Once in my childhood I had seen a panther in the zoological Gardens that had struck my imagination and long occupied my thoughts.He was not like the other animals , who stupidly slept, or viciously gazed at the visitors . He walked about in a straight line from corner to corner of his cage with mathematical precision, each time turning at the same place , each time rubbing against the same bar of his cage with his golden fur. his sharp, rapacious head was bent down,his eyes looking straight before him,and not once did he turn aside. all day long people
crowded before his cage ; they talked and made a noise, but he continued his wandering and did not once turn his eyes towards the gazers.few faces in the crowd smiled; most of them looked seriously , even gloomily,on this living picture of dull,despairing reflection,and turned away with a sigh; going away they would turn again inquiringly to look at him, unable to comprehend, and sigh as if there were something in common between them, free men, and this imprisoned beast. whenever afterwards men or books mentioned eternity I thought of the panther, and it appeared to me that I knew eternity and it's torments.
I became such a panther in my stone cage. I walked about and thought. I walked in one line across my cage from corner to corner, and my thoughts travelled along a short line -- such heavy thoughts it seemed that I had not a head but a whole world on my shoulders . they consisted of only one word , but what a large, what a tormenting, what a fatal word!
"LIES' is this word.
I had made a miserable mistake . I had killed the woman who lied to me, but had made the lie immortal. Do not kill the woman until by means of entreaty , torture, and fire you have torn the truth from her soul.
Thus I thought as I walked from corner to corner of my cage.
Darkness is there, and the emptiness of centuries and eternity, but she is not there she is not anywhere. the lie has remained .it is immortal. I feel it in every atom of the air ,and when I breathe it comes with hisses into my breast and tears it and tears it!
Oh! what madness it is for a man to look for truth! What Pain!
...
an excerpt from a russian short story "The Lie" written by Leonid Andreyev.
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