And as if himself impressed with the importance of the verdict, and evidently greatly delighted with his speech, the prosecutor took his seat.

The burden of his speech, if we eliminate the flights of eloquence, was to the effect that Maslova, after gaining the merchant’s confidence, hypnotized him, and that, arriving at the inn with the key to the merchant’s trunk, she intended to steal the money herself, but, being discovered by Simon and Euphemia, was obliged to divide with them.  That afterward, desiring to conceal the traces of her crime, she returned with the merchant to the inn and administered poison to him.

When the prosecutor had finished his speech, a middle-aged man, in a dress coat and wide semi-circle of starched shirt front, rose from the lawyer’s bench, and boldly began to deliver a speech in defense of Kartinkin and Bochkova.  He was a lawyer hired by them for three hundred rubles.  He declared them both innocent, and threw all the blame on Maslova.

He belittled the deposition of Maslova relating to the presence of Bochkova and Kartinkin when she took the money, and insisted that, as she had confessed to poisoning the merchant, her evidence could have no weight.  The twenty-five hundred rubles could have been earned by two hard working and honest persons, who were receiving in tips three to four rubles a day from guests.  The merchant’s money was stolen by Maslova, who either gave it to some one for safe keeping, or lost it, which was not unlikely, as she was not in a normal condition.  The poisoning was done by Maslova alone.

For these reasons he asked the jury to acquit Kartinkin and Bochkova of stealing the money; or, if they found them guilty of stealing he asked for a verdict of theft, but without participation in the poisoning, and without conspiracy.

In conclusion, this lawyer made a thrust at the prosecuting attorney by remarking that, although the splendid reasonings of the prosecutor on heredity explain the scientific questions of heredity, they hardly hold good in the case of Bochkova, since her parentage was unknown.

The prosecutor, growling, began to make notes, and shrugged his shoulders in contemptuous surprise.

Next rose Maslova’s lawyer, and timidly and falteringly began his speech in her defense.  Without denying that Maslova participated in the theft, he insisted that she had no intention of poisoning Smelkoff, but gave him the powder in order to make him sleep.  When he described Maslova’s unfortunate life, telling how she had been drawn into a life of vice by a man who went unpunished, while she was left to bear the whole burden of her fall, he attempted to become eloquent, but his excursion into the domain of psychology failed, so that everybody felt awkward.  When he began to mutter about man’s cruelty and woman’s helplessness, the justiciary, desiring to help him, asked him to confine himself to the facts of the case.