Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/116

Rh in combat only to be crushed and perish, after I had learned that only one amongst ten thousand of those who had the welfare of the peoples on their lips had it also in their hearts, and that fraud, knavery, selfish greed, impatient discontent, corrupt ambitions, were the natures of the liberators not less than of the tyrants;—after I had read the bare truth to its last letter;—I lured them still. Partly because I was irrevocably bound to the work, partly because all my old belief would not die; chiefly of all, because I had grown to love the power possessed, and could not bring myself to lay it down and own my whole life a defeat. Nor was it one"

The warmth flushed her face again, her eyes lit with the light of victory, something of the haughty defiance with which she had challenged Giulio Villaflor, returned then as she challenged the memories of her past. "It has been a crime, it may be—but not a failure. No Vassalis ever failed, I have fed hope into action, when without me it would have died out in darkness. I have armed hands that but for my weapons could never have struck their oppressors down. I have breathed liberty into a thousand lives that but for me might never have drawn in its mountain air. I have loosened the bonds of many martyrs;