superiors
in accordance with long-established routine he would fire it off
before the jurymen, without passion or ardour, feeling that it was
colourless and boring, and then--gallop through the mud and the
rain to the station, thence to the town, shortly to receive
instructions to go off again to some district to deliver another
speech. . . . It was a bore!

At first the prisoner turned pale and coughed nervously into his
sleeve, but soon the stillness, the general monotony and boredom
infected him too. He looked with dull-witted respectfulness at the
judges' uniforms, at the weary faces of the jurymen, and blinked
calmly. The surroundings and procedure of the court, the expectation
of which had so weighed on his soul while he was awaiting them in
prison, now had the most soothing effect on him. What he met here
was not at all what he could have expected. The charge of murder
hung over him, and yet here he met with neither threatening faces
nor indignant looks nor loud phrases about retribution nor sympathy
for his extraordinary fate; not one of those who were judging him
looked at him with interest or for long. . . . The dingy windows
and walls, the voice of the secretary, the attitude of the prosecutor
were all saturated with official indifference and produced an
atmosphere of frigidity, as though the murderer were simply an
official property, or as though he were not being judged by living
men, but by some unseen machine, set going, goodness knows how or
by whom. . . .

The peasant, reassured, did not understand that the men here were
as accustomed to the dramas and tragedies of life and were as blunted
by the sight of them as hospital attendants are at the sight of
death, and that the whole horror and hopelessness of his position
lay just in this mechanical indifference. It seemed that if he were
not to sit quietly but to get up and begin beseeching, appealing
with tears for their mercy, bitterly repenting, that if he were to
die of despair--it would all be shattered against blunted nerves
and the callousness of custom, like waves against a rock.

When the secretary finished, the president for some reason passed
his hands over the table before him, looked for some time with his
eyes screwed up towards the prisoner, and then asked, speaking
languidly:

"Prisoner at the bar, do you plead guilty to having murdered your
wife on the evening of the ninth of June?"

"No, sir," answered the prisoner, getting up and