The biographer throws off that extraordinary remark without any perceptible disturbance to his serenity; for he follows it with a sentimental justification of Shelley’s conduct which has not a pang of conscience in it, but is silky and smooth and undulating and pious—­ a cake-walk with all the colored brethren at their best.  There may be people who can read that page and keep their temper, but it is doubtful.  Shelley’s life has the one indelible blot upon it, but is otherwise worshipfully noble and beautiful.  It even stands out indestructibly gracious and lovely from the ruck of these disastrous pages, in spite of the fact that they expose and establish his responsibility for his forsaken wife’s pitiful fate—­a responsibility which he himself tacitly admits in a letter to Eliza Westbrook, wherein he refers to his taking up with Mary Godwin as an act which Eliza “might excusably regard as the cause of her sister’s ruin.”