Page:Dostoyevsky - The House of the Dead, Collected Edition, 1915.djvu/269

 was always trying to explain to me in his broken Russian some special astronomical system he had invented. I was told that he had once published an account of it, but the learned world had only laughed at him. I think he was a little cracked. For whole days together he was on his knees saying his prayers, for which all the convicts respected him to the day of his death. He died before my eyes in our hospital after a severe illness. He won the convicts’ respect, however, from the first moment in prison after the incident with our major. On the journey from U. to our prison they had not been shaved and they had grown beards, so when they were led straight to the major he was furiously indignant at such a breach of discipline, though they were in no way to blame for it.

“What do they look like!” he roared, “they are tramps, brigands!”

Z., who at that time knew very little Russian and thought they were being asked who they were—tramps or brigands?—answered:

“We are not tramps, we are political prisoners.”

“Wha—aat? You are insolent! Insolent!” roared the major. “To the guard-house! A hundred lashes, at once, this instant!”

The old man was flogged. He lay down under the lashes without a protest, bit his hand and endured the punishment without a cry, a moan, or a movement. Meanwhile B. and T. went into the prison, where M., already waiting for them at the gate, fell on their necks, though he had never seen them before. Agitated by the way the major had received them, they told M. all about Z. I remember how M. told me about it.

“I was beside myself,” he said. “I did not know what was happening to me and shivered as though I were in a fever. I waited for Z. at the gate. He would have to come straight from the guard-house where the flogging took place. Suddenly the gate opened: Z. came out with a pale face and trembling white lips, and without looking at anyone passed through the convicts who were assembled in the yard and already knew that a ‘gentleman’ was being flogged; he went into the prison ward, straight to his place, and without saying a word knelt down and began to pray. The convicts were impressed and even touched. “When I saw that old grey-headed man,” said M., “who had left a wife and children in his own country—when I saw him on his knees praying, after a shameful punishment, I rushed behind