ble."

"But what is going to happen to him, to Vasily?"

"Keep still. Stop."

The public was jarred by something it did not understand. All blinked
in perplexity with blinded eyes, as if dazzled by the sudden blazing up
of an object, indistinct in outline, of unknown meaning, but with
horrible drawing power. And since the people did not comprehend this
great thing dawning on them, they contracted its significance into
something small, the meaning of which was, evident and clear to them.
The elder Bukin, therefore, whispered aloud without constraint:

"Say, please, why don't they permit them to talk? The prosecuting
attorney can say everything, and as much as he wants to----"

A functionary stood at the benches, and waving his hands at the people,
said in a half voice:

"Quiet, quiet!"

The father of Samoylov threw himself back, and ejaculated broken words
behind his wife's ear:

"Of course--let us say they are guilty--but you'll let them explain.
What is it they have gone against? Against everything--I wish to
understand--I, too, have my interest." And suddenly: "Pavel says the
truth, hey? I want to understand. Let them speak."

"Keep still!" exclaimed the functionary, shaking his finger at him.

Sizov nodded his head sullenly.

But the mother kept her gaze fastened unwaveringly on the judges, and
saw that they got more and more excited, conversing with one another in
indistinct voices. The sound of their words, cold and tickling,
touched her face, puckering the skin on it, and filling her mouth with
a sickly, disgusting taste. The mother somehow conceived that they
were all speaking of the bodies of her son and his comrades, their
vigorous bare bodies, their muscles, their youthful limbs full of hot
blood, of living force. These bodies kindled in the judges the
sinister, impotent envy of the rich by the poor, the unwholesome greed
felt by wasted and sick people for the strength of the healthy. Their
mouths watered regretfully for these bodies, capable of working and
enriching, of rejoicing and creating. The youths produced in the old
judges the revengeful, painful excitement of an enfeebled beast which
sees the fresh prey, but no longer has the power to seize it, and howls
dismally at its powerlessness.

This thought, rude and strange, grew more vivid the more attentively
the mother scrutinized the judges. They seemed not to conceal their
excited greed--the impotent vexation of the hungry w