ich he suggests to the wife of his oldest and most intimate friend
that she is not happy with her husband. But this time M. Rod had got the
forge working, and the bellows dead on the charcoal. The development of
the situation has something of that twist or boomerang effect which we
have noticed in _Michel Teissier_. Dr. Morgex begins by defending
murderers; he does not end, but starts the end, by becoming a murderer
himself, though one with far more "extenuating circumstances" than those
so often allowed in French courts. His friend--who is an advocate of no
mean powers but loose life and dangerously full habit--has, when the
doctor warns him against apoplexy, half scoffed, but also begged him, if
a seizure should take place, to afford him a chance of euthanasia
instead of lingering misery. The actual situation, though with stages
and variations which are well handled, arises; the doctor, who has long
since been frantically in love with the wife, succumbs to the
temptation--which has been aggravated by the old request, by the
sufferings of the victim, and by the urgent supplications of the family,
that he _shall_ give morphia to relieve these sufferings. He gives
it--but in a dose which he knows to be lethal.

After a time, and having gone through no little mental agony, he marries
the widow, who is in every sense perfectly innocent; and a brief period
of happiness follows. But his own remorse continues; the well-meaning
chatter of a lady, who has done much to bring about the marriage, and to
whom Morgex had unwarily mentioned "obstacles," awakes the wife's
suspicion, and, literally, "the murder is out." Morgex confesses, first
to a lawyer friend, who, to his intense surprise, pronounces him legally
guilty, of course, but morally excusable; then to a priest, who takes
almost exactly the opposite point of view, and admitting that the legal
crime may be excusable, declares the moral guilt not lessened; while he
points out that while the wages of iniquity are retained, no pardon can
be deserved or expected. And so the pair part. Morgex gives himself up
to the hardest and least profitable practitioner-work. Of what the wife
does we hear nothing. She has been perfectly guiltless throughout; she
has loved her second husband without knowing his crime, and after
knowing it; and so she is "La Sacrifiee." But this (as some would call
it) sentimental appeal is not the real appeal of the book, though it is
delicately led up to from