Page 86 - the-idiot

reprieved and some other punishment substituted; but the
interval between the two sentences, twenty minutes, or at
least a quarter of an hour, had been passed in the certainty
that within a few minutes he must die. I was very anxious
to hear him speak of his impressions during that dread-
ful time, and I several times inquired of him as to what he
thought and felt. He remembered everything with the most
accurate and extraordinary distinctness, and declared that
he would never forget a single iota of the experience.
‘About twenty paces from the scaffold, where he had
stood to hear the sentence, were three posts, fixed in the
ground, to which to fasten the criminals (of whom there
were several). The first three criminals were taken to the
posts, dressed in long white tunics, with white caps drawn
over their faces, so that they could not see the rifles pointed
at them. Then a group of soldiers took their stand oppo-
site to each post. My friend was the eighth on the list, and
therefore he would have been among the third lot to go up.
A priest went about among them with a cross: and there was
about five minutes of time left for him to live.
‘He said that those five minutes seemed to him to be a
most interminable period, an enormous wealth of time; he
seemed to be living, in these minutes, so many lives that
there was no need as yet to think of that last moment, so
that he made several arrangements, dividing up the time
into portions—one for saying farewell to his companions,
two minutes for that; then a couple more for thinking over
his own life and career and all about himself; and another
minute for a last look around. He remembered having di-