The Forged Coupon: Chapter 5

Chapter 5

IN the meantime Mahin, the schoolboy who had taught his friend
Smokovnikov to forge the coupon, had finished his career at school and
then at the university, where he had studied law. He had the advantage
of being liked by women, and as he had won favour with a vice-minister's
former mistress, he was appointed when still young as examining
magistrate. He was dishonest, had debts, had gambled, and had seduced
many women; but he was clever, sagacious, and a good magistrate. He was
appointed to the court of the district where Stepan Pelageushkine
had been tried. When Stepan was brought to him the first time to give
evidence, his sincere and quiet answers puzzled the magistrate. He
somehow unconsciously felt that this man, brought to him in fetters and
with a shorn head, guarded by two soldiers who were waiting to take
him back to prison, had a free soul and was immeasurably superior to
himself. He was in consequence somewhat troubled, and had to summon up
all his courage in order to go on with the inquiry and not blunder in
his questions. He was amazed that Stepan should narrate the story of his
crimes as if they had been things of long ago, and committed not by him
but by some different man.

"Had you no pity for them?" asked Mahin.

"No. I did not know then."

"Well, and now?"

Stepan smiled with a sad smile. "Now," he said, "I would not do it even
if I were to be burned alive."

"But why?

"Because I have come to know that all men are brethren."

"What about me? Am I your brother also?"

"Of course you are."

"And how is it that I, your brother, am sending you to hard labour?"

"It is because you don't know."

"What do I not know?"

"Since you judge, it means obviously that you don't know."

"Go on. . . . What next?"

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