Notes from a Dead House (Vintage Classics)

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

I have known people who were even good, even honest, even respected in society, and yet, for example, they could not take it calmly if a man who was being punished did not cry out under the lashes, did not plead and beg for mercy. Punished men must unfailingly cry out and plead for mercy. That’s how it’s done; it’s considered both proper and necessary, and once, when the victim did not want to cry out, the officer, whom I knew, and who might have been considered a kind man in other respects, even became personally offended. At first he was going to punish the man lightly, but, not hearing the usual “Your Honor, dear father, have mercy, I’ll pray to God eternally,” and so on, he flew into a rage and gave him fifty extra lashes, wishing to get cries and pleas from him—and he got them.