The Gift of the Sailor: The String of Pearls & Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street — page 68: what you’re looking at

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

“Why seven thousand five hundred only, when you mentioned eight thousand pounds?” “The five hundred pounds is my little commission upon the transaction. Your grace will perceive that I appreciate highly the honour of your grace’s custom, and consequently charge the lowest possible price. I can assure your grace I could get more for my money by a great deal, but the pleasure of being able to meet your grace’s views is so great, that I am willing to make a sacrifice, and therefore it is that I say five hundred, when I really ought to say one thousand pounds, taking into consideration the great scarcity of money at the present juncture; and I can assure your grace that—” “Peace, peace,” said Sweeney Todd, “and if it be not convenient to redeem the jewels at the end of a month from this time, you will hear from me most assuredly.” “T am quite satisfied of that,” said John Mundel, and he accordingly drew a cheque for seven thousand five hundred pounds, which he handed to Sweeney Todd, who put it in his pocket, not a little delighted that at last he had got rid of his pearls, even at a price so far beneath their real value. “T need scarcely urge upon you, Mr. Mundel,” he said, “the propriety of keeping this affair profoundly secret.” “Indeed you need not, your grace, for it is part of my business to be discreet and cautious. I should very soon have nothing to do in my line, your grace may depend, if I were to talk about it. No, this transaction will for ever remain locked up in my own breast, and no living soul but your grace and I need know what has occurred.” With this, John Mundel showed Sweeney Todd to his carriage, with abundance of respect, and in two minutes more he was travelling along towards town with what might be considered a small fortune in his pocket. We should have noticed earlier that Sweeney Todd had, upon the occasion of his going to sell the pearls to the lapidary, in the city, made some great alterations in his appearance, so that it was not likely he should be recognised again to a positive certainty. For example—having no whiskers whatever of his own, he had put on a large black pair of false ones, as well as moustachios, and he had given some colour to his cheeks likewise which had so completely altered his appearance, that those who were most intimate with him would not have known him except by his voice, and that he took good care to alter in his intercourse with John Mundel, so that it should not become a future means of detection. “T thought that this would succeed,” he muttered to himself, as he went towards town, “and I have not been deceived. For three months longer, and only three, I will carry on the business in Fleet Street, so that any sudden alteration in my fortunes may not give rise to suspicion.” He was then silent for some minutes, during which he appeared to be revolving some very knotty question in his brain, and then he said, suddenly— “Well, well, as regards Tobias, I think it will be safer, unquestionably, to put him out of the way by taking his life, than to try to dispose of him in a madhouse, and I think there are one or two more persons whom it will be highly necessary to prevent being mischievous, at all events at present. I must think—I must think.” When such a man as Sweeney Todd set about thinking, there could be no possible doubt but that some serious mischief was meditated, and any one who could have watched his face during that ride home from the money-lender’s, would have seen by its expression that the thoughts which agitated him were of a dark and desperate character, and such as anybody but himself would have shrunk from aghast. But he was not a man to shrink from anything, and, on the contrary, the more a set of circumstances presented themselves in a gloomy and a terrific aspect, the better they seemed to suit him, and the peculiar constitution of his mind. There can be no doubt but that the love of money was the predominant feeling in Sweeney Todd’s intellectual organization, and that, by the amount it would bring him, or the amount it would deprive him of, he measured everything. With such a man, then, no question of morality or ordinary feeling could arise, and there can be no doubt that he would quite willingly have sacrificed the whole human race, if, by so doing, he could have achieved any of the objects of his ambition. And so, on his road homeward, he probably made up his mind to plunge still deeper into criminality, and perchance to indulge in acts that a man not already so deeply versed in iniquity would have shrunk from with the most positive terror. And by a strange style of reasoning, such men as Sweeney Todd reconcile themselves to the most heinous crimes upon the ground of what they call policy. That is to say, that having committed some serious offence, they are compelled to commit a great number more for the purpose of endeavouring to avoid the consequences of the first lot, and hence the continuance of criminality becomes a matter necessary to self- defence, and an essential ingredient in their consideration of self-preservation. Probably Sweeney Todd had been for the greater part of his life, aiming at the possession of extensive pecuniary resources, and, no doubt, by the aid of a superior intellect, and a mind full of craft and design, he had managed to make others subservient to his views; and now that those views were answered, and that his underlings and accomplices were no longer required, they became positively dangerous. He was well aware of that cold-blooded policy which teaches that it is far safer to destroy than to cast away the tools by which a man carves his way to power and fortune. “They shall die,” said Sweeney Todd—‘“dead men tell no tales, nor women nor boys either, and they shall all die; after which there will, I think, be a serious fire in Fleet Street. Ha! ha! it may spread to what mischief it likes, always provided it stops not short of the entire destruction of my house and premises. Rare sport—rare sport will it be to me, for then I will at once commence a new career, in which the barber will be forgotten, and the man of fashion only seen and remembered, for with this sad addition to my means, I am fully capable of vying with the highest and the noblest, let them be whom they may.” This seemed a pleasant train of reflections to Sweeney Todd, and as the coach entered Fleet Street, there sat such a grim smile upon his countenance that he looked like some fiend in human shape, who had just completed the destruction of a human soul. CORniclooo S CO)