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248 is a fair object to be stretched on the cruellest racks by self-complacent Virtue, that self-complacent Virtue may feed her lily-liveredness on the pallor of Sin's anguish. For perfect Virtue does not more loudly claim our approbation, than repented Sin in its concludedness does demand our utmost tenderness and concern. And as the more immense the Virtue, so should be the more immense our approbation; likewise the more immense the Sin, the more infinite our pity. In some sort, Sin hath its sacredness, not less than holiness. And great Sin calls forth more magnanimity than small Virtue. What man, who is a man, does not feel livelier and more generous emotions toward the great god of Sin—Satan,—than toward yonder haberdasher, who only is a sinner in the small and entirely honourable way of trade?

Though Pierre profoundly shuddered at that impenetrable yet blackly significant nebulousness, which the wild story of Isabel threw around the early life of his father; yet as he recalled the dumb anguish of the invocation of the empty and the ashy hand uplifted from his father's death-bed, he most keenly felt that of whatsoever unknown shade his father's guilt might be, yet in the final hour of death it had been most dismally repented of; by a repentance only the more full of utter wretchedness, that it was a consuming secret in him. Mince the matter how his family would, had not his father died a raver? Whence that raving, following so prosperous a life? Whence, but from the cruellest compunctions?

Touched thus, and strung in all his sinews and his nerves to the holding of his father's memory intact,—Pierre turned his confronting and unfrightened face toward Lucy Tartan, and stilly vowed that not even she should know the whole; no, not know the least.

There is an inevitable keen cruelty in the loftier heroism. It is not heroism only to stand unflinched ourselves in the