In the first and decisive encounter with Baldassarre,
the words of repudiation which seal the whole after-character of his
life, apparently escape from him unconsciously and by surprise. But it
is the traitor-heart that speaks them. They could never even by surprise
have escaped the lips, had not the baseness of their denial and desertion
been already in the heart consummated.
We need not follow him through all his subsequent and deepening treasons.
They all, without exception, want every element that might make even
treason impressive. They want even such factitious elevation as their
being prompted by hatred or revenge might lend;--even such broader
interest as their being done in the interest of a party, or for some wide
end, could confer. They have no fuller or deeper import than the present
ease, present safety, present or future advantage, of that object which
fills up his universe,--Self. He would rather not have betrayed the
trust reposed in him by Romola's father, if the end he thereby proposed
to himself could have been attained otherwise than through such betrayal.
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