The circumstances of the case were these. The soldier, Shiboúnin, was a man of very limited intelligence, whose chief occupation was writing out reports. When he had any money he spent it on solitary drinking. The Captain in command of his company, a Pole, apparently disliked him, and frequently found fault with his reports and made him rewrite them. This treatment Shiboúnin bitterly resented; and one day, when he had been drinking, on being told to rewrite a document he had prepared, he insulted and struck the Captain. By law the penalty for a private who strikes his officer is death. Tolstoy nevertheless hoped to save the man's life, and obtained permission to plead on his behalf. The trial took place on 6th June, and the members of the court-martial were Colonel Únosha, Stasulévitch, and Kolokóltsef; the latter being merely a light-headed youngster. Tolstoy, when telling me of the incident, remarked that of the four occasions on which he has spoken in public, this was the time that he did so with most assurance and satisfaction to himself. He had written out his speech; the main point of which was that Shiboúnin was not responsible for his actions, being abnormal, and having from the combined effect of intemperance and the monotony of his occupation, become idiotic and obsessed by an idea that his Company Commander did not understand report writing, and unfairly rejected work faultlessly done. The law decrees a mitigation of sentence for crimes committed by those who are not in the full possession of their senses; and as this contradicts the paragraph allotting death as the sole punishment for a soldier who strikes his officer, Tolstoy argued that mercy should be extended to the prisoner. The Court adjourned to consider its verdict, and (as Tolstoy subsequently learnt) Stasulévitch was in favour of mercy. The Colonel, who was more of a military machine than a human being, demanded the death sentence, and the decision therefore rested with the boyish Sub-Lieutenant, who (submitting to his Colonel) voted for death. Tolstoy wished to appeal (through his aunt, the Countess A. A. Tolstoy) to Alexander II for a pardon; but with characteristic disregard of details, he omitted to mention the name of the regiment in which the affair had occurred, and this enabled the Minister of War, Milútin, to delay the presentation of the petition until Shiboúnin had been shot; which occurred on 9th August. Tolstoy's appeal never, therefore, reached the Emperor.