Explore "Ernest Maltravers Book I" by Edward Bulwer-lytton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"How like a younker or a prodigal, The scarfed bark puts from her native bay! " /Merchant of Venice/.
WE are apt to connect the voice of Conscience with the stillness of midnight. But I think we wrong that innocent hour. It is that terrible "NEXT MORNING," when reason is wide awake, upon which remorse fastens its fangs. Has a man gambled away his all, or shot his friend in a duel -- has he committed a crime or incurred a laugh -- it is the /next morning/, when the irretrievable Past rises before him like a spectre; then doth the churchyard of memory yield up its grisly dead -- then is the witching hour when the foul fiend within us can least tempt perhaps, but most torment. At night we have one thing to hope for, one refuge to fly to -- oblivion and sleep! But at morning, sleep is over, and we are called upon coldly to review, and re-act, and live again the waking bitterness of self-reproach. Maltravers rose a penitent and unhappy man -- remorse was new to him, and he felt as if he had committed a treacherous and fraudulent as well as guilty deed.