Falkland is of a noble nature ... a man worthy of affection
and kindness ... I am myself the basest and most odious of
mankind."
The inexorable persecutor in return cries at last:
"Williams, you have conquered! I see too late the
greatness and elevation of your mind. I confess that it
is to my fault and not yours that I owe my ruin ... I
am the most execrable of all villains... As reputation
was the blood that warmed my heart, so I feel that
death and infamy must seize me together."
Three days later Falkland dies, but instead of experiencing
relief at the death of his persecutor, Williams becomes the
victim of remorse, regarding himself as the murderer of a noble
spirit, who had been inevitably ruined by the corruption of human
society:
"Thou imbibedst the poison of chivalry with thy earliest youth,
and the base and low-minded envy that met thee on thy return to
thy native seats, operated with this poison to hurry thee into
madness."
At the conclusion of the story, Godwin has not succeeded in
making his moral very clear. The "wicked aristocrat" who figures
in the preface as "carrying into private life the execrable
principles of kings and ministers" emerges at last almost as a
saintly figure, who through a false notion of honour has
unfortunately become the victim of a brutal squire.
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