Between these Pillars of Hercules of our national jurisprudence, the bailiff had fallen into the deep water, in other words, into the Criminal Court. A few months later the court came to a decision: the criminal was to be flogged and then banished to Siberia. His son and all his relations came to me, begging me to save the father and head of the family. I felt intense pity myself for the sufferer, who was perfectly innocent. I called again on the President and Councillors; again I tried to prove that they were injuring themselves by punishing this man so severely. “You know very well yourselves,” I said, “that no lawsuit is ever settled without bribes; and you will starve yourselves, unless you take the truly Christian view that every gift is good and perfect.”[[105]] By begging and bowing and sending the bailiff’s son to bow still lower, I attained half of my object. The man was condemned to suffer a certain number of lashes within the prison walls, but he was not exiled; and he was forbidden to undertake any business of the kind in future for other peasants.
[105]. There is a reference to the Epistle of James, i. 17.
When I found that the Governor and state-attorney had confirmed this remission, I went off to beg the police that the flogging might be lightened; and they, partly flattered by this personal appeal, and partly pitying a martyr in a cause so near to their own hearts, and also because they knew the man was well-to-do, promised me that the punishment should be merely nominal.
A few days later the bailiff came to my house one morning; he looked thin, and there was more grey in his beard. For all his joy, I soon perceived that he had something on his mind.
“What’s troubling you?” I asked.
“Well, I wish I could get it all over at once.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“What I mean is—when will the flogging be?”
“But haven’t you been flogged?”
“No.”