"If they knew," he said to himself, as he bent his head with an air of importance while the report was read, "how much their president, only half an hour since, looked like a naughty school-boy!" and a gleam of amusement came into his eyes as he listened to the report.
The session generally lasted till two o'clock without interruption, and was followed by recess and luncheon. The clock had not yet struck two, when the great glass doors of the court-room were suddenly thrown open, and some one entered. All the members, glad of any diversion, looked round from where they sat under the Emperor's portrait and behind the zertsálo, or proclamation-table; but the doorkeeper instantly ejected the intruder, and shut the door on him.
After the business was read through, Stepan Arkadyevitch arose, stretched himself, and in a spirit of sacrifice to the liberalism of the time took out his cigarette, while still in the court-room, and then passed into his private office. Two of his colleagues, the aged veteran Nikitin, and the chamberlain Grinevitch, followed him.
"There'll be time enough to finish after luncheon," said Oblonsky.
"How we are rushing through with it!" replied Nikitin.
"This Famin must be a precious rascal," said Grinevitch, alluding to one of the characters in the affair which they had been investigating.
Stepan Arkadyevitch knitted his brows at Grinevitch's words, as if to signify that it was not the right thing to form snap judgments, and he made no reply.
"Who was it came into the court-room?" he asked of the doorkeeper.
"Some one who entered without permission, your excellency, while my back was turned. He asked to see you: I said, 'When the court adjourns, then ....'"
"Where is he?"
"Probably in the vestibule; he was there just now. Ah! there he is," said the doorkeeper, pointing to a solidly built, broad-shouldered man with curly beard, who, without taking off his sheepskin cap, was lightly
