The Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy (25+ Works with active table of contents) (511 page)

CHAPTER XXXIII

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THE AIM OF THE LAW.

"Well, and how are the children?" Nekhludoff asked his sister when he was calmer. The sister told him about the children. She said they were staying with their grandmother (their father's mother), and, pleased that his dispute with her husband had come to an end, she began telling him how her children played that they were travelling, just as he used to do with his three dolls, one of them a negro and another which he called the French lady.

"Can you really remember it all?" said Nekhludoff, smiling.

"Yes, and just fancy, they play in the very same way."

The unpleasant conversation had been brought to an end, and Nathalie was quieter, but she did not care to talk in her husband's presence of what could be comprehensible only to her brother, so, wishing to start a general conversation, she began talking about the sorrow of Kamenski's mother at losing her only son, who had fallen in a duel, for this Petersburg topic of the day had now reached Moscow. Rogozhinsky expressed disapproval at the state of things that excluded murder in a duel from the ordinary criminal offences. This remark evoked a rejoinder from Nekhludoff, and a new dispute arose on the subject. Nothing was fully explained, neither of the antagonists expressed all he had in his mind, each keeping to his conviction, which condemned the other. Rogozhinsky felt that Nekhludoff condemned him and despised his activity, and he wished to show him the injustice of his opinions.

Nekhludoff, on the other hand, felt provoked by his brother-in-law's interference in his affairs concerning the land. And knowing in his heart of hearts that his sister, her husband, and their children, as his heirs, had a right to do so, was indignant that this narrow-minded man persisted with calm assurance to regard as just and lawful what Nekhludoff no longer doubted was folly and crime.

This man's arrogance annoyed Nekhludoff.

"What could the law do?" he asked.

"It could sentence one of the two duellists to the mines like an ordinary murderer."

Nekhludoff's hands grew cold.

"Well, and what good would that be?" he asked, hotly.

"It would be just."

"As if justice were the aim of the law," said Nekhludoff.

"What else?"

"The upholding of class interests! I think the law is only an instrument for upholding the existing order of things beneficial to our class."

"This is a perfectly new view," said Rogozhinsky with a quiet smile; "the law is generally supposed to have a totally different aim."

"Yes, so it has in theory but not in practice, as I have found out. The law aims only at preserving the present state of things, and therefore it persecutes and executes those who stand above the ordinary level and wish to raise it--the so-called political prisoners, as well as those who are below the average--the so-called criminal types."

"I do not agree with you. In the first place, I cannot admit that the criminals classed as political are punished because they are above the average. In most cases they are the refuse of society, just as much perverted, though in a different way, as the criminal types whom you consider below the average."

"But I happen to know men who are morally far above their judges; all the sectarians are moral, from--"

But Rogozhinsky, a man not accustomed to be interrupted when he spoke, did not listen to Nekhludoff, but went on talking at the same time, thereby irritating him still more.

"Nor can I admit that the object of the law is the upholding of the present state of things. The law aims at reforming--"

"A nice kind of reform, in a prison!" Nekhludoff put in.

"Or removing," Rogozhinsky went on, persistently, "the perverted and brutalised persons that threaten society."

"That's just what it doesn't do. Society has not the means of doing either the one thing or the other."

"How is that? I don't understand," said Rogozhinsky with a forced smile.

"I mean that only two reasonable kinds of punishment exist. Those used in the old days: corporal and capital punishment, which, as human nature gradually softens, come more and more into disuse," said Nekhludoff.

"There, now, this is quite new and very strange to hear from your lips."

"Yes, it is reasonable to hurt a man so that he should not do in future what he is hurt for doing, and it is also quite reasonable to cut a man's head off when he is injurious or dangerous to society. These punishments have a reasonable meaning. But what sense is there in locking up in a prison a man perverted by want of occupation and bad example; to place him in a position where he is provided for, where laziness is imposed on him, and where he is in company with the most perverted of men? What reason is there to take a man at public cost (it comes to more than 500 roubles per head) from the Toula to the Irkoatsk government, or from Koursk--"

"Yes, but all the same, people are afraid of those journeys at public cost, and if it were not for such journeys and the prisons, you and I would not be sitting here as we are."

"The prisons cannot insure our safety, because these people do not stay there for ever, but are set free again. On the contrary, in those establishments men are brought to the greatest vice and degradation, so that the danger is increased."

"You mean to say that the penitentiary system should be improved."

"It cannot he improved. Improved prisons would cost more than all that is being now spent on the people's education, and would lay a still heavier burden on the people."

"The shortcomings of the penitentiary system in nowise invalidate the law itself," Rogozhinsky continued again, without heeding his brother-in-law.

"There is no remedy for these shortcomings," said Nekhludoff, raising his voice.

"What of that? Shall we therefore go and kill, or, as a certain statesman proposed, go putting out people's eyes?" Rogozhinsky remarked.

"Yes; that would be cruel, but it would be effective. What is done now is cruel, and not only ineffective, but so stupid that one cannot understand how people in their senses can take part in so absurd and cruel a business as criminal law."

"But I happen to take part in it," said Rogozhinsky, growing pale.

"That is your business. But to me it is incomprehensible."

"I think there are a good many things incomprehensible to you," said Rogozhinsky, with a trembling voice.

"I have seen how one public prosecutor did his very best to get an unfortunate boy condemned, who could have evoked nothing but sympathy in an unperverted mind. I know how another cross-examined a sectarian and put down the reading of the Gospels as a criminal offence; in fact, the whole business of the Law Courts consists in senseless and cruel actions of that sort."

"I should not serve if I thought so," said Rogozhinsky, rising.

