He felt sorry for his comrades, especially for Vasya Kashirin; but that was a cold, almost official pity, which even some of the judges may have felt at times.
Werner understood that the execution was not merely death, that it was something different,--but he resolved to face it calmly, as something not to be considered; to live until the end as if nothing had happened and as if nothing could happen.

Only in this way could he express his greatest contempt for capital punishment and preserve his last freedom of the spirit which could not be torn away from him.

At the trial--and even his comrades who knew well his cold, haughty fearlessness would perhaps not have believed this,--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.