listening to a prisoner with a weary face and beard turning gray, who
greatly resembled him. Further on stood a ragamuffin waving his hand,
shouting and laughing. On the floor beside this man sat a woman in a
good woolen dress, with a child in her arms. She wept bitterly,
evidently seeing for the first time that gray-haired man on the other
side of the net, manacled, in a prison jacket, and with head half
shaven. Over this woman stood the bank employee shouting at the top of
his voice to a bald-headed prisoner with shining eyes.

Nekhludoff remained in this room about five minutes, experiencing a
strange feeling of anguish, a consciousness of his impotence at the
discord in the world, and he was seized with a sensation like a
rocking on board of a ship.

"But I must fulfill my mission," he said to himself, taking heart.
"What am I to do?"

As he looked around for some officer, he saw a middle-sized man with
mustache, wearing epaulets, who was walking behind the crowd.

"Sir, could you not tell me where the women are kept, and where it is
permitted to see them?" he asked, making a particular effort to be
polite.

"You wish to go to the women's ward?"

"Yes; I would like to see one of the women prisoners," Nekhludoff
said, with the same strained politeness.

"You should have said so in the meeting-room. Whom do you wish to see,