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.24 I'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: