cacy
of principle, all perception of sin and righteousness, all the landmarks
of right and wrong, were obliterated in the muddy inundation of flippant
irreverence and ignorant disbelief.

"For when we in our viciousness grow hard,
O, misery on't! the wise gods seal our eyes:
In our own filth drop our clear judgments, make us
Adore our errors, laugh at us while we strut
To our confusion."

"I'm sometimes half inclined to agree with what you were saying about
would-be saints," said Brogten, as they left D'Acres' wine-party.

"What fun it would be to try the experiment of a saint's peccability on
some living subject," said Bruce.

"Rather! Suppose you try on that fellow Hazlet?"

"Oh, you mean the lank party who snuffles the responses with such
oleaginous sanctimony. Well, I bet you 2 to 1 in ponies that I have him
roaring drunk before a month's over."

"I won't take the bet," said Brogten, "because I believe you'll
succeed."

"I'll t-t-take it for the fun," said Fitzurse.

"Done, then!" said Bruce.

So Bruce, _pour passer le temps_, deliberately undertook the corruption
of a human soul. That soul might have been low enough already; for
Hazlet was, as we have seen, mean-hearted and malicious, and in him,
although unknown to himself, the garb of the Pharisee but concealed the
breast of the hypocrite. But yet Hazlet _was_ free, and if Bruce had
not undertaken the devil's work, might have been free to his life's end,
from all gross forms of transgression--from all the more flagrant and
open delinquencies that lay waste the inner sanctities of a fallen human
soul.

He was an easy subject for Bruce's machinations, and those machinations
were conceived and carried on with consummate and characteristic
cleverness. Bruce did not spread his net in the sight of the bird, but
set to work with wariness and caution. He determined to try the arts of
fascination, not of force. The thought of the desperate wickedness
involved in his attempt either never crossed his mind, or, if it did,
was rejected as the feeble suggestion of an over-scrupulous conscience.
Bruce pretended at least to fancy that the basis of all men's characters
was identical, and that, as they only differed in external
manifestations, it made very little difference whether Hazlet became
"fast" or continued "slow." "Fast" and "slow" were the mild euphemisms
with which Bruce expressed the slight distinction between a vicious and
a virtuous l