“As you have sometimes said, there is the posterity of Cain and the posterity of Abel.  In the great human drama Cain is in opposition.  You are descended from Adam through that line, in which the devil still fans the fire of which the first spark was flung on Eve.  Among the demons of that pedigree, from time to time we see one of stupendous power, summing up every form of human energy, and resembling the fevered beasts of the desert, whose vitality demands the vast spaces they find there.  Such men are as dangerous as lions would be in the heart of Normandy; they must have their prey, and they devour common men and crop the money of fools.  Their sport is so dangerous that at last they kill the humble dog whom they have taken for a companion and made an idol of.

“When it is God’s will, these mysterious beings may be a Moses, an Attila, Charlemagne, Mahomet, or Napoleon; but when He leaves a generation of these stupendous tools to rust at the bottom of the ocean, they are no more than a Pugatschef, a Fouche, a Louvel, or the Abbe Carlos Herrera.  Gifted with immense power over tenderer souls, they entrap them and mangle them.  It is grand, it is fine —­in its way.  It is the poisonous plant with gorgeous coloring that fascinates children in the woods.  It is the poetry of evil.  Men like you ought to dwell in caves and never come out of them.  You have made me live that vast life, and I have had all my share of existence; so I may very well take my head out of the Gordian knot of your policy and slip it into the running knot of my cravat.

  “To repair the mischief I have done, I am forwarding to the public
  prosecutor a retraction of my deposition.  You will know how to
  take advantage of this document.

“In virtue of a will formally drawn up, restitution will be made, Monsieur l’Abbe, of the moneys belonging to your Order which you so imprudently devoted to my use, as a result of your paternal affection for me.

“And so, farewell.  Farewell, colossal image of Evil and Corruption; farewell—­to you who, if started on the right road, might have been greater than Ximenes, greater than Richelieu!  You have kept your promises.  I find myself once more just as I was on the banks of the Charente, after enjoying, by your help, the enchantments of a dream.  But, unfortunately, it is not now in the waters of my native place that I shall drown the errors of a boy; but in the Seine, and my hole is a cell in the Conciergerie.

“Do not regret me:  my contempt for you is as great as my
admiration.

“LUCIEN.”

A little before one in the morning, when the men came to fetch away the body, they found Jacques Collin kneeling by the bed, the letter on the floor, dropped, no doubt, as a suicide drops the pistol that has shot him; but the unhappy man still held Lucien’s hand between his own, and was praying to God.