"Is it possible that innocent people are held in durance here?"
Nekhludoff said, when they emerged from the corridor.

"What can we do? However, many of them are lying. If you ask them,
they all claim to be innocent," said the assistant inspector;
"although some are there really without any cause whatever."

"But these masons don't seem to be guilty of any offense."

"That is true so far as the masons are concerned. But those people
are spoiled. Some measure of severity is necessary. They are not all
as innocent as they look. Only yesterday we were obliged to punish two
of them."

"Punish, how?" asked Nekhludoff.

"By flogging. It was ordered----"

"But corporal punishment has been abolished."

"Not for those that have been deprived of civil rights."

Nekhludoff recalled what he had seen the other day while waiting in
the vestibule, and understood that the punishment had then been taking
place, and with peculiar force came upon him that mingled feeling of
curiosity, sadness, doubt, and moral, almost passing over into
physical, nausea which he had felt before, but never with such force.

Without listening to the assistant or looking around him, he hastily