d for you when I raised that
storm of public opinion and public indignation. I would not have you
take satisfaction in the thought that I regret your escape. I do not. I
rejoice in it. To deal justice by death has this disadvantage that the
victim has no knowledge that justice has overtaken him. Had you died,
had you been torn limb from limb that night, I should now repine in the
thought of your eternal and untroubled slumber. Not in euthanasia, but
in torment of mind should the guilty atone. You see, I am not sure that
hell hereafter is a certainty, whilst I am quite sure that it can be a
certainty in this life; and I desire you to continue to live yet awhile
that you may taste something of its bitterness.

"You murdered Philippe de Vilmorin because you feared what you described
as his very dangerous gift of eloquence, I took an oath that day that
your evil deed should be fruitless; that I would render it so; that the
voice you had done murder to stifle should in spite of that ring like
a trumpet through the land. That was my conception of revenge. Do you
realize how I have been fulfilling it, how I shall continue to fulfil
it as occasion offers? In the speech with which I fired the people of
Rennes on the very morrow of that deed, did you not hear the voice of
Philippe de Vilmorin uttering the ideas that were his with a fire and a
passion greater than he could have commanded because Nemesis lent me
her inflaming aid? In the voice of Omnes Omnibus at Nantes my voice
again--demanding the petition that sounded the knell of your hopes of
coercing the Third Estate, did you not hear again the voice of Philippe
de Vilmorin? Did you not reflect that it was the mind of the man you had
murdered, resurrected in me his surviving friend, which made necessary
your futile attempt under arms last January, wherein your order, finally
beaten, was driven to seek sanctuary in the Cordelier Convent? And
that night when from the stage of the Feydau you were denounced to the
people, did you not hear yet again, in the voice of Scaramouche, the
voice of Philippe de Vilmorin, using that dangerous gift of eloquence
which you so foolishly imagined you could silence with a sword-thrust?
It is becoming a persecution--is it not?--this voice from the grave that
insists upon making itself heard, that will not rest until you have been
cast into the pit. You will be regretting by now that you did not kill
me too, as I invited you on that occasion. I can