A tall, good-looking peasant, a stone-mason, of about fifty, stepped out from the rest.  He told Nekhludoff that all of them had been ordered back to their homes and were now being kept in prison because they had no passports, yet they had passports which were only a fortnight overdue.  The same thing had happened every year; they had many times omitted to renew their passports till they were overdue, and nobody had ever said anything; but this year they had been taken up and were being kept in prison the second month, as if they were criminals.

“We are all masons, and belong to the same artel.  We are told that the prison in our government is burnt, but this is not our fault.  Do help us.”

Nekhludoff listened, but hardly understood what the good-looking old man was saying, because his attention was riveted to a large, dark-grey, many-legged louse that was creeping along the good-looking man’s cheek.

“How’s that?  Is it possible for such a reason?” Nekhludoff said, turning to the assistant.

“Yes, they should have been sent off and taken back to their homes,” calmly said the assistant, “but they seem to have been forgotten or something.”

Before the assistant had finished, a small, nervous man, also in prison dress, came out of the crowd, and, strangely contorting his mouth, began to say that they were being ill-used for nothing.

“Worse than dogs,” he began.

“Now, now; not too much of this.  Hold your tongue, or you know—­”

“What do I know?” screamed the little man, desperately.  “What is our crime?”

“Silence!” shouted the assistant, and the little man was silent.

“But what is the meaning of all this?” Nekhludoff thought to himself as he came out of the cell, while a hundred eyes were fixed upon him through the openings of the cell doors and from the prisoners that met him, making him feel as if he were running the gauntlet.

“Is it really possible that perfectly innocent people are kept here?” Nekhludoff uttered when they left the corridor.

“What would you have us do?  They lie so.  To hear them talk they are all of them innocent,” said the inspector’s assistant.  “But it does happen that some are really imprisoned for nothing.”

“Well, these have done nothing.”

“Yes, we must admit it.  Still, the people are fearfully spoilt.  There are such types—­desperate fellows, with whom one has to look sharp.  To-day two of that sort had to be punished.”

“Punished?  How?”

“Flogged with a birch-rod, by order.”

“But corporal punishment is abolished.”

“Not for such as are deprived of their rights.  They are still liable to it.”

Nekhludoff thought of what he had seen the day before while waiting in the hall, and now understood that the punishment was then being inflicted, and the mixed feeling of curiosity, depression, perplexity, and moral nausea, that grew into physical sickness, took hold of him more strongly than ever before.