White Stains

16 PREFACE last (the pious will quote James 2, 19, and the infidel will observe that he died in an asylum) ; then the full swing of the tide catches him, the mysteries of death become more and more an obsession, and he is flung headlong into Sadism, Necrophilia, all the mad- dest, fiercest vices that the mind of fiends ever brought up from the pit. But always to the very end his power is unexhausted, immense, terrible. His delirium does not amuse ; it appals ! A man who could conceive as he did must himself have had some glorious chord in his heart vibrating to the eternal principle of Bound- less Love. That this love was wrecked is for me, in some sort a relative of his, a real and bitter sorrow. He might have been so great ! He missed Heaven ! Think kindly of him !