The Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy (25+ Works with active table of contents) (504 page)

So the sentence remained unrepealed.

CHAPTER 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 saying 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.

Nekhludoff looked at Selenin scrutinisingly and with surprise, and Selenin dropped his eyes, in which appeared an expression not only of sadness but also of ill-will.

"Do you, then, believe in the dogmas of the church?" Nekhludoff asked.

"Of course I do," replied Selenin, gazing straight into Nekhludoff's eyes with a lifeless look.

Nekhludoff sighed. "It is strange," he said.

"However, we shall have a talk some other time," said Selenin. "I am coming," he added, in answer to the usher, who had respectfully approached him. "Yes, we must meet again," he went on with a sigh. "But will it be possible for me to find you? You will always find me in at seven o'clock. My address is Nadejdinskaya," and he gave the number. "Ah, time does not stand still," and he turned to go, smiling only with his lips.

"I will come if I can," said Nekhludoff, feeling that a man once near and dear to him had, by this brief conversation, suddenly become strange, distant, and incomprehensible, if not hostile to him.

CHAPTER XXIII

.

THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR.

When Nekhludoff knew Selenin as a student, he was a good son, a true friend, and for his years an educated man of the world, with much tact; elegant, handsome, and at the same time truthful and honest. He learned well, without much exertion and with no pedantry, receiving gold medals for his essays. He considered the service of mankind, not only in words but in acts, to be the aim of his young life. He saw no other way of being useful to humanity than by serving the State. Therefore, as soon as he had completed his studies, he systematically examined all the activities to which he might devote his life, and decided to enter the Second Department of the Chancellerie, where the laws are drawn up, and he did so. But, in spite of the most scrupulous and exact discharge of the duties demanded of him, this service gave no satisfaction to his desire of being useful, nor could he awake in himself the consciousness that he was doing "the right thing."

This dissatisfaction was so much increased by the friction with his very small-minded and vain fellow officials that he left the Chancellerie and entered the Senate. It was better there, but the same dissatisfaction still pursued him; he felt it to be very different from what he had expected, and from what ought to be.

And now that he was in the Senate his relatives obtained for him the post of Gentleman of the Bedchamber, and he had to go in a carriage, dressed in an embroidered uniform and a white linen apron, to thank all sorts of people for having placed him in the position of a lackey. However much he tried he could find no reasonable explanation for the existence of this post, and felt, more than in the Senate, that it was not "the right thing," and yet he could not refuse it for fear of hurting those who felt sure they were giving him much pleasure by this appointment, and because it flattered the lowest part of his nature. It pleased him to see himself in a mirror in his gold-embroidered uniform, and to accept the deference paid him by some people because of his position.

Something of the same kind happened when he married. A very brilliant match, from a worldly point of view, was arranged for him, and he married chiefly because by refusing he would have had to hurt the young lady who wished to be married to him, and those who arranged the marriage, and also because a marriage with a nice young girl of noble birth flattered his vanity and gave him pleasure. But this marriage very soon proved to be even less "the right thing" than the Government service and his position at Court.

After the birth of her first child the wife decided to have no more, and began leading that luxurious worldly life in which he now had to participate whether he liked or not.

She was not particularly handsome, and was faithful to him, and she seemed, in spite of all the efforts it cost her, to derive nothing but weariness from the life she led, yet she perseveringly continued to live it, though it was poisoning her husband's life. And all his efforts to alter this life was shattered, as against a stone wall, by her conviction, which all her friends and relatives supported, that all was as it should be.

The child, a little girl with bare legs and long golden curls, was a being perfectly foreign to him, chiefly because she was trained quite otherwise than he wished her to be. There sprung up between the husband and wife the usual misunderstanding, without even the wish to understand each other, and then a silent warfare, hidden from outsiders and tempered by decorum. All this made his life at home a burden, and became even less "the right thing" than his service and his post.

But it was above all his attitude towards religion which was not "the right thing." Like every one of his set and his time, by the growth of his reason he broke without the least effort the nets of the religious superstitions in which he was brought up, and did not himself exactly know when it was that he freed himself of them. Being earnest and upright, he did not, during his youth and intimacy with Nekhludoff as a student, conceal his rejection of the State religion. But as years went on and he rose in the service, and especially at the time of the reaction towards conservatism in society, his spiritual freedom stood in his way.

