" And suddenly: "Pavel says
the truth, hey? I want to understand. Let them speak."
"Keep still!" exclaimed the functionary, shaking his finger at him.
Sizov nodded his head sullenly.
But the mother kept her gaze fastened unwaveringly on the judges,
and saw that they got more and more excited, conversing with one
another in indistinct voices. The sound of their words, cold and
tickling, touched her face, puckering the skin on it, and filling
her mouth with a sickly, disgusting taste. The mother somehow
conceived that they were all speaking of the bodies of her son and
his comrades, their vigorous bare bodies, their muscles, their
youthful limbs full of hot blood, of living force. These bodies
kindled in the judges the sinister, impotent envy of the rich by the
poor, the unwholesome greed felt by wasted and sick people for the
strength of the healthy. Their mouths watered regretfully for these
bodies, capable of working and enriching, of rejoicing and creating.
The youths produced in the old judges the revengeful, painful excitement
of an enfeebled beast which sees the fresh prey, but no longer has
the power to seize it, and howls dismally at its powerlessness.
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