No, no, you do not see that frame, you even forget that you have given up your cane at the entrance of the picture-gallery . . . you forget your name, your child, the latest model forage-cap, everything therefore, in order to see, not a picture, but to behold there in very truth Mary Stuart: in every way exactly as at Fotheringay. The executioner stands there absolutely as he must have stood in reality, I will even go so far as to assume that you put out your hand to ward off the blow! So far that you exclaim: ‘Let the woman live, perhaps she will mend her ways!’ You see, I give your beau jeu as regards the execution of the picture. . . .”
“Yes, but then what next? Is not then the impression just as striking as when I saw the same scene in reality in Fotheringay?”
“No, most decidedly not; and that only because this time you did not climb on top of a stool with three legs. You take a stool—on this occasion with four legs, and for choice an easy chair—you sit down before the picture so that you may enjoy long and thoroughly—we do, strange though it seems, enjoy the spectacle of horrible things—and what impression do you think it will make on you?”
“Well, terror, fear, pity, emotion . . . just as when I looked through the opening in the wall. We have assumed that the picture is perfect, I must therefore receive from it entirely the same impression as from the real thing.”
“No! within two minutes you feel a pain in your right arm, out of sympathy with the executioner who has to hold up that heavy piece of steel so long without moving.”
“Sympathy with the executioner?”
“Yes! fellow-suffering, community of feeling, you know! And likewise with the woman who has to lie there in front of that block such a long time, in an uncomfortable attitude, and probably in a disagreeable frame of mind. You still have pity for her, but not, now, because she has to be decapitated, but because one keeps her waiting so long before she is decapitated; and if you still would say or exclaim anything in the end—assuming that you feel an
