d slightly bending his head, he
cast a glance around the court-room, his eyes avoiding the prisoners.

"Gentlemen of the jury, the case which is now to be submitted to your
consideration," he began his speech, prepared while the indictment and
reports were being read, "is a characteristic crime, if I may so
express myself."

The speech of a prosecuting attorney, according to his idea, had to be
invested with a social significance, according to the manner of those
lawyers who became famous. True, among his hearers were three women; a
seamstress, a cook and Simon's sister, also a driver, but that made
no difference. Those celebrities also began on a small scale. The
prosecutor made it a rule to view the situation from the eminence of
his position, i. e., to penetrate into the profound psychological
meaning of crime, and bare the ulcers of society.

"Here is before you, gentlemen of the jury, a crime characteristic, if
I may so express myself, of the end of our century, bearing, as it
were, all the specific features of the first symptoms of
decomposition, to which those elements of our society, which are
exposed, as it were, to the more scorching rays of that process, are
subject."

The prosecutor spoke at great length, endeavoring on the one hand to
remember all those wise sayings which he had prepared for the
occasion, and on the other, most important, hand, not to stop for a
moment, but to make his speech flow uninterruptedly for an hour and a
quarter. He stopped only once, for a long time swallowing his saliva,
but he immediately mastered himself and made up for the lost time by a
greater flow of eloquence. He spoke in a gentle, insinuating voice,
resting now on one foot, now on the other, and looking at the jury;
then changed to a calm, business tone, consulting his note-book, and
again he thundered accusations, turning now to the spectators, now to
the jury. But he never looked at the prisoners, all three of whom
stared at him. He incorporated into his speech all the latest ideas
then in vogue in the circle of his acquaintances, and what was then
and is now received as the last word of scientific wisdom. He spoke of
heredity, of innate criminality, of Lombroso, of Charcot, of
evolution, of the struggle for existence, of hypnotism, of hypnotic
suggestion, and of decadence.

The merchant Smelkoff, according to the prosecutor, was a type of the
great, pure Russian, with his broad nature, who, in consequence of his