Oh dear no, you can be perfectly easy on that score. I have quite another matter on hand.
You must excuse my asking, you know. Your appearance led me to think but just wait for the secretary; the general is busy now, but the secretary is sure to come out.
Oh well, look here, if I have some time to wait, would you mind telling me, is there any place about where I could have a smoke? I have my pipe and tobacco with me.
SMOKE? said the man, in shocked but disdainful surprise, blinking his eyes at the prince as though he could not believe his senses. No, sir, you cannot smoke here, and I wonder you are not ashamed of the very suggestion. Ha, ha! a cool idea that, I declare!
Oh, I didnt mean in this room! I know I cant smoke here, of course. Id adjourn to some other room, wherever you like to show me to. You see, Im used to smoking a good deal, and now I havent had a puff for three hours; however, just as you like.
Now how on earth am I to announce a man like that? muttered the servant. In the first place, youve no right in here at all; you ought to be in the waiting-room, because youre a sort of visitor a guest, in fact and I shall catch it for this. Look here, do you intend to take up you abode with us? he added, glancing once more at the princes bundle, which evidently gave him no peace.
No, I dont think so. I dont think I should stay even if they were to invite me. Ive simply come to make their acquaintance, and nothing more.
Make their acquaintance? asked the man, in amazement, and with redoubled suspicion. Then why did you say you had business with the general?
Oh well, very little business. There is one little matter some advice I am going to ask him for; but my principal object is simply to introduce myself, because I am Prince Muishkin, and Madame Epanchin is the last of her branch of the house, and besides herself and me there are no other Muishkins left.
What youre a relation then, are you? asked the servant, so bewildered that he began to feel quite alarmed.
Well, hardly so. If you stretch a point, we are relations, of course, but so distant that one cannot really take cognizance of it. I once wrote to your mistress from abroad, but she did not reply. However, I have thought it right to make acquaintance with her on my arrival. I am telling you all this in order to ease your mind, for I see you are still far from comfortable on my account. All you have to do is to announce me as Prince Muishkin, and the object of my visit will be plain enough. If I am received very good; if not, well, very good again. But they are sure to receive me, I should think; Madame Epanchin will naturally be curious to see the only remaining representative of her family. She values her Muishkin descent very highly, if I am rightly informed.
The princes conversation was artless and confiding to a degree, and the servant could not help feeling that as from visitor to common serving-man this state of things was highly improper. His conclusion was that one of two things must be the explanation either that this was a begging impostor, or that the prince, if prince he were, was simply a fool, without the slightest ambition; for a sensible prince with any ambition would certainly not wait about in ante-rooms with servants, and talk of his own private affairs like this. In either case, how was he to announce this singular visitor?
I really think I must request you to step into the next room! he said, with all the insistence he could muster.
Why? If I had been sitting there now, I should not have had the opportunity of making these personal explanations. I see you are still uneasy about me and keep eyeing my cloak and bundle. Dont you think you might go in yourself now, without waiting for the secretary to come out?
No, no! I cant announce a visitor like yourself without the secretary. Besides the general said he was not to be disturbed he is with the Colonel C . Gavrila Ardalionovitch goes in without announcing.
Who may that be? a clerk?
What? Gavrila Ardalionovitch? Oh no; he belongs to one of the companies. Look here, at all events put your bundle down, here.
Yes, I will if I may; and can I take off my cloak
Of course; you cant go in THERE with it on, anyhow.
The prince rose and took off his mantle, revealing a neat enough morning costume a little worn, but well made. He wore a steel watch chain and from this chain there hung a silver Geneva watch. Fool the prince might be, still, the generals servant felt that it was not correct for him to continue to converse thus with a visitor, in spite of the fact that the prince pleased him somehow.
And what time of day does the lady receive? the latter asked, reseating himself in his old place.
Oh, thats not in my province! I believe she receives at any time; it depends upon the visitors. The dressmaker goes in at eleven. Gavrila Ardalionovitch is allowed much earlier than other people, too; he is even admitted to early lunch now and then.
It is much warmer in the rooms here than it is abroad at this season, observed the prince; but it is much warmer there out of doors. As for the houses a Russian cant live in them in the winter until he gets accustomed to them.
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!