"Yes! I had a hope to live for--mangled as I was in body, and racked in mind--a hope that was a faith--and bittersweet it was in imagined foretaste of fruition--the hope and the faith of revenge. They said he would not aim at my life. But what was that to me who thirsted for his blood? Was he to escape death, because he dared not wound bone, or flesh, or muscle of mine, seeing that the assassin had already stabbed my soul? Satisfaction! I tell you that I was for revenge. Not that his blood could wipe out the stain with which my name was imbrued, but let it be mixed with the mould; and he who invaded my marriage-bed--and hallowed was it by every generous passion that ever breathed upon woman's breast--let him fall down in convulsions, and vomit out his heart's blood, at once in expiation of his guilt, and in retribution dealt out to him by the hand of him whom he had degraded in the eyes of the whole world beneath the condition even of a felon, and delivered over in my misery to contempt and scorn. I found him out;--there he was before me--in all that beauty by women so beloved--graceful as Apollo; and with a haughty air, as if proud of an achievement that adorned his name, he saluted me--_her husband_--on the field,--and let the wind play with his raven tresses--his curled love-locks--and then presented himself to my aim in an attitude a statuary would have admired. I shot him through the heart." The good old man heard the dreadful words with a shudder--yet they had come to his ears not unexpectedly, for the speaker's aspect had gradually been growing black with wrath, long before he ended in an avowal of murder. Nor, on ceasing his wild words and distracted demeanour, did it seem that his heart was touched with any remorse. His eyes retained their savage glare--his teeth were clenched--and he feasted on his crime. "Nothing but a full faith in Divine Revelation," solemnly said his aged friend, "can subdue the evil passions of our nature, or enable conscience itself to see and repent of sin. Your wrongs were indeed great--but without a change wrought in all your spirit, alas! my son! you cannot hope to see the kingdom of heaven."