Page:Dostoyevsky - The House of the Dead, Collected Edition, 1915.djvu/62

 that there is no need to fear convicts. A man does not so quickly or so easily fly at another with a knife. In fact, if there may be danger, if there is sometimes trouble, the rarity of such instances shows how trifling the risk is. I am speaking, of course, only of convicted prisoners, many of whom are glad to have reached the prison at last (a new life is sometimes such a good thing!) and are consequently disposed to live quietly and peaceably. Moreover, the others will not let those who are really troublesome do mischief. Every convict, however bold and insolent he may be, is afraid of everything in prison. But a convict awaiting punishment is a different matter. He is certainly capable of falling on any outsider, apropos of nothing, simply because he will have to face a flogging next day, and if he does anything to bring about another trial his punishment will be delayed. Here there is an object, a motive for the attack; it is “to change his luck” at any cost and as quickly as possible. I know one strange psychological instance of the kind.

In the military division in our prison there was a convict who had been a soldier, and had been sentenced for two years without deprivation of rights, an awful braggart and a conspicuous coward. As a rule boastfulness and cowardice are rarely found in a Russian soldier. Our soldiers always seem so busy that if they wanted to show off they would not have time. But if one is a braggart he is almost always an idler and a coward. Dutov (that was the convict’s name) served out his sentence at last and returned to his line regiment. But as all, like him, sent to prison for correction are finally corrupted there, it usually happens that after they have been not more than two or three weeks in freedom, they are arrested again and come back to the prison, this time not for two or three “lifer” years, but as a for fifteen or twenty years; and so it happened with him. Three weeks after leaving the prison, Dutov stole something, breaking a lock to do so, and was insolent and unruly as well. He was tried and sentenced to a severe punishment. Reduced to the utmost terror by the punishment awaiting him, being a most pitiful coward, he fell, knife in hand, upon an officer who went into the convicts’ room, the day before he would have had to “walk the green street.” Of course he was well aware that by such an act he greatly increased his sentence and his term of penal servitude, but all he was reckoning on was putting off the terrible moment of punishment for a few days, even for a few hours! He was such a