n is an instinct more sacred than society, and more
imperious then laws.'

"The undisguised and bold manner of his discourse impressed while it
revolted me. I looked upon him as a study, and I combated, in order
to learn, him. He had been a soldier--he had seen the greatest part
of Europe--he possessed a strong shrewd sense--he was a villain--but
a villain bold--adroit--and not then thoroughly unredeemed. His
conversation created dark and perturbed reflections. What was that
state of society--was it not at war with its own elements--in which vice
prospered more than virtue? Knowledge was my dream, that dream I might
realize, not by patient suffering, but by active daring. I might wrest
from society, to which I owed nothing, the means to be wise and great.
Was it not better and nobler to do this, even at my life's hazard, than
lie down in a ditch and die the dog's death? Was it not better than such
a doom--ay better for mankind--that I should commit one bold wrong, and
by that wrong purchase the power of good? I asked myself that question.
It is a fearful question; it opens a labyrinth of reasonings, in which
the soul may walk and lose itself for ever.

"One day Houseman met me, accompanied by a stranger who had just
visited our town, for what purpose you know already. His name--supposed
name--was Clarke. Man, I am about to speak plainly of that stranger--his
character and his fate. And yet--yet you are his son! I would fain
soften the colouring; but I speak truth of myself, and I must not,
unless I would blacken my name yet deeper than it deserves, varnish
truth when I speak of others. Houseman joined, and presented to me
this person. From the first I felt a dislike creep through me at the
stranger, which indeed it was easy to account for. He was of a careless
and somewhat insolent manner. His countenance was impressed with the
lines and character of a thousand vices: you read in the brow and
eye the history of a sordid yet reckless life. His conversation was
repellent to me beyond expression. He uttered the meanest sentiments,
and he chuckled over them as the maxims of a superior sagacity; he
avowed himself a knave upon system, and upon the lowest scale. To
overreach, to deceive, to elude, to shuffle, to fawn, and to lie, were
the arts that he confessed to with so naked and cold a grossness, that
one perceived that in the long habits of debasement he was unconscious
of what was not debased. Houseman seemed to draw him