MR TOOBAD

That is, because the devil is come among us, and finds it for his
interest to destroy all our perceptions of the distinctions of right
and wrong.


MARIONETTA

I do not precisely enter into your meaning, Mr Flosky, and should be
glad if you would make it a little more plain to me.


MR FLOSKY

One or two examples will do it, Miss O'Carroll. If I were to take all
the mean and sordid qualities of a money-dealing Jew, and tack on to
them, as with a nail, the quality of extreme benevolence, I should
have a very decent hero for a modern novel; and should contribute my
quota to the fashionable method of administering a mass of vice, under
a thin and unnatural covering of virtue, like a spider wrapt in a
bit of gold leaf, and administered as a wholesome pill. On the same
principle, if a man knocks me down, and takes my purse and watch by
main force, I turn him to account, and set him forth in a tragedy as
a dashing young fellow, disinherited for his romantic generosity, and
full of a most amiable hatred of the world in general, and his own
country in particular, and of a most enlightened and chivalrous
affection for himself: then, with the addition of a wild girl to fall
in love with him, and a series of adventures in which they break all