heart.

"No," I mused, "I did not do that. These things are but an absurd
dream."

I recalled the time when I was ignorant of life, when I was taking my
first steps in experience. I remembered an old beggar who used to sit
on a stone bench before the farm gate, to whom I was sometimes sent with
the remains of our morning meal. Holding out his feeble, wrinkled hands
he would bless me as he smiled upon me. I felt the morning wind blowing
on my brow and a freshness as of the rose descending from heaven into
my soul. Then I opened my eyes and, by the light of the lamp, saw the
reality before me.

"And you do not believe yourself guilty?" I demanded, with horror. "O
novice of yesterday, how corrupt art thou today! Because you weep, you
fondly imagine yourself innocent? What you consider the evidence of your
conscience is only remorse; and what murderer does not experience it? If
your virtue cries out, is it not because it feels the approach of death?
O wretch! those far-off voices that you hear groaning in your heart, do
you think they are sobs? They are perhaps only the cry of the sea-mew,
that funereal bird of the tempest, whose presence portends shipwreck.
Who has ever told the story of the childhood of those who have died
stained with human blood? They, also, have been good in their day; they
sometimes bury their faces in their hands and think of those happy
days. You do evil, and you repent? Nero did the same when he killed his
mother. Who has told you that tears can wash away the stains of guilt?

"And even if it were true that a part of your soul is not devoted to
evil forever, what will you do with the other part that is not yours?
You will touch with your left hand the wounds that you inflict with
your right; you will make a shroud of your virtue in which to bury your
crimes; you will strike, and like Brutus you will engrave on your sword
the prattle of Plato! Into the heart of the being who opens her arms
to you, you will plunge that blood-stained but repentant arm; you will
follow to the cemetery the victim of your passion, and you will plant on
her grave the sterile flower of your pity. You will say to those who see
you 'What could you expect? I have learned how to kill, and observe that
I already, weep; learn that God made me better than you see me.' You
will speak of your youth, and you will persuade yourself that heaven
ought to pardon you, that your misfortunes are involuntary, and you will
implore sleep