"Tush!" said Julian; "their commonness, if indeed it be so, does not diminish their deadliness. Not to put the question on the religious ground at all, I fully agree with Carlyle that, on the mere consideration of expedience and physical fact, nothing can be more fatal, more calamitous than `to burn away in mad waste the divine aromas and celestial elements from our existence; to change our holy of holies into a place of riot; to make the soul itself hard, impious, barren.'" Hazlet, ashamed and bewildered, confused his present position with old reminiscences, and muttered some balderdash about Carlyle "not being sound." "Carlyle not sound?" said Julian; "good heavens! You can still retain the wretched babblements of your sectarianism while your courses are what they are!" He was inclined to drop the conversation in sheer disgust, but Hazlet's pride was now aroused, and he began to bluster about the impertinence of interference on Julian's part, and his right to do what he chose. "Certainly," said Julian, sternly, "the choice lies with yourself. Run, if you will, as a bird to the snare of the fowler, till a dart strike you through. But if you are dead and indifferent to your own miserable soul, think that in this sin you cannot sin alone; think that you are dragging down to the nethermost abyss others besides yourself. Remember the wretched victims of your infamous passions, and tremble while you desecrate and deface for ever God's image stamped on a fair human soul. Think of those whom your vileness dooms to a life of loathliness, a death of shame and anguish, perhaps an eternity of horrible despair. Learn something of the days they are forced to spend, that they may pander to the worst instincts of your degraded nature; days of squalor and drunkenness, disease and dirt; gin at morning, noon, and night; eating infection, horrible madness, and sudden death at the end. Can you ever hope for salvation and the light of God's presence, while the cry of the souls of which you have been _the murderer_--yes, do not disguise it, the _murderer_, the cruel, willing, pitiless murderer--is ringing upwards from the depths of hell?" "What do you mean by the murderer?" said Hazlet, with an attempt at misconception.