That other Abbe--Rosslot was his
name--shone forth a pure creator: he owed his prowess to the example of
none. But in Paris crime is too often passionel, and a crime passionel
is a crime with a purpose, which, like the novel with a purpose, is
conceived by a dullard, and carried out for the gratification of the
middle-class.
To whitewash the scoundrel is to put upon him the heaviest dishonour: a
dishonour comparable only to the monstrously illogical treatment of
the condemned. When once a hero has forfeited his right to comfort and
freedom, when he is deemed no longer fit to live upon earth, the Prison
Chaplain, encouraging him to a final act of hypocrisy, gives him a free
pass (so to say) into another and more exclusive world. So, too, the
moralist would test the thief by his own narrow standard, forgetting
that all professions are not restrained by the same code. The road has
its ordinances as well as the lecture-room; and if the thief is commonly
a bad moralist, it is certain that no moralist was ever a great thief.
Why then detract from a man's legitimate glory? Is it not wiser to
respect 'that deep intuition of oneness,' which Coleridge says is 'at
the bottom of our faults as well as our virtues?' To recognise that
a fault in an honest man is a virtue in a scoundrel? After all, he
is eminent who, in obedience to his talent, does prodigies of valour
unrivalled by his fellows. And none has so many opportunities of various
eminence as the scoundrel.
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