Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol2.djvu/304

294 'No, your Excellency, I am not speaking because I know something you don't know. Though indeed there is one circumstance which would be in his favour, but he will not himself agree to make use of it, because it will bring trouble on another man. All I think is that your Excellency may have been in too great a hurry then. Pardon me, but to my weak understanding it seems as though a man's previous life should also be taken into consideration, for if one does not look into everything coolly, but makes an outcry from the first, one only terrifies him and gets no real confession; while, if one questions him with sympathy as man to man, he will tell everything of himself and not even ask for mitigation of his sentence, and will feel no bitterness against any one, because he sees clearly that it is not I that am punishing him but the law.'

The prince pondered. At that moment an official came in and stood waiting respectfully with his portfolio. There was a look of hard work and anxiety on his still young and fresh face. It could be seen that it was not for nothing that he served on special commissions. He was one of those few officials who do their work con amore. Not excited by ambition nor desire of gain, nor imitation of others, he worked simply because he was convinced that he ought to be here and in no other place, and that this was the object of his life. To investigate, to analyse, and after extricating all the threads of a tangled case, to make it clear was his task. And his