The Wildfire Club - The Emma Hardinge Britten Archive

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lOul of the agonized man, for the first time awakened to
the thirst for human blood and quenchless nngeaDce.
gleamed through the lnstroua eyes of the seer .
.. Farewell, Augustine. I go to rescue or avenge my
mother," were his first words. But he could not part
thus, and that Augustine knew. Nearly a hundred miles
intervened between himself and the scene of the tragedy
he had witnessed. The road was lined with Austrian
troops, /lnd by daybreak of the morrow the command had
been given to the rebel Hungarians, by their leaders, to
advance to the taking of an important position which they
confidently hoped to secure. This last consideration more
than all the rest, together with the cherished desire of
being permitted to lead a forlorn hope in the course of the
engagement, finally prevailed in restraining the unhappy
son from rushing off in the midst of all impossibilities to
attempt the rescue of his mother, supposing that she should·
survive the shameful cruelties to which she had been exposed.
And the morrow's SUD shone down upon a dreadful
field of carnage, in which no hand drew so red or reckless
a sword as he who a few short hours before had
mourned before moon and stars the delltruction of a single
human life.
"Lead us not into temptation." Does God tempt us 'I
If not, what does? These are fearful queries, full of dreadful
meaning too; for none can deny that the human heart,
swelling with loving, generous impulses under the gentle
rule of peaceful surrounding, has become, if not an absolute
traitor to itself, yet so wildly fierce, 80 hard, relentless,
almost savage beneath the impetus of opposite influences,
that we again demand, by whom and why are we
thus tempted? 0, life! dost thou demand, for the evolvement
of all thy purposes, that the secret depths of human