CHAPTER XIV.
For an empty Box
HEN I look back on the series of events which I am narrating and try to recover the feelings with which I was affected in its passage, I am almost amazed and in some measure ashamed to find how faint is my abhorrence of the Duke of Saint-Maclou. My indignation wants not the bridle but the whip, and I have to spur myself on to a becoming vehemence of disapproval. I attribute my sneaking kindness for him—for to that and not much less I must plead guilty—partly indeed to the revelation of a passion in him that seemed to leave him hardly responsible for the wrong he plotted, but far more to the incidents of this night, in which I was in a manner his comrade and the partner with him in an adventure. To have stood shoulder to shoulder with a man blinds his faults—and the duke bore himself, not merely with the coolness and courage which I made no doubt of his displaying, but with a readiness and zest remarkable at any time, but more striking when they followed on the paroxysm to which I had seen him helplessly subject. These indications of good in the man mollified my dislike and
130
