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considered that form of punishment out of date, immoral, and unsuitable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