Dont they heat them at all?
Well, they do heat them a little; but the houses and stoves are so different to ours.
Hm! were you long away?
Four years! and I was in the same place nearly all the time, in one village.
You must have forgotten Russia, hadnt you?
Yes, indeed I had a good deal; and, would you believe it, I often wonder at myself for not having forgotten how to speak Russian? Even now, as I talk to you, I keep saying to myself how well I am speaking it. Perhaps that is partly why I am so talkative this morning. I assure you, ever since yesterday evening I have had the strongest desire to go on and on talking Russian.
Hm! yes; did you live in Petersburg in former years?
This good flunkey, in spite of his conscientious scruples, really could not resist continuing such a very genteel and agreeable conversation.
In Petersburg? Oh no! hardly at all, and now they say so much is changed in the place that even those who did know it well are obliged to relearn what they knew. They talk a good deal about the new law courts, and changes there, dont they?
Hm! yes, thats true enough. Well now, how is the law over there, do they administer it more justly than here?
Oh, I dont know about that! Ive heard much that is good about our legal administration, too. There is no capital punishment here for one thing.
Is there over there?
Yes I saw an execution in France at Lyons. Schneider took me over with him to see it.
What, did they hang the fellow?
No, they cut off peoples heads in France.
What did the fellow do? yell?
Oh no its the work of an instant. They put a man inside a frame and a sort of broad knife falls by machinery -they call the thing a guillotine-it falls with fearful force and weight-the head springs off so quickly that you cant wink your eye in between. But all the preparations are so dreadful. When they announce the sentence, you know, and prepare the criminal and tie his hands, and cart him off to the scaffold thats the fearful part of the business. The people all crowd round even women- though they dont at all approve of women looking on.
No, its not a thing for women.
Of course not of course not! bah! The criminal was a fine intelligent fearless man; Le Gros was his name; and I may tell you believe it or not, as you like that when that man stepped upon the scaffold he CRIED, he did indeed, he was as white as a bit of paper. Isnt it a dreadful idea that he should have cried cried! Whoever heard of a grown man crying from fear not a child, but a man who never had cried before a grown man of forty-five years. Imagine what must have been going on in that mans mind at such a moment; what dreadful convulsions his whole spirit must have endured; it is an outrage on the soul thats what it is. Because it is said thou shalt not kill, is he to be killed because he murdered some one else? No, it is not right, its an impossible theory. I assure you, I saw the sight a month ago and its dancing before my eyes to this moment. I dream of it, often.
The prince had grown animated as he spoke, and a tinge of colour suffused his pale face, though his way of talking was as quiet as ever. The servant followed his words with sympathetic interest. Clearly he was not at all anxious to bring the conversation to an end. Who knows? Perhaps he too was a man of imagination and with some capacity for thought.
Well, at all events it is a good thing that theres no pain when the poor fellows head flies off, he remarked.
Do you know, though, cried the prince warmly, you made that remark now, and everyone says the same thing, and the machine is designed with the purpose of avoiding pain, this guillotine I mean; but a thought came into my head then: what if it be a bad plan after all? You may laugh at my idea, perhaps but I could not help its occurring to me all the same. Now with the rack and tortures and so on you suffer terrible pain of course; but then your torture is bodily pain only (although no doubt you have plenty of that) until you die. But HERE I should imagine the most terrible part of the whole punishment is, not the bodily pain at all but the certain knowledge that in an hour, then in ten minutes, then in half a minute, then now this very INSTANT your soul must quit your body and that you will no longer be a man and that this is certain, CERTAIN! Thats the point the certainty of it. Just that instant when you place your head on the block and hear the iron grate over your head then that quarter of a second is the most awful of all.
This is not my own fantastical opinion many people have thought the same; but I feel it so deeply that Ill tell you what I think. I believe that to execute a man for murder is to punish him immeasurably more dreadfully than is equivalent to his crime. A murder by sentence is far more dreadful than a murder committed by a criminal. The man who is attacked by robbers at night, in a dark wood, or anywhere, undoubtedly hopes and hopes that he may yet escape until the very moment of his death. There are plenty of instances of a man running away, or imploring for mercy at all events hoping on in some degree even after his throat was cut. But in the case of an execution, that last hope having which it is so immeasurably less dreadful to die, is taken away from the wretch and CERTAINTY substituted in its place! There is his sentence, and with it that terrible certainty that he cannot possibly escape death which, I consider, must be the most dreadful anguish in the world. You may place a soldier before a cannons mouth in battle, and fire upon him and he will still hope. But read to that same soldier his death-sentence, and he will either go mad or burst into tears. Who dares to say that any man can suffer this without going mad? No, no! it is an abuse, a shame, it is unnecessary why should such a thing exist? Doubtless there may be men who have been sentenced, who have suffered this mental anguish for a while and then have been reprieved; perhaps such men may have been able to relate their feelings afterwards. Our Lord Christ spoke of this anguish and dread. No! no! no! No man should be treated so, no man, no man!