"But we do nothing to destroy the conditions in which people like
these are produced; on the contrary, we support the
establishments where they are formed. These establishments are
well known: factories, mills, workshops, public-houses,
gin-shops, brothels. And we do not destroy these places, but,
looking at them as necessary, we support and regulate them. We
educate in this way not one, but millions of people, and then
catch one of them and imagine that we have done something, that
we have guarded ourselves, and nothing more can be expected of
us. Have we not sent him from the Moscow to the Irkoutsk
Government?" Thus thought Nekhludoff with unusual clearness and
vividness, sitting in his high-backed chair next to the colonel,
and listening to the different intonations of the advocates',
prosecutor's, and president's voices, and looking at their
self-confident gestures. "And how much and what hard effort this
pretence requires," continued Nekhludoff in his mind, glancing
round the enormous room, the portraits, lamps, armchairs,
uniforms, the thick walls and large windows; and picturing to
himself the tremendous size of the building, and the still more
ponderous dimensions of the whole of this organisation, with its
army of officials, scribes, watchmen, messengers, not only in
this place, but all over Russia, who receive wages for carrying
on this comedy which no one needs. "Supposing we spent
one-hundredth of these efforts helping these castaways, whom we
now only regard as hands and bodies, required by us for our own
peace and comfort. Had some one chanced to take pity on him and
given some help at the time when poverty made them send him to
town, it might have been sufficient," Nekhludoff thought, looking
at the boy's piteous face. "Or even later, when, after 12 hours'
work at the factory, he was going to the public-house, led away
by his companions, had some one then come and said, 'Don't go,
Vania; it is not right,' he would not have gone, nor got into bad
ways, and would not have done any wrong.
"But no; no one who would have taken pity on him came across this
apprentice in the years he lived like a poor little animal in the
town, and with his hair cut close so as not to breed vermin, and
ran errands for the workmen. No, all he heard and saw, from the
older workmen and his companions, since he came to live in town,
was that he who cheats, drinks, swears, who gives another a
thrashing, who goes on the loose, is a fine fellow. Ill, his
constitution undermined by unhealthy labour, drink, and
debauchery--bewildered as in a dream, knocking aimlessly about
town, he gets into some sort of a shed, and takes from there some
old mats, which nobody needs--and here we, all of us educated
people, rich or comfortably off, meet together, dressed in good
clothes and fine uniforms, in a splendid apartment, to mock this
unfortunate brother of ours whom we ourselves have ruined.