And down came a second cut as bad as the first. My blood was up.
‘If this is justice, then there is no God,’ I said.
He stood aghast. I went on.
‘If there be a God—’
‘If there be a God!’ he shrieked, and sprang towards me.
I did not move a step.
‘I hope there is,’ I said, as he seized me again; ‘for you are unjust.’
I remember only a fierce succession of blows. With Voltaire and the French revolution present to his mind in all their horror, he had been nourishing in his house a toad of the same spawn! He had been remiss, but would now compel those whom his neglect had injured to pay off his arrears! A most orthodox conclusion! but it did me little harm: it did not make me think that God was unjust, for my uncle, not Mr Forest, was my type of Christian. The harm it did was of another sort—and to Charley, not to me.
Of course, while under the hands of the executioner, I could not observe what was going on around me. When I began to awake from the absorption of my pain and indignation, I found myself in my room. I had been ordered thither, and had mechanically obeyed. I was on my bed, staring at the door, at which I had become aware of a gentle tapping.
‘Come in,’ I said; and Charley—who, although it was his room as much as mine, never entered when he thought I was there without knocking at the door—appeared, with the face of a dead man. Sore as I was, I jumped up.