Page 153 of 483

"When I reflect, my dear cousin," said she, "on the miserable

death of Justine Moritz, I no longer see the world and its works

as they before appeared to me. Before, I looked upon the accounts

of vice and injustice that I read in books or heard from others

as tales of ancient days or imaginary evils; at least they were

remote and more familiar to reason than to the imagination; but

now misery has come home, and men appear to me as monsters

thirsting for each other's blood. Yet I am certainly unjust.

Everybody believed that poor girl to be guilty; and if she could

have committed the crime for which she suffered, assuredly she

would have been the most depraved of human creatures. For the

sake of a few jewels, to have murdered the son of her benefactor

and friend, a child whom she had nursed from its birth, and

appeared to love as if it had been her own!