m, which seemed to renew my vigour with every sentence,
and which has indeed made the first of these passages accepted for a
model of spirited narrative description, and the second for a
masterpiece of wickedness and wit. What result, then, can be drawn from
two experiences so contrary as yours and mine? For my part, I lay it
down as a principle, no author can be moral in a merely human sense.
And, to pursue the argument higher, how can you, for one instant,
suppose the existence of free-will in puppets situated as we are in the
thick of a novel which we do not even understand? And how, without
free-will upon our parts, can you justify blame or approval on that of
the author? We are in his hands; by a stroke of the pen, to speak
reverently, he made us what we are; by a stroke of the pen he can
utterly undo and transmute what he has made. In the very next chapter,
my dear General, you may be shown up for an impostor, or I be stricken
down in the tears of penitence and hurried into the retirement of a
monastery!"

"You use an argument old as mankind, and difficult of answer," said the
Priest. "I cannot justify the free-will of which I am usually conscious;
nor will I ever seek to deny that this consciousness is interrupted.
Sometimes events mount upon me with such swiftness and pressure that my
choice is overwhelmed, and even to myself I seem to obey a will external
to my own; and again I am sometimes so paralysed and impotent between
alternatives that I am tempted to imagine a hesitation on the part of my
author. But I contend, upon the other hand, for a limited free-will in
the sphere of consciousness; and as it is in and by my consciousness
that I exist to myself, I will not go on to inquire whether that
free-will is valid as against the author, the newspaper, or even the
readers of the story. And I contend, further, for a sort of empire or
independence of our own characters when once created, which the author
cannot or at least does not choose to violate. Hence Lelio was conceived
upright, honest, courageous, and headlong; to that first idea all his
acts and speeches must of necessity continue to answer; and the same,
though with such different defects and qualities, applies to you, Count
Spada, and to myself. We must act up to our characters; it is these
characters that the author loves or despises; it is on account of them
that we must suffer or triumph, whether in this work or in a sequel.
Such is my belief."

"I