"Why shouldn't I?"

"Is he not dishonoured by the execution of his relative?"

"Dishonoured! Certainly not; even his brother was not dishonoured. He
broke the law, but he paid for it with his life, and owed society nothing
more. He's a man of honour, who played high and lost; that's all. I don't
know that there is any penalty in the statute book which dishonours the
culprit; that would be tyrannical, and we would not bear it. I may break
any law I like, so long as I am willing to pay the penalty. It is only a
dishonour when the criminal tries to escape punishment by base or
cowardly actions."

"How do you mean?"

"To ask for the royal mercy, to beg forgiveness of the people, and the
like."

"How about escaping from justice?"

"That is no dishonour, for to fly is an act of courage; it continues the
defiance of the law, and if the law cannot exact obedience, so much the
worse for it. It is an honour for you to have escaped from the tyranny of
your magistrates; your flight from The Leads was a virtuous action. In
such cases man fights with death and flees from it. 'Vir fugiens denuo
pugnabit'."

"What do you think of highway robbers, then?"

"I detest them as wretches dangerous to society, but I pity them when I