hood, depravity,
and savagery--that's your civilization! Yes, we are enemies of this
civilization!"

"Please!" shouted the old judge, shaking his chin; but Samoylov, all
red, his eyes flashing, also shouted:

"But we respect and esteem another civilization, the creators of which
you have persecuted, you have allowed to rot in dungeons, you have
driven mad----"

"I forbid you to speak! Hm-- Fedor Mazin!"

Little Mazin popped up like a cork from a champagne bottle, and said in
a staccato voice:

"I--I swear!--I know you have convicted me----"

He lost breath and paled; his eyes seemed to devour his entire face. He
stretched out his hand and shouted:

"I--upon my honest word! Wherever you send me--I'll escape--I'll
return--I'll work always--all my life! Upon my honest word!"

Sizov quacked aloud. The entire public, overcome by the mounting wave
of excitement, hummed strangely and dully. One woman cried, some one
choked and coughed. The gendarmes regarded the prisoners with dull
surprise, the public with a sinister look. The judges shook, the old
man shouted in a thin voice:

"Ivan Gusev!"

"I don't want to speak."

"Vasily Gusev!"

"Don't want to."

"Fedor Bukin!"

The whitish, faded fellow lifted himself heavily, and shaking his head
slowly said in a thick voice:

"You ought to be ashamed. I am a heavy man, and yet I
understand--justice!" He raised his hand higher than his head and was
silent, half-closing his eyes as if looking at something at a distance.

"What is it?" shouted the old judge in excited astonishment, dropping
back in his armchair.

"Oh, well, what's the use?"

Bukin sullenly let himself down on the bench. There was something big
and serious in his dark eyes, something somberly reproachful and naive.
Everybody felt it; even the judges listened, as if waiting for an echo
clearer than his words. On the public benches all commotion died down
immediately; only a low weeping swung in the air. Then the prosecuting
attorney, shrugging his shoulders, grinned and said something to the
marshal of the nobility, and whispers gradually buzzed again excitedly
through the hall.

Weariness enveloped the mother's body with a stifling faintness. Small
drops of perspiration stood on her forehead. Samoylov's mother stirred
on the bench, nudging her with her shoulder and elbow, and said to her
husband in a subdued whisper:

"How is this, now? Is it possible?"

"You see, it's possi