said the little man desperately. "Are we guilty of
anything?"

"Silence!" shouted the assistant, and the little man subsided.

"What a peculiar state of things!" Nekhludoff said to himself as he
ran the gauntlet, as it were, of a hundred eyes that followed him
through the corridor.

"Is it possible that innocent people are held in durance here?"
Nekhludoff said, when they emerged from the corridor.

"What can we do? However, many of them are lying. If you ask them,
they all claim to be innocent," said the assistant inspector;
"although some are there really without any cause whatever."

"But these masons don't seem to be guilty of any offense."

"That is true so far as the masons are concerned. But those people
are spoiled. Some measure of severity is necessary. They are not all
as innocent as they look. Only yesterday we were obliged to punish two
of them."

"Punish, how?" asked Nekhludoff.

"By flogging. It was ordered----"

"But corporal punishment has been abolished."

"Not for those that have been deprived of civil rights."

Nekhludoff recalled what he had seen the other day while waiting in
the vestibule, and understood that the punishment had then been taking
place, and with peculiar force came upon him that mingled feeling of
curiosity, sadness, doubt, and moral, almost passing over into
physical, nausea which he had felt before, but never with such force.

Without listening to the assistant or looking around him, he hastily
passed through the corridor and ascended to the office. The inspector
was in the corridor, and, busying himself with some affair, had forgot
to send for Bogodukhovskaia. He only called it to mind when Nekhludoff
entered the office.

"I will send for her immediately. Take a seat," he said.

CHAPTER LII.

The office consisted of two rooms. In the first room, which had two
dirty windows and the plastering on the walls peeled off, a black
measuring rod, for determining the height of prisoners, stood in one
corner, while in another hung a picture of Christ. A few wardens stood
around in this room. In the second room, in groups and pairs, about
twenty men and women were sitting along the walls, talking in low
voices. A writing table stood near one of the windows.

The inspector seated himself at the writing table and offered
Nekhludoff a chair standing near by. Nekhludoff seated himself and
began to examine the people in the room.

His attention was first of all attr