The Criminal from Lost Honour, Friedrich Schiller 1786
Channel: Age of Enlightenment
Date: 2015-10-28

Where does guilt come from? Where does reconciliation come from?

At the moment I felt as if the whole world depended on the firing of my gun, and the hatred of my whole life seemed concentrated in the tip of the finger that was to give the fatal pressure to the trigger. An invisible fatal hand was suspended over me, the index of my destiny pointed irrevocably to that black minute. My arm trembled, and when I allowed my gun the fatal choice, my teeth chattered as in an ague fit, and my breath, with a suffering sensation, was confined in my lungs. For the duration of one minute, did the barrel of the gun waver uncertainly between the man and the deer, one minute-and one more-and yet one more. It was a doubtful and obstinate contest between revenge and conscience gained the victory, and the huntsman lay dead on the ground. My gun fell as it had been fired. “Murderer,” I stammered out slowly. 

https://archive.org/stream/talesfromgermanc00oxenrich#page/34/mode/2up