"Oh, Marianne!" interrupted the friar in agony, "you may easily reason, for you never had a child; but if Heaven had blessed us with one, you might have felt for my anguish."
"I do feel for you," returned Marianne; "but does she not treat me with equal scorn? Since the absence of Edmund she has become distracted, and I, who know the agonies a woman endures when she finds herself deserted by the man she adores, can feel for her."
"And who first gained her Edmund? Would he ever have become her husband, had not I induced him?"
"I believe not; neither would she have been Queen but for you."
"No—no. Oh! how I have toiled for that ungrateful girl! How I have adored her!"
"You have been a devoted father."
"Have I not, Marianne? I have at least endeavoured to expiate my sin. I have done penance—I have spent nights unnumbered in painful vigils. I have scourged my body, till the feeble flesh has shrunk beneath the torture; yet still my mind remains unappeased. Remorse still gnaws my vitals! Oh, Marianne! how poor is earthly grandeur to a mind diseased!"
In this manner did these companions in iniquity confer; till at length, hating each other and themselves, they gave vent to mutual upbraiding, and parted with undisguised hatred and contempt. Such, indeed, is the disgusting nature of sin, that though a man may shut his eyes to his own defects, or rather, see them through the magic prism of self-love; yet he almost always abhors them when he sees them reflected in another.
Thus it was with Father Morris.—Marianne had been his associate in many scenes of vice; he had, in fact, first led her from the paths of virtue, and, as usual in such cases, he now hated the creature he had made.
Father Morris was indeed that brother of the Duke of Cornwall, whose crimes and punishment have been before slightly hinted at. He had married in early life a beautiful and accomplished woman; but, instigated by the machinations of Marianne, whom he had previously seduced and abandoned, he had become jealous of her, and, in a paroxysm of rage, had deprived her of life. This was the crime he had since endeavoured to expiate by the penance of his whole life. Vain, however, had been his endeavour! The mortification of the body avails little, where the humiliation of the spirit is wanting; and Father Morris, notwithstanding his apparent repentance, was proud, envious, and intolerant.