“Have you received a copy of the indictment?”

“I have,” she answered.

“Sit down.”

The prisoner leant back to pick up her skirt in the way a fine lady picks up her train, and sat down, folding her small white hands in the sleeves of her cloak, her eyes fixed on the president.  Her face was calm again.

The witnesses were called, and some sent away; the doctor who was to act as expert was chosen and called into the court.

Then the secretary got up and began reading the indictment.  He read distinctly, though he pronounced the “I” and “r” alike, with a loud voice, but so quickly that the words ran into one another and formed one uninterrupted, dreary drone.

The judges bent now on one, now on the other arm of their chairs, then on the table, then back again, shut and opened their eyes, and whispered to each other.  One of the gendarmes several times repressed a yawn.

The prisoner Kartinkin never stopped moving his cheeks.  Botchkova sat quite still and straight, only now and then scratching her head under the kerchief.

Maslova sat immovable, gazing at the reader; only now and then she gave a slight start, as if wishing to reply, blushed, sighed heavily, and changed the position of her hands, looked round, and again fixed her eyes on the reader.

Nekhludoff sat in the front row on his high-backed chair, without removing his pince-nez, and looked at Maslova, while a complicated and fierce struggle was going on in his soul.

CHAPTER X.

The trial—­the indictment.

The indictment ran as follows:  On the 17th of January, 18—­, in the lodging-house Mauritania, occurred the sudden death of the Second Guild merchant, Therapont Emilianovich Smelkoff, of Kourgan.

The local police doctor of the fourth district certified that death was due to rupture of the heart, owing to the excessive use of alcoholic liquids.  The body of the said Smelkoff was interred.  After several days had elapsed, the merchant Timokhin, a fellow-townsman and companion of the said Smelkoff, returned from St. Petersburg, and hearing the circumstances that accompanied the death of the latter, notified his suspicions that the death was caused by poison, given with intent to rob the said Smelkoff of his money.  This suspicion was corroborated on inquiry, which proved: 

1.  That shortly before his death the said Smelkoff had received the sum of 3,800 roubles from the bank.  When an inventory of the property of the deceased was made, only 312 roubles and 16 copecks were found.

2.  The whole day and night preceding his death the said Smelkoff spent with Lubka (alias Katerina Maslova) at her home and in the lodging-house Mauritania, which she also visited at the said Smelkoff’s request during his absence, to get some money, which she took out of his portmanteau in the presence of the servants of the lodging-house Mauritania, Euphemia Botchkova and Simeon Kartinkin, with a key given her by the said Smelkoff.  In the portmanteau opened by the said Maslova, the said Botchkova and Kartinkin saw packets of 100-rouble bank-notes.