Book 1 Chapter 46 A Prison Flogging

The governor was immediately informed that something very like a
rebellion had taken place. And he sent back an order to flog the
two chief offenders, Vasiliev and the tramp, Nepomnishy, giving
each thirty strokes with a birch rod. The flogging was appointed
to take place in the women's interviewing-room.

All this was known in the prison since the evening, and it was
being talked about with animation in all the cells.

Korableva, Khoroshevka, Theodosia, and Maslova sat together in
their corner, drinking tea, all of them flushed and animated by
the vodka they had drunk, for Maslova, who now had a constant
supply of vodka, freely treated her companions to it.

"He's not been a-rioting, or anything," Korableva said, referring
to Vasiliev, as she bit tiny pieces off a lump of sugar with her
strong teeth. "He only stuck up for a chum, because it's not
lawful to strike prisoners nowadays."

"And he's a fine fellow, I've heard say," said Theodosia, who sat
bareheaded, with her long plaits round her head, on a log of wood
opposite the shelf bedstead on which the teapot stood.

"There, now, if you were to ask _him_," the watchman's wife said
to Maslova (by him she meant Nekhludoff).

"I shall tell him. He'll do anything for me," Maslova said,
tossing her head, and smiling.

"Yes, but when is he coming? and they've already gone to fetch
them," said Theodosia. "It is terrible," she added, with a sigh.

"I once did see how they flogged a peasant in the village.
Father-in-law, he sent me once to the village elder. Well, I
went, and there . . . " The watchman's wife began her long story,
which was interrupted by the sound of voices and steps in the
corridor above them.