I
It was a dark autumn
night. The old banker was pacing from corner to corner of his study,
recalling to his mind the party he gave in the autumn fifteen years
before. There were many clever people at the party and much interesting
conversation. They talked among other things of capital punishment. The
guests, among them not a few scholars and journalists, for the most part
disapproved of capital punishment. They found it obsolete as a means of
punishment, unfitted to a Christian State and immoral. Some of them
thought that capital punishment should be replaced universally by life
imprisonment.
“I don’t agree with
you,” said the host. “I myself have experienced neither capital
punishment nor life-imprisonment, but if one may judge a priori, then in
my opinion capital punishment is more moral and more humane than
imprisonment. Execution kills instantly, life-imprisonment kills by
degrees. Who is the more humane executioner, one who kills you in a few
seconds or one who draws the life out of you incessantly, for years?”
“They’re both
equally immoral,” remarked one of the guests, “because their purpose is
the same, to take away life. The State is not God. It has no right to
take away that which it cannot give back, if it should so desire.”
Among the company was a lawyer, a young man of about twenty-five. On being asked his opinion, he said:
“Capital punishment
and life-imprisonment are equally immoral; but if I were offered the
choice between them, I would certainly choose the second. It’s better to
live somehow than not to live at all.”
There ensued a
lively discussion. The banker who was then younger and more nervous
suddenly lost his temper, banged his fist on the table, and turning to
the young lawyer, cried out:
“It’s a lie. I bet you two millions you wouldn’t stick in a cell even for five years.”
“If you mean it seriously,” replied the lawyer, “then I bet I’ll stay not five but fifteen.”
“Fifteen! Done!” cried the banker. “Gentlemen, I stake two millions.”
“Agreed. You stake two millions, I my freedom,” said the lawyer.
So this wild,
ridiculous bet came to pass. The banker, who at that time had too many
millions to count, spoiled and capricious, was beside himself with
rapture. During supper he said to the lawyer jokingly:
“Come to your
senses, young roan, before it’s too late. Two millions are nothing to
me, but you stand to lose three or four of the best years of your life. I
say three or four, because you’ll never stick it out any longer. Don’t
forget either, you unhappy man, that voluntary is much heavier than
enforced imprisonment. The idea that you have the right to free yourself
at any moment will poison the whole of your life in the cell. I pity
you.”
And now the banker, pacing from corner to corner, recalled all this and asked himself:
“Why did I make this
bet? What’s the good? The lawyer loses fifteen years of his life and I
throw away two millions. Will it convince people that capital punishment
is worse or better than imprisonment for life? No, no! all stuff and
rubbish. On my part, it was the caprice of a well-fed man; on the
lawyer’s pure greed of gold.”
He recollected
further what happened after the evening party. It was decided that the
lawyer must undergo his imprisonment under the strictest observation, in
a garden wing of the banker’s house. It was agreed that during the
period he would be deprived of the right to cross the threshold, to see
living people, to hear human voices, and to receive letters and
newspapers. He was permitted to have a musical instrument, to read
books, to write letters, to drink wine and smoke tobacco. By the
agreement he could communicate, but only in silence, with the outside
world through a little window specially constructed for this purpose.
Everything necessary, books, music, wine, he could receive in any
quantity by sending a note through the window. The agreement provided
for all the minutest details, which made the confinement strictly
solitary, and it obliged the lawyer to remain exactly fifteen years from
twelve o’clock of November 14th, 1870, to twelve o’clock of November
14th, 1885. The least attempt on his part to violate the conditions, to
escape if only for two minutes before the time freed the banker from the
obligation to pay him the two millions.
During the first
year of imprisonment, the lawyer, as far as it was possible to judge
from his short notes, suffered terribly from loneliness and boredom.
From his wing day and night came the sound of the piano. He rejected
wine and tobacco. “Wine,” he wrote, “excites desires, and desires are
the chief foes of a prisoner; besides, nothing is more boring than to
drink good wine alone,” and tobacco spoils the air in his room. During
the first year the lawyer was sent books of a light character; novels
with a complicated love interest, stories of crime and fantasy,
comedies, and so on.
