Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/73

 wrath; others believe in it, but will take the risk, provided they can secure the cash; punishment they argue, may perhaps never come after all! Granted that loss of money is the greatest of human calamities, what right have you to deem yourself outside the common lot of man, as though hatched from a white and lucky egg? Look at the list of crimes daily brought before the Court and dare to call yourself unfortunate! Who wonders at a swollen neck in the Alps, or at blue eyes and yellow hair in a German?

But is the perjured wretch to go unpunished? you ask. Well, if the man's life were taken, that would not bring back your money'; and when you tell me that vengeance is sweeter than life itself, I tell you that none think so but the ignorant, and that of all pleasures vengeance is the meanest. You may judge of it by this, that no one so delights in it as a woman!

But why fancy that such men escape punishment when conscience is for ever wielding its unseen unheard lash over their guilty souls? What punishment of Caedicius or Rhadamanthus can be so terrible as that of having to carry one's own accusing witness by day and by night, within one's breast? Truly spoke the Pythian oracle when it condemned the man who returned a deposit, not for conscience' sake, but from fear; for the man who meditates a crime within his heart has all the guiltiness of the deed. If he lxix