in artifices, and a disgust
for the trick of passing for a saint. He had been the Tantalus of
cynicism. And now, upon this rock, in the midst of this solitude, he
could be frank and open. A bold plunge into wickedness--what a
voluptuous sense of relief it brought with it. All the delights known to
the fallen angels are summed up in this; and Clubin felt them in that
moment. The long arrears of dissimulations were paid at last. Hypocrisy
is an investment; the devil reimburses it. Clubin gave himself up to the
intoxication of the idea, having no longer any eye upon him but that of
Heaven. He whispered within himself, "I am a scoundrel," and felt
profoundly satisfied.

Never had human conscience experienced such a full tide of emotions.

He was glad to be entirely alone, and yet would not have been sorry to
have had some one there. He would have been pleased to have had a
witness of his fiendish joy; gratified to have had opportunity of saying
to society, "Thou fool."

The solitude, indeed, assured his triumph; but it made it less.

He was not himself to be spectator of his glory. Even to be in the
pillory has its satisfaction, for everybody can see your infamy.

To compel the crowd to stand and gape is, in fact, an exercise of power.
A malefactor standing upon a platform in the market-place, with the
collar of iron around his neck, is master of all the glances which he
constrains the multitude to turn towards him. There is a pedestal on
yonder scaffolding. To be there--the centre of universal observation--is
not this, too, a triumph? To direct the pupil of the public eye, is this
not another form of supremacy? For those who worship an ideal
wickedness, opprobrium is glory. It is a height from whence they can
look down; a superiority at least of some kind; a pre-eminence in which
they can display themselves royally. A gallows standing high in the gaze
of all the world is not without some analogy with a throne. To be
exposed is, at least, to be seen and studied.

Herein we have evidently the key to the wicked reigns of history. Nero
burning Rome, Louis Quatorze treacherously seizing the Palatinate, the
Prince Regent killing Napoleon slowly, Nicholas strangling Poland before
the eyes of the civilised world, may have felt something akin to
Clubin's joy. Universal execration derives a grandeur even from its
vastness.

To be unmasked is a humiliation; but to unmask one's self is a triumph.
There is an intoxication in t