The Idiot Page 12

undertreatment with my professor; he had fits, and attacks of melancholy,then he would weep, and once he tried to commit suicide. _His_ life inprison was sad enough; his only acquaintances were spiders and a treethat grew outside his grating--but I think I had better tell you ofanother man I met last year. There was a very strange feature in thiscase, strange because of its extremely rare occurrence. This man hadonce been brought to the scaffold in company with several others, andhad had the sentence of death by shooting passed upon him for somepolitical crime. Twenty minutes later he had been reprieved andsome other punishment substituted; but the interval between the twosentences, twenty minutes, or at least a quarter of an hour, had beenpassed in the certainty that within a few minutes he must die. I wasvery anxious to hear him speak of his impressions during that dreadfultime, and I several times inquired of him as to what he thought andfelt. He remembered everything with the most accurate and extraordinarydistinctness, and declared that he would never forget a single iota ofthe experience.

  “About twenty paces from the scaffold, where he had stood to hear thesentence, were three posts, fixed in the ground, to which to fasten thecriminals (of whom there were several). The first three criminals weretaken to the posts, dressed in long white tunics, with white caps drawnover their faces, so that they could not see the rifles pointed at them.Then a group of soldiers took their stand opposite to each post. Myfriend was the eighth on the list, and therefore he would have beenamong the third lot to go up. A priest went about among them with across: and there was about five minutes of time left for him to live.

  “He said that those five minutes seemed to him to be a most interminableperiod, an enormous wealth of time; he seemed to be living, in theseminutes, so many lives that there was no need as yet to think of thatlast moment, so that he made several arrangements, dividing up the timeinto portions--one for saying farewell to his companions, two minutesfor that; then a couple more for thinking over his own life and careerand all about himself; and another minute for a last look around. Heremembered having divided his time like this quite well. While sayinggood-bye to his friends he recollected asking one of them some veryusual everyday question, and being much interested in the answer. Thenhaving bade farewell, he embarked upon those two minutes which he hadallotted to looking into himself; he knew beforehand what he was goingto think about. He wished to put it to himself as quickly and clearlyas possible, that here was he, a living, thinking man, and that in threeminutes he would be nobody; or if somebody or something, then what andwhere? He thought he would decide this question once for all in theselast three minutes. A little way off there stood a church, and itsgilded spire glittered in the sun. He remembered staring stubbornly atthis spire, and at the rays of light sparkling from it. He could nottear his eyes from these rays of light; he got the idea that these rayswere his new nature, and that in three minutes he would become one ofthem, amalgamated somehow with them.

  “The repugnance to what must ensue almost immediately, and theuncertainty, were dreadful, he said; but worst of all was the idea,‘What should I do if I were not to die now? What if I were to return tolife again? What an eternity of days, and all mine! How I should grudgeand count up every minute of it, so as to waste not a single instant!’He said that this thought weighed so upon him and became such a terribleburden upon his brain that he could not bear it, and wished they wouldshoot him quickly and have done with it.”

  The prince paused and all waited, expecting him to go on again andfinish the story.

  “Is that all?” asked Aglaya.

  “All? Yes,” said the prince, emerging from a momentary reverie.

  “And why did you tell us this?”

  “Oh, I happened to recall it, that’s all! It fitted into theconversation--”

  “You probably wish to deduce, prince,” said Alexandra, “that moments oftime cannot be reckoned by money value, and that sometimes five minutesare worth priceless treasures. All this is very praiseworthy; but may Iask about this friend of yours, who told you the terrible experience ofhis life? He was reprieved, you say; in other words, they did restore tohim that ‘eternity of days.’ What did he do with these riches of time?Did he keep careful account of his minutes?”

  “Oh no, he didn’t! I asked him myself. He said that he had not lived abit as he had intended, and had wasted many, and many a minute.”

  “Very well, then there’s an experiment, and the thing is proved; onecannot live and count each moment; say what you like, but one _cannot_.”

