ent the good God laid upon him--"

"The world would have pronounced him a spiritless, dishonored slave,
father," said the count, answering the ecclesiastic's speech before it
was yet finished, "and gentlemen would have refused him the hand of
fellowship."

"Was he justified then, my father?" asked the boy eagerly, who had
been listening with eager attention to every word that had yet been
spoken. "Do you think, then, that he was in the right; that he could
not do otherwise than to slay her? I can understand that he was bound
to kill the man who had basely wronged his honor--but a woman!--a
woman whom he had once loved too!--that seems to me most horrible; and
the mode, by a slow poison! living with her while it took effect!
eating at the same board with her! sleeping by her side! that seems
even more than horrible, it was cowardly!"

"God forbid, my son," replied the elder nobleman, "that I should say
any man was justified who had murdered another in cold blood;
especially, as you have said, a woman, and by a method so terrible as
poison. I only mean exactly what I said, that he was tried very
fearfully, and that under such trial the best and wisest of us here
below cannot say how he would act himself. Moreover, it would seem
that mistaken as he was perhaps in the course which he seems to have
imagined that honor demanded at his hands, he was much mistaken in the
mode which he took of accomplishing his scheme of vengeance. It was
made very evident upon his trial that he did nothing, even to that
wretched traitress, in rage or revenge, but all as he thought in
honor. He chose a drug which consumed her by a mild and gradual decay,
without suffering or spasm; he gave her time for repentance, nay, it
is clearly proved that he convinced her of her sin, reconciled her to
the part he had taken in her death, and exchanged forgiveness with her
before she passed away. I do not think myself that to commit a crime
himself can clear one from dishonor cast upon him by another's act,
but at the same time I cannot look upon Kerguelen's guilt as of that
brutal and felonious nature which calls for such a punishment as
his--to be broken alive on the wheel, like a hired stabber--much less
can I assent to the stigma which is attached to him on all sides,
while that base, low-lived, treacherous, cogging miscreant, who fell
too honorably by his honorable sword, meets pity--God defend us from
such justice and sympathy!--and is entombed with