Page:Dostoevsky - The Idiot, Collected Edition, 1916.djvu/28

"You've grown strange to our ways?"

"Yes, that's true. Would you believe it, I am surprised to find I haven't forgotten how to speak Russian. As I talk to you, I keep thinking 'Why, I am speaking Russian nicely.' Perhaps that's why I talk so much. Ever since yesterday I keep longing to talk Russian."

"Hm! Ha! Used you to live in Petersburg?" In spite of his efforts the lackey could not resist being drawn into such a polite and affable conversation.

"In Petersburg? I've scarcely been there at all, only on my way to other places. I knew nothing of the town before, and now I hear there's so much new in it that anyone who knew it would have to get to knew it afresh. People talk a great deal about the new Courts of Justice now."

"Hm!... Courts of Justice.... It's true there are Courts of Justice. And how is it abroad, are their courts better than ours?"

"I don't know. I've heard a great deal that's good about ours. We've no capital punishment, you know."

"Why, do they execute people there then?"

"Yes. I saw it in France, at Lyons. Dr. Schneider took me with him."

"Do they hang them?"

"No, in France they always cut off their heads."

"Do they scream?"

"How could they? It's done in an instant. They make the man lie down and then a great knife is brought down by a heavy, powerful machine, called the guillotine.... The head falls off before one has time to wink. The preparations are horrible. When they read the sentence, get the man ready, bind him, lead him to the scaffold--that's what's awful! Crowds assemble, even women, though they don't like women to look on...."

"It's not a thing for them!"

"Of course not, of course not! Such a horrible thing!.. The criminal was an intelligent, middle-aged man, strong and courageous, called Legros. But I assure you, though you may not believe me, when he mounted the scaffold he was weeping and was as white as paper. Isn't it incredible? Isn't it awful? Who cries for fear? I'd no idea that a grown man, not a child, a man who never cried, a man of forty-five, could cry for fear! What must be passing in the soul at such a moment; to what anguish it must be brought! It's an outrage on the soul, that's