“Three days ago!” repeated Turnbull.  “When and why did this illumination occur?”

“I knew I was not quite right,” answered Evan, “the moment I saw the round eyes of that old man in the cell.”

“Old man in the cell!” repeated his wondering companion.  “Do you mean the poor old idiot who likes spikes to stick out?”

“Yes,” said MacIan, after a slight pause, “I mean the poor old idiot who likes spikes to stick out.  When I saw his eyes and heard his old croaking accent, I knew that it would not really have been right to kill you.  It would have been a venial sin.”

“I am much obliged,” said Turnbull, gruffly.

“You must give me time,” said MacIan, quite patiently, “for I am trying to tell the whole truth.  I am trying to tell more of it than I know.”

“So you see I confess”—­he went on with laborious distinctness—­ “I confess that all the people who called our duel mad were right in a way.  I would confess it to old Cumberland Vane and his eye-glass.  I would confess it even to that old ass in brown flannel who talked to us about Love.  Yes, they are right in a way.  I am a little mad.”

He stopped and wiped his brow as if he were literally doing heavy labour.  Then he went on: 

“I am a little mad; but, after all, it is only a little madness.  When hundreds of high-minded men had fought duesl about a jostle with the elbow or the ace of spades, the whole world need not have gone wild over my one little wildness.  Plenty of other people have killed themselves between then and now.  But all England has gone into captivity in order to take us captive.  All England has turned into a lunatic asylum in order to prove us lunatics.  Compared with the general public, I might positively be called sane.”

He stopped again, and went on with the same air of travailing with the truth: 

“When I saw that, I saw everything; I saw the Church and the world.  The Church in its earthly action has really touched morbid things—­tortures and bleeding visions and blasts of extermination.  The Church has had her madnesses, and I am one of them.  I am the massacre of St. Bartholomew.  I am the Inquisition of Spain.  I do not say that we have never gone mad, but I say that we are fit to act as keepers to our enemies.  Massacre is wicked even with a provocation, as in the Bartholomew.  But your modern Nietzsche will tell you that massacre would be glorious without a provocation.  Torture should be violently stopped, though the Church is doing it.  But your modern Tolstoy will tell you that it ought not to be violently stopped whoever is doing it.  In the long run, which is most mad—­the Church or the world?  Which is madder, the Spanish priest who permitted tyranny, or the Prussian sophist who admired it?  Which is madder, the Russian priest who discourages righteous rebellion, or the Russian novelist who forbids it?  That is the final and blasting test.  The world