on, and awoke on the brink of that precipice into which I am about to
plunge. You know the rest. But oh! what now was my horror! It had not
been a mere worthless, isolated unit in creation that I had blotted out
of the sum of life. I had shed the blood of his brother whose child was
my betrothed! Mysterious avenger--weird and relentless fate! How, when I
deemed myself the farthest from her, had I been sinking into her grasp!
Mark, young man, there is a moral here that few preachers can teach thee!
Mark. Men rarely violate the individual rule in comparison to their
violation of general rules. It is in the latter that we deceive by
sophisms which seem truths. In the individual instance it was easy for me
to deem that I had committed no crime. I had destroyed a man, noxious to
the world; with the wealth by which he afflicted society I had been the
means of blessing many; in the individual consequences mankind had really
gained by my deed; the general consequence I had overlooked till now, and
now it flashed upon me. The scales fell from my eyes, and I knew myself
for what I was! All my calculations were dashed to the ground at once,
for what had been all the good I had proposed to do--the good I had done-
-compared to the anguish I now inflicted on your house? Was your father
my only victim? Madeline, have I not murdered her also? Lester, have I
not shaken the sands in his glass? You, too, have I not blasted the prime
and glory of your years? How incalculable--how measureless--how viewless
the consequences of one crime, even when we think we have weighed them
all with scales that would have turned with a hair's weight! Yes; before
I had felt no remorse. I felt it now. I had acknowledged no crime, and
now crime seemed the essence itself of my soul. The Theban's fate, which
had seemed to the men of old the most terrible of human destinies, was
mine. The crime--the discovery--the irremediable despair--hear me, as
the voice of a man who is on the brink of a world, the awful nature of
which Reason cannot pierce--hear me! when your heart tempts to some
wandering from the line allotted to the rest of men, and whispers 'This