“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 presenting the scene at the court to his companions as he clearly saw it himself. Nikitin, who always was on the side of severity and formality, took up the other side. All depended on Skovorodnikoff’s vote, and he voted for rejecting the appeal, because Nekhludoff’s determination to marry the woman on moral grounds was extremely repugnant to him.
Skovorodnikoff was a materialist, a Darwinian, and counted every manifestation of abstract morality, or, worse still, religion, not only as a despicable folly, but as a personal affront to himself. All this bother about a prostitute, and the presence of a celebrated advocate and Nekhludoff in the Senate were in the highest degree repugnant to him. So he shoved his beard into his mouth and made faces, and very skilfully pretended to know nothing of this case, excepting that the reasons for an appeal were insufficient, and that he, therefore, agreed with the chairman to leave the decision of the Court unaltered.
So the sentence remained unrepealed.
XXII
An old friend.
“Terrible,” said Nekhludoff, as he went out into the waiting-room with the advocate, who was arranging the papers in his portfolio. “In a matter which is perfectly clear they attach all the importance to the form and reject the appeal. Terrible!”
“The case was spoiled in the Criminal Court,” said the advocate.
“And Selenin, too, was in favour of the rejection. Terrible! terrible!” Nekhludoff repeated. “What is to be done now?”
“We will appeal to His Majesty, and you can hand in the petition yourself while you are here. I will write it for you.”
At this moment little Wolf, with his stars and uniform, came out into the waiting-room and approached Nekhludoff. “It could not be helped, dear Prince. The reasons for an appeal were not sufficient,” he said, shrugging his narrow shoulders and closing his eyes, and then he went his way.
After Wolf, Selenin came out too, having heard from the Senators that his old friend Nekhludoff was there.
“Well, I never expected to see you here,” he said, coming up to Nekhludoff, and smiling only with his lips while his eyes remained sad. “I did not know you were in Petersburg.”
“And I did not know you were Public Prosecutor-in-Chief.”
“How is it you are in the Senate?” asked Selenin. “I had heard, by the way, that you were in Petersburg. But what are you doing here?”
“Here? I am here because I hoped to find justice and save a woman innocently condemned.”
“What woman?”
“The one whose case has just been decided.”
“Oh! Maslova’s case,” said Selenin, suddenly remembering it. “The appeal had no grounds whatever.”
“It is not the appeal; it’s the woman who is innocent, and is being punished.”
Selenin sighed. “That may well be, but——”
“Not may be, but is.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I was on the jury. I know how we made the mistake.”
Selenin became thoughtful. “You should have made a statement at the time,” he said.
“I did make the statement.”
“It should have been put down in an official report. If this had been added to the petition for the appeal—”
“Yes, but still, as it is, the verdict is evidently absurd.”
“The Senate has no right to say so. If the Senate took upon itself to repeal the decision of the law courts according to its own views as to the justice of the decisions in themselves, the verdict of the jury would lose all its meaning, not to mention that the Senate would have no basis to go upon, and would run the risk of infringing justice rather than upholding it,” said Selenin, calling to mind the case that had just been heard.
“All I know is that this woman is quite innocent, and that the last hope of saving her from an unmerited punishment is gone. The grossest injustice has been confirmed by the highest court.”
“It has not been confirmed. The Senate did not and cannot enter into the merits of the case in itself,” said Selenin. Always busy and rarely going out into society, he had evidently heard nothing of Nekhludoff’s romance. Nekhludoff noticed it, and made up his mind that it was best to say nothing about his special relations with Maslova.
“You are probably staying with your aunt,” Selenin remarked, apparently wishing to change the subject. “She told me you were here yesterday, and she invited me to meet you in the evening, when some foreign preacher was to lecture,” and Selenin again smiled only with his lips.
“Yes, I was there, but left in disgust,” said Nekhludoff angrily, vexed that Selenin had changed the subject.
“Why with disgust? After all, it is a manifestation of religious feeling, though one-sided and sectarian,” said Selenin.
“Why, it’s only some kind of whimsical folly.”
“Oh, dear, no. The curious thing is that we know the teaching of our church so little that we see some new kind of revelation in what are, after all, our own fundamental dogmas,” said Selenin, as if hurrying to let his old friend know his new views.