his
circumstance, and in the night, Marius, taking advantage of the loose
charge kept over them, and by means partly of a large bribe, had
contrived that Cornelius, as the really innocent person, should be
dismissed in safety on his way, to procure, as Marius explained, the
proper means of defence for himself, when the time of trial came.

And in the morning Cornelius in fact set forth alone, from their
miserable place of detention. Marius believed that Cornelius was to be
the husband of Cecilia; and that, perhaps strangely, had but added to
the desire to get him away safely.--We wait for the great crisis which
[213] is to try what is in us: we can hardly bear the pressure of our
hearts, as we think of it: the lonely wrestler, or victim, which
imagination foreshadows to us, can hardly be one's self; it seems an
outrage of our destiny that we should be led along so gently and
imperceptibly, to so terrible a leaping-place in the dark, for more
perhaps than life or death. At last, the great act, the critical
moment itself comes, easily, almost unconsciously. Another motion of
the clock, and our fatal line--the "great climacteric point"--has been
passed, which changes ourselves or our lives. In one quarter of an
hour, under a sudden, uncontrollable impulse, hardly weighing what he
did, almost as a matter of course and as lightly as one hires a bed for
one's night's rest on a journey, Marius had taken upon himself all the
heavy risk of the position in which Cornelius had then been--the long
and wearisome delays of judgment, which were possible; the danger and
wretchedness of a long journey in this manner; possibly the danger of
death. He had delivered his brother, after the manner he had sometimes
vaguely anticipated as a kind of distinction in his destiny; though
indeed always with wistful calculation as to what it might cost him:
and in the first moment after the thing was actually done, he felt only
satisfaction at his courage, at the discovery of his possession of
"nerve."

Yet he was, as we know, no hero, no heroic [214] martyr--had indeed no
right to be; and when he had seen Cornelius depart, on his blithe and
hopeful way, as he believed, to become the husband of Cecilia;
actually, as it had happened, without a word of farewell, supposing
Marius was almost immediately afterwards to follow (Marius indeed
having avoided the moment of leave-taking with its possible call for an
explanation of the circumstances), the