Lieutenant Smekalov, as I have said already, sometimes punished severely, but he knew how to do it so that, far from being resented, his jokes on the occasion were, even in my day when it was all long past, remembered with enjoyment and laughter. He had not many such jokes, however: he was lacking in artistic fancy. In fact, he really had one solitary joke which was his mainstay for nearly a year; perhaps its charm lay in its uniqueness. There was much simplicity in it. The guilty convict would be brought in to be flogged. Smekalov comes in with a laugh and a joke, he asks the culprit some irrelevant questions about his personal life in the prison not with any sort of object, not to make up to him, but simply because he really wants to know . The birch-rods are brought and a chair for Smekalov. He sits down and even lights his pipe; he had a very long pipe. The convict begins to entreat him.⁠ ⁠… “No, brother, lie down⁠ ⁠… it’s no use,” says Smekalov. The convict sighs and lies down. “Come, my dear fellow, do you know this prayer by heart?”

“To be sure, your honour, we are Christians, we learnt it from childhood.”