“If she be not disturbed. I have carefully darkened the room. What has been done?” she inquired, looking in his face. Struck with its expression, she exclaimed, “How you have suffered!”
“Yes. Life is bitter to those whom God has chosen. If Moyse did but know it, I almost envy him his rest.”
“Is it over, then? is he dead?”
“He dies at sunrise. You think Génifrède may sleep till noon?”
Thérèse could not reply, and he proceeded—
“He is found guilty, and sentenced. There was no escape. His guilt is clear as noonday.”
“No escape from the sentence,” said Thérèse, eagerly. “But there is room for mercy yet. You hold the power of life and death over all the colony—a power like that of God, and put into your hand by Him.”
“A power put into my hand by Him, and therefore to be justly used. Moyse’s crime is great, and mercy to him would be a crime in me. I have fault enough already to answer for in this business, and I dare not sin yet further.”
“You yourself have sinned?” said Thérèse, with a gleam of hope in her countenance and tone.
“Yes. I ought to have discerned the weakness of this young man. I ought to have detected the passions that were working in him. I was misled by one great and prolonged effort of self-control in him. I appointed an unworthy officer to the care of the lives and safety of the whites. Many of them have gone to lay their deaths to my charge in heaven. All I can now do is, by one more death (would to God it were my own!) to save and to reassure those who are left. It is my retribution that Moyse must die. As for Paul, as for Génifrède—the sin of the brother is visited upon the brother—the sin of the father upon the child.”