Our business there
over, however, he offered me a seat in his carriage, a brougham that
had sauntered after us, for the return. And no sooner was the carriage
door closed upon us than he began--
'I am an old man. I want to talk. Will you listen?
'This death, this funeral, have stirred me deeply. I knew Kasghine
years ago in Russia, when we were both young men, he an officer in the
Russian army, I an attache to the French Embassy.
'His career has been a very sad one. It illustrates many sad truths.
'Sometimes--it is trite to say so--an act of baseness, a crime of some
sort, may be the beginning, the first cause, of a man's salvation. It
pulls him up, wakes his conscience. Aghast at what he has done, he
reflects, repents, reforms. That is a comforting circumstance, a token
of God's goodness.
'But what shall we say when the exact opposite happens? When it is an
act of nobility, of splendid heroism, of magnificent self-devotion,
that brings to pass a man's moral downfall? It is horrible to admit
such a thing as possible, is it not? And yet, the same man who may be
capable of one sudden immense act of heroism, may be quite incapable
of keeping up the prolonged, daily, yearly struggle with adversity
which that act may entail upon him.
'It was so with Kasghine. It was a very noble action which drove him,
an exile, from his country.
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