I say three or four, because you won't stay longer. To me two millions are a trifle, but you are losing three or four of the best years of your life. 'Think better of it, young man, while there is still time. At supper he made fun of the young man, and said: 'Agreed! You stake your millions and I stake my freedom!' said the young man.Īnd this wild, senseless bet was carried out! The banker, spoilt and frivolous, with millions beyond his reckoning, was delighted at the bet. 'If you mean that in earnest,' said the young man, 'I'll take the bet, but I would stay not five but fifteen years.' 'It's not true! I'll bet you two millions you wouldn't stay in solitary confinement for five years.' 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: To live anyhow is better than not at all.'Ī lively discussion arose.

'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. It has not the right to take away what it cannot restore when it wants to.'Īmong the guests was a young lawyer, a young man of five-and-twenty.

'Both are equally immoral,' observed one of the guests, 'for they both have the same object - to take away life. 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?' Capital punishment kills a man at once, but lifelong imprisonment kills him slowly. 'I have not tried either the death penalty or imprisonment for life, but if one may judge à priori, the death penalty is more moral and more humane than imprisonment for life. 'I don't agree with you,' said their host the banker.

In the opinion of some of them the death penalty ought to be replaced everywhere by imprisonment for life. They considered that form of punishment out of date, immoral, and unsuitable for Christian States. The majority of the guests, among whom were many journalists and intellectual men, disapproved of the death penalty. Among other things they had talked of capital punishment.

There had been many clever men there, and there had been interesting conversations. The old banker was walking up and down his study and remembering how, fifteen years before, he had given a party one autumn evening.

The bet by anton chekhov