“But the divine part puts the martyred wife under the protection of those who drink of the spiritual fount!”
“What would become of her if it were not so? the wretched soul must become corrupt from contact with a soul already corrupt.”
“I never tried to corrupt her: I tried to save her by persuasion, almost always by kindness, sometimes by authority verging on tyranny....”
“You confess it—you confess that you were despotic!”
“Not such despotism as it might have been in vulgar hands. Some would have punished, I simply prohibited—and my prohibitions were constantly disobeyed—I could not have insisted without going to cruel lengths.”
“And the dove fled from the talons of the vulture,” said Paoletti with a sort of honeyed sarcasm.
“Yes.—And fell into those of the vampire who sucked all the sweetness out of my existence. I was teaching my treasure to trust me and you taught her to loathe me; I never argued against her beliefs, I made no objection to her having a judicious confessor—but her sanctimonious friends disgusted me. And my enemy was not a man but a whole army—a host that called itself celestial, and that has made itself formidable by gaining allies in bigots and hysterical wretches who believe themselves to be saints. I tried to fight in the dark, but in the dark I was cut in pieces. An act of hypocrisy such as has saved many a weak man, would perhaps have saved me. She, poor deluded soul, bound over to mysticism by promises of celestial joys, proposed terms of peace; nothing could be easier—: ‘Abjure your mad scepticism; come into our fold,’ she said. This was what they wanted! But I would not purchase peace by an imposture, nor try to capture the heart that was slipping away from me by false professions of faith. I would not add another to the host of hypocrites who make up the greater portion of modern society.—Time went on; the struggle had to be fought out. My sincerity exasperated my wife’s spiritual advisers: the ministers of interference and of misapplied piety.
“But after all, what does it matter? I would rather be infamous in your eyes than in my own.”