The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 278: what you’re looking at

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248 THE COURT OF LONDON nor by the condemned felon who looks Death face to face. Oh, my poor wife, my dearly beloved children, whither had ye gone? Wherefore was I thus deprived of your love, your solace? Why were we not permitted to meet and mingle our tears? But I saw it all; I comprehended the villainy that had been. perpetrated. It was quite clear that the money which I had sent from Woolwich along with the letter had never reached them. It had doubtless been kept by the villainous peace-officer, and they were turned into the streets. O God! how bitter, how diabolical, how fiendish was the curse that rose up in my soul at that moment, a curse menacing the whole framework of society with ruin, blood, murder, and, vengeance, — such a curse, in fine, as a desperate man might be expected to vent upon a world that had lacerated, tortured, scourged, persecuted, and goaded him so cruelly —so maddeningly. Yes, I breathed a curse, — not aloud, no, it was to myself; for that curse was too awful, too hideous, too damnable to be shaped in words or clothed in language, until the mind had become familiar with it by frequent contemplation. And now that I have so long, so steadfastly, so continuously viewed that curse face to face, I may unhesitatingly tell thee, Mr. Meagles, that it summed up all the mischiefs I would possibly work against society and all the horrors with which I could startle it. I looked upon the world as a pandemonium, and I determined to have a fiend’s revenge. At all events, if this earth were not really hell already, then I vowed to open hell at the feet of all whom my influence could reach. ‘‘ | wandered out into the suburbs of St. Pancras with these thoughts uppermost in my mind; and I saw a funeral pass. I beheld the mourners weeping, — the friends and relatives with their countenances buried in their handkerchiefs. I heard the sobs of some of them, and thence knew that their erief was real. Mechanically I followed the funeral into Old St. Pancras Churchyard; I saw the coffin lowered into the earth, I beheld the soil shovelled down upon it, 1 marked the intense anguish of the mourners. And as | thus gazed upon them, I was suddenly struck by the features of the chief mourner as he withdrew his handkerchief from his face for afew moments. Heavens! it was the peace-officer to whom I had entrusted the money and the letter at Woolwich, and who had robbed my poor family of the gold they so much a . CORNIKENIOOKS