“Now my people have made a terrible mistake. They have taken the law into their own hands and have thought to punish you themselves. They have done wrong, they have done foolishly. Who can punish you? You have power above the law. Your interests are above the courts of the land. They did not understand. They did not know you. They have been misled. They have listened to men like me preaching: ‘Right shall 298 prevail: Justice shall conquer.’ And where does right prevail? And when shall justice conquer? No doubt you have said these phrases yourself. Because your fathers and my fathers taught us to say them. But are they true? Does justice conquer? Does right prevail? You can say. I ask you, who have the answer in your power. Does right prevail? Then give my stricken people what is theirs. Does justice conquer? Then see that they come to no harm.
“I dare to put this thing raw to your face because I know the man that once lived within you. I saw you––!”
“Don’t harp on that,” Stanton cut in viciously. “You know nothing about it.”
“I do harp on that. I have come here to harp on that. Do you think that if I had not with my eyes seen that thing I would have come near you at all? No. I would have branded you before all men for the thing that you have done. I would have given these confessions which I hold to the world. I would have denounced you as far as tongue and pen would go to every man who through four years gave blood at your side. I would have braved the rebuke of my superiors and maybe the discipline of my Church to bring upon you the hard thoughts of men. I would have made your name hated in the ears of little children. But I would not have come to you.
“If I had not seen that thing I would not have come to you, for I would have said: What good? The man is a coward without a heart. A coward, do you remember that word?”
The man groaned and struck out with his hand as though to drive away a ghastly thing that would leap upon him.
“A coward without a heart,” the Bishop repeated remorselessly, “who has men and women and children in his power and who, because he has no heart, can use his power to crush them.
“If I had not seen, I would have said that.
“But I saw. I saw. And I have come here to ask you: Are you the same brave man with a heart that I saw on that day?