He had heard all the details of the murder with a
fulness that had been at last complete. The man who had oppressed
him, and whom he had at times almost envied, was indeed gone, and the
world for awhile had believed that he, Phineas Finn, had been the
man's murderer!
And now what should be his own future life? One thing seemed certain
to him. He could never again go into the House of Commons, and sit
there, an ordinary man of business, with other ordinary men. He had
been so hacked and hewed about, so exposed to the gaze of the vulgar,
so mauled by the public, that he could never more be anything but the
wretched being who had been tried for the murder of his enemy. The
pith had been taken out of him, and he was no longer a man fit for
use. He could never more enjoy that freedom from self-consciousness,
that inner tranquillity of spirit, which are essential to public
utility. Then he remembered certain lines which had long been
familiar to him, and he repeated them aloud, with some conceit that
they were apposite to him:--
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,--
For the reed that grows never more again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.
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