A traitor would be
found dead with no sign of suffering or injury, and the physician
would pronounce that he had died of apoplexy or heart disease. A
persecutor, or one who had unpardonably wronged any of the Children of
the Star, might go mad, might fling himself from a precipice, might be
visited with the most terrible series of calamities, all natural in
their character, all distinctly traceable to natural causes, but
astonishing and even apparently supernatural in their accumulation,
and often in their immediate appropriateness to the character of his
offence. Our neighbours would, of course, destroy the avenger, if they
could find him out--would attempt to exterminate our society, could
they prove its agency."
"But surely your countrymen must either disbelieve in such agency, in
which case they can hardly fear your vengeance, or they must believe
it, and then would deem it just and necessary to retaliate."
"No," he said. "They disbelieve in the possibility while they are
forced to see the fact. It is impossible, they would say, that a man
should be injured in mind or body, reputation or estate, that the
forces of Nature or the feelings of men should be directed against
him, without the intervention of any material agent, by the mere will
of those who take no traceable means to give that will effect.
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