"Good evening." "I came down here because I understand that the current year is a very good year for wine." "For drinking it, that is." "I'm looking for some champagne." ""Not to be taken internally. " Oh." ""For bathing only. "" "Fortunately, my tastes aren't so expensive." "I bathe in ginger beer." "That way one doesn't have to add a softener." "All this is by way of introducing tonight's play." "It is called, by an extraordinary coincidence," ""A Bottle of Wine. "" "Grace." "Hello, Judge." "I came to get my clothes." "So you're going." "You're really going, after all." "I won't be long upstairs." "Grace." "Isn't there..." "Nothing." "I see." "Ten years, and one word seems to take care of it all." ""Nothing. " Such a merciless word." "Judge, we've been through all this." "Have we?" "Have we really, Grace?" "Or is it just that I've been doing all the talking?" "And all the listening, too?" "If you'll excuse me, please." "Why is it that the less use people have for another human being, the politer they become to him." "Relentlessly politer." "Really, Judge, I don't have time right now for any of your handy, pocket philosophy." "I see." "Where's Wallace?" "Waiting for you?" "Counting the seconds at some adjacent bar?" "Go ahead." "Tear him down." "See if I care." "Forgive me." "I didn't mean to be ungracious." "Well, he's not in a bar." "He's..." "He's outside in the car." "Of course." "You'll need someone to help you with your luggage." "Oh, that's just about what I'd expect you to say." "Oh, you're gracious all right, Judge." "Believe me, you are gracious." "Mr. Donaldson, come wait inside." "The sun's too hot out there." "It's all right, I can wait here." "Don't be foolish." "This heat will kill you." "Afternoon, sir." "Afternoon." "It's hot, isn't it?" "You are the judge?" "I mean Judge Condon." "Grace's..." "Grace's husband." "Does it always get this hot in town?" "Not always." "Just mostly, mostly August, around this time of year." "I didn't want to come here." "I can imagine." "But Grace said that it would be all right." "That she wouldn't be very long." "You're young." "Younger than I thought you'd be." "And money?" "I daresay you have money?" "Oh, don't be ashamed of it." "I think I'd better wait in the car." "Nonsense." "This isn't an everyday occasion." "A perfectly civilized conversation, while one's wife gathers the wardrobe of 10 years." "Actually, this is a new experience for me." "One wonders what to say, exactly." "Certainly there should be something in common we could talk about." "Well, for example, Grace." "Let's go inside." "It's cooler there." "You don't know Grace." "At least, not quite as well as I do." "She'll be a good 5 or 10 minutes yet." "Let's wait in the library." "The only room in the house with a fan." "Sit down, young man." "You stand there like a buck I once shot in Wisconsin, feeling the wind for danger." "And after all, you're virtually one of the family now." "I'm sorry we had to meet." "Oh?" "Yes, I'm not up to this sort of thing." "I can see you're not." "Well, if it will make you feel any easier, I don't feel much up to it myself." "Well, sit down." "It's an old habit of mine to be on a slightly higher level than the court." "Good." "And while you wait, we'll have a little sherry." "I have some very good sherry outside here in the cabinet." "Very dry." "By the way, Mr. Donaldson, what do you do for a living?" "I'm an architect." "What?" "Here in Cartersville?" "No, my father's firm in Chicago." "I came here on a job." "Oh." "Now we can relax." "This is a very old wine." "Very old." "Very good." "Very special." "Amontillado." "Yes." "We shall not taste its like again." "To Grace." "Can you propose a more fitting toast?" "To Grace." "To Grace." "It is good." "Rich and smooth." "Yes." "We've been saving it for quite a long time, Grace and I." "For our 10th anniversary." "I bought it for her in Spain." "On our honeymoon." "Quite a story." "Ten years from now, we told each other, we'll share this wine." "The wine of a decade." "Sir..." "Oh, it's quite all right." "Grace doesn't touch alcohol anymore." "We may as well drink it, you and I." "Sir, I think its better that I wait..." "Not that she ever did drink very much really." "She takes pretty good care of herself." "Given to diets and massage." "Oh, mind you." "She like an occasionally glass of sherry." "Something like this, for example." "She got to like it on our honeymoon." "I'm sorry, Judge." "I'm just not comfortable." "I mean all this." "I mean, it's one thing to..." "To take another man's wife and quite another to drink a toast to doing it." "Is that it?" "I just don't feel I should stay." "I should have waited in the car." "Thanks for the drink." "Goodbye." "But I would like to say again, I'm sorry." "You know, you disappoint me." "Disappoint