At home, when his father died, he had to be present at the masses said for his soul, and his mother wished him to go to confession or to communion, and it was in a way expected, by public opinion, but above all, Government service demanded that he should be present at all sorts of services, consecrations, thanksgivings, and the like. Hardly a day passed without some outward religious form having to be observed.

When present at these services he had to pretend that he believed in something which he did not believe in, and being truthful he could not do this. The alternative was, having made up his mind that all these outward signs were deceitful, to alter his life in such a way that he would not have to be present at such ceremonials. But to do what seemed so simple would have cost a great deal. Besides encountering the perpetual hostility of all those who were near to him, he would have to give up the service and his position, and sacrifice his hopes of being useful to humanity by his service, now and in the future. To make such a sacrifice one would have to be firmly convinced of being right.

And he was firmly convinced he was right, as no educated man of our time can help being convinced who knows a little history and how the religions, and especially Church Christianity, originated.

But under the stress of his daily life he, a truthful man, allowed a little falsehood to creep in. He said that in order to do justice to an unreasonable thing one had to study the unreasonable thing. It was a little falsehood, but it sunk him into the big falsehood in which he was now caught.

Before putting to himself the question whether the orthodoxy in which he was born and bred, and which every one expected him to accept, and without which he could not continue his useful occupation, contained the truth, he had already decided the answer. And to clear up the question he did not read Voltaire, Schopenhauer, Herbert Spencer, or Comte, but the philosophical works of Hegel and the religious works of Vinet and Khomyakoff, and naturally found in them what he wanted, i.e., something like peace of mind and a vindication of that religious teaching in which he was educated, which his reason had long ceased to accept, but without which his whole life was filled with unpleasantness which could all be removed by accepting the teaching.

And so he adopted all the usual sophistries which go to prove that a single human reason cannot know the truth, that the truth is only revealed to an association of men, and can only be known by revelation, that revelation is kept by the church, etc. And so he managed to be present at prayers, masses for the dead, to confess, make signs of the cross in front of icons, with a quiet mind, without being conscious of the lie, and to continue in the service which gave him the feeling of being useful and some comfort in his joyless family life. Although he believed this, he felt with his entire being that this religion of his, more than all else, was not "the right thing," and that is why his eyes always looked sad.

And seeing Nekhludoff, whom he had known before all these lies had rooted themselves within him, reminded him of what he then was. It was especially after he had hurried to hint at his religious views that he had most strongly felt all this "not the right thing," and had become painfully sad. Nekhludoff felt it also after the first joy of meeting his old friend had passed, and therefore, though they promised each other to meet, they did not take any steps towards an interview, and did not again see each other during this stay of Nekhludoff's in Petersburg.

CHAPTER XXIV

.

MARIETTE TEMPTS NEKHLUDOFF.

When they left the Senate, Nekhludoff and the advocate walked on together, the advocate having given the driver of his carriage orders to follow them. The advocate told Nekhludoff the story of the chief of a Government department, about whom the Senators had been talking: how the thing was found out, and how the man, who according to law should have been sent to the mines, had been appointed Governor of a town in Siberia. Then he related with particular pleasure how several high-placed persons stole a lot of money collected for the erection of the still unfinished monument which they had passed that morning; also, how the mistress of So-and-so got a lot of money at the Stock Exchange, and how So-and-so agreed with So-and-so to sell him his wife. The advocate began another story about a swindle, and all sorts of crimes committed by persons in high places, who, instead of being in prison, sat on presidential chairs in all sorts of Government institutions. These tales, of which the advocate seemed to have an unending supply, gave him much pleasure, showing as they did, with perfect clearness, that his means of getting money were quite just and innocent compared to the means which the highest officials in Petersburg made use of. The advocate was therefore surprised when Nekhludoff took an isvostchik before hearing the end of the story, said good-bye, and left him. Nekhludoff felt very sad. It was chiefly the rejection of the appeal by the Senate, confirming the senseless torments that the innocent Maslova was enduring, that saddened him, and also the fact that this rejection made it still harder for him to unite his fate with hers. The stories about existing evils, which the advocate recounted with such relish, heightened his sadness, and so did the cold, unkind look that the once sweet-natured, frank, noble Selenin had given him, and which kept recurring to his mind.