pleasure or poison fruits of pain. Some seeds hold two germs; and vice
and penalty are wrapped up under one covering. Sins are
self-registering and penalties are automatic. The brain keeps a double
set of books, and at last visits its punishments. Conscience does not
wait for society to ferret out iniquity, but daily executes judgment.
Policemen may slumber and the judge may nod, but the nerves are always
active, memory never sleeps, conscience is never off duty. The recoil
of the gun bruises black the shoulder of him who holds it, and sin is a
weapon that kills at both ends.

In the olden days, when the poisoner was in every palace, the Doge of
Venice offered a reward for a crystal goblet that would break the
moment a poison touched it. Perhaps the idea was suggested to the
Prince because his soul already fulfilled the thought, for one drop of
sin always shatters the cup of joy and wastes life's precious wine.
How do events interpret this principle! One day Louis, King of France,
was riding in the forest near his gorgeous and guilty palace of
Versailles. He met a peasant carrying a coffin. "What did the man die
of?" asked the King. "Of hunger," answered the peasant. But the sound
of the hunt was in the King's ear, and he forgot the cry of want. Soon
the day came when the King stood before the guillotine, and with mute
appeals for mercy fronted a mob silent as statues, unyielding as stone,
grimly waiting to dip the ends of their pikes in regal blood. He gave
cold looks; he received cold steel.

Marie Antoinette, riding to Notre Dame for her bridal, bade her
soldiers command all beggars, cripples and ragged people to leave the
line of the procession. The Queen could not endure for a brief moment
the sight of those miserable ones doomed to unceasing squalor and
poverty. What she gave others she received herself, for soon, bound in