The Schoolmaster and other stories - Penn State University

The Schoolmaster & other storieswon’t reach your fiancée. It was not you who wrote theaddress but I, and I muddled it so they won’t be able tomake it out at the post-office. It will be a lesson to younot to argue about what you don’t understand.’“Now, gentlemen, I leave it to the next to speak.”The fifth juryman settled himself more comfortably,and had just opened his mouth to begin his story whenwe heard the clock strike on Spassky Tower.“Twelve …” one of the jurymen counted. “And intowhich class, gentlemen, would you put the emotions thatare being experienced now by the man we are trying?He, that murderer, is spending the night in a convictcell here in the court, sitting or lying down and of coursenot sleeping, and throughout the whole sleepless nightlistening to that chime. What is he thinking of? Whatvisions are haunting him?”And the jurymen all suddenly forgot about strong impressions;what their companion who had once writtena letter to his Natasha had suffered seemed unimportant,even not amusing; and no one said anything more;they began quietly and in silence lying down to sleep.DRUNKA MANUFACTURER called Frolov, a handsome dark manwith a round beard, and a soft, velvety expression in hiseyes, and Almer, his lawyer, an elderly man with a bigrough head, were drinking in one of the public rooms ofa restaurant on the outskirts of the town. They had bothcome to the restaurant straight from a ball and so werewearing dress coats and white ties. Except them andthe waiters at the door there was not a soul in the room;by Frolov’s orders no one else was admitted.They began by drinking a big wine-glass of vodka andeating oysters.“Good!” said Almer. “It was I brought oysters intofashion for the first course, my boy. The vodka burnsand stings your throat and you have a voluptuous sensationin your throat when you swallow an oyster. Don’tyou?”84