blood of his brother
whose child was my betrothed! Mysterious avenger--weird and relentless
fate! How, when I deemed myself the farthest from her, had I been
sinking into her grasp! Mark, young man, there is a moral here that few
preachers can teach thee! Mark. Men rarely violate the individual rule
in comparison to their violation of general rules. It is in the latter
that we deceive by sophisms which seem truths. In the individual
instance it was easy for me to deem that I had committed no crime. I
had destroyed a man, noxious to the world; with the wealth by which
he afflicted society I had been the means of blessing many; in the
individual consequences mankind had really gained by my deed; the
general consequence I had overlooked till now, and now it flashed upon
me. The scales fell from my eyes, and I knew myself for what I was! All
my calculations were dashed to the ground at once, for what had been
all the good I had proposed to do--the good I had done--compared to the
anguish I now inflicted on your house? Was your father my only victim?
Madeline, have I not murdered her also? Lester, have I not shaken the
sands in his glass? You, too, have I not blasted the prime and glory
of your years? How incalculable--how measureless--how viewless the
consequences of one crime, even when we think we have weighed them all
with scales that would have turned with a hair's weight! Yes; before I
had felt no remorse. I felt it now. I had acknowledged no crime, and now
crime seemed the essence itself of my soul. The Theban's fate, which had
seemed to the men of old the most terrible of human destinies, was mine.
The crime--the discovery--the irremediable despair--hear me, as the
voice of a man who is on the brink of a world, the awful nature of which
Reason cannot pierce--hear me! when your heart tempts to some wandering
from the line allotted to the rest of men, and whispers 'This may be
crime in others, but is not so in thee'--tremble; cling fast, fast to
the path you are lured to leave. Remember me!

"But in this state of mind I was yet forced to play the hypocrite. Had
I been alone in the world--had Madeline and Lester not been to me what
they were, I might have avowed my deed and my motives--I might have
spoken out to the hearts of men--I might have poured forth the gloomy
tale of reasonings and of temptings, in which we lose sense, and become
the archfiend's tools! But while their eyes were on me; while their
lives and hear