You both belong to the same family,
but yours is the elder branch; and the elder branch may occupy
high places in peace and live happily and without cares. Want or
anger may drive your brother the convict to take a man's life;
you have taken more, you have taken the joy out of a man's life,
you have killed all that was best in his life--his dearest
beliefs. The murderer simply lay in wait for his victim, and
killed him reluctantly, and in fear of the scaffold; but _you_
. . . ! You heaped up every sin that weakness can commit against
strength that suspected no evil; you tamed a passive victim, the
better to gnaw his heart out; you lured him with caresses; you
left nothing undone that could set him dreaming, imagining,
longing for the bliss of love. You asked innumerable sacrifices
of him, only to refuse to make any in return. He should see the
light indeed before you put out his eyes! It is wonderful how
you found the heart to do it! Such villainies demand a display
of resource quite above the comprehension of those bourgeoises
whom you laugh at and despise. They can give and forgive; they
know how to love and suffer. The grandeur of their devotion
dwarfs us. Rising higher in the social scale, one finds just as
much mud as at the lower end; but with this difference, at the
upper end it is hard and gilded over.
"Yes, to find baseness in perfection, you must look for a noble
bringing up, a great name, a fair woman, a duchess. You cannot
fall lower than the lowest unless you are set high above the rest
of the world.
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