"A short story in the manner of Maupassant" - says the Russian in the subtitle of his tale "The Murder", adding - "A real story."
In 1892, Tolstoy made a version of Guy de Maupassant's "The Doomed to Life," 1883. We have some lines written on the margins, which seem to be imagined situations to be inserted, but none of them are in the publication.
Thus, phrases such as "The judges were elegant, there were jurors, prosecutors, speeches and, with all pomp, they decided on the guillotine" or "In Germany, after the duel between a baron and a bourgeois for gambling, the principalities gave up winning with chance "(whose insertion is marked with *) - does not seem to fit the whole.
Let's look at the two versions:
"The island did not have many ways to make a fortune, and the monarch lived relatively modestly in comparison with his kinsmen on the Continent, and when the judge condemned the defendant to death, he could not imagine how costly it would be to bring a guillotine from France. They thought of ways to kill. The gallows: there were no trained men and the spectacle could degenerate into miserable torture. The poison: the specialists lived far away and wanted a place to lodge the family. Death by drowning: a legend of a killer of past centuries, who would have come back, still left people terrified. What to do? The game was the only source of income for the small kingdom * and the monarch was forced to take the man into a cell, but the exchange of guards was constant. After the calculations, a lifetime pension sounded much more reasonable. That is how the kingdom of Monaco ended up swapping the death penalty for balance in the accounts."
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"It was depressing to see the king so dejected. No one wanted to shoot a man for so little, he even went to the jail with a pistol in his hand, ready to put an end to the case.
But ... What if the shot was missed? The knighthood would not cover such an embarrassment in Europe. Is not it enough to call the kingdom 'village'? It would not be enough to say that it feeds its court and army with the roulette?
What to do, if between the little tax and the fight of the game, it is worth more the second? But there was no way to kill a guy without to import things, people, even import that courage.
Techniques had moved on, we were in a century of law and order, no one was going to stick a knife into the man without a certain training.
Still, many people thought that freedom was incompatible with a 'state'. It was all debts and, with so much luxury to be sold and bought, the rich disliked obligations. The last spectacle at the Opera looked very poor.
They thought, they thought. The criminal was released on the mountain. He came back in an hour, he could not hide in such a small kingdom. They tried to put him on a ship. The captain warned that the press wanted to board together, which made the case impossible. Already it was spoken in revolt by fear of new tax. The court began to donate to get a hangman. At that moment, someone did the math and realized that a pension and a farm in the mound was much higher. So they signed the contract and finished the death penalty. "
But ... What if the shot was missed? The knighthood would not cover such an embarrassment in Europe. Is not it enough to call the kingdom 'village'? It would not be enough to say that it feeds its court and army with the roulette?
What to do, if between the little tax and the fight of the game, it is worth more the second? But there was no way to kill a guy without to import things, people, even import that courage.
Techniques had moved on, we were in a century of law and order, no one was going to stick a knife into the man without a certain training.
Still, many people thought that freedom was incompatible with a 'state'. It was all debts and, with so much luxury to be sold and bought, the rich disliked obligations. The last spectacle at the Opera looked very poor.
They thought, they thought. The criminal was released on the mountain. He came back in an hour, he could not hide in such a small kingdom. They tried to put him on a ship. The captain warned that the press wanted to board together, which made the case impossible. Already it was spoken in revolt by fear of new tax. The court began to donate to get a hangman. At that moment, someone did the math and realized that a pension and a farm in the mound was much higher. So they signed the contract and finished the death penalty. "
Afonso Lima, 2016
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