The
more he saw, the more he doubted. He watched men narrowly, and
saw how, beneath the surface, courage was often rashness; and
prudence, cowardice; generosity, a clever piece of calculation;
justice, a wrong; delicacy, pusillanimity; honesty, a _modus
vivendi_; and by some strange dispensation of fate, he must see
that those who at heart were really honest, scrupulous, just,
generous, prudent, or brave were held cheaply by their
fellow-men.
"What a cold-blooded jest!" said he to himself. "It was not
devised by a God."
From that time forth he renounced a better world, and never
uncovered himself when a Name was pronounced, and for him the
carven saints in the churches became works of art. He understood
the mechanism of society too well to clash wantonly with its
prejudices; for, after all, he was not as powerful as the
executioner, but he evaded social laws with the wit and grace so
well rendered in the scene with M. Dimanche. He was, in fact,
Moliere's Don Juan, Goethe's Faust, Byron's Manfred, Mathurin's
Melmoth--great allegorical figures drawn by the greatest men of
genius in Europe, to which Mozart's harmonies, perhaps, do no
more justice than Rossini's lyre. Terrible allegorical figures
that shall endure as long as the principle of evil existing in
the heart of man shall produce a few copies from century to
century.
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