“Well, my boy, can you walk to the hospital or not? No, you’d better drive. Get the horse out at once!” he shouted in excited haste to the sergeant.
“But I don’t feel anything, your honour. He only gave me a little prick, your honour.”
“You don’t know, you don’t know, my dear boy; we shall see. . . . It’s a dangerous place; it all depends on the place; he struck you just over the heart, the ruffian! And you, you,” he roared, addressing Lomov, “now I’ll make you smart! . . . To the guard-house!”
And he certainly did make him smart. Lomov was tried and, though the wound turned out to be the slightest of pricks, the intent was unmistakable. The criminal’s term of imprisonment was increased and he was given a thousand strokes. The major was thoroughly satisfied.
At last the inspector arrived. The day after he arrived in the town he visited our prison. It was on a holiday. For some days before everything in the prison had been scrubbed, polished, cleaned. The prisoners were freshly shaven. Their clothes were white and clean. In the summer the regulation dress for the prisoners was white linen jacket and trousers. Every one of them had a black circle about four inches in diameter sown on the back of their jackets. A whole hour was spent in drilling the convicts to answer properly if the great man should greet them. There were rehearsals. The major bustled about like one possessed. An hour before the general’s appearance the convicts were all standing in their places like posts with their arms held stiffly to their sides. At last, at one o’clock, the general arrived. He was a general of great consequence, of such consequence that I believe all official hearts must have throbbed all over Western Siberia at his arrival. He walked in sternly and majestically, followed by a great suite of the local authorities in attendance on him, several generals and colonels among them. There was one civilian, a tall and handsome gentleman in a swallowtail coat and low shoes, who had come from Petersburg too, and who behaved with extreme freedom and independence. The general frequently turned to him and with marked courtesy. This interested the convicts immensely—a civilian and treated with such esteem and by such a general, too! Later on they found out his surname and who he was, but there were numbers of theories. Our major, wearing a tight uniform with an orange-coloured collar, with his bloodshot eyes and crimson pimply face, did not, I fancy, make a particularly agreeable impression on the
