Nekhludoff found the captain after the second bell.  The captain, wiping his thick moustache with his short hand and raising his shoulders, was reprimanding one of the sergeants.

“What is it you want?” he asked Nekhludoff.

“There is a woman giving birth to a child, so I thought it would be well——­”

“Well, let her.  When the child is born we will see to it,” said the captain, passing to his car.

The conductor came with a whistle in his hand.  The third bell sounded, and a loud wailing rose among the female prisoners and their friends and relatives on the platform.  Nekhludoff was standing beside Tarass, and watched the cars passing before him, with the grated windows and the shaved heads seen through them.  As the one in which Maslova was passed, he saw her standing with others at the window, looking at him and smiling piteously.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote F:  Early in the eighties five prisoners died from sunstroke while being transferred from the Boutyr prison to the Nijhni railroad station.—­L.  T.]

CHAPTER XXIV.

The passenger train which was to carry away Nekhludoff was to start in two hours.  Nekhludoff at first thought of utilizing these two hours in visiting his sister, but after the impressions of the morning he felt so excited and exhausted that he seated himself on a sofa in the saloon for first-class passengers.  But he unexpectedly felt so drowsy that he turned on his side, placed his palm under his cheek, and immediately fell asleep.

He was awakened by a servant in dress-coat holding a napkin in his hand.

“Mister, mister, are you not Prince Nekhludoff?  A lady is looking for you.”

Nekhludoff quickly raised himself, rubbing his eyes, and the incidents of the morning passed before his mind’s eye—­the procession of the convicts, the men who had died from the heat, the grated windows of the cars, and the women huddled behind them, one of whom was laboring in child-birth without aid, and another piteously smiling to him from behind the iron grating.  But in reality he saw a table covered with bottles, vases, chandeliers, and fruit stands; nimble servants bustling around the table, and in the depth of the saloon, before the lunch-counter, loaded with viands and fruits, the backs of passengers leisurely eating their luncheon.

While Nekhludoff was raising himself and shaking off the slumber, he noticed that everybody in the saloon was curiously watching the entrance.  He turned his eyes in the same direction, and saw a procession of people who bore an arm-chair in which was seated a lady, her head covered with tulle.  The first bearer was a lackey who seemed familiar to Nekhludoff.  The one behind was also a familiar porter, with white crown lace around his cap.  Behind the arm-chair came an elegantly dressed maid-servant with curly hair, carrying a round leather box and a sunshade.  Further behind came the short-necked Prince Korchagin, his shoulders thrown back; then Missy, Misha, their cousin, and a diplomat Osten, unfamiliar to Nekhludoff, with his long neck and prominent Adam’s apple and an ever cheerful appearance.  He walked impressively, but evidently jestingly talking to the smiling Missy.  Behind them came the doctor, angrily smoking a cigarette.