sufferer breathes a purer air than he who has made him suffer.  In the hearts of the persecuted there is radiance, where those who persecute have only gloom; and is it not on the light within us that the wellbeing of happiness depends?  He who brings sorrow with him stifles more happiness within himself than in the man he overwhelms.  Which of us, had he to choose, but would rather be Pierrette than Rogron?  The instinct of happiness within us needs no telling that he who is morally right must be happier than he who is wrong, though the wrong be done from the height of a throne.  And, even though the Rogrons be unaware of their Injustice, it alters nothing; for, be we aware or unaware of the evil we commit, the air we breathe will still be heavily charged.  Nay, more—­to him who knows he does wrong there may come, perhaps, the desire to escape from his prison; but the other will die in his cell, without even his thoughts having travelled beyond the gloomy walls that conceal from him the true destiny of man.

79.  Why seek justice where it cannot be? and where can it be, save in our soul?  Its language is the natural language of the spirit of man; but this spirit must learn new words ere it can travel in the universe.  Justice is the very last thing of all wherewith the universe concerns itself.  It is equilibrium that absorbs its attention; and what we term justice is truly nothing but this equilibrium transformed, as honey is nothing but a transformation of the sweetness found in the flower.  Outside man there is no justice; within him injustice cannot be.  The body may revel in ill—­gotten pleasure, but virtue alone can bring contentment to the soul.  Our inner happiness is measured out to us by an incorruptible Judge and the mere endeavour to corrupt him still further reduces the sum of the final, veritable happiness he lets fall into the shining scale.  It is lamentable enough that a Rogron should be able to torture a helpless child, and darken the few hours of life the chance of the world had given; but injustice there would be only if his wickedness procured him the inner happiness and peace, the elevation of thought and habit, that long years spent in love and meditation had procured for Spinoza and Marcus Aurelius.  Some slight intellectual satisfaction there may be in the doing of evil; but none the less does each wrongful deed clip the wings of our thoughts, till at length they can only crawl amidst all that is fleeting and personal.  To commit an act of injustice is to prove we have not yet attained the happiness within our grasp.  And in evil—­reduce things to their primal elements, and you shall find that even the wicked are seeking some measure of peace, a certain up-lifting of soul.  They may think themselves happy, and rejoice for such dole as may come to them; but would it have satisfied Marcus Aurelius, who knew the lofty tranquillity, the great quickening of the soul?  Show a vast lake to the child who has never beheld the sea, it will clap its hands and be glad, and think the sea is before it; but therefore none the less does the veritable sea exist.