nalysis of
the means; and if I remember rightly, he whines like a priest at the
motives,--for see you not what was really the cause of this spreading
pestilence? It was the Saturnalia of the Weak,--a burst of mocking
license against the Strong; it was more,--it was the innate force of the
individual waging war against the many."

"I do not understand you."

"No? In that age, husbands were indeed lords of the household; they
married mere children for their lands; they neglected and betrayed them;
they were inexorable if the wife committed the faults set before her for
example. Suddenly the wife found herself armed against her tyrant. His
life was in her hands. So the weak had no mercy on the strong. But man,
too, was then, even more than now, a lonely wrestler in a crowded arena.
Brute force alone gave him distinction in courts; wealth alone brought
him justice in the halls, or gave him safety in his home. Suddenly the
frail puny lean saw that he could reach the mortal part of his giant
foe. The noiseless sling was in his hand,--it smote Goliath from afar.
Suddenly the poor man, ground to the dust, spat upon by contempt, saw
through the crowd of richer kinsmen, who shunned and bade him rot; saw
those whose death made him heir to lordship and gold and palaces and
power and esteem. As a worm through a wardrobe, that man ate through
velvet and ermine, and gnawed out the hearts that beat in his way. No.
A great intellect can comprehend these criminals, and account for
the crime. It is a mighty thing to feel in one's self that one is an
army,--more than an army! What thousands and millions of men, with
trumpet and banner, and under the sanction of glory, strive to
do,--destroy a foe,--that, with little more than an effort of the
will,--with a drop, a grain, for all his arsenal,--one man can do!"

There was a horrible enthusiasm about this reasoning devil as he spoke
thus; his crest rose, his breast expanded. That animation which a noble
thought gives to generous hearts kindled in the face of the apologist
for the darkest and basest of human crimes. Lucretia shuddered; but her
gloomy imagination was spelled; there was an interest mingled with her
terror.

"Hush! you appall me," she said at last, timidly. "But, happily, this
fearful art exists no more to tempt and destroy?"

"As a more philosophical discovery, it might be amusing to a chemist to
learn exactly what were the compounds of those ancient poisons," said
Dalibar