When one man has been under very remarkable obligations to another, with whom he subsequently quarrels, a common sense of decency, as it were, makes of the former a much severer enemy than a mere stranger would be. To account for your own hard-heartedness and ingratitude in such a case, you are bound to prove the other party's crime. It is not that you are selfish, brutal, and angry at the failure of a speculation--no, no--it is that your partner has led you into it by the basest treachery and with the most sinister motives. From a mere sense of consistency, a persecutor is bound to show that the fallen man is a villain--otherwise he, the persecutor, is a wretch himself.

But when one man has been under obligations to another, with whom he quarrels, he becomes a much severer enemy than a mere stranger would be. To account for your own ingratitude in such a case, you are bound to prove the other party's crime. It is not that you are selfish, brutal, and angry - no, no - it is that your partner has made you so by the basest treachery.
