'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 points25— 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 stepped onto it: his head, his face white as paper, the priest offering him the cross, he greedily puts it to his blue lips and stares, and— knows everything.
The cross and the head—there's the picture. The priest's face, the executioner, his two assistants, and a few heads and eyes below—all that could be painted as background, in a mist, as accessory . . . That's the sort of picture."
The prince fell silent and looked at them all.
"That, of course, is nothing like quietism," Alexandra said to herself.
"Well, now tell us how you were in love," said Adelaida.
The prince looked at her in surprise.
"Listen," Adelaida seemed to be hurrying, "you owe us the story about the Basel picture, but now I want to hear how you were in love. You were, don't deny it.
Besides, as soon as you start telling about something, you stop being a philosopher."
"When you finish a story, you immediately feel ashamed of having told it," Aglaya suddenly observed.
"Why is that?"
"This is quite stupid, finally," Mrs. Epanchin snapped, looking indignantly at Aglaya.
"Not clever," Alexandra agreed.
"Don't believe her, Prince," Mrs. Epanchin turned to him, "she does it on purpose out of some sort of spite; she hasn't been brought up so stupidly; don't think anything of their pestering you like this.
They probably have something in mind, but they already love you.
I know their faces."
"I know their faces, too," said the prince, giving special emphasis to his words.
"How is that?" Adelaida asked curiously.
"What do you know about our faces?" the other two also became curious.
But the prince was silent and serious; they all waited for his reply.
"I'll tell you later," he said quietly and seriously.
"You decidedly want to intrigue us," cried Aglaya. "And what solemnity!"
"Well, all right," Adelaida again began to hurry, "but if you're such an expert in faces, then surely you were also in love, which means I guessed right.
Tell us about it."
"I wasn't in love," the prince replied as quietly and seriously, "I . . . was happy in a different way."
"How? In what way?"
"Very well, I'll tell you," the prince said, as if pondering deeply.
VI
"Here you all are now," the prince began, "looking at me with such curiosity that if I don't satisfy it, you may well get angry with me.