I merely say this to have it off my mind, and I am only sorry that I did not say it all then —”
Hippolyte flushed hotly. He had thought at first that the prince was “humbugging” him; but on looking at his face he saw that he was absolutely serious, and had no thought of any deception. Hippolyte beamed with gratification.
“And yet I must die,” he said, and almost added: “a man like me!”
“And imagine how that Gania annoys me! He has developed the idea—or pretends to believe—that in all probability three or four others who heard my confession will die before I do. There’s an idea for you—and all this by way of consoling me! Ha! ha! ha! In the first place they haven’t died yet; and in the second, if they did die—all of them—what would be the satisfaction to me in that? He judges me by himself. But he goes further, he actually pitches into me because, as he declares, ‘any decent fellow’ would die quietly, and that ‘all this’ is mere egotism on my part. He doesn’t see what refinement of egotism it is on his own part—and at the same time, what ox-like coarseness! Have you ever read of the death of one Stepan Gleboff, in the eighteenth century? I read of it yesterday by chance.”
“Who was he?”
“He was impaled on a stake in the time of Peter.”
“I know, I know! He lay there fifteen hours in the hard frost, and died with the most extraordinary fortitude—I know—what of him?”
“Only that God gives that sort of dying to some, and not to others. Perhaps you think, though, that I could not die like Gleboff?”
“Not at all!” said the prince, blushing. “I was only going to say that you—not that you could not be like Gleboff—but that you would have been more like—”