'I should like to know what charge can be made against a man upon these questions and upon these answers? What article of the Code are you applying to me?'
'The Code of laws is drawn up for crimes of a different kind,'
observed the light-blue colonel.
'That's a different point. After reading over all these literary exercises, I cannot believe that that makes up the whole business for which I have been in prison over six months.'
'But do you really imagine,' replied Shubinsky, 'that we believed you, that you have not formed a secret society?'
'\Vhere is the society?'
'It is your luck that no traces have been found, that you have not succeeded in achiPving anything. V\'e stopped you in time, that is, to speak plainly, we have savPd you.'
It was the story of the locksmith's wife and her husband in Gop;ol's lnspertor Grncral over again.
When I had signed, Shubinsky rang the bell and told them to summon the priest. The priest came up and wrote below my signature that all the evidence had been given by me voluntarily and without any compulsion. I need hardly say that he had not been present at the examination, and that he had not even the decency to ask me how it had been. (It was my impartial witness outside the gate again ! )
At the end of the investigation, prison conditions \vere somewhat n•laxPd. l\1emhPrs of our families could obtain permits for inh•rviPws. So passPrl anothPr two months.
In thf' middlP of March onr sentencf' was confirmPd. No one knPw what it was: some said we "vere hPing sent to the Caucasus, othPrs that Wl' shonlrl be tah•n to Bohrnysk, othPrs again hopPd that WI' should all lw rdPasPd ( this was the sentence which was proposed hy Staal and sent separately by him to the
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Tsar; he advised that our imprisonment should be taken as equivalent to punishment) .
A t last, on 31st March, we were all assembled a t Prince Golitsyn's to hear our sentence. This was a gala day for us. We were seeing each other for the first time since our arrest.
Noisily, gaily embracing and shaking hands, we stood surrounded by a cordon of gendarme and garrison officers. This meeting cheered us all up; there was no end to the questions and the anecdotes.
Sokolovsky was present, pale and somewhat thinner, but as brilliantly amusing as ever.
The author of The Creation of the World and of Khever and other rather good poems, had much poetic talent by nature, but was not wildly original enough to dispense with development, nor sufficiently well-educated to develop. A charming rake, a poet in life, he was not in the least a political man. He was amusing, likeable, a merry companion in merry moments, a bon vivant, fond of having a good time-as we all were-perhaps rather more so.
Having dropped accidentally from a carousel into prison, Sokolovsky behaved extremely well; he grew up in confinement.
The auditor of the commission, a pedant, a pietist, a detective, who had grown thin and grey-headed in envy, covetousness and slander, not daring from devotion to the throne and to religion to understand the last two verses of his poem in their grammatical sense, asked Sokolovsky,
'To whom do those insolent words at the end of the song refer?'
'Rest assured,' said Sokolovsky, 'not to the Tsar, and I would particularly draw your attention to that extenuating circumstance.'
The auditor shrugged his shoulders, lifted up his eyes unto the hills and after gazing a long time at Sokolovsky in silence took a pinch of snuff.
Sokolovsky was arrested in Petersburg and sent to Moscow without being told where he was being taken. Our police often perpetrate similar jests, and to no purpose at all. It is the form their poetical fancy takes. There is no occupation in the world so prosaic, so revolting that it has not its artistic yearnings for superfluous sumptuousness and decoration. Sokolovsky was taken straight to prison and put into a dark closet. Why was he put in prison while we were kept in various barracks?
He had two or three shirts with him and nothing else at all. In England every convict on being brought into prison is at once
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put into a bath, but with us they take every precaution against cleanliness.
If Dr Haas had not sent Sokolovsky a bundle of his own linen he would have been crusted with dirt.
Dr Haas was a very original eccentric. The memory of this
'crazy, deranged' man ought not to be choked among the weeds of the official necrologies describing the virtues of persons of the first two grades, which are not discovered until their bodies have rotted away.
A thin littl(', wax('n-looking old man, in a black swallow-tail coat, breeches, black silk stockings and buckl('d shoes, he looked as though he had just come out of some drama of the eighteenth century. In this grand gala fit for fun('rals and weddings, and in the agreeable climate of fifty-nine degr('eS north latitude, Haas used every V\"e('k to drive to the stage-post on the Sparrow Hills wlwn a batch of convicts were being sent off. In the capacity of prison doctor he had accPss to them; he used to go to inspect them and always brought with him a basket full of all manner of things, victuals and dainties of all sorts--walnuts, cakes, oranges and apples for tlw women. This aroused the wrath and indignation of the philanthropic ladies who were afraid of giving pl('aSurf' by th('ir philanthropy, and afraid of being more charitablP than was n('ct>ssary to save the convicts from dying of hunger and th(' ringing frost.
But Haas was not easy to move, and after listening mildly to reproaches for his 'foolish spoiling of th(' female convicts,' would rub his hands and say:
'Bf' so kind to see, gracious madam: a bit of bread, a copper ev('ryon(' giv('S th('m ; but a sweet or an orange for long they will not S('('; this no one giv('s them, that I can from your words d('duce ; I do th('m this pleasure for that it \viii not a long time be n•peated.'
Haas lived in th(' hospital. A sick man came before dinner to consult him. Haas examined him and \Wnt into his study to writ(' som(' pr('scription. On his return he found neither the patif'nt nor th(• silwr· forks and spoons which had been lying on the tab!('. Baas calh·d thP portPr and ask('rl him if any one had com(' in besid!'s the sick man. Th(' porter grasped the situation, rushed out and returned a minute Iat('r with the spoons and the pa tient, whom he harl stoppPd with tliP help of anotlwr hospital portPr. The rascal f('II at the doctor's feet and besought him for mercy. l laas \vas overcome with Pmbarrassment.
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'Go for the police,' he said to one of the porters, and to the other, 'and you send a clerk here at once.'
The porters, pleased at the discovery, at the victory and a t their share in the business altogether, r a n off, and Haas, taking advantage of their absence, said to the thief,
'You arc a false man, you have deceived and tried to rob rr:c.
God will judge you . . . and now run quickly out of the back gate before the porters come back . . . but stop: perhaps you haven't a farthing: here is half a rouble, but try to reform your soul; from God you will not escape as from a watchman.'
At this even the members of his own household protested. But the incorrigible doctor maintained his point: