, but that of all whom he loved or
cherished; his own pure, beautiful, inimitable Julia, to whom his heart
now reverted with a far deeper and more earnest tenderness, after its
brief inconstancy; as he compared her strong, yet maidenly and gentle
love, with the wild and ungovernable passions of the wanton, for whom he
had once sacrificed her.

Paullus Arvina was not naturally, not radically evil. Far from it, his
impulses were naturally virtuous and correct, his calm sober thoughts
always honorable and upright; but his passions were violent and
unregulated; his principles of conduct not definitively formed; and his
mind wavering, unsettled, and unsteady.

His passions on the previous day had betrayed him fatally, through the
dark machinations of the conspirator, and the strange fascinations of his
lovely daughter, into the perpetration of a great crime. He had bound
himself, by an oath too dreadful to be thought of without shuddering, to
the commission of yet darker crimes in future.

And now the mists of passion had ceased to bedim his mental vision, his
eyes were opened, that he saw and repented most sincerely the past guilt.
How was he to avoid the future?

To no man in these days, could there be a doubt even for a moment--however
great the sin of swearing such an oath! No one in these days, knowing and
repenting of the crime, would hesitate a moment, or fancy himself bound,
because he had committed one vile sin in pledging himself thus to guilt,
to rush on deeper yet into the perpetration of wickedness.

The sin were in the swearing, not in the breaking of an oath so vile and
shameful.

But those were days of dark heathenish superstition, and it was far beyond
the reach of any intellect perhaps of that day to arrive at a conclusion,
simple as that to which any mind would now leap, as it were instinctively.

In those days, an omitted rite, an error in the ceremonial tribute paid to
the marble idol, was held a deeper sin than adultery, incest, or blood
shedding. And the bare thought of the vengeance due for a broken oath
would often times keep sleepless, with mere dread, the eyes of men who
could have slumbered calmly on the commission of the deadliest crimes.

Such, then, was the state of Arvina's mind on that morning--grieving with
deep remorse for the faults of which he confessed himself guilty;
trembling at the idea of rushing into yet more desperate guilt; and at the
same time feeling bound to do so, in d