Nekhludoff noticed a peculiar glitter under his brother-in-law's spectacles. "Can it be tears?" he thought. And they were really tears of injured pride. Rogozhinsky went up to the window, got out his handkerchief, coughed and rubbed his spectacles, took them off, and wiped his eyes.

When he returned to the sofa he lit a cigar, and did not speak any more.

Nekhludoff felt pained and ashamed of having offended his brother-in-law and his sister to such a degree, especially as he was going away the next day.

He parted with them in confusion, and drove home.

"All I have said may be true--anyhow he did not reply. But it was not said in the right way. How little I must have changed if I could be carried away by ill-feeling to such an extent as to hurt and wound poor Nathalie in such a way!" he thought.

CHAPTER XXXIV

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THE PRISONERS START FOR SIBERIA.

The gang of prisoners, among whom was Maslova, was to leave Moscow by rail at 3 p.m.; therefore, in order to see the gang start, and walk to the station with the prisoners Nekhludoff meant to reach the prison before 12 o'clock.

The night before, as he was packing up and sorting his papers, he came upon his diary, and read some bits here and there. The last bit written before he left for Petersburg ran thus: "Katusha does not wish to accept my sacrifice; she wishes to make a sacrifice herself. She has conquered, and so have I. She makes me happy by the inner change, which seems to me, though I fear to believe it, to be going on in her. I fear to believe it, yet she seems to be coming back to life." Then further on he read. "I have lived through something very hard and very joyful. I learnt that she has behaved very badly in the hospital, and I suddenly felt great pain. I never expected that it could be so painful. I spoke to her with loathing and hatred, then all of a sudden I called to mind how many times I have been, and even still am, though but in thought, guilty of the thing that I hated her for, and immediately I became disgusting to myself, and pitied her and felt happy again. If only we could manage to see the beam in our own eye in time, how kind we should be." Then he wrote: "I have been to see Nathalie, and again self-satisfaction made me unkind and spiteful, and a heavy feeling remains. Well, what is to be done? Tomorrow a new life will begin. A final good-bye to the old! Many new impressions have accumulated, but I cannot yet bring them to unity."

When he awoke the next morning Nekhludoff's first feeling was regret about the affair between him and his brother-in-law.

"I cannot go away like this," he thought. "I must go and make it up with them." But when he looked at his watch he saw that he had not time to go, but must hurry so as not to be too late for the departure of the gang. He hastily got everything ready, and sent the things to the station with a servant and Taras, Theodosia's husband, who was going with them. Then he took the first isvostchik he could find and drove off to the prison.

The prisoners' train started two hours before the train by which he was going, so Nekhludoff paid his bill in the lodgings and left for good.

It was July, and the weather was unbearably hot. From the stones, the walls, the iron of the roofs, which the sultry night had not cooled, the beat streamed into the motionless air. When at rare intervals a slight breeze did arise, it brought but a whiff of hot air filled with dust and smelling of oil paint.

There were few people in the streets, and those who were out tried to keep on the shady side. Only the sunburnt peasants, with their bronzed faces and bark shoes on their feet, who were mending the road, sat hammering the stones into the burning sand in the sun; while the policemen, in their holland blouses, with revolvers fastened with orange cords, stood melancholy and depressed in the middle of the road, changing from foot to foot; and the tramcars, the horses of which wore holland hoods on their heads, with slits for the ears, kept passing up and down the sunny road with ringing bells.

When Nekhludoff drove up to the prison the gang had not left the yard. The work of delivering and receiving the prisoners that had commenced at 4 A.M. was still going on. The gang was to consist of 623 men and 64 women; they had all to be received according to the registry lists. The sick and the weak to be sorted out, and all to be delivered to the convoy. The new inspector, with two assistants, the doctor and medical assistant, the officer of the convoy, and the clerk, were sitting in the prison yard at a table covered with writing materials and papers, which was placed in the shade of a wall. They called the prisoners one by one, examined and questioned them, and took notes. The rays of the sun had gradually reached the table, and it was growing very hot and oppressive for want of air and because of the breathing crowd of prisoners that stood close by.

"Good gracious, will this never come to an end!" the convoy officer, a tall, fat, red-faced man with high shoulders, who kept puffing the smoke, of his cigarette into his thick moustache, asked, as he drew in a long puff. "You are killing me. From where have you got them all? Are there many more?" the clerk inquired.

"Twenty-four men and the women."

"What are you standing there for? Come on," shouted the convoy officer to the prisoners who had not yet passed the revision, and who stood crowded one behind the other. The prisoners had been standing there more than three hours, packed in rows in the full sunlight, waiting their turns.

While this was going on in the prison yard, outside the gate, besides the sentinel who stood there as usual with a gun, were drawn up about 20 carts, to carry the luggage of the prisoners and such prisoners as were too weak to walk, and a group of relatives and friends waiting to see the prisoners as they came out and to exchange a few words if a chance presented itself and to give them a few things. Nekhludoff took his place among the group. He had stood there about an hour when the clanking of chains, the noise of footsteps, authoritative voices, the sound of coughing, and the low murmur of a large crowd became audible.

This continued for about five minutes, during which several jailers went in and out of the gateway. At last the word of command was given. The gate opened with a thundering noise, the clattering of the chains became louder, and the convoy soldiers, dressed in white blouses and carrying guns, came out into the street and took their places in a large, exact circle in front of the gate; this was evidently a usual, often-practised manoeuvre. Then another command was given, and the prisoners began coming out in couples, with flat, pancake-shaped caps on their shaved heads and sacks over their shoulders, dragging their chained legs and swinging one arm, while the other held up a sack.