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Nekhludoff walked up to the body and touched the icy cold feet of Kryltzoff. Nekhludoff, after parting with the Englishman, went straight to his hotel, and walked about his room for a long time. The affair with Katiousha was at an end. There was something ugly in the very memory of it. But it was not that which grieved him.
Those hundreds and thousands of degraded human beings locked up in the noisome prisons by indifferent generals, procureurs, inspectors, rose up in his imagination; he remembered the strange, free old man accusing the officials, and therefore considered mad, and among the corpses the beautiful, waxen face of Kryltzoff, who had died in anger.
Yes, it was Kryltzoff, or at any rate the trace that his material existence had left behind. "Why had he suffered? Why had he lived? Does he now understand?" Nekhludoff thought, and there seemed to be no answer, seemed to be nothing but death, and he felt faint.
"I think it is absolutely necessary to make a collective protest," said Vera Doukhova, in a determined tone, and yet looking now at one, now at another, with a frightened, undecided look. "Valdemar Simonson did protest, but that is not sufficient." "What protest!" muttered Kryltzoff, cross and frowning.
Katusha and Simonson are with him, and Vera, too. She has taken my place." Kryltzoff said something that could not be heard because of the noise, and frowning in the effort to repress his cough shook his head. Then Nekhludoff stooped towards him, so as to hear, and Kryltzoff, freeing his mouth of the handkerchief, whispered: "Much better now. Only not to catch cold."
"Pretty well, only I cannot get warm; I got wet through," Kryltzoff answered, quickly replacing his hands into the sleeves of his cloak. "And here it is also beastly cold. There, look, the window-panes are broken," and he pointed to the broken panes behind the iron bars. "And how are you? Why did you not come?"
Nekhludoff nodded in acquiescence, and again exchanged a glance with Mary Pavlovna. "How about the problem of the three bodies?" whispered Kryltzoff, smiling with great difficulty. "The solution is difficult."
Novodvoroff's voice filled the room; he alone was speaking, all the rest were silent. "They are always disputing," Mary Pavlovna said, when there was a moment's silence. "And you yourself, what do you think about it?" Nekhludoff asked her. "I think Kryltzoff is right when he says we should not force our views on the people."
"I cannot talk to them," Kryltzoff said in a whisper, and became silent. "And it is much better not to talk," said Nekhludoff. An officer entered the cell and announced that the time for departing had arrived. He counted every prisoner, pointing at every one with his finger. When he reached Nekhludoff he said, familiarly: "It is too late to remain now, Prince; it is time to go."
On each of the last two were three political prisoners. Novodvoroff, Grabetz and Kondratieff sat on one, Rintzeva, Nabatoff and the woman to whom Mary Pavlovna had given up her own place on the other, and on one of the carts lay Kryltzoff on a heap of hay, with a pillow under his head, and Mary Pavlovna sat by him on the edge of the cart.
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