Penny Blood Serial Cover — page 103: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ALFRED DE ROSANN. 95 into the hands of justice; a third declared that, if he had murdered his own father, it was because he had no inducement to be a dutiful son; a fourth boasted of having robbed his unsuspicious master during a period of twelve years, which at last brought on the ruin of the respectable merchant whom he served, and to whom he was indebted for his bread; a fifth deplored his folly in not having blown out an aged grandfather’s brains, when he made the old man sign away his last farthing by placing a pistol to his ear, and terrifying him with the most dreadful menaces; and a sixth cursed the venerable priest who had interrupted him during a sacrilegious attempt to rob a village church. Such—for we dare quote no more—is a small sam- ple of the conversation, the ideas, and the thoughts of those wretches with whom De Rosann was forced to as- sociate. And, to add to his internal grief, he dared not manifest his disgust : he was obliged to conceal it all in his lacerated breast. He was compelled to join in the boisterous laugh—to listen to the ribald song—to ap- plaud the licentious joke—to smile at anecdotes of blood, of lust, of incest, and of terror—and to main- tain, as well as he was able, a joyous countenance amongst murderers and thieves. But all that he heard and saw, he witnessed with loathing, and regarded it as an example teaching him to retain the natural purity of his sentiments, and to avoid the slightest step that might lead to the abyss wherein the wretches around him had fallen. Had he been gradually drawn on from one degree of vice and dissipation to another, and initiated in the school of turpitude-and debauch-. ery step by step, the weakness of humanity might have been triumphed over, and his soul might have eventually succumbed to temptation. But he was pre- - cipitated suddenly and headlong from a high estate to a predicament of horror; and the alarming contrast instantly made a deep impression upon his mind—an impression so indelibly stamped, that nothing less pow- erful than the waters of oblivion could have washed it away. CoOmicooolks (C@