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"But I had better tell you of another encounter I had with a man last year. There was one very strange incident in his life--strange because a thing like this happens so very rarely. This man had once been taken with others before the scaffold and sentenced to be shot for a political crime. Twenty minutes later a decree of pardon was read to them, and a different punishment imposed. Nevertheless, in the interval between the two decrees, twenty minutes or at least a quarter of an hour, he had lived absolutely convinced that in a few minutes he would die. I was always anxious to listen when he recalled his impressions of that time, and I would often ask him about it. He remembered everything with extraordinary clarity and said he would never forget anything about those minutes. Twenty paces from the scaffold, where the soldiers and a crowd of people stood, three posts were planted in the ground; for there were several condemned criminals to be executed. The first three were led to the posts, bound, and dressed in death clothes (long white robes); and white hoods were pulled down over their eyes so they would not see the guns. Then a squad of several soldiers was formed opposite each post. My friend stood eighth on the list, which meant he would go to the posts on the third round. A priest went to each of them with a cross. It looked as if he had only five minutes to live. He told me those five minutes seemed an eternity stretching before him, a great abundance of time; he felt that in those five minutes he could live so many lifetimes that there was no need, yet, to think of the final moment; so he laid out his time. He allotted time to say farewell to his comrades, about two minutes; then another two minutes to think about himself for the last time, and then to look around for the last time. He remembered that he carried out this plan exactly. He was dying at twenty-seven, a strong and healthy man. He remembered that as he said good-bye to comrades, he asked one of them a rather pointless question and had been fascinated by the answer. Then, when he had said good-bye to his comrades, came those two minutes he had set aside to think about himself; he knew beforehand what he was going to think about: he wanted to conceive, as fast and as vividly as he could, how it was that he was here and alive now and in three minutes he would be something--something or someone--but what? And where? And he thought he could resolve all this in two minutes! Not far away there was a church, and its gilt roof gleamed in the bright sun. He remembered that he gazed with terrible intensity at that roof and the rays of sun that sparkled from it; he could not take his eyes from those rays of light; it seemed to him this light was his new nature and that in three minutes he would somehow melt into it. His uncertainty and revulsion against this new thing which was bound to happen at any moment was terrible; but he said that nothing was more awful than the incessant thought, 'What if I was not to die! What if life was given back to me! What an eternity! And it all would be mine! I would turn each minute into a century. I would miss nothing. I would reckon each passing minute and waste nothing!' He said that this thought finally filled him with such rage that he wanted to be shot as soon as possible."
The prince suddenly stopped talking. Everyone waited for him to continue and to reach some conclusion.
"Have you finished?" asked Aglaya.
"Pardon? Oh, yes, I finished," said the price, emerging from a moment's deep reflection.
"But what did you tell all this for?"
"Oh. It just came to mind. Something that was said--"
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