Pale and
illegible became the fine-sounding paragraphs on which I had secretly
prided myself. A few passages, however, survived here and there at
long intervals. They were those on which I had labored least, and had
almost forgotten; or those, as I observed in one or two instances,
which had been selected for special reprobation in the weekly
journals. Something stood to my credit, and the worst charge, of
willfully and intentionally setting down what I did not believe to be
true, was not alleged against me. Ignorance, prejudice, carelessness;
sins of infirmity,--culpable indeed, but not culpable in the last
degree; the water in the ink, the commonplaces, the ineffectual
sentiments--these, to my unspeakable comfort, I perceived were my
heaviest crimes. Had I been accused of absolute worthlessness, I
should have pleaded guilty in the state of humiliation to which I was
reduced; but things were better than they might have been. I was
flattering myself that when it came to the wages question, the balance
would be in my favor: so many years of labor--such and such cheques
received from my publisher. Here at least I held myself safe, and I
was in good hope that I might scrape through.

The examiner was good-natured in his manner. A reviewer who had been
listening for my condemnation was beginning to look disgusted, when
suddenly one of the walls of the court became transparent, and there
appeared an interminable vista of creatures--creatures of all kinds
from land and water, reaching away into the extreme distance. They
were those which in the course of my life I had devoured, either in
part or whole, to sustain my unconscionable carcass. There they stood
in lines with solemn and reproachful faces,--oxen and calves, sheep
and lambs, deer, hares, rabbits, turkeys, ducks, chickens, pheasants,
grouse, and partridges, down to the larks and sparrows and blackbirds
which I had shot when a boy and made into puddings. Every one of them
had come up to bear witness against their murderer; out of sea and
river had come the trout and salmon, the soles and turbots, the ling
and cod, the whiting and mackerel, the smelts and whitebait, the
oysters, the crabs, the lobsters, the shrimps. They seemed literally
to be in millions, and I had eaten them all. I talked of wages. These
had been my wages. At this enormous cost had my existence been
maintained. A stag spoke for the rest: "We all," he said, "were
sacrificed to keep this cormorant in