paving-stones as well as on the narrow strips of lawn on the
boulevards. The birches, the poplars, and the wild cherry
unfolded their gummy and fragrant leaves, the limes were
expanding their opening buds; crows, sparrows, and pigeons,
filled with the joy of spring, were getting their nests ready;
the flies were buzzing along the walls, warmed by the sunshine.
All were glad, the plants, the birds, the insects, and the
children. But men, grown-up men and women, did not leave off
cheating and tormenting themselves and each other. It was not
this spring morning men thought sacred and worthy of
consideration not the beauty of God's world, given for a joy to
all creatures, this beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to
harmony, and to love, but only their own devices for enslaving
one another.

Thus, in the prison office of the Government town, it was not the
fact that men and animals had received the grace and gladness of
spring that was considered sacred and important, but that a
notice, numbered and with a superscription, had come the day
before, ordering that on this 28th day of April, at 9 a.m., three
prisoners at present detained in the prison, a man and two women
(one of these women, as the chief criminal, to be conducted
separately), had to appear at Court. So now, on the 28th of
April, at 8 o'clock, a jailer and soon after him a woman warder
with curly grey hair, dressed in a jacket with sleeves trimmed
with gold, with a blue-edged belt round her waist, and having a
look of suffering on her face, came into the corridor.

"You want Maslova?" she asked, coming up to the cell with the
jailer who was on duty.