Is this, then, your experience of mankind? or is it because
you find me with red hands that you presume such baseness? and is this
crime of murder indeed so impious as to dry up the very springs of
good?"
"Murder is to me no special category[22]," replied the other. "All
sins are murder, even all life is war. I behold your race, like
starving mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of
famine and feeding on each other's lives. I follow sins beyond the
moment of their acting; I find in all that the last consequence is
death; and to my eyes, the pretty maid who thwarts her mother with
such taking graces on a question of a ball, drips no less visibly with
human gore than such a murderer as yourself. Do I say that I follow
sins? I follow virtues also; they differ not by the thickness of a
nail, they are both scythes for the reaping angel of Death. Evil, for
which I live, consists not in action but in character. The bad man is
dear to me; not the bad act, whose fruits, if we could follow them far
enough down the hurtling[23] cataract of the ages, might yet be found
more blessed than those of the rarest virtues. And it is not because
you have killed a dealer, but because you are Markheim, that I offered
to forward your escape."
"I will lay my heart open to you," answered Markheim. "This crime on
which you find me is my last. On my way to it I have learned many
lessons; itself is a lesson, a momentous lesson.
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