THE BET

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 ago. 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 that’s serious,” 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 man, 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 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 the 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

everyone 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 keen damp wind hovered howling over all 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 place where the garden-wing

stood, 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 stairs 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. Someone’s bed, with no bedclothes

on it, stood there, and an iron stove was 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 dim. The prisoner himself

sat by the table. Only his back, the hair on his head and his hands

were visible. On the table, the two chairs, the carpet by the table

open books were strewn.

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 gave 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 behind the door 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 a woman’s long curly hair, 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 me

wonderful tales, which made my head drunken. In your books I climbed

the summits of Elbruz and Mont Blanc and saw from thence how the

sun rose in the morning, and in the evening overflowed the sky, the

ocean and the mountain ridges with a purple gold. I saw from thence

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 more clever than you all.

“And I despise your books, despise all wordly blessings and wisdom.

Everything is void, frail, visionary and delusive like 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 lie for truth and

ugliness for beauty. You would marvel if by certain conditions there

should suddenly grow on apple and orange trees, instead of fruit,

frogs and lizards, 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 long from

sleep....

The next morning the poor watchman came running to him and told him

that they had seen the man who lived in the wing climbing through the

window into the garden. He had gone to the gate and disappeared.

Together with his servants the banker went instantly 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.