The Bet

Fifteen years ago, at a party, a young lawyer and a rich banker argued about which was worse: to be put to death, or to be shut up in prison for life.“Life in prison is better,” said the lawyer. “To live any way at all is better than not to live.”Angry, the banker cried, “I bet you two million that you could not stay locked up alone for even five years.” “I will stay fifteen,” said the lawyer.

So the lawyer moved into a small lodge in the banker’s garden, and the door was locked.For fifteen years he was to see no one, hear no voices, and read no news, though he could ask for books, wine, and a piano through a little window.If he left even five minutes early, he would lose the whole two million.

In the first years he played sad music and read light novels, and the watchmen sometimes heard him weeping.Then he began to study in earnest — languages, history, and philosophy — and in a few years he read six hundred books.Later he read nothing but the Bible, and after that books on religion, science, and poetry, all mixed together.

The night before the fifteen years ended, the banker sat alone, close to despair.He had gambled and lost, and paying the two million now would leave him ruined and disgraced.“There is only one way out,” he thought. “The man must die tonight.”

In the small hours the banker crept into the locked lodge and found the lawyer asleep at his table, thin as a skeleton, his hair already grey.On the table lay a letter, and the banker began to read it.In it the lawyer said that his books had shown him the whole world, and that he now scorned money, comfort, and life itself as empty things.

To prove his contempt, he wrote, he would leave the lodge five minutes early and give up all claim to the two million.The banker kissed the sleeping man’s head and wept; in the morning the lawyer climbed out of the window and was gone, and the banker locked the letter away in his safe.