“I understand you to say, sir, that you thought the wretched man of whom we spoke was bound, under the extremity in which he stood, to die with a falsehood in his mouth. Can a gentleman ever be justified in saying the thing that is not? Much more, can it be his bounden duty to do so?” “Unquestionably, as a rule of general conduct, he can not. Truth is the soul of honor; and without truth, honor can not exist. But this is a most intricate and tangled question. It never can arise without presupposing the commission of one guilty act--one act which no good or truly moral man would commit at all. It is, therefore, scarcely worth our while to examine it. But I do say, on my deliberate and grave opinion, that if a woman, previously innocent and pure, have sacrificed her honor to a man, that man is bound to sacrifice everything--his life without a question, and I think his truth also--in order to preserve her character, so far as he can, unscathed. But we will speak no more of this; it is an odious subject, and one of which I trust you, Raoul, will never have the sad occasion to consider.” “Oh, never, father, never I!” cried the ingenuous boy; “I must first lose my senses, and become a madman.” “All men are madmen, Raoul,” said the churchman--who stood in the relation of maternal uncle to the youth--“who suffer their passions to have the mastery of them. You must learn, therefore, to be their tyrant; for if you be not, be well assured that they will be yours--and merciless tyrants they are to the wretches who become their subjects.” “I will remember what you say, sir,” answered the boy, “and, indeed, I am not like to forget it, for altogether this is the saddest day I ever have passed; and this is the most horrible and appalling story that I have ever heard told. It was but just that the lord of Kerguelen should die, for he did a murder; and since the law punishes that in a peasant, it must do so likewise with a noble. But to break him upon the wheel!--it is atrocious! I should have thought all the nobles of the land would have applied to the king to spare him that horror.” “Many of them did apply, Raoul; but the king, or his ministers in his name, made answer that during the regency the count Horn was broken on the wheel for murder, and therefore that to behead the lord of Kerguelen for the same offence, would be to admit that the count was wrongfully condemned.” “Out on it! out on it! what sophistry! Count Horn murdered a banker, like a common thief, for his gold; and this unhappy lord hath done the deed for which he must suffer in a mistaken sense of honor, and with all tenderness compatible with such a deed. There is nothing similar or parallel in the two cases; and if there were, what signifies it now to Count Horn, whether he were condemned rightfully or not? Are these men heathen, that they would offer a victim to the offended manes of the dead? But is there no hope, my father, that his sentence may be commuted?”