up his hat and was the first to go. ‘And no doubt he will go on being silent,’ said Luise. So it was. For a fortnight no one came to take me and no one had any suspicion of me. That fortnight, though you mayn’t believe it, Alexandr Petrovitch, was the happiest time in my life. Every day I met Luise. And how tender, how tender she grew to me! She would cry and say, ‘I’ll follow you wherever they send you, I’ll leave everything for you!’ It was almost more than I could bear, she wrung my heart so. Well, and within a fortnight they took me. The old man and the aunt came to an understanding and gave information against me. . . .”
“But excuse me,” I interrupted, “for that they could not have given you more than ten or twelve years at the utmost in the civil division, but you are in the special division. How can that be?”
“Oh, that is a different matter,” said Baklushin. “When I was brought to the court the captain swore at me with nasty words before the court. I couldn’t control myself and said to him, ‘What are you swearing for? Don’t you see you are in a court of justice, you scoundrel!’ Well, that gave a new turn to things, they tried me again and for everything together they condemned me to four thousand blows and sent me here in the special, division. And when they brought me out for punishment, they brought out the captain too: me to walk down the green street,’ and him to be deprived of his rank and sent to serve as a soldier in the Caucasus. Good-bye, Alexandr Petrovitch. Come and see our performance.”
At last the holidays came. The convicts did hardly any work on Christmas Eve. Some went to the sewing-rooms and workshops; the others were sent to their different tasks, but for the most part, singly or in groups, came back to prison immediately afterwards and they all remained indoors after dinner. Indeed the majority had left the prison in the morning more on their own business than for the regulation work: some to arrange about bringing in and ordering vodka; others to see friends, male and female, or to collect any little sums
