"Are you aware that you are asking me to put a premium on crime?" Mr. Van Ostend asked coldly. He looked at the priest as if he thought he had taken leave of his senses.
"That is one way of putting it, I admit; but there is another. Let me put it to you: if you had had a son; if he were fatherless; if he had fallen through emulation of other men, wouldn't you like to know that some man might lend a hand for the sake of the mother?"
"I don't know. Stealing is stealing, whether my son were the thief or another man's. Why shouldn't a man take his punishment? You know the everyday argument: the man who steals a loaf of bread gets nine months, and the man who steals a hundred thousand gets clear. If the law is for the one and not for the other, the result is, logically, anarchy. Besides, the man, not he of the street who steals because he is hungry, but the one who has every advantage of education and environment to make his way right in life, goes wrong knowingly. Are we in this case to coddle, to sympathize, to let ourselves be led into philanthropic drivel over 'judge not that ye be not judged'? I cannot see it so."
"You are right in your reasoning, but you are reasoning according to the common law, man-made; and I said we could agree only if we keep to the fundamentals of life."
"Well, if the law isn't a fundamental, what is?"
"I heard Bishop Brooks once say: 'The Bible was before ever it was written.' And perhaps I can best answer your question by saying the law of the human existed before the law of which you are thinking was ever written. Love, mercy, long-suffering were before the law formulated 'an eye for an eye,' or this world could not have existed to the present time for you and me. It is in recognition of that, in dealing with the human, that I make my appeal to you—for the mother, first and foremost, who suffers through the son, her first-born and only child, as your daughter is your only—" Mr. Van Ostend interrupted him.
"I must beg you, Father Honoré, not to bring my daughter's name into this affair. I have suffered enough—enough."
"Mr. Van Ostend, pardon me the seeming discourtesy in your own house, but I am compelled to mention it. After you have given your final decision to my importuning, there can be no further appeal. The man, if living, must go to prison. Mrs. Champney positively refuses to help her nephew in any way. She has been approached twice on the subject of advancing four-fifths of the hundred thousand; she can do it, but she won't. She is not a mother; neither has she any real love for her nephew, for she refuses to aid him in his extremity. I mentioned your daughter, because you must know that her name has been in the past connected with the man for whom I am asking the boon of another chance in life. I have felt convinced that for her sake, if for no other, you would make this sacrifice."
"My daughter, I am glad to inform you, never cared for the man. She is too young, too undeveloped. It is the one thing that makes it possible for me to contemplate what he has done with any degree of sanity. Had he won her affections, had she loved him—" He paused: it was impossible for him to proceed.
"Thank God that she was spared that!" Father Honoré ejaculated under his breath. Mr. Van Ostend looking at him keenly, perceived that he was under the influence of some powerful emotion. He turned to him, a mute question on his lips. Father Honoré answered that mute query with intense earnestness, by repeating what, apparently, he had said to himself: