e makes manifest to ordinary
ability. If we regard narrowly the lives of great criminals, we are
often very much startled by the extraordinary acuteness, the profound
calculation, the patient, meditative energy which they have employed
upon the conception and execution of a crime. We feel inclined to think
that such intellectual power would have commanded great distinction,
worthily used and guided; but we never find that these great criminals
seem to have been sensible of the opportunities to real eminence which
they have thrown away. Often we observe that there have been before
them vistas into worldly greatness which, by no uncommon prudence and
exertion, would have conducted honest men half as clever to fame and
power; but, with a strange obliquity of vision, they appear to have
looked from these broad clear avenues into some dark, tangled defile, in
which, by the subtlest ingenuity, and through the most besetting perils,
they might attain at last to the success of a fraud or the enjoyment of
a vice. In crime once indulged there is a wonderful fascination, and the
fascination is, not rarely, great in proportion to the intellect of the
criminal. There is always hope of reform for a dull, uneducated, stolid
man, led by accident or temptation into guilt; but where a man of great
ability, and highly educated, besots himself in the intoxication of dark
and terrible excitements, takes impure delight in tortuous and slimy
ways, the good angel abandons him forever.

Olivier Dalibard walked musingly on, gained a house in one of the
most desolate quarters of the abandoned faubourg, mounted the spacious
stairs, and rang at the door of an attic next the roof. After some
moments the door was slowly and cautiously opened, and two small, fierce
eyes, peering through a mass of black, tangled curls, gleamed through
the aperture. The gaze seemed satisfactory.

"Enter, friend," said the inmate, with a sort of complacent grunt; and
as Dalibard obeyed, the man reclosed and barred the door.

The room was bare to beggary; the ceiling, low and sloping, was
blackened with smoke. A wretched bed, two chairs, a table, a strong
chest, a small cracked looking-glass, completed the inventory. The dress
of the occupier was not in keeping with the chamber; true that it was
not such as was worn by the wealthier classes, but it betokened no sign
of poverty. A blue coat with high collar, and half of military fashion,
was buttoned tight over a chest o