The film of passion had dropped
alike from mental and bodily vision. He beheld his irritated feelings
in their true light, and knew himself in thought a murderer. He would
have sacrificed life itself, could he but have recalled the words of
insult offered to one so noble; not for the danger to himself from
their threatening nature, but for the injurious injustice done to the
man from whom he had received a hundred acts of little unobtrusive
kindnesses, and whom he had once revered as the model of every thing
virtuous and noble--services which Morales had rendered him, felt
gratefully perhaps at the time, but forgotten in the absorption of
thought or press of occupation during his sojourn in Sicily, now
rushed back upon him, marking him ingrate as well as dishonored. All
that had happened he regarded as Divine judgment on an unspoken,
unacted, but not the less encouraged sin. The fact that his sword had
done the deed, convinced him that his destruction had been connived
at, as well as that of Morales. A suspicion as to the designer, if not
the actual doer of the deed, had indeed taken possession of him; but
it was an idea so wild, so unfounded, that he dared not give it words.
From the idea of death, and such a death, his whole soul indeed
revolted; but to avert it seemed so utterly impossible, that he
bent his proud spirit unceasingly to its anticipation; and with the
spiritual aid of the good and feeling Father Francis, in some degree
succeeded.
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