Page:Paul Clifford Vol 2.djvu/153

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PAUL CLIFFORD.
145

the easier is it to cure them. The mind can cure the evils that spring from the mind; it is only a fool, and a quack, and a driveller, when it professes to heal the evils that spring from the body:—my blue devils spring from the body—consequently, my mind, which, as you know, is a particularly wise mind, wrestles not against them. Tell me frankly," renewed Augustus, after a pause, "do you ever repent? Do you ever think, if you had been a shop-boy with a white apron about your middle, that you would have been a happier and better member of society than you now are?"

"Repent!" said Clifford fiercely, and his answer opened more of his secret heart, its motives, its reasonings, and its peculiarities than were often discernible. "Repent!—that is the idlest word in our language. No,—the moment I repent—that moment I reform! Never can it seem to me an atonement for crime, merely to regret it—my mind would lead me not to regret, but to repair!—Repent!—No,—not yet! The older I