FullReads

MR. X.
That’s quite rational. Any one who behaves as if he belonged to the bronze age ought to live in the historic costume.

MR. Y.
[Spitefully].

You scoff, you, you who have behaved like a man of the stone age! And you are allowed to live in the gold age!

MR. X.
[Searchingly and sharp].

What do you mean by that last expression–the gold age?

MR. Y.
[Insidiously].

Nothing at all.

MR. X.
That’s a lie; you are too cowardly to state your whole meaning.

MR. Y.
Am I cowardly? Do you think that? I wasn’t cowardly when I dared to show myself in this neighborhood, where I have suffered what I have.–Do you know what one suffers from most when one sits in there? It is from the fact that the others are not sitting in there too.

MR. X.
What others?

MR. Y.
The unpunished.

MR. X.
Do you allude to me?

MR. Y.
Yes.

MR. X.
I haven’t committed any crime.

MR. Y.
No? Haven’t you?

MR. X.
No. An accident is not a crime.

MR. Y.
So, it’s an accident to commit murder?

MR. X.
I haven’t committal any murder.

MR. Y.
So? Isn’t it murder to slay a man?

MR. X.
No, not always. There is manslaughter, homicide, assault resulting in death, with the subdivisions, with or without intent. However, now I am really afraid of you, for you belong in the most dangerous category of human beings, the stupid.

MR. Y.
So you think that I am stupid? Now listen! Do you want me to prove that I am very shrewd?

MR. X.
Let me hear.

MR. Y.
Will you admit that I reason shrewdly and logically when I say this? You met with an accident which might have brought you two years of hard labor. You have escaped the ignominious penalty altogether. Here sits a man who also has been the victim of an accident, an unconscious suggestion, and forced to suffer two years of hard labor. This man can wipe out the stain he has unwittingly brought upon himself only through scientific achievement; but for the attainment of this he must have money–much money, and that immediately. Doesn’t it seem to you that the other man, the unpunished one, would restore the balance of human relations if he were sentenced to a tolerable fine? Don’t you think so?

MR. X.
[Quietly].

Yes.

MR. Y.
Well, we understand each other.–H’m! How much do you consider legitimate?

MR. X.
Legitimate? The law decrees that a man’s life is worth at the minimum fifty crowns. But as the deceased had no relatives, there’s nothing to be said on that score.

MR. Y.
Humph, you will not understand? Then I must speak more plainly. It is to me that you are to pay the fine.

MR. X.
I’ve never heard that a homicide should pay a fine to a forger, and there is also no accuser.

MR. Y.
No? Yes, you have me.

MR. X.
Ah, now things are beginning to clear up. How much do you ask to become accomplice to the homicide?

MR. Y.
Six thousand crowns.

MR. X.
That’s too much. Where am I to get it?

[Mr. Y. points to the case.]
I don’t want to do that, I don’t want to become a thief.