I envy a fellow like Caesar Borgia. He could murder a friend,
seduce his widow, and rob the orphans all on a summer's day, and
go home contentedly to supper; and after a little music he could
sleep like a man who has thoroughly earned his repose. What
manner of creatures are other men? They area blank mystery to
me; and I am writing--or have been writing--a sociological study
of the most subtle generation of them that has ever existed! I
am an empty fool. I know absolutely nothing. I can no more
account for the peaceful slumbers of that marvellous young man of
five-and-twenty than I can predicate the priority of the first
hen or the first egg. I, with never a murder or a seduction or a
robbery on my conscience, could not sleep last night. I doubt
whether I shall sleep to-night. I feel as if I shall remain
awake through the centuries with a rat gnawing my vitals.
So unhappy looking a woman as Judith, when I called on her early
this forenoon, I have never beheld. Gone was the elaborate
coquetry of yesterday; gone the quiet roguishness of yesteryear;
gone was all the Judith that I knew, and in her place stood a
hollow-eyed woman shaking at gates eternally barred.
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