Nekhludoff followed them as if he were hypnotised.
"What do you want?" asked one of the policemen.
But Nekhludoff did not answer, and followed where the body was being carried.
The madman, sitting on a bed, was smoking greedily the cigarette Nekhludoff had given him.
"Ah, you've come back," he said, and laughed.
When he saw the body he made a face, and said, "Again! I am sick of it. I am not a boy, am I, eh?" and he turned to Nekhludoff with a questioning smile.
Nekhludoff was looking at the dead man, whose face, which had been hidden by his cap, was now visible.
This convict was as handsome in face and body as the other was hideous.
He was a man in the full bloom of life.
Notwithstanding that he was disfigured by the half of his head being shaved, the straight, rather low forehead, raised a bit over the black, lifeless eyes, was very fine, and so was the nose above the thin, black moustaches.
There was a smile on the lips that were already growing blue, a small beard outlined the lower part of the face, and on the shaved side of the head a firm, well-shaped ear was visible.
One could see what possibilities of a higher life had been destroyed in this man. The fine bones of his hands and shackled feet, the strong muscles of all his well-proportioned limbs, showed what a beautiful, strong, agile human animal this had been. As an animal merely he had been a far more perfect one of his kind than the bay stallion, about the laming of which the fireman was so angry.
Yet he had been done to death, and no one was sorry for him as a man, nor was any one sorry that so fine a working animal had perished.
The only feeling evinced was that of annoyance because of the bother caused by the necessity of getting this body, threatening putrefaction, out of the way.
The doctor and his assistant entered the hospital, accompanied by the inspector of the police station.
The doctor was a thick-set man, dressed in pongee silk coat and trousers of the same material, closely fitting his muscular thighs.
The inspector was a little fat fellow, with a red face, round as a ball, which he made still broader by a habit he had of filling his cheeks with air, and slowly letting it out again.
The doctor sat down on the bed by the side of the dead man, and touched the hands in the same way as his assistant had done, put his ear to the heart, rose, and pulled his trousers straight.
"Could not be more dead," he said.
The inspector filled his mouth with air and slowly blew it out again.
"Which prison is he from?" he asked the convoy soldier.
The soldier told him, and reminded him of the chains on the dead man's feet.
"I'll have them taken off; we have got a smith about, the Lord be thanked," said the inspector, and blew up his cheeks again; he went towards the door, slowly letting out the air.
"Why has this happened?" Nekhludoff asked the doctor.
The doctor looked at him through his spectacles.
"Why has what happened?
Why they die of sunstroke, you mean?
This is why: They sit all through the winter without exercise and without light, and suddenly they are taken out into the sunshine, and on a day like this, and they march in a crowd so that they get no air, and sunstroke is the result."
"Then why are they sent out?"
"Oh, as to that, go and ask those who send them.
But may I ask who are you?"
"I am a stranger."
"Ah, well, good-afternoon; I have no time." The doctor was vexed; he gave his trousers a downward pull, and went towards the beds of the sick.
"Well, how are you getting on?" he asked the pale man with the crooked mouth and bandaged neck.
Meanwhile the madman sat on a bed, and having finished his cigarette, kept spitting in the direction of the doctor.
Nekhludoff went down into the yard and out of the gate past the firemen's horses and the hens and the sentinel in his brass helmet, and got into the trap, the driver of which had again fallen asleep.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE CONVICT TRAIN.
When Nekhludoff came to the station, the prisoners were all seated in railway carriages with grated windows.
Several persons, come to see them off, stood on the platform, but were not allowed to come up to the carriages.
The convoy was much troubled that day.
On the way from the prison to the station, besides the two Nekhludoff had seen, three other prisoners had fallen and died of sunstroke. One was taken to the nearest police station like the first two, and the other two died at the railway station. [In Moscow, in the beginning of the eighth decade of this century, five convicts died of sunstroke in one day on their way from the Boutyrki prison to the Nijni railway station.] The convoy men were not troubled because five men who might have been alive died while in their charge.
This did not trouble them, but they were concerned lest anything that the law required in such cases should be omitted. To convey the bodies to the places appointed, to deliver up their papers, to take them off the lists of those to be conveyed to Nijni—all this was very troublesome, especially on so hot a day.
It was this that occupied the convoy men, and before it could all be accomplished Nekhludoff and the others who asked for leave to go up to the carriages were not allowed to do so.
Nekhludoff, however, was soon allowed to go up, because he tipped the convoy sergeant.
The sergeant let Nekhludoff pass, but asked him to be quick and get his talk over before any of the authorities noticed.
There were 15 carriages in all, and except one carriage for the officials, they were full of prisoners.
As Nekhludoff passed the carriages he listened to what was going on in them.
In all the carriages was heard the clanging of chains, the sound of bustle, mixed with loud and senseless language, but not a word was being said about their dead fellow-prisoners.
The talk was all about sacks, drinking water, and the choice of seats.
Looking into one of the carriages, Nekhludoff saw convoy soldiers taking the manacles off the hands of the prisoners.