‘Me, they mean me!’ Now he is sure of it.
‘He kept silent even’, began the angelic advocate once more in a still softer and sadder voice, ‘when the same philanthropist paid all his creditors their due but him—and even when (riding once again in a carriage with rubber tires and fiery horses) he knocked Bontzye down and drove over him. He kept silent even in the hospital, where one may cry out. He kept silent when the doctor would not come to his bedside without being paid fifteen kopeks, and when the attendant demanded another five—for changing his linen.
‘He kept silent in the death struggle—silent in death.
‘Not a word against God; not a word against men!
‘Dixi!’
Once more Bontzye trembled all over. He knew that after the advocate comes the prosecutor. Who knows what he will say? Bontzye himself remembered nothing of his life. Even in the other world he forgot every moment what had happened in the one before. The advocate had recalled everything to his mind. Who knows what the prosecutor will not remind him of?
‘Gentlemen’, begins the prosecutor, in a voice biting and acid as vinegar—but he breaks off.
‘Gentlemen’, he begins again, but his voice is milder, and a second time he breaks off.
Then from out the same throat comes in a voice that is almost gentle: ‘Gentlemen! He was silent! I will be silent too!’