“You will be late for the debate,” said one of them to the other. “Why do you stop?”
“My friend,” said the other, “I never pass this spot without recalling the time when I stood here without a son, or, as I thought, a chance of one, and impiously meditated self-destruction.”
“You!--now so rich--so fortunate in repute and station--is it possible? How was it? A lucky chance?--a sudden legacy?”
“No: Time, Faith, and Energy--the three Friends God has given to the Poor!”
The men moved on; but Morton, who had turned his face towards them, fancied that the last speaker fixed on him his bright, cheerful eye, with a meaning look; and when the man was gone, he repeated those words, and hailed them in his heart of hearts as an augury from above.
Quickly, then, and as if by magic, the former confusion of his mind seemed to settle into distinct shapes of courage and resolve. “Yes,” he muttered; “I will keep this night’s appointment--I will learn the secret of these men’s life. In my inexperience and destitution, I have suffered myself to be led hitherto into a partnership, if not with vice and crime, at least with subterfuge and trick. I awake from my reckless boyhood--my unworthy palterings with my better self. If Gawtrey be as I dread to find him--if he be linked in some guilty and hateful traffic; with that loathsome accomplice--I will--” He paused, for his heart whispered, “Well, and even so,--the guilty man clothed and fed thee!” “I will,” resumed his thought, in answer to his heart--“I will go on my knees to him to fly while there is yet time, to work--beg--starve--perish even--rather than lose the right to look man in the face without a blush, and kneel to his God without remorse!”
And as he thus ended, he felt suddenly as if he himself were restored to the perception and the joy of the Nature and the World around him; the NIGHT had vanished from his soul--he inhaled the balm and freshness of the air--he comprehended the delight which the liberal June was scattering over the earth--he looked above, and his eyes were suffused with pleasure, at the smile of the soft blue skies. The MORNING became, as it were, a part of his own being; and he felt that as the world in spite of the storms is fair, so in spite of evil God is good. He walked on--he passed the bridge, but his step was no more the same,--he forgot his rags. Why should he be ashamed? And thus, in the very flush of this new and strange elation and elasticity of spirit, he came unawares upon a group of young men, lounging before the porch of one of the chief hotels in that splendid Rue de Rivoli, wherein Wealth and the English have made their homes. A groom, mounted, was leading another horse up and down the road, and the young men were making their comments of approbation upon both the horses, especially the one led, which was, indeed, of uncommon beauty and great value. Even Morton, in whom the boyish passion of his earlier life yet existed, paused to turn his experienced and admiring eye upon the stately shape and pace of the noble animal, and as he did so, a name too well remembered came upon his ear.