Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/114

Rh them without mercy to my own ends. I tell you I never spared. If any ever doubted or resisted me, he had a terrible chastisement; he soon gave his very soul and conscience up into my hands. Sometimes I think that Mephistopheles himself never tempted more deftly and more brutally than I have done. That dead Viana! He would be living now were it not for me. He was half a Bourbon in his creeds; he worshipped pleasure, and pleasure alone; revolutions might have reeled around him, and Cario would never have laid down the wine-cup, never asked with what side the day went or the battle turned. But I brought him to give his very life to my moulding; I moved him to his own ruin by those very qualities of fearless chivalry and generous passion that should have been his shield from me. And—if you had seen him lying dead there as I saw him, with his brave face turned upward, that he might smile in my eyes to the last!"

Her head sank, there was the mute anguish on her of a remorse that would never fade out while life remained. He stood beside her silent also; he knew that there were no words that could assuage this bitterness, he knew that to this self-condemnation justíce forbade any consolation that must have been at its best but a deceiving sophistry.