"Argue it as you will," cried Dominique Lafon; "be plausible and eloquent, bring batteries of sophisms to the attack, you cannot breach my solid position. Excuse and extenuation are alike in vain. I repeat and maintain, that to make a magistrate personally responsible for his judgments, be they just or unjust, so long as he has kept within the line of his duty, and acted according to his conscience, is revenge of the basest and most criminal description."
"Bear in mind," replied Henry la Chapelle, "that I attempt not to justify the unhappy Gaudry. All I assert is, that injustice excites in the breast of every man, even of the gentlest, hatred against him by whom the injustice is done. And its frequent repetition, or the long continuance of the suffering it occasions, will ultimately provoke, in nine cases out of ten, an outbreak of revengeful fury. The heart becomes embittered, the judgment blinded, the mild and beautiful injunctions of Scripture are forgotten or disregarded, in the gust of passion and vindictive rage. To offer the left cheek when the right has been buffeted, is, of all divine precepts, the most difficult to follow. A man ruined, tortured, or disgraced by injustice, looks to the sentence, not to the intention, of his judge; taxes him with precipitation, prejudice, or over-severity, and views revenge as a right rather than a crime. Doubtless there are exceptions--men whose Christian endurance would abide by them even unto death; but, believe me, they are few, very few. The virtues of Job are rare; and rancour, the vile weed, chokes, in our corrupt age, the meek flower, resignation."
"A man to whom injustice is really done," said Dominique, "may console himself with the consciousness of his innocence, which an act of rancorous revenge would induce many to doubt. The suffering victim finds sympathy; the fierce avenger excites horror and reprobation."
"Mere words, my dear fellow," replied la Chapelle. "Fine phrases, and nothing else. You are a theorist, pleading against human nature. What logic is this? Undeserved punishment is far more difficult to endure than merited castigation; and an act of revenge should rather plead in favour of the innocence of him who commits it. In a criminal, the consciousness that he merited his punishment would leave less room for hatred than for shame; it would excite vexation at his ill luck, rather than enduring anger against his judge. There would be exceptions and variations, of course, according to the moral idiosyncracy of the individual. It is impossible to establish a mathematical scale for the workings of human passions. I repeat that I do not justify such revenge, but I still maintain that to seek it is natural to man, and that many men, even with less aggravation than was given to Gaudry, might not have sufficient resolution and virtue to resist the impulse."