21

AS soon as the senators were seated round the table in the conference-room Wolf, with great animation, began to bring forward all the reasons why judgement ought to be reversed.

The president, an ill-natured man at the best of times, was in a particularly bad temper that day. Listening to the case during the session, he had formed his opinion already and now sat paying no attention to Wolf but lost in his own thoughts. He was remembering what he had written the day before in his memoirs about the appointment of Vilyanov to an important post he had long coveted. President Nikitin honestly believed that his opinion concerning various officials in the two higher grades with whom he came in contact in the course of his service would furnish material for future historians. Having written a chapter on the day before in which certain officials of those first two grades were soundly rated for preventing him, as he expressed it, from saving Russia from the destruction into which her rulers were dragging her – but in reality for having prevented him from getting a higher salary – he was thinking now what a new light for posterity his revelations would shed on events.

‘Yes, of course,’ he replied to Wolf, not having heard a word of what he was saying.

Beh was listening to Wolf with a melancholy expression, drawing garlands all the while on the sheet of paper lying before him. Beh was a liberal of the very first water. He treasured the traditions of the ’sixties, and if he ever departed from his strictly neutral attitude it was always in favour of liberalism. Thus, in the present instance, apart from the fact that the company director who was appealing was a bad lot, the prosecution of a journalist for libel, tending as it did to restrict the freedom of the press, in itself inclined Beh to reject the suit. When Wolf had completed his argument Beh stopped in the middle of drawing a garland, and in a sad and gentle voice (he was sad to feel himself obliged to demonstrate such truisms) showed concisely, simply and convincingly that the appellant had no case, and, bending his white head, went on with his garland.

Skovorodnikov, who sat opposite Wolf and kept stuffing his moustaches and beard into his mouth with his fat fingers, the moment Beh paused stopped chewing his beard and in a loud grating voice said that, in spite of the fact that the company director was a frightful scoundrel, he would advocate setting the judgement aside if any legal grounds had existed, but as there were none he was of Beh’s opinion, he said, pleased at the opportunity of getting a hit in at Wolf. The president sided with Skovorodnikov, and the appeal was dismissed.

Wolf was annoyed, especially since he seemed to have been caught showing dishonest partiality. Assuming an air of indifference, however, he unfolded the document dealing with Maslova’s case and became engrossed in it. Meanwhile the senators rang the bell and asked for tea, and began discussing an event which together with the Kamensky duel was the talk of Petersburg.

This was the affair of the chief of a Government department who was accused of the crime covered by Article 995.

‘How revolting!’ said Beh with disgust.

‘Why, where’s the harm? I can show you a book in our literature in which a German writer openly puts forward the view that such acts ought not to be considered criminal, and that marriage between men should be sanctioned,’ said Skovorodnikov, noisly and greedily inhaling the smoke from a squashed cigarette which he held between his fingers close to the palm of his hand, and he laughed boisterously.

‘Impossible!’ said Beh.

‘I will show it to you,’ said Skovorodnikov, giving the full title of the book, and even the year and place of publication.

‘They say he is to be appointed governor of some place in Siberia,’ remarked Nikitin.

‘That’s fine. The bishop will come out in procession to meet him with the cross. They ought to appoint a bishop of the same species. I could recommend one to them,’ said Skovorodnikov, and throwing the stub of his cigarette into his saucer, he took into his mouth as much as he could of his beard and moustache and began to chew them.

At this point the usher came in and reported the request of Nekhlyudov and his counsel to be present during the hearing of Maslova’s case.

‘Now this case,’ said Wolf, ‘is quite romantic,’ and he told them what he knew of Nekhlyudov’s relations with Maslova.

After having talked about it a little while they finished their cigarettes and drank their tea, the senators returned to the Senate Chamber, announced their decision in the libel case and proceeded to hear Maslova’s appeal.

In his thin voice Wolf made a full report of Maslova’s appeal, but again not without some bias and obviously hoping to get the sentence quashed.

‘Have you anything to add?’ the president asked Fanarin.

Fanarin rose and, standing with his broad white chest expanded, proved point by point, with remarkable persuasiveness and precision, how the Criminal Court had on six counts strayed from the exact meaning of the law. He went farther and touched, though briefly, on the facts of the case and the crying injustice of the sentence. The tone of his short but forceful address was one of apology to the senators for insisting on matters which they with their wisdom and knowledge of the law saw and understood far better than he: he spoke only because the obligation he had taken upon himself demanded that he should. After Fanarin’s speech there seemed not the smallest reason to doubt that the senate must set aside the decision of the court. As he finished his pleading Fanarin smiled triumphantly. Looking at his lawyer and seeing this smile, Nekhlyudov felt sure the case was won. But when he glanced towards the senators he saw that Fanarin alone was smiling and triumphant. The senators and the assistant public prosecutor were neither smiling nor triumphant: they looked bored, as if they were thinking, ‘We have heard your sort before, and what does it all amount to?’ They were all manifetly glad when the lawyer finished, and stopped wasting their time. Immediately after the end of the lawyer’s speech the president turned to the assistant public prosecutor. In a few brief but explicit, definite words Selyenin expressed himself against the reversal of the judgement – he had heard nothing to warrant such a course. Whereupon the senators rose and retired to consult among themselves. In the conference-room they were divided in their opinion. Wolf was in favour of allowing the appeal. Beh, having grasped the issue, also ardently favoured quashing the sentence, vividly painting for the senators the scene in the court and what he righly interpreted as the misunderstanding on the part of the jury. Nikitin, standing, as always, for severity in general and for strict formality, was against the appeal. The whole matter, therefore, depended on Skovorodnikov’s vote. And he voted for rejecting the appeal, chiefly because he was outraged by Nekhlyudov’s determination to marry the girl on moral grounds.

Skovorodnikov was a materialist and a Darwinian, and counted all manifestations of abstract morality or, worse still, religious feeling, not only as despicable folly but as a personal affront to himself. All this fuss about a prostitute, and the presence here in the Senate of a famous lawyer to defend her, and of Nekhlyudov himself, were in the highest degree repugnant to him. And he stuffed his beard into his mouth again, and made faces, pretending very convincingly to know nothing whatever about the case except that the reasons for the appeal were inadequate, and that, therefore, he agreed with the president in rejecting it.

The appeal was rejected.