  “That is true,” said the prince, “I have thought so myself. And yet, whyshouldn’t one do it?”

  “You think, then, that you could live more wisely than other people?” said Aglaya.

  “I have had that idea.”

  “And you have it still?”

  “Yes--I have it still,” the prince replied.

  He had contemplated Aglaya until now, with a pleasant though rathertimid smile, but as the last words fell from his lips he began to laugh,and looked at her merrily.

  “You are not very modest!” said she.

  “But how brave you are!” said he. “You are laughing, and I--that man’stale impressed me so much, that I dreamt of it afterwards; yes, I dreamtof those five minutes...”

  He looked at his listeners again with that same serious, searchingexpression.

  “You are not angry with me?” he asked suddenly, and with a kind ofnervous hurry, although he looked them straight in the face.

  “Why should we be angry?” they cried.

  “Only because I seem to be giving you a lecture, all the time!”

  At this they laughed heartily.

  “Please don’t be angry with me,” continued the prince. “I know very wellthat I have seen less of life than other people, and have less knowledgeof it. I must appear to speak strangely sometimes...”

  He said the last words nervously.

  “You say you have been happy, and that proves you have lived, not less,but more than other people. Why make all these excuses?” interruptedAglaya in a mocking tone of voice. “Besides, you need not mind aboutlecturing us; you have nothing to boast of. With your quietism, onecould live happily for a hundred years at least. One might show you theexecution of a felon, or show you one’s little finger. You could drawa moral from either, and be quite satisfied. That sort of existence iseasy enough.”

  “I can’t understand why you always fly into a temper,” said Mrs.Epanchin, who had been listening to the conversation and examining thefaces of the speakers in turn. “I do not understand what you mean. Whathas your little finger to do with it? The prince talks well, though heis not amusing. He began all right, but now he seems sad.”

  “Never mind, mamma! Prince, I wish you had seen an execution,” saidAglaya. “I should like to ask you a question about that, if you had.”

  “I have seen an execution,” said the prince.

  “You have!” cried Aglaya. “I might have guessed it. That’s a fittingcrown to the rest of the story. If you have seen an execution, how canyou say you lived happily all the while?”

  “But is there capital punishment where you were?” asked Adelaida.

  “I saw it at Lyons. Schneider took us there, and as soon as we arrivedwe came in for that.”

  “Well, and did you like it very much? Was it very edifying andinstructive?” asked Aglaya.

  “No, I didn’t like it at all, and was ill after seeing it; but I confessI stared as though my eyes were fixed to the sight. I could not tearthem away.”

  “I, too, should have been unable to tear my eyes away,” said Aglaya.

  “They do not at all approve of women going to see an execution there.The women who do go are condemned for it afterwards in the newspapers.”

  “That is, by contending that it is not a sight for women they admit thatit is a sight for men. I congratulate them on the deduction. I supposeyou quite agree with them, prince?”

  “Tell us about the execution,” put in Adelaida.

  “I would much rathe
r not, just now,” said the prince, a little disturbedand frowning slightly.

  “You don’t seem to want to tell us,” said Aglaya, with a mocking air.

  “No,--the thing is, I was telling all about the execution a little whileago, and--”

  “Whom did you tell about it?”

  “The man-servant, while I was waiting to see the general.”

  “Our man-servant?” exclaimed several voices at once.

  “Yes, the one who waits in the entrance hall, a greyish, red-facedman--”

  “The prince is clearly a democrat,” remarked Aglaya.

  “Well, if you could tell Aleksey about it, surely you can tell us too.”

  “I do so want to hear about it,” repeated Adelaida.

  “Just now, I confess,” began the prince, with more animation, “when youasked me for a subject for a picture, I confess I had serious thoughtsof giving you one. I thought of asking you to draw the face of acriminal, one minute before the fall of the guillotine, while thewretched man is still standing on the scaffold, preparatory to placinghis neck on the block.”

  “What, his face? only his face?” asked Adelaida. “That