hem beyond
the bed; he ripped his coat and kicked it across the floor. No! He would
not eat. He wanted to be alone. Alone with himself, alone with his
wrath, alone with his designs for revenge.

"The cowards! And I trusted them."

He could not understand his guilt. There was no guilt, only the
insatiable lust on the part of his enemies for vengeance. The execution
came first, then the trial. There was no accusation; he had been
condemned from the start. The public, at whose hands he had long
suffered, who reviled and oppressed him with equal vehemence, who had
elevated him to the topmost niche of glory, and as promptly crumbled the
column beneath his feet and allowed him to crash to the ground, now
gloated over their ruined and heartbroken victim with outrageous
jubilation. They were on destruction bent, and he the victim of their
stupid spite.

If he could not understand his culpability, neither could he apprehend
fully and vividly the meaning of his sentence. To be reprimanded by the
Commander-in-chief! Better to be found guilty by the court and inflicted
with the usual military discipline. His great sense of pride could not,
would not suffer him to be thus humiliated at the hands of him from whom
he had previously been rewarded with so many favors, and in whom he had
lodged his most complete esteem and veneration. He could not endure it,
that was all; and what was more he would not.

He decided to leave the city forever. Then the howl of contumely could
not pursue him; it would grow faint with the distance. He was no longer
Military Governor, and never would he reassume that thankless burden. He
would retire to private life far removed from the savage envy of these
aspiring charlatans. Unhappy memories and wretched degradation would
close his unhappy days and shroud his name with an unmerited and unjust
obloquy.

His wife had been correct in her prognostications. The court, like the
public mind, which it only feebly reflected, had been prejudiced against
him from the start. The disgust which he entertained of the French
Alliance was only intensified the more by the recent proceedings of
Congress, and perhaps he might listen more attentively now to her
persuasions to go over to the British side. He would be indemnified, of
course; but it was revenge he was seeking, on which account he would not
become an ordinary deserter. He had been accustomed to playing heroic
roles, and he would not become a mere villain now