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Updated: July 11, 2025
In these days Paul Armstrong pondered much and often over the saying of the man who had been his master in the arts of fiction and the drama: 'Men reserve their bitterest repentances for their best actions. If only he had played the man of the world towards Annette instead of playing the Quixote, how different a position he would have held towards the moral pack!
That night, as I walked home solitary, I felt more humble and less satisfied with myself than I had done for many a month. One good sign was that I was by no means disposed this time to launch out into the extravagant resolutions to turn over a new leaf which had marked my former repentances. In fact, I said to myself, I won't resolve to do anything; but, God helping me, do something I will.
But a man who has not created himself can never secure himself against the inroad of the glorious terror of that Goodness which was able to utter him into being, with all its possible wrongs and repentances. The fact that a man has never, up to any point yet, been aware of aught beyond himself cannot shut Him out who is beyond him, when at last He means to enter.
Let us ask God to convince us really of sin by his Holy Spirit, and show us what sin is, and its exceeding sinfulness; how ugly and foul sin is, how foolish and absurd, how mean and ungrateful toward that good God who wishes us nothing but good, and wishes us, therefore, to be good, because goodness is the only path to life and happiness; and then we shall be so ashamed of ourselves, so afraid of our own weakness, so shocked at the difference between ourselves and the spotless Lord Jesus, that we shall have no time to despise others, no time to admire our own frames, and feelings, and repentances.
We still disliked each other with the cordiality of our first acquaintance, but I was very sorry for it, and had a great many repentances about it after every meeting. Kilian I met a good deal, but we rather avoided each other, at short range, though exceedingly good friends to the general observation.
An innate cleanliness of soul rendered the occasional coarseness to him harmless, and the mighty torrent of the man's life, broken by occasional pools reflecting the stars; its headlong hatred of hypocrisy and false religion; its generosity, and struggling conscientiousness; its failures and its repentances, roused much in the heart of Donal.
Hence I never now hear that expression taken from the Latin, "Of the dead speak nothing unless good," without despising it as an unworthy concession to sentiment; for I have not the least doubt in my mind that, spite of deathbed repentances and all the horrors which crowd upon the imagination of a bad man in his last moments I say I have not the least doubt that of every hundred persons who die, ninety-nine of them, could they be raised from the dead, no matter how many years or even centuries they might have lain in their graves, would exhibit their original natures, and pursue exactly the same courses which made them loved or scorned or feared or neglected before, which brought them to the gallows or which qualified them to die in peace with faces brightening to the opening heavens.
At their best, they are simply good, like good children or good nuns. But in Prussia, all that is best in the civilized machinery is put at the service of all that is worst in the barbaric mind. Here again the Prussian has no accidental merits, none of those lucky survivals, none of those late repentances, which make the patchwork glory of Russia.
His big strength and virile, primitive possessiveness would appeal to many women, and Nan reflected that had she cared for him it would have been easy enough to tame him with his tempestuous love, his savage temper, and his shamefaced "little boy" repentances! A woman who loved him in return might have led him by a thread of gossamer!
If it was sometimes forced upon him that all this ended in anguish to some of these various charmers, first or last, then there was always in reserve the pleasure of repentance. He was very winning and generous in his repentances, and he enjoyed them so much they were often repeated.
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