You are surprised to find me so calm in the midst of crime? Let me then say a few words apropos. I fain would have you become as apathetic as I—and I think you soon shall. I noticed yesterday that you were struck, even startled, by my equanimity in the thick of the horrors we were committing and I seem to remember that you accused me of lacking pity for the men our debauchery sacrificed.

Oh, Juliette, banish all doubt thereof: Nature has arranged everything, informed everything, hers is the responsibility for all you see and all there is. Has she given equal strength, equal beauty, equal grace to all the creatures wrought by her hand? Of course not. Since she desires that each particular thing or constitution have its particular contour or hue, so also she wills that fates and fortunes be not alike. The luckless ones chance puts in our clutches, or who excite our passions, have their place in Nature’s scheme as do the stars in the firmament and the sun that gives us light; and ’tis as certain an evil one commits in meddling with this wise economy as ’twould be were one to confound cosmic operations, were that crime within the scope of our possibilities…