"Silence!" shouted the assistant, and the little man subsided.
"What a peculiar state of things!" Nekhludoff said to himself as he ran the gauntlet, as it were, of a hundred eyes that followed him through the corridor.
"Is it possible that innocent people are held in durance here?" Nekhludoff said, when they emerged from the corridor.
"What can we do? However, many of them are lying. If you ask them, they all claim to be innocent," said the assistant inspector; "although some are there really without any cause whatever."
"But these masons don't seem to be guilty of any offense."
"That is true so far as the masons are concerned. But those people are spoiled. Some measure of severity is necessary. They are not all as innocent as they look. Only yesterday we were obliged to punish two of them."
"Punish, how?" asked Nekhludoff.
"By flogging. It was ordered——"
"But corporal punishment has been abolished."
"Not for those that have been deprived of civil rights."