Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/250

222 morning and evening. While there, he would gaze at the icons for hours, but he did not pray, for his brain was working rapidly. His conscience was perfectly clear, and he was sure that his position was due to some mistake or misunderstanding. He was of the opinion that the whole thing had happened because the judges and the sheriff were young men, without any experience. Surely, if he could get a chance to have a good, heart to heart talk with some old judge, everything would become adjusted in no time. He did not understand his judges, and, it seemed to him, his judges did not understand him.

At last, after a long delay, the trial came. Avdeyev borrowed fifty roubles from a friend, took with him a bottle of alcohol for his leg, some herbs for his stomach, and went to the city in which the trial was to take place.

The trial lasted for a week and a half. During this whole time Avdeyev sat among his fellow defendants, serious and dignified, as becomes an innocent man who is wrongly accused. He listened intently to everything that was going on, and did not understand anything. His general frame of mind was hostile to all that went on about him. He was angry because they were detaining him in court so long, because he could not get any Lenten food, because his lawyer did not say what he thought should be said. It seemed to him that the judges did not do their duty properly. They paid no attention to Avdeyev, questioned him but once in three days, and then the questions were of such a nature, that his replies invariably aroused laughter in the spectators' gallery. When he attempted to speak of his losses, of his business that had gone to ruin, of his intentions to bring suit for damages, his lawyer turned to him and made some kind of unintelligible grimaces, the spectators laughed, and the judge told him sternly that what he was saying was irrelevant. When he was called upon to speak for the last time, he said something entirely different from the story his lawyer wanted him to give to the judge, and what he did say aroused another fit of laughter in the gallery.

During those, awful hours when the jury was locked in for deliberation, he sat in the buffet-room of the court building, never giving a thought to the jury and its deliberations. Anyway, he could not understand what was keeping them so long when the whole thing was so plain; he still did not know what they wanted of him.

Feeling hunger, he asked the waiter to bring him some Lenten food. He was given a piece of fish with carrots, and