I wandered over Europe, plunged into
a thousand scenes of turmoil and excitement--it was all useless--still
the shadow went with me. Crime is a terrible companion to have ever at
your elbow. The _Atra cura_ of the poet is nothing to it, friend! It is
a fiend which will not be driven away. It grins, and gibbers, and
utters its gibes, day and night. Believe me, Surry,--I speak from
experience--it is better for this world, as well as the next, to be a
boor, a peasant, a clodhopper with a clear conscience, than to hold in
your hand the means of all luxury, and so-called enjoyment, and, with
it, the consciousness that you are blood guilty under almost any
circumstances.
"Some men might have derived comfort from the circumstances of _that_
crime. I could not. They might have said, 'I was goaded, stung, driven,
outraged, tempted beyond my strength, caught in a net of fire, from
which there was but one method of exit--to burst out, trampling down
every thing.' Four words silenced all that sophistry--'She was a
woman!' It was the face of that woman, as I saw it last on that stormy
night by the lightning flashes, which drove me to despair. I, the son
of the pure gentleman whose portrait is yonder--I, the representative
of the Mohuns, a family which had acted in all generations according to
the dictates of the loftiest honor--I, had put to death a woman, and
that thought spurred me to madness!
"Of _his_ death I did not think in the same manner.
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