‘Where is he?’ he said, and at the moment he said it, he caught sight of a young man with a long, thin neck, and half of his head shaven and covered with short hair, coming round the corner of the house between two dragoons. This young man was clothed in a fox-lined blue cloth coat, that had once been foppish but was now shabby, and in filthy convict’s trousers of fustian, thrust into uncleaned and battered thin boots. His uncertain gait was clogged by the heavy manacles hanging about his thin, weak legs.
‘Ah! ’ said Rastoptchin, hurriedly turning his eyes away from the young man in the fox-lined coat and pointing to the bottom steps. ‘Put him here!’
With a clank of manacles the young man stepped with effort on to the step indicated to him; putting his finger into the tight collar of his coat, he turned his long neck twice, and sighing, folded his thin, unworkmanlike hands before him with a resigned gesture.
For several seconds, while the young man was taking up his position on the step, there was complete silence. Only at the back of the mass of people, all pressing in one direction, could be heard sighs and groans and sounds of pushing and the shuffling of feet.
Rastoptchin, waiting for him to be on the spot he had directed, scowled, and passed his hand over his face.
‘Lads!’ he said, with a metallic ring in his voice, ‘this man, Vereshtchagin, is the wretch by whose doing Moscow is lost.’
The young man in the fox-lined coat stood in a resigned pose, clasping his hands together in front of his body, and bending a little forward. His wasted young face, with its look of hopelessness and the hideous disfigurement of the half-shaven head, was turned downwards. At the count’s first words he slowly lifted his head and looked up from below at the count, as though he wanted to say something to him, or at least to catch his eye. But Rastoptchin did not look at him. The blue vein behind the young man’s ear stood out like a cord on his long, thin neck, and all at once his face flushed crimson.
All eyes were fixed upon him. He gazed at the crowd, and, as though made hopeful by the expression he read on the faces there, he smiled a timid, mournful smile, and dropping his head again, shifted his feet on the step.
‘He is a traitor to his Tsar and his country; he deserted to Bonaparte; ,he alone of all the Russians has disgraced the name of Russia, and through him Moscow is lost,’ said Rastoptchin in a harsh, monotonous voice; but all at once he glanced down rapidly at Vereshtchagin, who still stood in the same submissive attitude. As though that glance had driven him to frenzy, flinging up his arms, he almost yelled to the crowd:
‘You shall deal with him as you think fit! I hand him over to you!’
The people were silent, and only pressed closer and closer on one another. To bear each other’s weight, to breathe in that tainted foulness, to be unable to stir, and to be expecting something vague, uncomprehended and awful, was becoming unbearable. The men in the front of the crowd, who saw and heard all that was passing before them, all stood with wide- open, horror-struck eyes and gaping mouths, straining all their strength to support the pressure from behind on their backs.
‘Beat him! . . . Let the traitor perish and not shame the name of Russia!’ screamed Rastoptchin. ‘Cut him down! I give the command!’ Hearing not the words, but only the wrathful tones of Rastoptchin’s voice, the mob moaned and heaved forward, but stopped again.
‘Count!’ . . . the timid and yet theatrical voice of Vereshtchagin broke in upon the momentary stillness that followed. ‘Count, one God is above us . . .’ said Vereshtchagin, lifting his head, and again the thick vein swelled on his thin neck and the colour swiftly came and faded again from his face. He did not finish what he was trying to say.
‘Cut him down! I command it! . . .’ cried Rastoptchin, suddenly turning as white as Vereshtchagin himself.
‘Draw sabres!’ shouted the officer to the dragoons, himself drawing his sabre.
Another still more violent wave passed over the crowd, and reaching the front rows, pushed them forward, and threw them staggering right up to the steps. The tall young man, with a stony expression of face and his lifted arm rigid in the air, stood close beside Vereshtchagin. ‘Strike at him!’ the officer said almost in a whisper to the dragoons; and one of the soldiers, his face suddenly convulsed by fury, struck Vereshtchagin on the head with the flat of his sword.
Vereshtchagin uttered a brief ‘Ah!’ of surprise, looking about him in alarm, as though he did not know what this was done to him for. A similar moan of surprise and horror ran through the crowd.
