The idea that you have the right to free yourself at any moment will poison the whole of your life in the cell. Don’t forget either, you unhappy man, that voluntary is much heavier than enforced imprisonment. I say three or four, because you’ll never stick it out any longer. Two millions are nothing to me, but you stand to lose three or four of the best years of your life. “Come to your senses, young roan, before it’s too late. During supper he said to the lawyer jokingly: The banker, who at that time had too many millions to count, spoiled and capricious, was beside himself with rapture. So this wild, ridiculous bet came to pass. You stake two millions, I my freedom,” said the lawyer. “If you mean it seriously,” replied the lawyer, “then I bet I’ll stay not five but fifteen.” I bet you two millions you wouldn’t stick in a cell even for five years.” The banker who was then younger and more nervous suddenly lost his temper, banged his fist on the table, and turning to the young lawyer, cried out: It’s better to live somehow than not to live at all.”

“Capital punishment and life-imprisonment are equally immoral but if I were offered the choice between them, I would certainly choose the second.

It has no right to take away that which it cannot give back, if it should so desire.”Īmong the company was a lawyer, a young man of about twenty-five. “They’re both equally immoral,” remarked one of the guests, “because their purpose is the same, to take away life. Who is the more humane executioner, one who kills you in a few seconds or one who draws the life out of you incessantly, for years?” Execution kills instantly, life-imprisonment kills by degrees. “I myself have experienced neither capital punishment nor life-imprisonment, but if one may judge a priori, then in my opinion capital punishment is more moral and more humane than imprisonment. Some of them thought that capital punishment should be replaced universally by life-imprisonment. They found it obsolete as a means of punishment, unfitted to a Christian State and immoral. The guests, among them not a few scholars and journalists, for the most part disapproved of capital punishment. They talked among other things of capital punishment. There were many clever people at the party and much interesting conversation. The old banker was pacing from corner to corner of his study, recalling to his mind the party he gave in the autumn fifteen years before.

The bet short story