“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 can not 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 more 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 can not look upon Kerguelen’s guilt as of that brutal and felonious nature which calls for such a punishment as this--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 tears and honors, while the avenger is crushed, living, out of the very shape of humanity by the hands of the common hangman.”