“That’s so!” says the one playing with the balalaïka. “Hard labour and prison are just the things to cause that.”
“It was like that the other day,” says the second one, without hearing the remark made to him. “There was a little wheat left, sweepings, a mere nothing; there was some idea of turning the refuse into money; well, look here, they took it to him, and he confiscated it. All economy, you see. Was that so, and was it right—yes or no?”
“But whom can you complain to?”
“To whom? Why, the ’spector (Inspector) who’s coming.”
“What ’spector?”
“It’s true, pals, a ’spector is coming soon,” said a youthful convict, who had got some sort of knowledge, had read the “Duchesse de la Vallière,” or some book of that sort, and who had been Quartermaster in a regiment; a bit of a wag, whom, as a man of information, the convicts held in a sort of respect. Without paying the least attention to the exciting debate, he goes straight to the cook, and asks him for some liver. Our cooks often deal in victuals of that kind; they used to buy a whole liver, cut it in pieces, and sell it to the other convicts.
“Two kopecks’ worth, or four?” asks cook.
“A four-kopeck cut; I’ll eat, the others shall look on and long,” says this convict. “Yes, pals, a general, a real general, is coming from Petersburg to ’spect all Siberia; it’s so, heard it at the Governor’s place.”
This news produces an extraordinary effect. For a quarter of an hour they ask each other who this General can be? what’s his title? whether his grade is higher than that of the Generals of our town? The convicts delight in discussing ranks and degrees, in finding out who’s at the head of things, who can make the other officials crook their backs, and to whom he crooks his own; so they get up an argument and quarrel about their Generals, and rude words fly about, all in honour of these high officers—fights, too, sometimes. What interest can they possibly have in it? When one hears convicts speaking of Generals and high officials one gets a measure of their intelligence as they were while still in the world before the prison days. It cannot be concealed that among our people, even in much higher circles, talk about generals and high officials is looked upon as the most serious and refined conversation.