The Awakening: (The Resurrection)Tolstoy, Leo, graf
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The Awakening: (The Resurrection)
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Forgiveness -- Fiction; Russia -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
He felt warm and opened a window which looked into a garden. It was a
moonlit, fresh and quiet night. Past the street rattled some vehicle,
and then everything was quiet. Directly beneath the window a tall,
denuded poplar threw its shadow on the gravel of the landing-place,
distinctly showing all the ramifications of its bare branches. To the
left the roof of a shed seemed white under the bright light of the
moon; in front were the tangled branches of the trees, through which
was seen the dark shadow of the garden inclosure.
Nekhludoff looked at the moonlit garden and roof, the shadows of the
poplar, and drank in the fresh, invigorating air.
"How delightful! My God, how delightful!" he said of that which was in
his soul.
CHAPTER XXIX.
It was six o'clock when Maslova returned to her cell, weary and
foot-sore from the long tramp over the stone pavement. Besides, she
was crushed by the unexpectedly severe sentence, and was also hungry.
When, during a recess, her guards had lunched on bread and hard-boiled
eggs her mouth watered and she felt that she was hungry, but
considered it humiliating to ask them for some food. Three hours after
that her hunger had passed, and she only felt weak. In this condition
she heard the sentence. At first she thought that she misunderstood
it; she could not believe what she heard, and could not reconcile
herself to the idea that she was a convict. But, seeing the calm,
serious faces of the judges and the jury, who received the verdict as
something quite natural, she revolted and cried out that she was
innocent. And when she saw also that her outcry, too, was taken as
something natural and anticipated, and which could not alter the case,
she began to weep. She felt that she must submit to the cruel
injustice which was perpetrated on her. What surprised her most was
that she should be so cruelly condemned by men--not old men, but those
same young men who looked at her so kindly.
The prosecuting attorney was the only man whose glances were other
than kind. While she was sitting in the prisoners' room, and during
recesses she saw these men passing by her and entering the room under
various pretexts, but with the obvious intention of looking at her.
And now these same men, for some reason, sentenced her to hard labor,
although she was innocent of the crime. For some time she wept, then
became calm, and in a condition of complete exhaustion she waited to
be taken away. She desired but one thing now--a cigarette. She was in
this frame of mind when Bochkova and Kartinkin were brought into the
room. Bochkova immediately began to curse her.
"You are innocent, aren't you? Why weren't you discharged, you vile
thing? You got your deserts! You will drop your fineries in Siberia!"
Maslova sat with lowered head, her hands folded in the sleeves of her
coat, and gazed on the smoothly trampled ground.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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