g,--woe to both!

Nicot was a villain as a boy. In most criminals, however abandoned,
there are touches of humanity,--relics of virtue; and the true
delineator of mankind often incurs the taunt of bad hearts and dull
minds, for showing that even the worst alloy has some particles of gold,
and even the best that come stamped from the mint of Nature have some
adulteration of the dross. But there are exceptions, though few, to the
general rule,--exceptions, when the conscience lies utterly dead, and
when good or bad are things indifferent but as means to some selfish
end. So was it with the protege of the atheist. Envy and hate filled up
his whole being, and the consciousness of superior talent only made him
curse the more all who passed him in the sunlight with a fairer form or
happier fortunes. But, monster though he was, when his murderous fingers
griped the throat of his benefactor, Time, and that ferment of all evil
passions--the Reign of Blood--had made in the deep hell of his heart a
deeper still. Unable to exercise his calling (for even had he dared to
make his name prominent, revolutions are no season for painters; and no
man--no! not the richest and proudest magnate of the land, has so great
an interest in peace and order, has so high and essential a stake in the
well being of society, as the poet and the artist), his whole intellect,
ever restless and unguided, was left to ponder over the images of guilt
most congenial to it. He had no future but in this life; and how in this
life had the men of power around him, the great wrestlers for dominion,
thriven? All that was good, pure, unselfish,--whether among Royalists or
Republicans,--swept to the shambles, and the deathsmen left alone in the
pomp and purple of their victims! Nobler paupers than Jean Nicot would
despair; and Poverty would rise in its ghastly multitudes to cut the
throat of Wealth, and then gash itself limb by limb, if Patience, the
Angel of the Poor, sat not by its side, pointing with solemn finger to
the life to come! And now, as Nicot neared the house of the Dictator, he
began to meditate a reversal of his plans of the previous day: not
that he faltered in his resolution to denounce Glyndon, and Viola would
necessarily share his fate, as a companion and accomplice,--no, THERE
he was resolved! for he hated both (to say nothing of his old but
never-to-be-forgotten grudge against Zanoni). Viola had scorned him,
Glyndon had served, and the thought of