Perfidy

“ Deceived by my nearest Relations, compelled to embrace a profession the duties of which I am ill-calculated to perform, conscious of the sanctity of those duties, and seduced into violating them by One whom I least suspected of perfidy, I am now obliged by circumstances to chuse between death and perjury. Woman’s timidity, and maternal affection, permit me not to balance in the choice. I feel all the guilt into which I plunge myself, when I yield to the plan which you before proposed to me. ”

“ Thy viziers accuse me of malice and perfidy, but there be none in the world more perfidious than men. Hast thou not heard the story of the goldsmith and the Cashmere singing-girl?’ ‘What befell them, O damsel?’ asked the King ”

“ It is then, in the last dregs of life, his body wasted with toil and diseases, his mind galled and ruffled by the memory of a thousand injuries and disappointments which he imagines he has met with from the injustice of his enemies, or from the perfidy and ingratitude of his friends, that he begins at last to find that wealth and greatness are mere trinkets of frivolous utility, no more adapted for procuring ease of body or tranquillity of mind than the tweezer-cases of the lover of toys ”

“ Odious to earth and heaven, impious to God, seditious among themselves, jealous of their neighbors, inhuman to strangers, they love no one, by no one are they beloved; and while they wish to inspire fear, they live in base and continual apprehension. They will not submit; they know not how to govern faithless to their superiors, intolerable to their equals, ungrateful to their benefactors, and alike impudent in their demands and their refusals. Lofty in promise, poor in execution; adulation and calumny, perfidy and treason, are the familiar arts of their policy. ”

“ Imperious honour;—surely I may pity him. Yet, wherefore pity? no, I envy thee: For thou hast still the liberty to weep, In thee 'twill be no crime: thy tears are guiltless, For they infringe no duty, stain no honour, And blot no vow; but mine are criminal, Are drops of shame which wash the cheek of guilt, And every tear I shed dishonours Douglas. Per. I swear my jealous love e'en grudges thee Thy sad pre-eminence in wretchedness. Elw. Rouse, rouse, my slumb'ring virtue! Percy, hear me. Heaven, when it gives such high-wrought souls as thine, Still gives as great occasions to exert them. ”

“ I cannot understand that hunger for revenge—that thirst for the blood of a fellow-creature.”
“You cannot understand it because you are a Christian woman,” said Percival. “But for my part I must say that I have the widest sympathy for all people; and no passion, however strange it may seem to others, is quite unintelligible to me. I have lived long enough in queer places to have become impressed with the fact that the civilisation which we profess to regard as a part of ourselves is but the thinnest of veneers—nay, of varnishes. ”

“ I cannot find another word to express this perfide of theirs in all its compass. Our poor treulos, the faithless of the English, are innocent as babes beside it. Perfide means faithless with pleasure, with insolence and malice. ”

“ And here, you may take this passing remark—How much more odious people are who have radical faults, than those who commit, I do not say positive crimes, but occasional weaknesses. Even a noble nature may fall into a great error; but what is that to the ever-enduring pride, envy, malice, and conceit of a little mind? Yes, I would at any time rather be the fallen than the one, so exult over the fall of another. ”

“ La perfidie, la trahison, le parjure n’ont rien qui leur paraisse répréhensible. A leurs yeux le droit n’est rien, la force fait tout. N’allez pas vous imaginer que ce que vous appelez bonté, douceur, complaisance, puisse vous être utile. ”

“ Most of you, I can well believe, would not voluntarily or deliberately step out of your way to meet a temptation, or to seek any evil course of life. You would not do it of your own free choice, or in cold blood, as we say. This, at any rate, is your own feeling about sin, whether the feeling is consistent with your life or not. As you contemplate any low form of life in another, you recognise its ugliness and its degrading character, and you call it very likely by the name it deserves. ”

“ He had cold, shrewd, pious eyes—the eyes of the hypocrite who serves the Lord with every breath he draws, and gets a blessing upon every crime he commits before committing it. In my first interviews with him I, being new to England, had made the mistake of treating him as an equal, that is, as a human being. My respect for myself forbids me to meet any of my fellow-members of the human race in any other fashion. ”

“ What a perversion, an abuse, an iniquity against the law of reciprocal righteousness, to call thousands together and get them, some certain ones, to seem conspicuous and devoted for one sole and grand object, and then all at once, with obliquity, open an avalanche on them for some imputed evil or monstrosity, for which, whatever be the wound or injury inflicted, they were both too fatigued and hurried with surprise, and too straightened for time, to be properly prepared. ”

“ And even some amongst themselves, great advocates for what they choose to call practical godliness, who have been drenched in sensuality, some of whom have been exposed to the public—why not use them as they have me? I only appeal to every thinking mind, whether their cruelty could arise from any thing but spite. It cannot arise from my doctrine itself, but their wilful ignorance of it, perversion p. ”

“ And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of PERVERSENESS. Of this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart—one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? ”

“ And if it should be asked,—How comes it that we are so liable to be affected by this dulness of spirit and of general habit?—we have to reply that it is because of the sensitiveness of the human soul to surrounding influences.
It is because our souls are so receptive, so imitative, and in consequence so easily perverted, darkened, blinded, or misled. I suppose we are all of us conscious of this sensitiveness of the moral and spiritual nature; we should all say, if questioned, that we are quite aware of it, and that no one would dispute it. ”

“ We look too much at the consequences of vice,—too little at the vice itself. It is vice which is the chief weight of what we call its consequences,—vice, which is the bitterness in the cup of human woe. ”

“ IV. So that it is very rare to find a perverse person, who, over and above those glaring vices which manifest themselves so palpably, is not tainted with others, which he affects to hide; and in case there do not predominate in him other passions besides those, which on account of their vehemence are so very conspicuous, these of themselves are sufficient to betray him into faults, which arise from, and are the offspring of other distinct passions, when the committing those faults is indispensably necessary for attaining the objects or purposes of the ruling passion. ”

