"Oh, it's almost not on business! That is, if you like, there is one piece of business, just to ask advice, but it's mainly to introduce myself, because I'm Prince Myshkin, and the general's wife is also the last Princess Myshkin, and except for the two of us, there are no more Myshkins."
"So you're also a relation?" the now all but frightened lackey fluttered himself up.
"That's not quite so either. However, if we stretch it, of course, we're related, but so distantly it's really impossible to work out. I once wrote a letter to the general's wife from abroad, but she didn't answer me. All the same, I thought I should get in touch on my return. I'm telling you all this now so that you won't have doubts, because I can see you're still worried: announce that Prince Myshkin is here, and the announcement itself will contain the reason for my visit. If they receive me—good; if not—that also may be very good. Though I don't think they can not receive me: the general's wife will certainly want to see the eldest and sole representative of her family, and she values her origins very much, as I've heard specifically about her."
It would seem that the prince's conversation was the most simple; but the simpler it was, the more absurd it became in the present case, and the experienced valet could not help feeling something that was perfectly proper between servant and servant, but perfectly improper between a guest and a servant. And since servants are much more intelligent than their masters commonly think, it occurred to the valet that there was one of two things here: either the prince was some sort of moocher and had certainly come to beg for money, or the prince was simply a little fool and had no ambitions, because a clever prince with ambitions would not have sat in the anteroom and discussed his affairs with a lackey, and therefore, in one case or the other, might he not be held answerable?
"But all the same you ought to go to the reception room," he observed as insistently as possible.
"I'd be sitting there and wouldn't have told you all that," the prince laughed merrily, "which means you'd still be looking at my
cloak and bundle and worrying. And now maybe you don't need to wait for the secretary, but can go and announce me yourself."
"I can't announce a visitor like you without the secretary, and besides, the general gave me a specific order earlier not to bother him for anyone while he was with the colonel, but Gavrila Ardalionych can go in without being announced."
"A clerk?"
"Gavrila Ardalionych? No. He works for the Company on his own. You can at least put your bundle down here."
"I already thought of that. With your permission. And, you know, I'll take the cloak off, too."
"Of course, you can't go and see him in your cloak."
The prince stood up, hastily took off his cloak, and remained in a rather decent and smartly tailored, though shabby, jacket. A steel chain hung across his waistcoat. The chain turned out to be attached to a silver Swiss watch.
Though the prince was a little fool—the lackey had already decided that—all the same the general's valet finally found it unsuitable to continue his conversation with the visitor, despite the fact that for some reason he liked the prince, in his own way, of course. But from another point of view, he provoked in him a decided and crude indignation.
"And when does the general's wife receive?" asked the prince, sitting down in his former place.
"That's none of my business, sir. She receives at various times, depending on the person. She'd receive the dressmaker even at eleven o'clock. Gavrila Ardalionych is also admitted earlier than others, even for an early lunch."
"Here it's warmer inside in winter than it is abroad," the prince observed, "but there it's warmer outside than here, while a Russian can't even live in their houses in winter unless he's used to it."
"They don't heat them?"
"No, and the houses are also built differently—the stoves and windows, that is."
"Hm! Have you been traveling long?"
"Four years. Though I sat in the same place almost the whole time, in the country."
"You're unaccustomed to things here?"
"That's true, too. Would you believe, I marvel at myself that I haven't forgotten how to speak Russian. Here I'm talking to you now and thinking to myself: 'I speak well enough after all.' That
may be why I'm talking so much. Really, since yesterday all I've wanted to do is speak Russian."
"Hm! Heh! And did you live in Petersburg before?" (Try as he might, the lackey could not help keeping up such a courteous and polite conversation.)
"In Petersburg? Hardly at all, just in passing. And before I didn't know anything here, but now I've heard so much is new that they say anyone who knew it has to learn to know it all over again. There's a lot of talk about the courts."13
"Hm! . . . The courts. The courts, it's true, there's the courts. And do the courts there judge more fairly or not?"
"I don't know. I've heard a lot of good about ours. Then, again, we have no capital punishment."14
"And they have it there?"
"Yes. I saw it in France, in Lyons. Schneider took me there with him."
"By hanging?"
"No, in France they always cut their heads off."
"And what, do they scream?"
"Hardly! It's instantaneous. The man is laid down, and a broad knife drops, it's a special machine called the guillotine, heavy, powerful... The head bounces off before you can blink an eye. The preparations are the bad part. When they read out the sentence, get everything ready, tie him up, lead him to the scaffold, then it's terrible! People gather, even women, though they don't like it when women watch."
"It's not their business."
"Of course not! Of course not! Such suffering! . . . The criminal was an intelligent man, fearless, strong, mature, his name was Legros. And I tell you, believe it or not, he wept as he climbed the scaffold, he was white as paper. Is it possible? Isn't it terrible? Do people weep from fear? I never thought it was possible for a man who has never wept, for a man of forty-five, not a child, to weep from fear! What happens at that moment with the soul, what convulsions is it driven to? It's an outrage on the soul, and nothing more! It's said, 'Do not kill.' So he killed, and then they kill him? No, that's impossible. I saw it a month ago, and it's as if it were still there before my eyes. I've dreamed about it five times."
The prince even grew animated as he spoke, a slight flush came to his pale face, though his speech was as quiet as before. The valet watched him with sympathetic interest and seemed unwilling to
tear himself away; perhaps he, too, was a man with imagination and an inclination to thinking.
"It's a good thing there's not much suffering," he observed, "when the head flies off."
"You know what?" the prince picked up hotly. "You've just observed that, and everybody makes the same observation as you, and this machine, the guillotine, was invented for that. But a thought occurred to me then: what if it's even worse? To you it seems ridiculous, to you it seems wild, but with some imagination even a thought like that can pop into your head. Think: if there's torture, for instance, then there's suffering, wounds, bodily pain, and it means that all that distracts you from inner torment, so that you only suffer from the wounds until you die. And yet the chief, the strongest pain may not be in the wounds, but in knowing for certain that in an hour, then in ten minutes, then in half a minute, then now, this second—your soul will fly out of your body and you'll no longer be a man, and it's for certain—the main thing is that it's for certain. When you put your head under that knife and hear it come screeching down on you, that one quarter of a second is the most horrible of all. Do you know that this isn't my fantasy, but that many people have said so? I believe it so much that I'll tell you my opinion outright. To kill for killing is an immeasurably greater punishment than the crime itself. To be killed by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than to be killed by robbers. A man killed by robbers, stabbed at night, in the forest or however, certainly still hopes he'll be saved till the very last minute. There have been examples when a man's throat has already been cut, and he still hopes, or flees, or pleads. But here all this last hope, which makes it ten times easier to die, is taken away for certain; here there's the sentence, and the whole torment lies in the certainty that there's no escape, and there's no greater torment in the world than that. Take a soldier, put him right in front of a cannon during a battle, and shoot at him, and he'll still keep hoping, but read that same soldier a sentence for certain, and he'll lose his mind or start weeping. Who ever said human nature could bear it without going mad? Why such an ugly, vain, unnecessary violation? Maybe there's a man who has had the sentence read to him, has been allowed to suffer, and has then been told, 'Go, you're forgiven.' That man might be able to tell us something. Christ spoke of this suffering and horror. No, you can't treat a man like that!"15