you?" "Yes, I thought you loved Grace." "I do." "If I loved a woman, I'd be curious about her." "I should want to know everything about her." "I know all I need to know about her." "You do?" "You'll stay because there are things about Grace you want to know." "I love her." "That's enough." "No." "That's not enough." "You have questions you'll never dare ask her yourself." "Questions to which you'll never get the answers, except from me." "You must hate her." "Hate her?" "I'm an old man with a young wife." "And I love her with all the foolishness the young never know." "Oh, they know ecstasy." "They know desire." "But they never know the wondrous foolishness of an old man in love for the first time." "No, the young never know." "They never understand." "Believe me, sir, I'm sorry." "I wish it were otherwise." "This is a small town." "I've lived here all my life." "My father and grandfather before me." "I've been the lawyer here." "I've been the judge." "Yes, I've been the judge for a long time." "Have you read Aristotle, Mr. Donaldson?" "No." ""When people dispute," Aristotle wrote," ""They take refuge in the judge. "" "Incidentally, do pour yourself some more wine." "He also said, Aristotle," ""To go to the judge is to go to justice. "" "The judge restores equality." "It is as though there were a line divided into unequal parts." "And he took away that by which the greater segment exceeds the half." "And added to it the smaller segment." "Therefore, the just consists in having equal amounts before and after the transaction." "Do you follow me, Mr. Donaldson?" "What, only half finished?" "Help yourself, Mr. Donaldson." "No, sir, I think I've had enough." "Help yourself!" "Drink." "This is one bottle of wine that deserves to be appreciated." "And we're going to finish it." "Every last drop of it, Mr. Donaldson." "I could shoot you, Mr. Donaldson, and get off scot-free." "You couldn't find 12 men among our 33,000 who would convict a man for shooting his wife's..." "Well, that's the way it is." "That's not the law..." "That's just the way it is." "For a long time I believed I'd kill you." ""If I ever set eyes on him for one instant," I told myself, "I'll kill him. "" "Strike him down on the street without mercy." "I spent nights wrestling with it, nights when Grace was out and this house was empty of everything except my thoughts." "But I'm a weak and foolish old man, and I haven't the will to pull the trigger." "I can't make myself do it." "You respect the law." "I respect the law, but I despise myself." "Had you ever planned to come to me, face me, tell me your intentions?" "I mentioned it to Grace." "But she didn't think it was necessary." "And neither did you, eh?" "I guess I was... afraid." "Not so much physically, but of a scene." "In a situation like this, any man would be." "You know, you really had me going there a minute back." "It never occurred to me that you might misunderstand and be afraid." "After all, the magistrate is the guardian of justice." "But now that I've seen how reasonable you are and your approach..." "Oh, I don't know how to say what I mean." "You're trying to say that all we most needed was to drink a bottle of old wine between ourselves, eh?" "Yes." "Yes, that's it." "And that's the way I felt about it." "There." "Just one more each." "Grace should be down by then." "No label." "Hmm?" "No, no label." "What kind of sherry did you say that was?" "Amontillado." "From Spain." "Yes, when Grace and I were married, we went to Europe for our honeymoon." "Well, it was one of her conditions." "She had never traveled and she wanted to." "I was 54 when I met Grace." "Incredibly enough, I had never been in love before." "Grace was my secretary." "She was young and she was very beautiful." "From the moment I saw her, I loved her." "And I wanted her." "Any way I could get her, I wanted her." "A year it went on like that, and I, longing for her." "A year, Mr. Donaldson, an interminably long, long time." "One bag's ready from the sound of it." "It won't be too long now." "Grace was new in town." "But she knew exactly what she wanted." "Marriage, and a name, and money." "I doubt if she ever looked on me as a man, with a man's feelings and desires." "No, no, I was just "the Judge. "" "And I loved her, even though she had no pity for my love." "I didn't know this then, understand." "I learned it slowly over these past 10 years." "She's not like that, what you're saying." "She's different now, isn't she?" "I mean, you think she is different." "She's the most understanding woman I've ever known." "Sympathetic, helpful..." "It was in my office one morning we agreed to marry, much as you'd settle a case out of court." "She closed her bargain." "I closed mine." "You don't love her." "Everything you say proves you don't." "I keep reminding