But Graspum would have all
such expressions shrink beneath his glowing goodness. With honied
words he tells the tale of his own honesty: his business intercourse
with the deceased was in character most generous. Many a good turn
did Marston receive at his hands; long had he been his faithful and
unwearied friend. Fierce are the words with which he would execrate
the tyrant creditors; yea, he would heap condign punishment on their
obdurate heads. Time after time did he tell them the fallen man was
penniless; how strange, then, that they tortured him to death within
prison walls. He would sweep away such vengeance, bury it with his
curses, and make obsolete such laws as give one man power to gratify
his passion on another. His burning, surging anger can find no
relief; nor can he tolerate such antiquated debtor laws: to him they
are the very essence of barbarism, tainting that enlightened
civilisation so long implanted by the State, so well maintained by
the people. It is on those ennobling virtues of state, he says, the
cherished doctrines of our democracy are founded. Graspum is,
indeed, a well-developed type of our modern democracy, the flimsy
fabric of which is well represented in the gasconade of the above
outpouring philanthropy.
And now, as again the crimson clouds of evening soften into golden
hues-as the sun, like a fiery chariot, sinks beneath the western
landscape, and still night spreads her shadowy mantle down the
distant hills, and over the broad lagoon to the north-two sable
figures may be seen patting, sodding, and bespreading with
fresh-plucked flowers the new grave.
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