d he was never carried away, and
was only steered in a course of his own choosing. The more he saw,
the more he doubted. He watched men narrowly, and saw how, beneath
the surface, courage was often rashness; and prudence, cowardice;
generosity, a clever piece of calculation; justice, a wrong; delicacy,
pusillanimity; honesty, a _modus vivendi_; and by some strange
dispensation of fate, he must see that those who at heart were really
honest, scrupulous, just, generous, prudent, or brave were held cheaply
by their fellow-men.

"What a cold-blooded jest!" said he to himself. "It was not devised by a
God."

From that time forth he renounced a better world, and never uncovered
himself when a Name was pronounced, and for him the carven saints in the
churches became works of art. He understood the mechanism of society too
well to clash wantonly with its prejudices; for, after all, he was not
as powerful as the executioner, but he evaded social laws with the wit
and grace so well rendered in the scene with M. Dimanche. He was, in
fact, Moliere's Don Juan, Goethe's Faust, Byron's Manfred, Mathurin's
Melmoth--great allegorical figures drawn by the greatest men of genius
in Europe, to which Mozart's harmonies, perhaps, do no more justice than
Rossini's lyre. Terrible allegorical figures that shall endure as long
as the principle of evil existing in the heart of man shall produce
a few copies from century to century. Sometimes the type becomes
half-human when incarnate as a Mirabeau, sometimes it is an inarticulate
force in a Bonaparte, sometimes it overwhelms the universe with irony
as a Rabelais; or, yet again, it appears when a Marechal de Richelieu
elects to laugh at human beings instead of scoffing at things, or when
one of the most famous of our ambassadors goes a step further and
scoffs at both men and things. But the profound genius of Juan Belvidero
anticipated and resumed all these. All things were a jest to him.
His was the life of a mocking spirit. All men, all institutions, all
realities, all ideas were within its scope. As for eternity, after half
an hour of familiar conversation with Pope Julius II. he said, laughing:

"If it is absolutely necessary to make a choice, I would rather believe
in God than in the Devil; power combined with goodness always offers
more resources than the spirit of Evil can boast."

"Yes; still God requires repentance in this present world----"

"So you always think of your indulgences,