The bet ( part one)

IT WAS a dark autumn night. The old banker was walking up and down his study

and remembering how, fifteen years before, he had given a party one autumn

evening. There had been many clever men there, and there had been interesting

conversations. Among other things they had talked of capital punishment. The

majority of the guests, among whom were many journalists and intellectual men,

disapproved of the death penalty. They considered that form of punishment out of

date, immoral, and unsuitable for Christian States. In the opinion of some of them

the death penalty ought to be replaced everywhere by imprisonment for life.

"I don't agree with you," said their host the banker. "I have not tried either the

death penalty or imprisonment for life, but if one may judge _a priori_, the death

penalty is more moral and more humane than imprisonment for life. Capital

punishment kills a man at once, but lifelong imprisonment kills him slowly. Which

executioner is the more humane, he who kills you in a few minutes or he who

drags the life out of you in the course of many years?"

"Both are equally immoral," observed one of the guests, "for they both have the

same object -- to take away life. The State is not God. It has not the right to take

away what it cannot restore when it wants to."

Among the guests was a young lawyer, a young man of five-and-twenty. When he

was asked his opinion, he said:

"The death sentence and the life sentence are equally immoral, but if I had to

choose between the death penalty and imprisonment for life, I would certainly

choose the second. To live anyhow is better than not at all."

A lively discussion arose. The banker, who was younger and more nervous in those

days, was suddenly carried away by excitement; he struck the table with his fist

and shouted at the young man:

"It's not true! I'll bet you two millions you wouldn't stay in solitary confinement for

five years."

"If you mean that in earnest," said the young man, "I'll take the bet, but I would

stay not five but fifteen years.""Fifteen? Done!" cried the banker. "Gentlemen, I stake two millions!"

"Agreed! You stake your millions and I stake my freedom!" said the young man.

And this wild, senseless bet was carried out! The banker, spoilt and frivolous, with

millions beyond his reckoning, was delighted at the bet. At supper he made fun of

the young man, and said:

"Think better of it, young man, while there is still time. To me two millions are a

trifle, but you are losing three or four of the best years of your life. I say three or

four, because you won't stay longer. Don't forget either, you unhappy man, that

voluntary confinement is a great deal harder to bear than compulsory. The thought

that you have the right to step out in liberty at any moment will poison your whole

existence in prison. I am sorry for you."

And now the banker, walking to and fro, remembered all this, and asked himself:

"What was the object of that bet? What is the good of that man's losing fifteen

years of his life and my throwing away two millions? Can it prove that the death

penalty is better or worse than imprisonment for life? No, no. It was all nonsensical

and meaningless. On my part it was the caprice of a pampered man, and on his

part simple greed for money. . . ."

Then he remembered what followed that evening. It was decided that the young

man should spend the years of his captivity under the strictest supervision in one

of the lodges in the banker's garden. It was agreed that for fifteen years he should

not be free to cross the threshold of the lodge, to see human beings, to hear the

human voice, or to receive letters and newspapers. He was allowed to have a

musical instrument and books, and was allowed to write letters, to drink wine, and

to smoke. By the terms of the agreement, the only relations he could have with

the outer world were by a little window made purposely for that object. He might

have anything he wanted -- books, music, wine, and so on -- in any quantity he

desired by writing an order, but could only receive them through the window. The

agreement provided for every detail and every trifle that would make his

imprisonment strictly solitary, and bound the young man to stay there _exactly_

fifteen years, beginning from twelve o'clock of November 14, 1870, and ending at

twelve o'clock of November 14, 1885. The slightest attempt on his part to break

the conditions, if only two minutes before the end, released the banker from the

obligation to pay him two millions.

For the first year of his confinement, as far as one could judge from his brief notes,

the prisoner suffered severely from loneliness and depression. The sounds of the

piano could be heard continually day and night from his lodge. He refused wine

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