“Bonds?” repeated Harriet. “No doubt. . . . But what matter if the bonds are light ones?”
“If they are light they are useless. Does one shackle a voluntary prisoner?”
“But religion . . .”
Shelley called Holbach to the aid of Godwin. “If God is just, how can we believe that he will punish creatures whom he himself has created weak? If he is All-Powerful, how is it possible either to offend him or resist him? If he is reasonable, why is he angry with the hapless beings to whom he has left the liberty to be unreasonable?”
“Custom . . .”
“What can custom matter to us in this short moment of eternity which we call the nineteenth century?”
Elizabeth took her brother’s side, and it was impossible for Harriet to oppose a demi-god with flashing eyes, a shirt-collar open on a delicate throat, and hair as fine as spun-silk.
She sighed; then to change the conversation, “Let us go on with Zastrozzi?” she proposed.
This was a novel which the three were writing together. It dealt with a robber chief, a haughty tyrant, and an “elegantly proportioned heroine all tenderness and purity.”
The hours passed pleasantly in Zastrozzi’s company; the evening closed in. Elizabeth left the guileless lovers alone in the darkness.