"vanin11" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dumas Alexandre)

may have been its cause. Seeing that it was useless and that he was
only wasting time in gazing in that direction, he made a sign to a
bearded man who was standing near a door which led to the servants'
quarters. The door was immediately opened, and the culprit was seen
advancing in the middle of a body of serfs and followed by the
executioner. The serfs were forced to attend the spectacle, that it
might serve as an example to them. The culprit was the general's
barber, as we have said, and the executioner was merely the coachman,
who, being used to the handling of a whip, was raised or degraded,
which you will, to the office of executioner every time punishment
with the knout was ordered. This duty did not deprive him of either
the esteem or even the friendship of his comrades, for they well knew
that it was his arm alone that punished them and that his heart was
not in his work. As Ivan's arm as well as the rest of his body was
the property of the general, and the latter could do as he pleased
with it, no one was astonished that it should be used for this
purpose. More than that, correction administered by Ivan was nearly
always gentler than that meted out by another; for it often happened
that Ivan, who was a good-natured fellow, juggled away one or two
strokes of the knout in a dozen, or if he were forced by those
assisting at the punishment to keep a strict calculation, he
manoeuvred so that the tip of the lash struck the deal plank on which
the culprit was lying, thus taking much of the sting out of the
stroke. Accordingly, when it was Ivan's turn to be stretched upon the
fatal plank and to receive the correction he was in the habit of
administering, on his own account, those who momentarily played his
part as executioner adopted the same expedients, remembering only the
strokes spared and not the strokes received. This exchange of mutual
benefits, therefore, was productive of an excellent understanding
between Ivan and his comrades, which was never so firmly knit as at
the moment when a fresh execution was about to take place. It is
true that the first hour after the punishment was generally so full
of suffering that the knouted was sometimes unjust to the knouter,
but this feeling seldom out-lasted the evening, and it was rare when
it held out after the first glass of spirits that the operator drank
to the health of his patient.

The serf upon whom Ivan was about to exercise his dexterity was a man
of five or six-and-thirty, red of hair and beard, a little above
average height. His Greek origin might be traced in his countenance,
which even in its expression of terror had preserved its habitual
characteristics of craft and cunning.

When he arrived at the spot where the punishment was to take place,
the culprit stopped and looked up at the window which had already
claimed the young aide-de-camp's attention; it still remained shut.
With a glance round the throng which obstructed the entrance leading
to the street, he ended by gazing, with a horror-stricken shudder
upon the plank on which he was to be stretched. The shudder did not
escape his friend Ivan, who, approaching to remove the striped shirt