"Ha! ha! ha!" hideously retorted the intruder; "Discernment, said you? Man's discernment is a mighty thing; by it he reads the past, the present, and the future; what can withstand his mighty vision? He can descry danger at a distance, and bring happiness within his grasp; he can tell the objects of his own creation, and his Creator's first beginning; he can read the starry alphabet in yonder heavens, and fathom the great deep; he can laugh at the instinct of grovelling creation, and thunder the dogmas of reason in the teeth of revelation itself! Discernment, indeed! ha! ha! ha! why, man is not half so well off as the brutes. What is their instinct but God's ever present and supporting hand; but man--he has neither perfect reason nor instinct! He has the conscience of an angel, and the impulses of a devil; and reason sits between them, for an umpire, with a fool's cap upon her head! Impulse bribes reason, and reason laughs at conscience. Impulse leads downward, like the power of gravity; and conscience struggles upward like the nightmare: but reason and discernment will traffic and bargain with impulse for one moment, and blind or cheat conscience the next! Turn mankind loose with all their reason without providence, and they will butt each other's foolish brains out! Bribed conscience makes hypocrites,--frightened conscience makes fanatics,--but reason-drilled conscience makes incarnate devils!" "But," said Chevillere, involuntarily interested by this wild rhapsody, "a tender, conscience-instructed reason, and christianized impulses, make an honest and a discerning man, too." "Instructed reason! who teaches man's reason, but the inward devils of his impulses? A few good parents may point upward, periodically, but the impulses pull down! down! down! for ever! no intermission. If they would let go, I myself could plunge into the sea; but the deeper we plunge, the harder they pull! The farther we sink, the heavier they become. Oh! man! of what a cursed race art thou! Think you the inhabitants of the moon are likewise under the ban of God's displeasure?" "I indulge in no such impracticable dreams," said Chevillere. "No! no! _you_ dream of paradise; but remember what I now tell you, your paradise will not be without its Eve, and its serpent too!" "To whom do you allude?" "To the lady of whom you were thinking but now." "You know not what you say," said Chevillere. "Do I not? Perhaps you would have me speak more plainly! Perhaps you could screw up your resolution to the point, that I might amputate your hopes one by one, as a poor fellow sees the surgeon carrying off his bloody limbs; nay, I could do it!" "Why, sir, you never saw me till within the hour." "Have I not? perhaps not; I would to heaven I could say as much about the lady." "To what lady do you so often allude?" "To the lady with the _black mantle_." "Hold, she is all innocence and purity."