Maslova reached her cell only at six in the evening, tired and
footsore, having, unaccustomed as she was to walking, gone 10
miles on the stony road that day. She was crushed by the
unexpectedly severe sentence and tormented by hunger. During the
first interval of her trial, when the soldiers were eating bread
and hard-boiled eggs in her presence, her mouth watered and she
realised she was hungry, but considered it beneath her dignity to
beg of them. Three hours later the desire to eat had passed, and
she felt only weak. It was then she received the unexpected
sentence. At first she thought she had made a mistake; she could
not imagine herself as a convict in Siberia, and could not
believe what she heard. But seeing the quiet, business-like faces
of judges and jury, who heard this news as if it were perfectly
natural and expected, she grew indignant, and proclaimed loudly
to the whole Court that she was not guilty. Finding that her cry
was also taken as something natural and expected, and feeling
incapable of altering matters, she was horror-struck and began to
weep in despair, knowing that she must submit to the cruel and
surprising injustice that had been done her. What astonished her
most was that young men--or, at any rate, not old men--the same
men who always looked so approvingly at her (one of them, the
public prosecutor, she had seen in quite a different humour) had
condemned her. While she was sitting in the prisoners' room
before the trial and during the intervals, she saw these men
looking in at the open door pretending they had to pass there on
some business, or enter the room and gaze on her with approval.
And then, for some unknown reason, these same men had condemned
her to hard labour, though she was innocent of the charge laid
against her. At first she cried, but then quieted down and sat
perfectly stunned in the prisoners' room, waiting to be led back.
She wanted only two things now--tobacco and strong drink. In this
state Botchkova and Kartinkin found her when they were led into
the same room after being sentenced. Botchkova began at once to
scold her, and call her a "convict."
"Well! What have you gained? justified yourself, have you? What
you have deserved, that you've got. Out in Siberia you'll give up
your finery, no fear!"
Maslova sat with her hands inside her sleeves, hanging her head
and looking in front of her at the dirty floor without moving,
only saying: "I don't bother you, so don't you bother me. I don't
bother you, do I?" she repeated this several times, and was
silent again. She did brighten up a little when Botchkova and
Kartinkin were led away and an attendant brought her three
roubles.
"Are you Maslova?" he asked. "Here you are; a lady sent it you,"
he said, giving her the money.