GUIDO.  He is indeed another man than he was in his first monologue, for he has thrown off the mask.  His tone is at first conciliatory, even entreating:  for his hearers are men of his own class, and he hopes to persuade them to one more intercession in his behalf.  But it changes to one of scorn and defiance, as the hopelessness of his case lays hold of him, and rises, at the end, to a climax of ferocity which is all but grand.

“Repentance! if he repent for twelve hours, will he die the less on the thirteenth?  He has broken the social law, and is about to pay for it.  What has he to repent of but that he has made a mistake?  Religion! who of them all believes in it?  Not the Pope himself; for religion enjoins mercy; it is meant to temper the harshness of the law:  and he destroys the life which the law has given over to him to save.  What man of them all shows by his acts that he believes; or would be treated otherwise than as a lunatic if he did?  Let those who will, halt between belief and unbelief.  It has not been in him to do so.  Give him the certainty of another world, and he would have lived for it.  Owning no such certainty, he has lived for this one; he has sought its pleasures and avoided its pains.  Only he has carried the thing too far.  The world has decreed limits to every man’s pleasure; it limits this for the good of all; and it has made unlawful the excess of pleasure which turns to someone else’s pain.  He has exceeded the lawful amount of pleasure, and he pays for it by an extra dose of pain.”

“There the matter ends.  But his judges want more—­a few edifying lies wherewith to show that he did not die impenitent, and stop the mouth of anyone who may hint, the day after the execution, that old men are too fond of putting younger ones out of the way.  They shall have his confession; but it must be the truth.”

“He killed his wife because he hated her; because, whether it were her fault or not, she was a stumbling-block in his path.  He had been outraged by her aversion, exasperated by her patience, maddened by her never putting herself in the wrong.  While her parents were with her, she resisted and clamoured, and then her presence could be endured; but they were left alone together, and then everything was changed.  Day by day, and all day, he was confronted by her automatic obedience, by her dumb despair.  She rose up and lay down—­she spoke or was silent at his bidding; neither a loosened hair, nor a crumple in the dress, giving token of resistance; he might have strangled her without her making a sign.  She eloped from him, yet he could not surprise her in the commission of a sin:  and he returned from his pursuit of her, ridiculous when he should have been triumphant.  He took his revenge at last.  And now that he might tell his story and find no one to controvert it—­how he came to claim his wife and child, and found no child, but the lover by the wife’s side; was attacked, defended himself, struck right and left, and thus did the deed—­she survives, by miracle, to confute him, to condemn him, and worst of all, to forgive him.”