In the second year
the piano was heard no longer and the lawyer asked only for classics. In
the fifth year, music was heard again, and the prisoner asked for wine.
Those who watched him said that during the whole of that year he was
only eating, drinking, and lying on his bed. He yawned often and talked
angrily to himself. Books he did not read. Sometimes at nights he would
sit down to write. He would write for a long time and tear it all up in
the morning. More than once he was heard to weep.
In the second half
of the sixth year, the prisoner began zealously to study languages,
philosophy, and history. He fell on these subjects so hungrily that the
banker hardly had time to get books enough for him. In the space of four
years about six hundred volumes were bought at his request. It was
while that passion lasted that the banker received the following letter
from the prisoner: “My dear gaoler, I am writing these lines in six
languages. Show them to experts. Let them read them. If they do not find
one single mistake, I beg you to give orders to have a gun fired off in
the garden. By the noise I shall know that my efforts have not been in
vain. The geniuses of all ages and countries speak in different
languages; but in them all burns the same flame. Oh, if you knew my
heavenly happiness now that I can understand them!” The prisoner’s
desire was fulfilled. Two shots were fired in the garden by the banker’s
order.
Later on, after the
tenth year, the lawyer sat immovable before his table and read only the
New Testament. The banker found it strange that a man who in four years
had mastered six hundred erudite volumes, should have spent nearly a
year in reading one book, easy to understand and by no means thick. The
New Testament was then replaced by the history of religions and
theology.
During the last two
years of his confinement the prisoner read an extraordinary amount,
quite haphazard. Now he would apply himself to the natural sciences,
then he would read Byron or Shakespeare. Notes used to come from him in
which he asked to be sent at the same time a book on chemistry, a
text-book of medicine, a novel, and some treatise on philosophy or
theology. He read as though he were swimming in the sea among broken
pieces of wreckage, and in his desire to save his life was eagerly
grasping one piece after another.
II
The banker recalled all this, and thought:
“To-morrow at twelve
o’clock he receives his freedom. Under the agreement, I shall have to
pay him two millions. If I pay, it’s all over with me. I am ruined for
ever ...”
Fifteen years before
he had too many millions to count, but now he was afraid to ask himself
which he had more of, money or debts. Gambling on the Stock-Exchange,
risky speculation, and the recklessness of which he could not rid
himself even in old age, had gradually brought his business to decay;
and the fearless, self-confident, proud man of business had become an
ordinary banker, trembling at every rise and fall in the market.
“That cursed bet,”
murmured the old man clutching his head in despair... “Why didn’t the
man die? He’s only forty years old. He will take away my last farthing,
marry, enjoy life, gamble on the Exchange, and I will look on like an
envious beggar and hear the same words from him every day: ‘I’m obliged
to you for the happiness of my life. Let me help you.’ No, it’s too
much! The only escape from bankruptcy and disgrace—is that the man
should die.”
The clock had just
struck three. The banker was listening. In the house every one was
asleep, and one could hear only the frozen trees whining outside the
windows. Trying to make no sound, he took out of his safe the key of the
door which had not been opened for fifteen years, put on his overcoat,
and went out of the house. The garden was dark and cold. It was raining.
A damp, penetrating wind howled in the garden and gave the trees no
rest. Though he strained his eyes, the banker could see neither the
ground, nor the white statues, nor the garden wing, nor the trees.
Approaching the garden wing, he called the watchman twice. There was no
answer. Evidently the watchman had taken shelter from the bad weather
and was now asleep somewhere in the kitchen or the greenhouse.
“If I have the courage to fulfil my intention,” thought the old man, “the suspicion will fall on the watchman first of all.”
In the darkness he
groped for the steps and the door and entered the hall of the
garden-wing, then poked his way into a narrow passage and struck a
match. Not a soul was there. Some one’s bed, with no bedclothes on it,
stood there, and an iron stove loomed dark in the corner. The seals on
the door that led into the prisoner’s room were unbroken.
When the match went out, the old man, trembling from agitation, peeped into the little window.
In the prisoner’s
room a candle was burning dimly. The prisoner himself sat by the table.
Only his back, the hair on his head and his hands were visible. Open
books were strewn about on the table, the two chairs, and on the carpet
near the table.