myself when I sit in judgment of her, she was an ambitious girl." "You may not be able to understand this, or to believe it, but I love her." "Of course, of course." "But you're not the first young man." "Nor will you be the last." "I don't intend to listen to this." "Grace began to drift about two years ago." "I saw it coming, but I couldn't stop it." "She was searching for someone to love, someone to leave me for." "The right man, the right step up." "It's you." "You're the one." "I wonder what it is you have that she wants." "I wonder." "And I believe I know." "It's youth." "She wants the youngness of you, just as I wanted her youngness a long time ago." "I don't know." "I don't know." "But whatever it is, youth or money or whatever it is, if I can give it to her, I will." "You will?" "If I say it, I will." "Look, I know this is rough on you, but these things happen." "Nobody plans them, they just happen." "Sometimes somebody gets hurt." "I asked you about Aristotle before, now I ask you about Socrates." "Are you familiar with his story?" "No." "Oh, then you're not familiar with his last words to his judges, a panel of Athenian noblemen who had just sentenced him to death." "I really think I ought to run up and help her." "I know Grace." "She'd not be even close to being ready." "She'll call when she wants you." "Socrates took poison." "Hemlock juice, very deadly." "It's rather stuffy in here." "Don't you feel it?" "Um, no." "Well, it's the wine." "It's just the wine, not the heat." "I did gulp it." "One should sip wine, I drank it rather fast." "Socrates, Mr. Donaldson, listen to what a wise man facing death had to say," ""Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death," ""and know of a certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man," ""either in life or after death." ""He and his are not neglected by the gods," ""nor has my own approaching end happened by mere chance." ""But I see clearly that the time had arrived when it was better for me to die" ""and be released from trouble." ""The hour of departure has arrived," ""and we go our ways," ""one of us to die and one to live." ""Which is better God only knows. "" "Yes, I feel it, too." "I suggest you sit down." "The pain will be less severe that way." "Pain?" "What pain?" "The wine, Mr. Donaldson." "The wine." "What about the wine?" "You'll recall, I went out of the room to get it." "But I heard you open the bottle." "You couldn't have possibly put anything in it while you were outside." "You heard me open a bottle but not that one." "I opened another one just to deceive you." "I prepared that bottle days ago." "I've been saving it." "For us." "That's impossible." "You have two, maybe three minutes to live." "But you drank the wine, too." "Glass for glass." "You're sure?" "No pain yet?" "I shall remember that and be grateful I didn't cause you any suffering." "It's too late to call a doctor." "Why don't you feel it?" "I do." "And that's why I leave you now." "So you may die alone and in peace." "Particularly because I don't intend to join you." "Grace!" "Grace!" "You said you'd give her anything, Donaldson." "What more can you give her than your life?" "Help me!" "Help me!" "I've laid out the various items which I now go to take, emetics, antidotes, they're not pleasant." "But they'll save me from accompanying you, young man, on your long, long voyage." "Help me, Judge, please." "Please, don't let me die in here by myself." "I seem to remember you and my wife were ready to leave me to live and die by myself." "I'll go away." "I'll go away, but help me, please." "Help me!" "I say to you, Donaldson, what I have had to say" "To other condemned men," "May God have mercy on your soul." "I'll never bother you and Grace again." "Judge!" "What are you doing to him?" "Just having a little fun, my pound of flesh, my moment of glory." "Judge!" "Judge Condon!" "You see, my dear, your man turns out to be not a man after all, but an hysterical child." "I had to prove it to you." "Listen to him." "The man you preferred to me." "Listen." "Grace!" "Grace, open the door!" "Grace!" "Grace, he's poisoned me." "Poison?" "You think the Judge could..." "Yes, I know it!" "No." "No, he couldn't do..." "Why, in 20 years he never once sentenced a man to death." "But he told me." "The bottle of wine, the one he bought for you in Spain, on your honeymoon." "We never had a honeymoon in Spain, Wallace." "There was nothing wrong with that bottle of sherry." "Forsooth." "Such knavery." "Naturally the police apprehended Wallace and he paid for his ungentlemanly conduct." "After all, one should not shoot one's host before dinner." "This concludes our little preachment on the evils of drink." "Tune in next time, when we shall again present a charming little horrific fairy tale." "Good night."