Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419

Отрывок из книги

The extraordinary motives under which people occasionally act, and the strange things they do under the influence of these motives, frequently so far transcend the bounds of probability, that we romance-writers, with the wholesome fear of the critics before our eyes, would not dare to venture on them. Only the other day we read in the newspapers that a Frenchman who had been guilty of embezzlement, and was afraid of being found out, went into a theatre in Lyon and stabbed a young woman whom he had never seen before in his life, in order that he might die by the hands of the executioner, and so escape the inconvenience of rushing into the other world without having time to make his peace with Heaven. He desired death as a refuge from the anguish of mind he was suffering; but instead of killing himself he killed somebody else, because the law would allow him leisure for repentance before it inflicted the penalty of his crime.

It will be said the man was mad—I suppose he was; and so is everybody whilst under the influence of an absorbing passion, whether the mania be love, jealousy, fanaticism, or revenge. The following tale will illustrate one phase of such a madness.

.....

'No thanks to you that he's not,' replied the officer; 'but he's alive, and likely to recover to give evidence against his assassin.'

'Dio!' cried Giuseppe, 'I wish I'd known he wasn't dead!'

.....