"Don't want to."
"Fedor Bukin!"
The whitish, faded fellow lifted himself heavily, and shaking his head slowly said in a thick voice:
"You ought to be ashamed. I am a heavy man, and yet I understand—justice!" He raised his hand higher than his head and was silent, half-closing his eyes as if looking at something at a distance.
"What is it?" shouted the old judge in excited astonishment, dropping back in his armchair.
"Oh, well, what's the use?"
Bukin sullenly let himself down on the bench. There was something big and serious in his dark eyes, something somberly reproachful and naïve. Everybody felt it; even the judges listened, as if waiting for an echo clearer than his words. On the public benches all commotion died down immediately; only a low weeping swung in the air. Then the prosecuting attorney, shrugging his shoulders, grinned and said something to the marshal of the nobility, and whispers gradually buzzed again excitedly through the hall.
Weariness enveloped the mother's body with a stifling faintness. Small drops of perspiration stood on her forehead. Samoylov's mother stirred on the bench, nudging her with her shoulder and elbow, and said to her husband in a subdued whisper:
"How is this, now? Is it possible?"
"You see, it's possible."