me, to spread black looks under colour of religion, or ito
sow tares in the wheat-field, as you do, in a course of
weak compliance with desire. iN'ow that he draws so
near to his deliverance, he can add but one act of ser-



MAEKHBIM. 137

yice — to repent, to die smiling, and thus to build up in
confidence and hope the more timorous of my surviving
followers. I ahi not so hard a master. Try me. Ac-
cept my help. Please yourself in life as you have done
hitherto ; please yourself more amply, spread your
elbows at the board ; and when the night begins to fall
and the curtains to be drawn, I tell you, for your
greater comfort, that you will find it even easy to com-
pound your quarrel with your conscience, and to make
a truckling peace with God. I came but now from such
a deathbed, and the room was full of sincere mourners,
listening to the man's last words : and when I looked
into that face, which had been set as a flint against
mercy, I found it smiling with hope."

" And do you, then, suppose me such a creature ? "
asked Markheim. " Do you think I have no more
generous aspirations than to sin, and sin, and sin,
and, at last, sneak into heaven ? My heart rises at the
thought. Is this, then, your ezperience 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," replied the
other. " All sins are murder, even as all life is war.
