'Well, did you give it to him?'
'To be sure I did-and they shaved the boy's head11 all right.'
Trained in such a way of rounding off a ccounts, and a ccustomed to reckonings of this sort, and also, perhaps, to the five gold pieces about the fate of which he had been silent, the headman was confident of success. But there may be many mishaps between the bribe and the hand that takes it. Count Essen, one of the Imperial adjutants, was sent to Vladimir for a levy of recruits. The head-man approached him with his gold pieces.
Unfortunately the Count had, like the heroine of Pushkin's Nulin, been reared 'not in the traditions of his fathers,' but in the school of the Baltic aristocracy, which instils a German devotion to the Russian Tsar. Essen lost his temper, shouted at him and, what was worse than anything, rang the bel l ; the clerk ran in and gendarmes made their appearance. The head-man, who had never suspected the existence of men in uniform who would not take bribes, lost his head so completely that he did not deny the charge, did not vow and swear that he had never offered money, did not protest, might God strike him blind and might another drop never pass his lips, if he had thought of such a thing! He let himself be caught like a sheep and led off to the police station, probably regretting that he had offered the general too little and so offended him.
But Essen, not satisfied with the purity of his own conscience, nor the terror of the luckless peasant, and probably wishing to eradicate bribery in Russland, to punish vice and set a salutary example, wrote to the police, wrote to the governor, wrote to the recruiting office about the head-man's wicked attempt. The peasant was put in prison and committed for trial. Thanks to the stupid and grotesque law which metes out the same punishment to the honest man who gives a bribe to an official and to the official himself who accepts the bribe, things looked black and the head-man had to be saved at a ll costs.
I rushed to the governor; he refused to intervene in the matter; the president and councillors of the Criminal Court shook their heads, terrified at the interference of the Imperial adjutant. The adjutant himself, relenting, was the first to declare that he 'wished the man no harm, that he only wanted to give him a lesson, that he ought to be tried and then let off.' When I 11 Took him as a recruit. (R.)
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told this to the politsmeyster, he observed : 'The fact is, none of these gentry know how things are done; he should have simply sent him to me. I would have given the fool a good drubbing-to teach him to look before he leaps-and would have sent him home. Everyone would have been satisfied, but now how are things to be patched up with the Criminal Court?'
These two comments express the Imperial Russian conception of law so neatly and strikingly that I cannot forget them.
Between these pillars of Hercules of the national jurisprudence, the head-man had fallen into the deepest slough, that is, into the Criminal Court. A fe\v months later the verdict was prepared that the head-man after being punished with the lash should be exiled to Siberia. His son and all his family came to me, imploring me to save their father, the head of the family. I myself felt fearfully sorry for the peasant, ruined though perfectly innocent. I went again to the president and the councillors, and pointed out to them once more that they were doing themselves harm by punishing the elder so severely; that they knew vPrv well themsPiv<>s that no busin<>ss was ever done without bribes; that, in fact, they would have nothing to eat if they did not, like true Christians, consider that every gift is perfect and every gift is good. Entreating, bO\ving, and sending the head-man's son to bow still lower, I succeeded in gaining half my object. The elder was condemned to a few strokes of the lash within the prison walls, was allowed to remain in his place of residence, but was forbidden to act as intermediary for the other peasants.
I sighed with relief when I sa\v the governor and the prosecutor had agreed to this, and went to the police to ask for some mitigation of the severity of the flogging; the police, partly because they were flattered at my coming myself to ask them a favour, partly through compassion for a man who was suffering for something that concerned them all so intimately, and knowing, moreover, that the man was well off, promised me to make it a pure formnlitv.
One morning a- few days later the head-man appeared, thinner and greyer than before. I saw that for all his delight he was sad about something and weighed down by some thought that oppressed him.
'\\"hat are you worrying about?' I asked him.
'\\"ell, I wish they'd settle it once for all.'
'I don't und<>rstand.'
'I mean, wh<>n are they going to punish me?'
'\\"hy, haven't they punished you? '
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'No.'
'Then how is it they have let you go? You are going home, aren't you?'
'Home, yes; but you see I keep thinking about the punishment.
The secretary did read it out.'
I could really make nothing of it, and at last asked him whether they had given him any sort of paper. He gave it me.
The whole verdict was written in it, and at the end it was stated that, punishment with the lash having been inflicted within the prison walls in accordance with the sentence of the Criminal Court, 'he was to be given a certificate to that effect and set free.'
I burst out laughing.
'Well, you have been punished already, then !'
'No, sir, I haven't.'
'Well, if you are dissatisfied, go back and ask them to punish you; perhaps the police will put themselves in your place, and see your point.'
Seeing that I was laughing, the old man smiled too, shaking his head dubiously and adding: 'Go on with you ! What strange doings!'
'How irregular! ' many people will say; but they must remember that it is only through such irregularity that life in Russia i s possible.
Appendix : Alex{l/l{Ler
L{tnren teniclz Vitber{j'
AMOI'G THE GROTESQUE and greasy, petty and loathsome people and scenes, files and titles, in this setting of official routine and red-tape, I recall the noble and melancholy features of an artist, who was crushed by the government with cold and callous cruelty.
The leaden hand of the Tsar not merely smothered a work of genius in its cradle, not merely destroyed the very creation of the artist, entangling him in judicial snares and the wiles of a police inquiry, but tried to snatch from him his honourable name altogether with his last crust of bread, and brand him as a taker of bribes and a pilferer of government funds.
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After ruining and disgracing A. L. Vitberg, Nicholas exiled him to Vyatka. It was there that we met.
For two years and a half I lived with the great artist and saw the strong man, who had fallen a victim to the autocracy of redtape officialdom and barrack-discipline, which blockishly measures everything in the world by the standard of the recruiting officer and the copying clerk's ruler, breaking down under the weight of persecution and misery.