Five minutes passed
and the prisoner never once stirred. Fifteen years’ confinement had
taught him to sit motionless. The banker tapped on the window with his
finger, but the prisoner made no movement in reply. Then the banker
cautiously tore the seals from the door and put the key into the lock.
The rusty lock gave a hoarse groan and the door creaked. The banker
expected instantly to hear a cry of surprise and the sound of steps.
Three minutes passed and it was as quiet inside as it had been before.
He made up his mind to enter.
Before the table sat
a man, unlike an ordinary human being. It was a skeleton, with
tight-drawn skin, with long curly hair like a woman’s, and a shaggy
beard. The colour of his face was yellow, of an earthy shade; the cheeks
were sunken, the back long and narrow, and the hand upon which he
leaned his hairy head was so lean and skinny that it was painful to look
upon. His hair was already silvering with grey, and no one who glanced
at the senile emaciation of the face would have believed that he was
only forty years old. On the table, before his bended head, lay a sheet
of paper on which something was written in a tiny hand.
“Poor devil,”
thought the banker, “he’s asleep and probably seeing millions in his
dreams. I have only to take and throw this half-dead thing on the bed,
smother him a moment with the pillow, and the most careful examination
will find no trace of unnatural death. But, first, let us read what he
has written here.”
The banker took the sheet from the table and read:
“To-morrow at twelve
o’clock midnight, I shall obtain my freedom and the right to mix with
people. But before I leave this room and see the sun I think it
necessary to say a few words to you. On my own clear conscience and
before God who sees me I declare to you that I despise freedom, life,
health, and all that your books call the blessings of the world.
“For fifteen years I
have diligently studied earthly life. True, I saw neither the earth nor
the people, but in your books I drank fragrant wine, sang songs, hunted
deer and wild boar in the forests, loved women... And beautiful women,
like clouds ethereal, created by the magic of your poets’ genius,
visited me by night and whispered to me wonderful tales, which made my
head drunken. In your books I climbed the summits of Elbruz and Mont
Blanc and saw from there how the sun rose in the morning, and in the
evening suffused the sky, the ocean and the mountain ridges with a
purple gold. I saw from there how above me lightnings glimmered cleaving
the clouds; I saw green forests, fields, rivers, lakes, cities; I heard
syrens singing, and the playing of the pipes of Pan; I touched the
wings of beautiful devils who came flying to me to speak of God... In
your books I cast myself into bottomless abysses, worked miracles,
burned cities to the ground, preached new religions, conquered whole
countries..
“Your books gave me
wisdom. All that unwearying human thought created in the centuries is
compressed to a little lump in my skull. I know that I am cleverer than
you all.
“And I despise your
books, despise all worldly blessings and wisdom. Everything is void,
frail, visionary and delusive as a mirage. Though you be proud and wise
and beautiful, yet will death wipe you from the face of the earth like
the mice underground; and your posterity, your history, and the
immortality of your men of genius will be as frozen slag, burnt down
together with the terrestrial globe.
“You are mad, and
gone the wrong way. You take falsehood for truth and ugliness for
beauty. You would marvel if suddenly apple and orange trees should bear
frogs and lizards instead of fruit, and if roses should begin to breathe
the odour of a sweating horse. So do I marvel at you, who have bartered
heaven for earth. I do not want to understand you.
“That I may show you
in deed my contempt for that by which you live, I waive the two
millions of which I once dreamed as of paradise, and which I now
despise. That I may deprive myself of my right to them, I shall come out
from here five minutes before the stipulated term, and thus shall
violate the agreement.”
When he had read,
the banker put the sheet on the table, kissed the head of the strange
man, and began to weep. He went out of the wing. Never at any other
time, not even after his terrible losses on the Exchange, had he felt
such contempt for himself as now. Coming home, he lay down on his bed,
but agitation and tears kept him a long time from sleeping...
The next morning the
poor watchman came running to him and told him that they had seen the
man who lived in the wing climb through the window into the garden. He
had gone to the gate and disappeared. The banker instantly went with his
servants to the wing and established the escape of his prisoner. To
avoid unnecessary rumours he took the paper with the renunciation from
the table and, on his return, locked it in his safe.