'Ay, poor Benjamin! That he had at the end the grace to ask our forgiveness and to repent hath in it something of a miracle. We have long forgiven him. But consider, Cousin. We were saved from the fight; we were saved from the sea; we were saved from slavery; we were enabled to strike the last blow for the Protestant religion—what were all these blessings worth if Benjamin still lived? To think, Humphrey, that Alice would never have been my wife and never a mother; and all these children would have remained unborn! I say that, though we may not desire the death of a sinner, we were not human if we rejoiced not at the death of our poor cousin.'
Yes; that is the thought which will not suffer me to repent. A single pinch of the Pulvis Jesuiticus, and he might have been living unto this very day: then would Alice have lost the crowning blessing of a woman's life.
Yet—I was, it is true, a physician—whose duty it is to save life, always to save life, even the life of the wretched criminal who is afterwards to die upon the gallows.
Yet, again, if he had been saved! As I write these lines I see my Mistress walking down the village street. She looks over my garden-gate; she lifts the latchet and enters, smiling gravely and tenderly. A sober happiness sits upon her brow. The terror of her first marriage has long been forgotten.
Why, as I watch her tranquil life, busy with her household and her children, full of the piety which asks not (as her father was wont to ask) how and where the mercy of Heaven is limited, and if, indeed, it will embrace all she loves; as I mark the tender love of husband and of children, which lies around her like a garment and prevents all her doings, there comes back to me continually a bed-room in which a man lies dying. Again in memory, again in intention, I throw upon the fire that handful of Pulvis Jesuiticus which should have driven away his fever and restored him to health again. A great and strong man he was, who might have lived till eighty years: where then would have been that love? where those children? where that tranquil heart and that contented mind? 'I WILL NOT SAVE HIS LIFE.' I say again in my mind: 'I WILL NOT SAVE HIM; HE SHALL DIE.'
'Humphrey,' my Mistress says, 'leave thy books awhile and walk with me: the winter sun is warm upon the hills. Come, it is the day when Benjamin died—repentant—what better could we wish? What greater blessing could have been bestowed upon him and upon us than a true repentance and to die? Oh! dear Brother, dear Humphrey, let us walk and talk of these blessings which have been showered upon my undeserving head.
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