One Abyss Invokes Another.
In times gone by, in the so-called darkness of the Middle Ages, there
were certain countries in Europe that believed in the existence of a
fiend or ghoul that inhabited lonely places and unfrequented woods,
and tore to pieces the imprudent traveller that ventured on its path.
This fiend of the desert and lonely wood was at best but a fabrication
of an excited fancy; it has long since passed away with the myths of
the past, and exists only in the nursery rhymes of our literature.
Yet in its place a malignant spirit of evil revels in the ruin of the
human race; it delights in the crowd; it loves the gaslight, the
lascivious song and wanton dance; it presides over our convivial
banquets with brow crowned with ivy and faded roses; whilst all the
unholy delights of earth sacrifice to it, in return it scatters amongst
its adorers all the ills and sorrows that flow from the curse of Eden,
making a libation to the infernal gods of the honor, the fortune, and
the lives of men. The ghoul or fiend of modern society is the demon
of alcohol.
History records a remarkable victim in the ill fated Cassier. When
grief falls on the irreligious soul, it seeks relief in crime. The
shadow of death that fell on his family circle, and the flight of his
son in daring forgetfulness of his parental authority, which he had
overrated, broke the last link of Christian forbearance in his
unbelieving heart; when wearied of blaspheming the providence of God,
he quaffed the fatal cup which hell gives as a balm to its
sorrow-stricken votaries.
A cloud of oblivion must hide from the tender gaze of the young and the
innocent the harrowing scenes that brought misery on his home, ruin on
his financial condition, and a deeper hue to the moral depravity of
his blighted character.
One look of sympathy at our young heroines, and we will pass on to the
thrilling course of events.
Like beautiful yachts on a stormy lake, without pilot, without hands
to steady the white sail to catch the favorable wind, Alvira and Aloysia
were tossed on a sea of trial which cast a baneful shadow over their
future destinies. Tears had cast the halo of their own peculiar beauty
over their delicate features; mourning and sombre costume wrapt around
them the gravity of sorrow and the adulation of a universal sympathy,
pretended or real, supplied the attentions that flattered and pleased
when they led the giddy world of fashion. The silence of grief hung
around the magnificent saloons, once so gay; the wardrobe that contained
the costly apparel, the casket that treasured the pearls of Ceylon and
gems of Golconda, were all closed and neglected. The treatment of
their father was an agony of domestic trouble, in which they were tried
as in a furnace.
A few weeks, however, and the darkest hour of the storm had passed.
Moments of relaxation brought beams of sunlight through the dissolving
beams of sunlight through the dissolving clouds; drives, walks, and
even visits were gradually resumed.
A fit of illness brought Cassier to his senses. A forced abstinence
for a few weeks saved him from the last and most terrible lot of
confirmed drunkenness; but ruin was written with his own hand on the
firm that made him wealthy. Quick-footed rumor, that hates the
well-being of man, was abroad at its deadly work; public confidence in
the bank began to wane, and each depositor lent the weight of his
individual interest to accelerate the financial crash. The stone set in
motion down the mountain assumes a force that no power could stay; on it
will go until it rests in the plain From the eminence of his boasted
wealth the usurer found this turn come to whirl around on the wheel of
fortune and yield to some other mortal, who is the toy of fortune, to
grasp for a moment the golden key of avarice and ambition.
At length the crash has come. One of the largest depositors sends
notice that in a week he will withdraw his funds.
Cassier saw ruin staring him in the face; when this sum was paid he
would be a pauper. He would not dig, and in the pride of his heart
he would not beg. Conscience, long seared in the path of impiety, has
no voice to warn, no staff to strike. Cassier, wise in his generation
of dishonesty, knows what he will do, and nerves himself for a
desperate undertaking which leads us deeper and deeper into the history
of crime, into the abysses of iniquity which invoke each other.
In a few days Paris is startled. Cassier has fled, and robbed his
creditors of a million francs.