who did
not want the tyrant's faculty of penetration, probably saw through all
his manoeuvres, and the avarice which he cloaked beneath his charity.
But it was noticeable that Robespierre frequently seemed to wink
at--nay, partially to encourage--such vice in men whom he meant
hereafter to destroy, as would tend to lower them in the public
estimation, and to contrast with his own austere and unassailable
integrity and PURISM. And, doubtless, he often grimly smiled in his
sleeve at the sumptuous mansion and the griping covetousness of the
worthy Citizen C--.

To this personage, then, Glyndon musingly bent his way. It was true, as
he had darkly said to Viola, that in proportion as he had resisted the
spectre, its terrors had lost their influence. The time had come at
last, when, seeing crime and vice in all their hideousness, and in so
vast a theatre, he had found that in vice and crime there are deadlier
horrors than in the eyes of a phantom-fear. His native nobleness began
to return to him. As he passed the streets, he revolved in his mind
projects of future repentance and reformation. He even meditated, as a
just return for Fillide's devotion, the sacrifice of all the reasonings
of his birth and education. He would repair whatever errors he had
committed against her, by the self-immolation of marriage with one
little congenial with himself. He who had once revolted from marriage
with the noble and gentle Viola!--he had learned in that world of wrong
to know that right is right, and that Heaven did not make the one sex to
be the victim of the other. The young visions of the Beautiful and the
Good rose once more before him; and along the dark ocean of his mind lay
the smile of reawakening virtue, as a path of moonlight. Never, perhaps,
had the condition of his soul been so elevated and unselfish.

In the meanwhile Jean Nicot, equally absorbed in dreams of the future,
and already in his own mind laying out to the best advantage the gold of
the friend he was about to betray, took his way to the house honoured
by the residence of Robespierre. He had no intention to comply with the
relenting prayer of Fillide, that the life of Glyndon should be spared.
He thought with Barrere, "Il n'y a que les morts qui ne revient pas."
In all men who have devoted themselves to any study, or any art, with
sufficient pains to attain a certain degree of excellence, there must be
a fund of energy immeasurably above that of the ordinary herd.