y stirred uneasily, but did not yield any distinct
results.

The watchman opened the door of the hall, and shouted:

"Relatives, enter; show your tickets!"

A sullen voice said lazily:

"Tickets! Like a circus!"

All the people now showed signs of a dull excitement, an uneasy
passion. They began to behave more freely, and hummed and disputed
with the watchman.

Sitting down on the bench, Sizov mumbled something to the mother.

"What is it?" asked the mother.

"Oh, nothing--the people are fools! They know nothing; they live
groping about and groping about."

The bellman rang; somebody announced indifferently:

"The session has begun!"

Again all arose, and again, in the same order, the judges filed in and
sat down; then the prisoners were led in.

"Pay attention!" whispered Sizov; "the prosecuting attorney is going to
speak."

The mother craned her neck and extended her whole body. She yielded
anew to expectation of the horrible.

Standing sidewise toward the judges, his head turned to them, leaning
his elbow on the desk, the prosecuting attorney sighed, and abruptly
waving his right hand in the air, began to speak:

The mother could not make out the first words. The prosecuting
attorney's voice was fluent, thick; it sped on unevenly, now a bit
slower, now a bit faster. His words stretched out in a thin line, like
a gray seam; suddenly they burst out quickly and whirled like a flock
of black flies around a piece of sugar. But she did not find anything
horrible in them, nothing threatening. Cold as snow, gray as ashes,
they fell and fell, filling the hall with something which recalled a
slushy day in early autumn. Scant in feeling, rich in words, the
speech seemed not to reach Pavel and his comrade. Apparently it touched
none of them; they all sat there quite composed, smiling at times as
before, and conversed without sound. At times they frowned to cover up
their smiles.

"He lies!" whispered Sizov.

She could not have said it. She understood that the prosecuting
attorney charged all the comrades with guilt, not singling out any one
of them. After having spoken about Pavel, he spoke about Fedya, and
having put him side by side with Pavel, he persistently thrust Bukin up
against them. It seemed as if he packed and sewed them into a sack,
piling them up on top of one another. But the external sense of his
words did not satisfy, did not touch, did not frighten her. She still
waited for