"If even you could meet death with a man's courage, I would not have you ascend the scaffold; for you it would be merely the arena in which, like many others, you would make a disgusting display of hardened ferocity; or, dying as you have lived, exhale your last sigh with an impious scoff or profane blasphemy. That must not be permitted. It is a bad example to set before a gazing crowd the spectacle of a condemned being making sport of the instrument of death, swaggering before the executioner, and yielding with an obscene jest the divine spark infused into man by the breath of a creating God. To punish the body is easily done; to save the soul is the great thing to be laboured for and desired. 'All sin may be forgiven,' said our blessed Saviour, but from the tribunal to the scaffold the passage is too short,--time and opportunity are required to repent and make atonement; this leisure you shall have. May God grant that you turn it to the right purpose!" The Schoolmaster remained utterly bewildered; for the first time in his life a vague and confused dread of something more horrible far than death itself crossed his guilty mind,--he trembled before the suggestions of his own imagination. Rodolph went on: "Anselm Duresnel, I will not sentence you to the galleys, neither shall you die--" "Then do you intend sending me to hell? or what are you going to do with me?" "Listen!" said Rodolph, rising from his seat with an air of menacing authority. "You have wickedly abused the great bodily strength bestowed upon you,--I will paralyse that strength; the strongest have trembled before you,--I will make you henceforward shrink in the presence of the weakest of beings. Assassin! murderer! you have plunged God's creatures into eternal night; your darkness shall commence even in this life. Now--this very hour--your punishment shall be proportioned to your crimes. But," added Rodolph, with an accent of mournful pity, "the terrible judgment I am about to pronounce will, at least, leave the future open to your efforts for pardon and for peace. I should be guilty as you are were I, in punishing you, to seek only for vengeance, just as is my right to demand it; far from being unrelenting as death, your sentence shall bring forth good fruits for hereafter; far from destroying your soul, it shall help you to seek its salvation. If, to prevent you from further violating the commandments of your Maker, I for ever deprive you of the beauties of this outer world, if I plunge you into impenetrable darkness, with no other companion than the remembrance of your crimes, it is that you may incessantly contemplate their enormity. Yes, separated for ever from this external world, your thoughts must needs revert to yourself, and your vision dwell internally upon the bygone scenes of your ill-spent life; and I am not without hope that such a mental and constantly presented picture will send the blush of shame even upon your hardened features, that your soul, deadened as