Chapter 9 Part 1 - Six

The presiding judge came to court early in the morning.He was a tall man with a big gray beard.He was a married man, but his life was very loose, and so was his wife.They do not interfere with each other.This morning he had received a letter from his Swiss governess, who had lived with them the previous summer and had recently come to Petersburg from the South, saying that she would be waiting for him in the town at the "Italian Hotel" between three and six in the afternoon.So he hoped that the court would start early today and end early, so that he could visit the red-haired Clara before six o'clock.He had had an affair with her at the villa last summer.

He walked into the office, closed the door, took out a pair of dumbbells from the bottom shelf of the filing cabinet, and lifted them up, forward, sideways and down twenty times each, and then lifted the dumbbells over his head again, without any hesitation. Squat down three times with great effort. "There's no better way to exercise than taking a shower and doing gymnastics," he thought, stroking a large bulge on his right arm with his left hand, which wore a gold ring on its ring finger.He was about to practice a fencing routine (both of which he always did before long trials), when the door moved.Someone wants to open the door and come in.

The judge hastily put the dumbbells back in place and opened the door. "Sorry," he said. A judge of short stature, wearing a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, walked in with hunched shoulders and a sullen face. "Matvey has not come again," said the judge displeased. "Not yet," replied the President, putting on his uniform. "He's always late." "I don't understand why he's not ashamed," said the judge, sitting down angrily, and produced a cigarette. The judge is a prudish gentleman, and had quarreled with his wife this morning because she had run out of living expenses for the month before the time came.His wife asked him to give her some money in advance, and he said there would be no accommodation.As a result, there was a commotion.The wife said that if this is the case, then don't start a business, and he can't even think about eating at home.He turned away after hearing this, lest his wife would really do what she threatened, because she was capable of anything. "Well, that's what it's like to live a decent life," he thought, looking at the radiant, amiable President, who was smoothing the sides of his embroidered collar with delicate white hands, his arms spread wide. Long and dense gray beard, "He is always proud, but I am suffering."

The clerk came in and brought a file. "Thank you," said the President, lighting a cigarette. "Which case will be tried first?" "I think it's the case of murder by poisoning," said the clerk nonchalantly. "Very well, the case of poisoning murder is the case of poisoning murder," said the president.He reckoned that the case could be over before four o'clock, and then he could leave, "Hasn't Matvey come yet?" "Not yet." "Has Brevi come, then?" "Here he is," replied the clerk. "If you see him, tell him we're going to try the poisoning case first."

Brevier is the deputy prosecutor in charge of prosecuting the case. The clerk came to the corridor and met Brevi.Brevier shrugged his shoulders, opened his uniform, and with a briefcase under his arm, he hurried along the corridor like a runner, his heels rattling, and his empty hand frantically swung back and forth. "Mikhail Petrovich asked me to ask, are you ready?" said the clerk. "Of course, I am available to appear in court at any time," the deputy prosecutor said. "Which case will be tried first?" "Poisoned murder case." "Excellent," said the deputy prosecutor, who was not at all pleased because he hadn't slept all night.They gave a farewell party to a colleague, drank a lot of wine, played cards until two o'clock in the morning, and went to the brothel that happened to be Maslova's six months ago, so he didn't have time to read the murder case. The case file, I want to flip through it now.The clerk knew that he hadn't read the case file, but he deliberately made things difficult and asked the chief judge to try the case first.Intellectually, the clerk was a liberal, even a radical.Brevet was conservative in thinking, and like all Germans who were officials in Russia, he believed in the Orthodox Church.The clerk didn't like him, but envied his position very much.

"And what about the Castrationist case?" asked the clerk. -------- ①A sect of Christianity that believes that childbearing is a sin, and thus castrates itself. "I said I could not try the case," said the deputy prosecutor, "because of a lack of witnesses, and I will say so to the court." "What does that matter..." "I can't do the trial," said the deputy prosecutor, waving his arms like this again, and ran to his office. He postponed the case of the Castrationists on the pretext that a witness, who was insignificant to the case, had not been called, and that he postponed the trial only for fear that the accused might be acquitted by a court of educated jurors. .However, as long as the judge discusses it properly, the case can be transferred to the county court for trial, where there are more peasants on the jury and the chance of conviction is much higher.

The corridors are bustling with each other, getting busier and busier.The crowd gathered for the most part near the civil court, where the case was being told to the jurors by the inquisitive good-looking gentleman.During a break in the interrogation, an old lady walked out of the civil court. It was she who had been handed over a large sum of money by that genius lawyer to a businessman who had no right to receive the money.The judges were well aware of this, and the plaintiff and his lawyer certainly knew it better; but the lawyer's method was so vicious that the old lady was forced to pay the money.The old lady was fat and well-dressed, with a few large flowers in her hat.She came out of the door, spread her stubby arms, and kept saying to her lawyer, "What's the matter? Do me a favor! What's the matter?" The lawyer looked at the flowers on her hat, thinking of his own thoughts, and did not listen to her at all.

The lawyer came out of the civil court swiftly after the old lady.He opened his waistcoat, revealing his starched white breasts, and his face was full of pride, because he ruined the old lady with the flowers on her hair, while the businessman who paid him ten thousand rubles got a hundred thousand. above.All eyes were on the lawyer, and he was aware of it.He had an air that seemed to say, "I have nothing to admire." He walked quickly past the crowd.