and the uttermost virtue, after all, prove but a betraying pander to the monstrousest vice,—then close in and crush me, ye stony walls, and into one gulf let all things tumble together!'
'My brother! this is some incomprehensible raving,' pealed Isabel, throwing both arms around him;—'my brother, my brother!'
'Hark thee to thy furthest inland soul,' thrilled Pierre in a steeled and quivering voice. 'Call me brother no more! How knowest thou I am thy brother? Did thy mother tell thee? Did my father say so to me?—I am Pierre, and thou Isabel, wide brother and sister in the common humanity,—no more. For the rest, let the gods look after their own combustibles. If they have put powder-casks in me—let them look to it! let them look to it! Ah! now I catch glimpses, and seem to half see, somehow, that the uttermost ideal of moral perfection in man is wide of the mark. The demigods trample on trash, and Virtue and Vice are trash! Isabel, I will write such things—I will gospelise the world anew, and show them deeper secrets than the Apocalypse!—I will write it, I will write it!'
'Pierre, I am a poor girl, born in the midst of a mystery, bred in mystery, and still surviving to mystery. So mysterious myself, the air and the earth are unutterable to me; no word have I to express them. But these are the circumambient mysteries; thy words, thy thoughts, open other wonder-worlds to me, whither by myself I might fear to go. But trust to me, Pierre. With thee, with thee, I would boldly swim a starless sea, and be buoy to thee, there, when thou the strong swimmer shouldst faint. Thou, Pierre, speakest of Virtue and Vice; life-secluded Isabel knows neither the one nor the other, but by hearsay. What are they, in their real selves, Pierre? Tell me first what is Virtue:—begin!'
