Book 1 Chapter 8 Swearing in the Jury

The president paused until the prisoners had taken their seats,
and when Maslova was seated, turned to the secretary.

Then the usual procedure commenced; the counting of the jury,
remarks about those who had not come, the fixing of the fines to
be exacted from them, the decisions concerning those who claimed
exemption, the appointing of reserve jurymen.

Having folded up some bits of paper and put them in one of the
glass vases, the president turned up the gold-embroidered cuffs
of his uniform a little way, and began drawing the lots, one by
one, and opening them. Nekhludoff was among the jurymen thus
drawn. Then, having let down his sleeves, the president requested
the priest to swear in the jury.

The old priest, with his puffy, red face, his brown gown, and his
gold cross and little order, laboriously moving his stiff legs,
came up to the lectern beneath the icon.

The jurymen got up, and crowded towards the lectern.

"Come up, please," said the priest, pulling at the cross on his
breast with his plump hand, and waiting till all the jury had
drawn near. When they had all come up the steps of the platform,
the priest passed his bald, grey head sideways through the greasy
opening of the stole, and, having rearranged his thin hair, he
again turned to the jury. "Now, raise your right arms in this
way, and put your fingers together, thus," he said, with his
tremulous old voice, lifting his fat, dimpled hand, and putting
the thumb and two first fingers together, as if taking a pinch of
something. "Now, repeat after me, 'I promise and swear, by the
Almighty God, by His holy gospels, and by the life-giving cross
of our Lord, that in this work which,'" he said, pausing between
each sentence--"don't let your arm down; hold it like this," he
remarked to a young man who had lowered his arm--"'that in this
work which . . . '"