more barbarous times, when the passions were permitted to rage unfettered, the deed aided the thought. And if perchance in the family circle any one happened to be in the other's way, poison and the dagger simply claimed their victims. History and literature abound with murders of this kind, and that great student of mankind, Shakspeare, for example, knows hardly any other tragic motive besides murder of kin. To-day people have grown calmer, and if a struggle for existence happens nowadays to creep into the holy family circle, one is content to wish the obnoxious one, in a dark hour, six feet under the earth. This wish is the ancient murder restrained by modern civilisation. There, my boy, now I have given you a long discourse, and if, meanwhile, your blood has cooled down, my object is fulfilled." "So you absolutely condemn her?" Robert anxiously stammered forth. "My dear boy, I condemn no one," replied the old man, with a serious smile, "least of all such an honest nature as Olga was. The fact alone that she had the courage to confess to herself and to him whom she loved most, what she was guilty of, raises her above the others. For this wish, of which we are speaking, as it is the most hideous spiritual sin of which the human soul can become guilty, so it is also the most secret. No friend confides it to a friend, no husband whispers it in the darkness of the nocturnal couch to his wife, no penitent dares to confess it to his spiritual adviser, even the prayer that struggles upwards to heaven out of the depths of contrition, passes it over in hypocritical silence. God may have knowledge of everything, only not of this baseness. Let this perish in shame and silence, as it was brought forth in night and horror. And more than this! This wish is the only crime for which there is commonly no expiation, no punishment either before the tribunal of the outer world, or one's own conscience. This is a case in which even that merciless judge which a man carries about within him proves amenable to bribery. Thousands of people who have once been guilty of this baseness go on living happily, put on flesh in perfect peace of soul, and rejoice in the fulfilment of their wish, which they themselves forget as speedily as possible, as soon as ever it is fulfilled. It becomes absorbed into the soul, just as a germ of disease becomes absorbed as soon as the stimulant of disease has disappeared. It is lost without any trace, it is absolutely blotted out by an abundance of social and personal virtues. I on no account say that I condemn these people. What would become of the world if every one who on looking into the glass discovered a wart on his face, were to cut his throat in despair at the fact? The people I have described to you are the healthy every-day people, whose so-called good constitution can stand a blow, and who care not a rap if now and again something objectionable sticks to them. Olga was moulded of finer clay,