a thirst of pleasure.  But to-day, and out of this deed, I pluck both warning and riches—­both the power and a fresh resolve to be myself.  I become in all things a free actor in the world; I begin to see myself all changed, these hands the agents of good, this heart at peace.  Something comes over me out of the past; something of what I have dreamed on Sabbath evenings to the sound of the church organ, of what I forecast when I shed tears over noble books, or talked, an innocent child, with my mother.  There lies my life; I have wandered a few years, but now I see once more my city of destination.”

“You are to use this money on the Stock Exchange, I think?” remarked the visitor; “and there, if I mistake not, you have already lost some thousands?”

“Ah,” said Markheim, “but this time I have a sure thing.”

“This time, again, you will lose,” replied the visitor, quietly.

“Ah, but I keep back the half!” cried Markheim.

“That also you will lose,” said the other.

The sweat started upon Markheim’s brow.  “Well, then, what matter?” he exclaimed.  “Say it be lost, say I am plunged again in poverty, shall one part of me, and that the worse, continue until the end to override the better?  Evil and good run strong in me, haling me both ways.  I do not love the one thing, I love all.  I can conceive great deeds, renunciations, martyrdoms; and though I be fallen to such a crime as murder, pity is no stranger to my thoughts.  I pity the poor; who knows their trials better than myself?  I pity and help them; I prize love, I love honest laughter; there is no good thing nor true thing on earth but I love it from my heart.  And are my vices only to direct my life, and my virtues to lie without effect, like some passive lumber of the mind?  Not so; good, also, is a spring of acts.”

But the visitant raised his finger.  “For six-and-thirty years that you have been in this world,” said he, “through many changes of fortune and varieties of humor, I have watched you steadily fall.  Fifteen years ago you would have started at a theft.  Three years back you would have blenched at the name of murder.  Is there any crime, is there any cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil?—­five years from now I shall detect you in the fact!  Downward, downward, lies your way; nor can anything but death avail to stop you.”

“It is true,” Markheim said, huskily, “I have in some degree complied with evil.  But it is so with all:  the very saints, in the mere exercise of living, grow less dainty, and take on the tone of their surroundings.”

“I will propound to you one simple question,” said the other; “and as you answer, I shall read to you your moral horoscope.  You have grown in many things more lax; possibly you do right to be so; and at any account, it is the same with all men.  But granting that, are you in any one particular, however trifling, more difficult to please with your own conduct, or do you go in all things with a looser rein?”