The prince now addressed the company in these words:—
“Gentlemen, the request which I am about to make to you is this: please to seat yourselves, take your pens, and write down freely on those sheets of paper your opinion of the communication which I have just made to you, and of which I feel sure you have not missed a word. You will not require more than twenty minutes to enunciate your sentiments as to the state of things which I have described to you, and as to the measures which I ought to take. At all events, I wish to have the one hundred and sixty-two sheets of paper written, signed, and dated by your own hands within half an hour’s time.”
After speaking these last words, he withdrew into his study. Half an hour later he re-entered the room, had all the sheets of paper collected and then courteously dismissed the assemblage. All the officials retired, either thoughtful or depressed, and returned home, without dreaming even of questioning one another.
After the scrutiny, which was conducted under the prince’s own eyes, twenty-seven humble resignations were laid on one side. The twenty-eighth, however, was written with a noble and profound sentiment of wounded pride. It came from an exalted personage, who, moreover, called in person, and who was immediately admitted. The explanation and the conduct of this official, who had resigned, indicated reviving loyalty and a general return to better sentiments. The prince promised to add a marginal note to the petition which this person had addressed to the sovereign, in order to obtain his discharge; he then undertook to preside in person over a tribunal of arbitration, which Lyenitzuin besought him to establish immediately, and in the presence of which he was desirous of terminating, in an honourable manner, the scandalous suit, which had arisen between himself and the other interested parties with regard to the testamentary dispositions of his late relative, Khlobuyoff’s aunt.
This matter having been arranged, the prince wrote a circular, copies of which were despatched that same evening to the twenty-seven scamps of divers ranks who had been led to acknowledge themselves guilty on the spot. Each one was invited to consider whether it would not be appropriate, whilst sending in a petition for permission to resign, which really amounted to an appeal to the sovereign for mercy, to support this petition by an apology to his fellow-men, in the shape of some good deed—for example, the gift of some money to the poor of the district who were suffering from famine. Then they all were to name to which of the Eastern governments they wished to retire with the simple rank of citizen. The prince’s circular procured for the poor inhabitants of the district, now sorely afflicted with famine, a sum of nearly one hundred thousand roubles which was distributed among them.
At the expiration of three months not a single one of these twenty-seven rascals remained in the town. We do not know whether any others afterwards arrived in their stead, but these were all forced to quit the government, never to appear there more. As for the lawyer, we do not know whether it was of his own free will or in consequence of certain orders he received, that he decided to make a prolonged sojourn in the vicinity of Lake Baïkal; however, fifty days after the departure of our hero the ex-advocate was installed in a small house in the western suburb of Irkutsk. There, in the midst of gardens, like Diocletian after he had abdicated the imperial throne, our fallen lawyer, in the lack of employment for his legal talents, innocently occupied himself in cultivating vegetables and preparing all sorts of preserves.
His excellency the civil governor, Lyenitzuin, in company with his wife and their charming infant, set out on their side for Nice, where they intended to spend the winter. As for Khlobuyoff, in the course of his tour of penitence he had raised his humble mission almost to the level of a sort of apostleship. Treasures of really even angelic eloquence had been discovered in this man, for so long a time both a dissipated and frivolous fellow, and the effects of his words on the people far surpassed those which Murazoff had hoped for. The repentant Lyenitzuin, it should be mentioned, bought back the hereditary domain of Khlobuyoff, who, on his mission being accomplished, learnt that his land has been been restored to him free from all encumbrances, abundantly provided with agricultural implements, with grain, horses, oxen, and flocks, and managed for a year, free of cost, by an upright agriculturist known to Murazoff and