o, did
Nekhludoff understand the cause of the noise. This room with windows
in the rear wall was divided in two not by one, but by two wire nets
which stretched from the ceiling to the floor. Two wardens walked
between the nets. The prisoners were on the other side of the nets,
between which there was a space of about seven feet for visitors, so
that not only was it difficult to converse with them but a
short-sighted man could not even see the face of the prisoner he was
visiting. In order to be heard, it was necessary to shout at the top
of one's voice. On both sides, pressing against the nets, were the
faces of wives, husbands, fathers, mothers, children, who endeavored
to see and speak to each other. But as every one tried to speak so
that he could be heard by the person spoken to, and his neighbor did
the same, their voices interfered with each other, and each tried to
outcry the other. The result was the noise which astonished Nekhludoff
when he entered the room. It was absolutely impossible to understand
the conversations. Only by the expression of the people's faces could
one judge what they were speaking about, and what relation the
speakers sustained toward each other. Near Nekhludoff was an old woman
with a small 'kerchief on her head, who, with trembling chin, shouted
to a pale young man with head half shaven. The prisoner, knitting his
brow, was listening to her with raised eyebrows. Beside the old woman
stood a young man in a long coat, who was nodding his head while
listening to a prisoner with a weary face and beard turning gray, who
greatly resembled him. Further on stood a ragamuffin waving his hand,
shouting and laughing. On the floor beside this man sat a woman in a
good woolen dress, with a child in her arms. She wept bitterly,
evidently seeing for the first time that gray-haired man on the other
side of the net, manacled, in a prison jacket, and with head half
shaven. Over this woman stood the bank employee shouting at the top of
his voice to a bald-headed prisoner with shining eyes.

Nekhludoff remained in this room about five minutes, experiencing a
strange feeling of anguish, a consciousness of his impotence at the
discord in the world, and he was seized with a sensation like a
rocking on board of a ship.

"But I must fulfill my mission," he said to himself, taking heart.
"What am I to do?"

As he looked around for some officer, he saw a middle-sized man with
mustache, wearing epaulets, who w