"Never mind, maman.But it's a pity you haven't seen an execution, there's one thing I'd ask you."
"I have seen an execution," the prince replied.
"You have?" cried Aglaya. "I must have guessed it! That crowns the whole thing. If you have, how can you say you lived happily the whole time? Well, isn't it true what I told you?"
"Were there executions in your village?" asked Adelaida.
"I saw it in Lyons, I went there with Schneider, he took me. I arrived and happened right on to it."
"So, what, did you like it very much? Was it very instructive? Useful?" Aglaya went on asking.
"I didn't like it at all, and I was a bit ill afterwards, but I confess I watched as if I was riveted to it, I couldn't tear my eyes away."
"I, too, would be unable to tear my eyes away," said Aglaya.
"They dislike it very much there when women come to watch, and even write about these women afterwards in the newspapers."
"Meaning that, since they find it's no business for women, they want to say by that (and thus justify) that it is a business for men. I congratulate them for their logic. And you think the same way, of course?"
"Tell us about the execution," Adelaida interrupted.
"I'd be very reluctant to now . . ." the prince became confused and seemed to frown.
"It looks as if you begrudge telling us," Aglaya needled him.
"No, it's because I already told about that same execution earlier."
"Whom did you tell?"
"Your valet, while I was waiting . . ."
"What valet?" came from all sides.
"The one who sits in the anteroom, with gray hair and a reddish face. I was sitting in the anteroom waiting to see Ivan Fyodorovich."
"That's odd," observed Mrs. Epanchin.
"The prince is a democrat," Aglaya snapped. "Well, if you told it to Alexei, you can't refuse us."
"I absolutely want to hear it," repeated Adelaida.
"Earlier, in fact," the prince turned to her, becoming somewhat animated again (it seemed he became animated very quickly and trustingly), "in fact it occurred to me, when you asked me for a subject for a picture, to give you this subject: to portray the face of a condemned man a minute before the stroke of the guillotine, when he's still standing on the scaffold, before he lies down on the plank."
"What? Just the face?" asked Adelaida. "That would be a strange subject, and what sort of picture would it make?"
"I don't know, why not?" the prince insisted warmly. "I recently saw a picture like that in Basel. 24I'd like very much to tell you . . . Someday I'll tell you about it... it struck me greatly."
"Be sure to tell us about the Basel picture later," said Adelaida, "but now explain to me about the picture of this execution. Can you say how you imagine it yourself? How should the face be portrayed? As just a face? What sort of face?"
"It was exactly one minute before his death," the prince began with perfect readiness, carried away by his recollection, and apparently forgetting at once about everything else, "the very moment when he had climbed the little stairway and just stepped onto the scaffold. He glanced in my direction; I looked at his face and understood everything . . . But how can one talk about it! I'd be terribly, terribly glad if you or someone else could portray that! Better if it were you! I thought then that it would be a useful painting. You know, here you have to imagine everything that went before, everything, everything. He lived in prison and expected it would be at least another week till the execution; he somehow calculated the time for the usual formalities, that the paper still had to go somewhere and would only be ready in a week. And then suddenly for some reason the procedure was shortened. At five o'clock in the morning he was asleep. It was the end of October; at five o'clock it's still cold and dark. The prison warden came in quietly, with some guards, and cautiously touched his shoulder. The man sat up, leaned on his elbow—saw a light: 'What's this?' 'The execution's at ten.' Still sleepy, he didn't believe it, started objecting that the paper would be ready in a week, but when he woke up completely, he stopped arguing and fell silent—so they described it—then said: 'All the same, it's hard so suddenly . . .' and fell silent again, and wouldn't say anything after that. Then three or four hours were spent on the well-known things: the priest, breakfast, for which he was given wine, coffee, and beef (now, isn't that a mockery? You'd think it was very cruel, yet, on the other hand, by God, these innocent people do it in purity of heart and are sure of their loving kindness), then the toilette (do you know what a criminal's toilette is?), and finally they drive him through the city to the scaffold ... I think that here, too, while they're driving him, it seems to him that he still has an endless time to live. I imagine he probably thought on the way: 'It's still long, there are still three streets left to live; I'll get to the end of this one, then there's still that one, and the one after it, with the bakery on the right . . . it's still a long way to the bakery!' People, shouting, noise all around him, ten thousand faces, ten thousand pairs of eyes—all that must be endured, and above all the thought: 'There are ten thousand of them, and none of them is being executed, it's me they're executing!' Well, that's all the preliminaries. A little stairway leads up to the scaffold; there, facing the stairway, he suddenly burst into tears, and yet he was a strong and manly fellow and was said to be a great villain. A priest was
with him all the time, rode in the cart with him, and kept talking— the man scarcely heard him: he'd begin to listen and after three words lose all understanding. That's how it must have been. Finally, he started up the stairway; his legs were bound, so he could only take small steps. The priest, who must have been an intelligent man, stopped talking and kept giving him the cross to kiss. At the foot of the stairway he was very pale, but when he went up and stood on the scaffold, he suddenly turned white as paper, absolutely white as a sheet of writing paper. Probably his legs went weak and numb, and he felt nauseous—as if something was pressing his throat, and it was like a tickling—have you ever felt that when you were frightened, or in very terrible moments, when you keep your reason but it no longer has any power? It seems to me, for instance, that if disaster is imminent, if the house is collapsing on you, you want terribly much just to sit down, close your eyes, and wait—let come what may! ... It was here, when this weakness set in, that the priest hurriedly and silently, with such a quick gesture, put the cross suddenly right to his lips—a small silver cross with four points 25— and did it frequently, every minute. And the moment the cross touched his lips, he opened his eyes and seemed to revive for a few seconds, and his legs moved. He kissed the cross greedily, hurried to kiss it, as if hurrying to grasp something extra, just in case, but he was hardly conscious of anything religious at that moment. And so it went till he reached the plank . . . It's strange that people rarely faint in those last seconds! On the contrary, the head is terribly alive and must be working hard, hard, hard, like an engine running; I imagine various thoughts throbbing in it, all of them incomplete, maybe even ridiculous, quite irrelevant thoughts: 'That gaping one has a wart on his forehead . . . the executioner's bottom button is rusty . . .' and meanwhile you know everything and remember everything; there is this one point that can never be forgotten, and you can't faint, and around it, around that point, everything goes and turns. And to think that it will be so till the last quarter of a second, when his head is already lying on the block, and he waits, and . . . knows,and suddenly above him he hears the iron screech! You're bound to hear it! If I were lying there, I'd listen on purpose and hear it! It may be only one tenth of an instant, but you're bound to hear it! And imagine, to this day they still argue that, as the head is being cut off, it may know for a second that it has been cut off— quite a notion! And what if it's five seconds! Portray the scaffold so that only the last step is seen closely and clearly; the criminal has