our foreman let him know; it was taken away; he wanted to make something out of it, to be sure. Was that fair now?”
“But who is it you want to complain to?”
“Who? Why, the inspector that’s coming.”
“What inspector?”
“That’s true, lads, that an inspector’s coming,” said a lively young fellow of some education who had been a clerk and was reading “The Duchess la Vallière,” or something of the kind. He was always merry and amusing, but he was respected for having a certain knowledge of life and of the world. Taking no notice of the general interest aroused by the news that an inspector was coming, he went straight up to one of the cooks and asked for some liver. Our cooks often used to sell such things. They would for instance buy a large piece of liver at their own expense, cook it, and sell it in small pieces to the convicts.
“One ha’p’orth or two ha’p’orths!” asked the cook.
“Cut me two ha’p’orths, let folks envy me,” answered the convict. “There’s a general, lads, a general coming from Petersburg; he’ll inspect all Siberia. That’s true. They said so at the commander’s.”
This news produced an extraordinary sensation. For a quarter of an hour there was a stream of questions: who was it, what general, what was his rank, was he superior to the generals here! Convicts are awfully fond of discussing rank, officials, which of them takes precedence, which can lord it over the other, and which has to give way; they even quarrel and dispute and almost fight over the generals. One wonders what difference it can make to them. But a minute knowledge of generals and the authorities altogether is the criterion of a man’s knowledge, discrimination and previous importance in the world. Talk about the higher authorities is generally considered the most refined and important conversation in prison.
“Then it turns out to be true, lads, that they are coming to sack the major,” observes Kvasov, a little red-faced man, excitable and remarkably muddle-headed. He had been the first to bring the news about the major.
“He’ll bribe them,” the grim, grey-headed convict, who had by now finished his soup, brought out jerkily.
“To be sure he will,” said another. “He’s grabbed money enough! He had a battalion before he came to us. The other day he was wanting to marry the head priest’s daughter.”
But he didn’t—they showed him the door, he was too poor.
