de is only that; he is a contemptible rascal whom
nobody would consent to resemble. The sublimity of his wickedness
is this, that he was himself the informer against his good friend
the Israelite, of whom the Inquisition took hold when he awoke the
next morning, and of whom a few days later they made a famous
bonfire. And it was in this way that the renegade became the
tranquil possessor of the fortune of the accursed descendant of
those who crucified our Lord.

_I._--I do not know which of the two is most horrible to me--the
vileness of your renegade, or the tone in which you speak of it.

_He._--And that is what I said: the atrocity of the action carries
you beyond contempt, and hence my sincerity. I wished you to know
to what a degree I excelled in my art, to extort from you the
admission that I was at least original in my abasement, to rank me
in your mind on the line of the great good-for-noughts, and to hail
me henceforth--_Vivat Mascarillus, fourbum imperator_!

[Here the discussion is turned aside, by Rameau's pantomimic performance
of a fugue, to various topics in music.[224]]

[224] Vol. v. pp. 457-468.

_I._--How does it happen that with such fine tact, such great
sensibility for the beauties of the musical art, you are so blind
to the fine things of morality, so insensible to the charms of
virtue?

_He._--It must be because there is for the one a sense that I have
not got, a fibre that has not been given to me, a slack string that
you may play upon as much as you please, but it never vibrates. Or
it may be because I have always lived with those who were good
musicians but bad men, whence it has come to pass that my ear has
grown very fine, and my heart has grown very deaf. And then there
is something in race. The blood of my father and the blood of my
uncle is the same blood; my blood is the same as that of my father;
the paternal molecule was hard and obtuse, and that accursed first
molecule has assimilated to itself all the rest.

_I._--Do you love your child?

_He._--Do I love it, the little savage! I dote on it.

_I._--Will you not then seriously set to work to arrest in it the
consequences of the accursed paternal molecule?

_He._--I shall labour in vain, I fancy. If he is destined to grow
into a good man, I shall no