“ Singular perversion, this, to which some minds are liable! To take from a man his wife by subtle and underhand methods, to rob him of that which makes life dear and sweet—there was nothing dishonorable in that! ”

“ Parbury.
Love counts for something, Clement.
[Pg 150]
Parbury.
[Comes to her.] Does love without respect count for very much? Would you like to go back to the old way—the way of petty tyranny—the way of the cowardly, unnecessary tear—the way of gaining your own ends at all costs—the way of being a spoilt child, instead of a thoughtful and considerate woman—the way of my own contemptible weakness? ”

“ My private perversity, as I here glance at it, has had its difficulties—most of all possibly that of one's addiction, in growing older, to allowing a supreme force to one's earlier, even one's earliest, estimates of physical felicity; or in other words that of the felt impulse to leave the palm for good looks to those who have reached out to it through the medium of our own history. ”

“ Yet, I confess, no glamour of any earthly love has ever utterly dazzled me,—not even hers. Of imperfections, of mistakes, of sins, I knew she was guilty. I know it now,—even with the sanctity of those crimsoned mosses, and the hush of the rest beneath, so close to my heart, I cannot forget them. ”

“ When a man insists too strenuously upon his rights, the imps of perversity invariably combine to thwart him. Percival was aware of their pursuing footsteps from the moment he went ashore and lost his umbrella, to the hour of his return to the dock, when he found himself face to face with a situation of baffling perplexity. ”

“ It was all a part of the terrible and yet useful perversity of life—of the perversity that enables a human being to pass from inconsistency to inconsistency without pausing in his course to reflect on his folly. ”

“ I have not been your dupe; you have neither shame, regret, nor remorse. You are vicious to the very core, you have never felt one honest aspiration, you have not robbed as long as you have been in possession of wherewithal to gratify your caprices,—that is what is called the probity of rich persons of your stamp. Then came the want of delicate feeling, then meannesses, then crime, then forgery. ”

“ I have known a casual word spoken by a vicious servant, plant the seeds of vice in a young and previously-innocent mind, which have afterwards produced a harvest of misery, desolation, and remorse, in the bosom of a happy and virtuous family. ”

“ Could you but resolve to hate the perfidious creature, it were easy for me to provide you with the means of holding her up to ridicule and scorn, and repaying her doubly all the evil she has inflicted upon you. ”

“ Wonderful perversion, that a view so contradictory and false can be enforced with a fiery zeal that proves it is believed, embraced, and retained under the influence of the fear, (and not the conviction in the understanding,) that it is essential to their salvation! ”

“ They emulate us, even without our requiring this, and desire nothing more than to become just as we are. Now, usually the great majority of us are thoroughly perverse, partly without knowing it; and because we are ourselves just as simple as children, we consider our perversity to be what is right. Even if we knew that we were perverse, how could we suddenly lay aside, in the presence of our children, that which a long life has made second nature to us, and exchange our whole former disposition and spirit for a new one? ”

“ Guy little dreaming of this so sudden thaw, and wanting the balm of love to apply to his sores, resolved to make a second encounter. So coming again to his Felice, said, "Fair Lady, I have been arraigned long ago, and now am come to receive my just sentence from the Tribunal of Love. It is life, or death, fair Felice that I look for, let me not languish in despair; give judgment, O ye fair, give judgment, that I may know my doom. A word from thy sacred lips can cure my bleeding heart, or a frown can doom me to the pit of misery." ”

“ Should he be unable to disarm your resentment, and move your soul to compassion by the tears of his wife and children, permit me to assure you that he will be punished with more severity for his imprudence, than was even intended by yourself, when he shall see a wife who is dear to him expiring at his feet ”

“ Or could this man, so vex’d in early time, By this strong feeling for his father’s crime; Who to the parent’s sin was barely just, And mix’d with filial fear the man’s disgust— Could he, without some strong delusion, quit 410 The path of duty, and to shame submit? Cast off the virtue he so highly prized, ‘And be the very creature he despised?’ [Pg 331] “A tenant’s wife, half forward, half afraid, Features, it seem’d, of powerful cast displayed, That bore down faith and duty; common fame Speaks of a contract that augments the shame. ”

“ If we abuse the light which we enjoy, and misimprove our religious opportunities and advantages, our guilt will be exceedingly aggravated, and our final ruin, if we perish, proportionately dreadful. For that servant which knew his Lord’s will and prepared not himself, nor did according to his will shall be beaten with many stripes.—For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required. ”

“ Hence their criminal impatience of life, and their bitter accusations of God and man; when, [p. 460] in truth, they have reason to accuse only their own folly. Thou who would act like a wise man, and build thy house on the rock, and not on the sand, contemplate human life not only in the sun-shine but in the shade. ”

“ They leave out many important virtues. They admit many odious and horrible vices; such as self-murder, cruelty, incest, and revenge.—And they place all the virtues on a wrong foundation, and persuade to the practice of them from improper and weak, or sinister and wicked motives. ”

“ Here follows a dark apology for their enigmatical jargon, in which they say, ‘The people who pick up and pervert our practical phrases incur a terrible guilt thereby.’ 1. The much greater part of their phrases are altogether unintelligible to any but themselves, and therefore none but some of themselves can pervert them. ”

“ As it is, I must at times deny and oppose you, and so must others, for you tend, by your influence, to exclude us from our full, free life. We must be content when you censure, and rejoiced when you approve; always admonished to good by your whole being, and sometimes by your judgment. And so I pass on to interest myself and others in the memoir of the Seherin von Prevorst. ”