Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 11, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume III

FATHER DAMIEN
writing ; and if the words written were base beyond
parallel, the rage, I am happy to repeat — it is the
only comphment I shall pay you — the rage was
almost virtuous. But, sir, when we have failed,
and another has succeeded ; when we have stood
by, and another has stepped in ; when we sit and
grow bulky in our charming mansions, and a plain,
uncouth peasant steps into the battle, under the
eyes of God, and succours the afflicted, and consoles
the dying, and is himself afflicted in his turn, and
dies upon the field of honour — the battle cannot be
retrieved as your unhappy irritation has suggested.
It is a lost battle, and lost for ever. One thing
remained to you in your defeat — some rags of com-
mon honour; and these you have made haste to
cast away.
Common honour ; not the honour of having done
anything right, but the honour of not having done
aught conspicuously foul ; the honour of the inert :
that was what remained to you. We are not all
expected to be Damiens ; a man may conceive his
duty more narrowly, he may love his comforts
better ; and none will cast a stone at him for that.
But will a gentleman of your reverend profession
allow me an example from the fields of gallantry ?
When two gentlemen compete for the favour of a
lady, and the one succeeds and the other is rejected,
and (as will sometimes happen) matter damaging to
the successful rival's credit reaches the ear of the
defeated, it is held by plain men of no pretensions
that his mouth is, in the circumstance, almost
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