak. She could not tell why, but she felt that he was her enemy.

      "I did not count it, but I saw that it was all hundred ruble bills."

      "The prisoner saw hundred ruble bills. I have no other questions."

      "Well, did you bring back the money?" asked the justiciary, looking at the clock.

      "I did."

      "Well, what then?"

      "Then he again took me with him," said Maslova.

      "And how did you give him the powder in the wine?" asked the justiciary.

      "How? Poured it into the wine and gave it to him."

      "Why did you give it to him?"

      Without answering, she sighed deeply. After a short silence she said:

      "He would not let me go. He exhausted me. I went into the corridor and said to Simon Michaelovich: 'If he would only let me go; I am so tired.' And Simon Michaelovich said: 'We are also tired of him. We intend to give him sleeping powders. When he is asleep you can go.' 'All right,' I said. I thought that it was a harmless powder. He gave me a package. I entered. He lay behind the partition, and ordered me to bring him some brandy. I took from the table a bottle of feen-champagne, poured into two glasses—for myself and him—threw the powder into his glass and handed it to him. I would not have given it to him if I had known it."

      "And how did you come by the ring?" asked the justiciary.

      "He presented it to me."

      "When did he present it to you?"

      "When we reached his room. I wished to depart. Then he struck me on the head and broke my comb. I was angered, and wished to go. Then he took the ring from his finger and gave it to me, asking me to stay," she said.

      Here the assistant prosecutor again rose, and with a dissimulating naiveness asked permission to ask a few more questions, which was granted, and leaning his head on his gold-embroidered collar, he asked:

      "I would like to know how long was the prisoner in the room with Smelkoff?"

      Maslova was again terror-stricken, and with her frightened eyes wandering from the prosecutor to the justiciary, she answered, hurriedly:

      "I do not remember how long."

      "And does the prisoner remember entering another part of the hotel after she had left Smelkoff?"

      Maslova was thinking.

      "Into the next room—an empty one," she said.

      "Why did you enter that room?" said the assistant prosecutor, impulsively.

      "To wait for a cabriolet."

      "Was not Kartinkin in the room with the prisoner?"

      "He also came in."

      "Why did he come in?"

      "There was the merchant's feen-champagne left, and we drank it together."

      "Oh, drank together. Very well."

      "And did the prisoner have any conversation with Simon, and what was the subject of the conversation?"

      Maslova suddenly frowned, her face turned red, and she quickly answered:

      "What I said? I know nothing more. Do what you please with me. I am innocent, and that is all. I did not say anything. I told everything that happened."

      "I have no more questions to ask," said the prosecutor to the court, and uplifting his shoulders he began to add to the memorandums of his speech that the prisoner herself confessed to entering an empty room with Simon.

      There was a short silence.

      "Have you anything else to say?"

      "I have told everything," she said, sighing, and took her seat.

      The justiciary then made some notes, and after he had listened to a suggestion whispered by the associate on the left, declared a recess of ten minutes, and, hastily rising, walked out of the court-room.

      After the judges had risen, the jury, lawyers and witness also rose, and with the pleasant feeling of having already performed part of an important work, began to move hither and thither.

      Nekhludoff walked into the jury-room and took a seat near the window.

CHAPTER XII.

       Table of Contents

      Yes, it was Katiousha.

      The relations of Nekhludoff to Katiousha were the following:

      Nekhludoff first met Katiousha when he went to stay one summer out at the estate of his aunts in order that he might quietly prepare his thesis on the private ownership of land. Ordinarily he lived on the estate of his mother, near Moskow, with his mother and sister. But that year his sister married, and his mother went abroad. Nekhludoff had to write a composition in the course of his university studies, and decided to pass the summer at his aunts'. There in the woods it was quiet, and there was nothing to distract him from his studies. Besides, the aunts loved their nephew and heir, and he loved them, loved their old-fashioned way of living.

      During that summer Nekhludoff experienced that exaltation which youth comes to know not by the teaching of others, but when it naturally begins to recognize the beauty and importance of life, and man's serious place in it; when it sees the possibility of infinite perfection of which the world is capable, and devotes itself to that endeavor, not only with the hope, but with a full conviction of reaching that perfection which it imagines possible. While in the university he had that year read Spencer's Social Statics, and Spencer's reasoning bearing on private ownership of land produced a strong impression on him, especially because he was himself the son of a landed proprietress. His father was not rich, but his mother received as her marriage portion ten thousand acres of land. He then for the first time understood all the injustice of private ownership of land, and being one of those to whom any sacrifice in the name of moral duty was a lofty spiritual enjoyment, he forthwith divided the land he had inherited from his father among the peasants. On this subject he was then

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