brood over it, crouching each morning upon a corpse, that
serves again for their pillow at night. To this class belong bishops'
coadjutors, cardinals' supernumeraries, _tontiniers_, and the like.
Add to the list many delicately scrupulous persons eager to buy landed
property beyond their means, who calculate with dry logic and in cold
blood the probable duration of the life of a father or of a step-mother,
some old man or woman of eighty or ninety, saying to themselves, "I
shall be sure to come in for it in three years' time, and then----" A
murderer is less loathsome to us than a spy. The murderer may have acted
on a sudden mad impulse; he may be penitent and amend; but a spy is
always a spy, night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad; his
vileness pervades every moment of his life. Then what must it be to live
when every moment of your life is tainted with murder? And have we not
just admitted that a host of human creatures in our midst are led by
our laws, customs, and usages to dwell without ceasing on a
fellow-creature's death? There are men who put the weight of a coffin
into their deliberations as they bargain for Cashmere shawls for their
wives, as they go up the staircase of a theatre, or think of going to
the Bouffons, or of setting up a carriage; who are murderers in thought
when dear ones, with the irresistible charm of innocence, hold up
childish foreheads to be kissed with a "Good-night, father!" Hourly they
meet the gaze of eyes that they would fain close for ever, eyes that
still open each morning to the light, like Belvidero's in this Study.
God alone knows the number of those who are parricides in thought.
Picture to yourself the state of mind of a man who must pay a life
annuity to some old woman whom he scarcely knows; both live in
the country with a brook between them, both sides are free to hate
cordially, without offending against the social conventions that require
two brothers to wear a mask if the older will succeed to the entail,
and the other to the fortune of a younger son. The whole civilization
of Europe turns upon the principle of hereditary succession as upon a
pivot; it would be madness to subvert the principle; but could we not,
in an age that prides itself upon its mechanical inventions, perfect
this essential portion of the social machinery?

If the author has preserved the old-fashioned style of address _To the
Reader_ before a work wherein he endeavors to represent all lite