There was no private room for me at the police-station, and the officer directed that I should spend the rest of the night in the office. He took me there himself; dropping into an armchair and yawning wearily, he said: “It’s a dog’s life. I’ve been up since three, and now your business has kept me till near four in the morning, and at nine I have to present my report.”
“Good-bye,” he said a moment later and left the room. A corporal locked me in, and said that I might knock at the door if I needed anything.
I opened the window: day was beginning and the morning breeze was stirring. I asked the corporal for water and drank a whole jugful. Of sleep I never even thought. For one thing, there was no place to lie down; the room contained no furniture except some dirty leather-covered chairs, one armchair, and two tables of different sizes, both covered with a litter of papers. There was a night-light, too feeble to light up the room, which threw a flickering white patch on the ceiling; and I watched the patch grow paler and paler as the dawn came on.
I sat down in the magistrate’s seat and took up the paper nearest me on the table—a permit to bury a servant of Prince Gagárin’s and a medical certificate to prove that the man had died according to all the rules of the medical art. I picked up another—some police regulations. I ran through it and found an article to this effect: “Every prisoner has a right to learn the cause of his arrest or to be discharged within three days.” I made a mental note of this item.
An hour later I saw from the window the arrival of our butler with a cushion, coverlet, and cloak for me. He made some request to the corporal, probably for leave to visit me; he was a grey-haired old man, to several of whose children I had stood godfather while a child myself; the corporal gave a rough and sharp refusal. One of our coachmen was there too, and I hailed them from the window. The soldier, in a fuss, ordered them to be off. The old man bowed low to me and shed tears; and the coachman, as he whipped up his horse, took off his hat and rubbed his eyes. When the carriage started, I could bear it no more: the tears came in a flood, and they were the first and last tears I shed during my imprisonment.
§3
Towards morning the office began to fill up. The first to appear was a clerk, who had evidently been drunk the night before and was not sober yet. He had red hair and a pimpled face, a consumptive look, and an expression of brutish sensuality; he wore a long, brick-coloured coat, ill-made, ill-brushed, and shiny with age. The next comer was a free-and-easy gentleman, wearing the cloak of a non-commissioned officer. He turned to me at once and asked:
“They got you at the theatre, I suppose?”
“No; I was arrested at home.”
“By Fyodor Ivanovitch?”