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Updated: April 30, 2025
Maslenikoff disapprovingly shook his head, went to the table and on a sheet of paper with a printed letter-head wrote in a bold hand: "The bearer, Prince Dmitri Ivanovich Nekhludoff, is hereby permitted to visit the prisoners, Maslova and Bogodukhovskaia, now detained in the prison," and signed his name to it with a broad flourish. "You will see now what order there is in prison.
The history of the prisoner Maslova was a very common one. Maslova was the daughter of an unmarried menial who lived with her mother, a cowherd, on the estate of two spinsters. This unmarried woman gave birth to a child every year, and, as is the custom in the villages, baptized them; then neglected the troublesome newcomers, and they finally starved to death. Thus five children died.
Coming to the gate, he asked the officer on duty to tell the inspector that he wished to see Maslova. The officer knew Nekhludoff, and told him an important piece of prison news. The captain had resigned, and another man, who was very strict, had taken his place. The inspector, who was in the prison at the time, soon made his appearance. He was tall, bony, very slow in his movements, and gloomy.
The attendant was hurt by her want of confidence, and that was why he treated Maslova so brusquely. Maslova was glad of the money, because it could give her the only thing she now desired. "If I could but get cigarettes and take a whiff!" she said to herself, and all her thoughts centred on the one desire to smoke and drink.
"Oh, for a drop of wine," she said to Korableva, wiping her tears with the sleeve of her shirt and sobbing from time to time. "Some booze? Why, of course!" said Korableva. Maslova produced the money from one of the lunch-rolls and gave it to Korableva, who climbed up to the draught-hole of the oven for a flask of wine she had hidden there.
"Well, it could not be worse than it is now, anyhow; I only wish it was settled one way or another." "Of course, it will be settled one way or another," said the jailer, with a superior's self-assured witticism. "Now, then, get along! Take your places!" The old woman's eyes vanished from the grating, and Maslova stepped out into the middle of the corridor.
The warders themselves are afraid of him," said Khoroshavka, who managed to exchange notes with the male prisoners and knew all that went on in the prison. "He'll run away, that's flat." "If he does go away you and I'll have to stay," said Korableva, turning to Maslova, "but you'd better tell us now what the advocate says about petitioning. Now's the time to hand it in."
It was chiefly the rejection of the appeal by the Senate, confirming the senseless torments that the innocent Maslova was enduring, that saddened him, and also the fact that this rejection made it still harder for him to unite his fate with hers.
The first class consisted of people entirely innocent, victims of judicial mistakes, such as that would-be incendiary, Menshov, or Maslova, and others. There were comparatively few people of this class, according to the observations of the chaplain about seven per cent. but their condition attracted particular attention.
Maslova was still thinking, and continued to assure herself that, as she had told him on his second visit, she had not forgiven him; that she hated him, but, in reality, she had long since begun to love him again, and loved him so that she involuntarily carried out his wishes. She ceased to drink and smoke, she gave up flirting, and willingly went as servant to the hospital.
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