The court was held in a large, oblong room.  At one end was a platform, reached by three steps.  In the middle of the platform stood a table, covered with green cloth, which was fringed with a dark-green lace.  Behind the table stood three arm-chairs with high, carved backs.  In an image-case suspended in the right corner was a representation of Christ with a crown of thorns, and beneath it a reading-desk, and on the same side stood the prosecutor’s desk.  To the left, opposite this desk, was the secretary’s table, and dividing these from the seats reserved for spectators was a carved railing, along which stood the prisoners’ bench, as yet unoccupied.

On an elevation to the right were two rows of chairs, also with high backs, reserved for the jury; below these were tables for the attorneys.  All this was in the front part of the court-room, which was divided in two by a railing.  In the rear part of the room benches in lines extended to the wall.  In the front row sat four women, either servants or factory employees, and two men, also workmen, who were evidently awed by the grandeur of the ornamentations, and were timidly whispering to each other.

Soon after the jurymen came the usher, who, walking sidewise to the middle of the room, shouted, as if he meant to frighten those present: 

“The court is coming!”

Everybody stood up, and the judges ascended the platform.  First came the presiding judge with his muscles and beautiful whiskers.  Then came the gold-spectacled, gloomy member of the court—­now even more gloomy, for before the opening of the session he met his brother-in-law, a candidate for a judicial office, who told him that he had seen his sister, and that she declared that there would be no dinner at home this day.

“So that, it seems, we will have to dine at an inn,” said the brother-in-law, laughing.

“What is there droll about it?” said the gloomy member of the court, and sank into a still deeper gloom.

And last of all came the third member of the court, that same Matvei Nikitich, who was always late.  He wore a long beard, and had large, kindly eyes, with drooping eyelids.  He suffered from catarrh of the stomach, and by the advice of his physician had adopted a new regimen, and this new regimen detained him this morning longer than usual.  When he ascended the platform he seemed to be wrapped in thought, but only because he had the habit of making riddles of every question that occurred to him.  At this moment he was occupied with the following enigmatical proposition: 

If the number of steps in the distance between the cabinet-door and the arm-chair will divide by three without a remainder, then the new regimen will cure him; but if it does not so divide, then it will not.  There were twenty-six steps, but he made one short step and reached the chair with the twenty-seventh.