f fellows who have repented their pledge, and have tried to swim
back to the bank they have blotted out. For though every man of us may
be a hero for one fatal minute, very few remain so after a day's march
even: and who wonders that Madam Fate is indignant, and wears the
features of the terrible Universal Fate to him? Fail before her, either
in heart or in act, and lo, how the alluring loves in her visage wither
and sicken to what it is modelled on! Be your Rubicon big or small,
clear or foul, it is the same: you shall not return. On--or to
Acheron!--I subscribe to that saying of The Pilgrim's Scrip:

"The danger of a little knowledge of things is disputable: but beware
the little knowledge of one's self!"

Richard Feverel was now crossing the River of his Ordeal. Already the
mists were stealing over the land he had left: his life was cut in
two, and he breathed but the air that met his nostrils. His father, his
father's love, his boyhood and ambition, were shadowy. His poetic dreams
had taken a living attainable shape. He had a distincter impression of
the Autumnal Berry and her household than of anything at Raynham. And
yet the young man loved his father, loved his home: and I daresay Caesar
loved Rome: but whether he did or no, Caesar when he killed the Republic
was quite bald, and the hero we are dealing with is scarce beginning to
feel his despotic moustache. Did he know what he was made of? Doubtless,
nothing at all. But honest passion has an instinct that can be safer
than conscious wisdom. He was an arrow drawn to the head, flying from
the bow. His audacious mendacities and subterfuges did not strike him
as in any way criminal; for he was perfectly sure that the winning and
securing of Lucy would in the end be boisterously approved of, and in
that case, were not the means justified? Not that he took trouble to
argue thus, as older heroes and self-convicting villains are in the
habit of doing; to deduce a clear conscience. Conscience and Lucy went
together.

It was a soft fair day. The Rubicon sparkled in the morning sun. One of
those days when London embraces the prospect of summer, and troops forth
all its babies. The pavement, the squares, the parks, were early alive
with the cries of young Britain. Violet and primrose girls, and organ
boys with military monkeys, and systematic bands very determined in
tone if not in tune, filled the atmosphere, and crowned the blazing
procession of omnibuses, freighted wit