*****

In the matter for which he suffered, George could never be brought to acknowledge that he was at all in the wrong.  “It may be an error of judgment,” he said to the Venerable Chaplain of the gaol, “but it is no crime.  Were it Crime, I should feel Remorse.  Where there is no remorse, Crime cannot exist.  I am not sorry:  therefore, I am innocent.  Is the proposition a fair one?”

The excellent Doctor admitted that it was not to be contested.

“And wherefore, sir, should I have sorrow,” the Boy resumed, “for ridding the world of a sordid worm;* of a man whose very soul was dross, and who never had a feeling for the Truthful and the Beautiful?  When I stood before my uncle in the moonlight, in the gardens of the ancestral halls of the De Barnwells, I felt that it was the Nemesis come to overthrow him.  ‘Dog,’ I said to the trembling slave, ’tell me where thy Gold is.  Thou hast no use for it.  I can spend it in relieving the Poverty on which thou tramplest; in aiding Science, which thou knowest not; in uplifting Art, to which thou art blind.  Give Gold, and thou art free.’  But he spake not, and I slew him.”

“I would not have this doctrine vulgarly promulgated,” said the admirable chaplain, “for its general practice might chance to do harm.  Thou, my son, the Refined, the Gentle, the Loving and Beloved, the Poet and Sage, urged by what I cannot but think a grievous error, hast appeared as Avenger.  Think what would be the world’s condition, were men without any Yearning after the Ideal to attempt to reorganize Society, to redistribute Property, to avenge Wrong.”

“A rabble of pigmies scaling Heaven,” said the noble though misguided young Prisoner.  “Prometheus was a Giant, and he fell.”

“Yes, indeed, my brave youth!” the benevolent Dr. Fuzwig exclaimed, clasping the Prisoner’s marble and manacled hand; “and the Tragedy of To-morrow will teach the World that Homicide is not to be permitted even to the most amiable Genius, and that the lover of the Ideal and the Beautiful, as thou art, my son, must respect the Real likewise.”

“Look! here is supper!” cried Barnwell gayly.  “This is the Real, Doctor; let us respect it and fall to.”  He partook of the meal as joyously as if it had been one of his early festals; but the worthy chaplain could scarcely eat it for tears.

* This is a gross plagiarism:  the above sentiment is expressed much more eloquently in the ingenious romance of Eugene Aram:—­“The burning desires I have known—­the resplendent visions I have nursed—­the sublime aspirings that have lifted me so often from sense and clay:  these tell me, that whether for good or ill, I am the thing of an immortality and the creature of a God. . . .  I have destroyed a man noxious to the world! with the wealth by which he afflicted society, I have been the means of blessing many.”

CODLINGSBY.