is,--he thought neither of death nor of
life,--but concentrated his attention deeply and coolly upon a difficult
chess game which he was playing. A superior chess player, he had
started this game on the first day of his imprisonment and continued it
uninterruptedly. Even the sentence condemning him to death by hanging
did not remove a single figure from his imaginary chessboard. Even the
knowledge that he would not be able to finish this game, did not stop
him; and the morning of the last day that he was to remain on earth he
started by correcting a not altogether successful move he had made on
the previous day. Clasping his lowered hands between his knees, he sat
for a long time motionless, then he rose and began to walk, meditating.
His walk was peculiar: he leaned the upper part of his body slightly
forward and stamped the ground with his heels firmly and distinctly. His
steps usually left deep, plain imprints even on dry ground. He whistled
softly, in one breath, a simple Italian melody, which helped his
meditation.

But this time for some reason or other the thing did not work well.
With an unpleasant feeling that he had made some important, even grave
blunder, he went back several times and examined the game almost from
the beginning. He found no blunder, yet the feeling about a blunder
committed not only failed to leave him, but even grew ever more intense
and unpleasant. Suddenly an unexpected and offensive thought came into
his mind: Did the blunder perhaps consist in his playing chess simply
because he wanted to distract his attention from the execution and thus
shield himself against the fear of death which is apparently inevitable
in every person condemned to death?

"No. What for?" he answered coldly and closed calmly his imaginary
chessboard. And with the same concentration with which he had played
chess, he tried to give himself an account of the horror and the
helplessness of his situation. As though he were going through a strict
examination, he looked over the cell, trying not to let anything escape.
He counted the hours that remained until the execution, made for himself
an approximate and quite exact picture of the execution itself and
shrugged his shoulders.

"Well?" he said to some one half-questioningly. "Here it is. Where is
the fear?"

Indeed there was no fear. Not only was it not there, but something
entirely different, the reverse of fear, developed--a sensation of
confused, but enormous