There is nothing wicked about walking round the world and coming back
to your own house; it is no more wicked than walking round the garden
and coming back to your own house. And there is nothing wicked
about picking up your wife here, there, and everywhere, if, forsaking
all others, you keep only to her so long as you both shall live.
It is as innocent as playing a game of hide-and-seek in the garden.
You associate such acts with blackguardism by a mere snobbish association,
as you think there is something vaguely vile about going (or being
seen going) into a pawnbroker's or a public-house. You think there
is something squalid and commonplace about such a connection.
You are mistaken.
"This man's spiritual power has been precisely this,
that he has distinguished between custom and creed.
He has broken the conventions, but he has kept the commandments.
It is as if a man were found gambling wildly in a gambling hell,
and you found that he only played for trouser buttons.
It is as if you found a man making a clandestine appointment
with a lady at a Covent Garden ball, and then you found it
was his grandmother. Everything is ugly and discreditable,
except the facts; everything is wrong about him, except that
he has done no wrong.
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