[CHAPTER XXVI]
FALKNER'S NARRATIVE
"To palliate crime, and, by investigating motive, to render guilt less odious—such is not the feeling that rules my pen; to confer honour upon innocence, to vindicate virtue, and announce truth—though that offer my own name as a mark for deserved infamy—such are my motives. And if I reveal the secrets of my heart, and dwell on the circumstances that led to the fatal catastrophe I record, so that, though a criminal, I do not appear quite a monster, let the egotism be excused for her dear sake—within whose young and gentle heart I would fain that my memory should be enshrined without horror, though with blame.
"The truth, the pure and sacred truth, will alone find expression in these pages. I write them in a land of beauty, but of desolation—in a country whose inhabitants are purchasing by blood and misery the dearest privileges of human nature—where I have come to die! It is night; the cooing aziolo, the hooting owl, the flashing fire-fly, the murmur of time-honoured streams, the moonlit foliage of the gray olive woods, dark crags, and rugged mountains, throwing awful shadows, and the light of the eternal stars—such are the objects around me. Can a man speak false in the silence of night, when God and his own heart alone keep watch! when conscience hears the moaning of the dead in the pauses of the breeze, and sees one pale, lifeless figure float away on the current of the stream! My heart whispers that before such witnesses the truth will be truly recorded; and my blood curdles, and my nerves, so firm amid the din of battle, shrink and shudder at the tale I am about to narrate.
"What is crime?
"A deed done injurious to others—forbidden by religion, condemned by morality, and which human laws are enacted to punish.
"A criminal feels all mankind to be his foes, the whole frame of society is erected for his especial ruin. Before he had a right to choose his habitation in the land of his forefathers—and, placing the sacred name of liberty between himself and power, none dared check his freeborn steps—his will was his law; the limits of his physical strength were the only barriers to his wildest wanderings—he could walk erect and fear the eye of no man. He who commits a crime forfeits these privileges. Men from out the lowest grade of society can say to him, 'You must come with us!'—they can drag him from those he loves, immure him in a loathsome cell, dole out scant portions of the unchartered air, make a show of him, lead him to death, and throw his body to the dogs; and society, which for the innocent would have raised one cry of horror against the perpetrators of such outrages, look on and clap their hands with applause.
"This is a vulgar aspect of the misery of which I speak—a crime may never be discovered. Mine lies buried in my own breast. Years have passed, and none point at me and whisper, 'There goes the murderer!' But do I not feel that God is my enemy, and my own heart whispers condemnation? I know that I am an impostor—that any day may discover the truth; but more heavy than any fear of detection is the secret hidden in my own heart; the icy touch of the death I caused creeps over me during the night. I am pursued by the knowledge that naught I do can prosper, for the cry of innocence is raised against me, and the earth groans with the secret burden I have committed to her bosom. That the death-blow was not actually dealt by my hand in no manner mitigates the stings of conscience. My act was the murderer, though my intention was guiltless of death.
"Is there a man who at some time has not desired to possess, by illegal means, a portion of another's property, or to obey the dictates of an animal instinct, and plant his foot on the neck of his enemy? Few are so cold of blood or temperate of mood as not, at some one time, to have felt hurried beyond the demarcations set up by conscience and law; few but have been tempted without the brink of the forbidden; but they stopped, while I leaped beyond—there is the difference between us. Falsely do they say who allege that there is no difference in guilt between the thought and act; to be tempted is human; to resist temptation—surely, if framed like me, such is to raise us from our humanity into the sphere of angels.
"Many are the checks afforded us. Some are possessed by fear; others are endowed by a sensibility so prophetic of the evil that must ensue, that perforce they cannot act the thing they desire; they tremble at the idea of being the cause of events over whose future course they can have no control; they fear injuring others—and their own remorse.