The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1886-12-24
HORRIBLE CALLoUsNEss.
Held His Mother-in-Law i'm the Fire and
Prayed for Her Soul.


Prayed for Her Soul.
London Spectator.
The horrible details of the trial for matricide
just ended at Blois. France where a woman and
her husband have been condemned to death and
two brothers OF the woman to penal servitude,
for the burning of their mother, after sleeping
her night dress in paraffine oil, imply species
OF callousness more intense In its degree and
more curiously limited in its kind than any that
we can recall in the whole records of crime. The
callousness TO suffering which exhibited in
the burning OF q mother for the purpose of OBJ
tanning her small savings of 5000 can hardly be
exaggerated; but all the more extraordinary is
the apparent solicitude which was shown,
though il doubtless tended to increase the dan
ger and risk of the guilty parties. to secure the
spiritual safety of their victim They took care
that the old woman, whom they were going TO
burn, should see the priest and receive absolu-
ton before the crime was committed and even
while they were in the very act of committing
Ode Profundis" for the benefit of
her soul. By sending for the priest they
unqestionably added to the evidence against
them, In case the crime should be discovered; so
that they were not SO callous but what they
some risk, rather than eudanger as they thought,
their victims salvation. by sending her to the
invisible world unabsolved. And while in their
cruelty they we're actually holding down the
tortured old woman on the fire, they were still
anxious enough about her we'll being as a spirit
to pray for her soul. Callousness so fearful to
bodily suffering combined with such seemingly
inconsistent soicitude about spiritual suffering,
is certainly very strange phenomenon. though
1t Is true enough, of course that the same
union between complete callousness and keen
susceptibility often occurs in a mans feelings
about himself. Ore man will bear shame as
stoically If he did not feel it and shrink from
the smallest physical pain. Another will bear
physical pain as If he did not feel it and shrink
from the smallest vestige of shame. One man
will be quite callous to moral censure and
shrink from the minutest appearance of
ridicule; another will be callous to ridicule and
shrink from any show of dislike; a third will be
quite Indifferent to dislike, and shrink
from contempt as if it were unendurable
Ii. then, calousness and sensitveness are
80 often capriciously com bined even in mans
own feelings about the attitude of others toward
him, 1T is not, perhaps. very surprising If there
is similar caprice in the callousness and sensi-
tiveness evinced by persons, or even classes, in
their feelings for others. if you cannot foresee
when they will be Indifferent and when they
will be sensitive. when they will be wholly with
out sympathy, and when they will be compass
sionate, or even full Of disinterested anxiety.
AS rule, however, we may safely say that cal
lousness is commoner in relation to feelings
which go through a good deal of wear
and tear every day, and dur
ing a good many hours of every
day, than it is in relation to feelings which are
comparatively seldom called into exercise Just
as the skin of the hand becomes callous soonest,
because it is most frequently exposed to wear
and tear, and becomes most callous in the Ia
borer who is constantly using his hands. the
feeling of sympathy with physical suffering,
which is constantly liable to be appealed to in
the life of the hardest-worked classes, becomes
callous sooner than the feeling of sympathy
with moral or spiritual suffering where
the latter is rarely, and yet at the same
time on those rare occasions very wildly
excited. medical student who faints at
his first operation soon comes to watch the most
frightful operations without even fiuttering of
the pulse; and the priest, who is quite over
whelmed when he first hears the confession of
a great crime, soon comes to look upon such con-
fessions a part of the routine OF his
life. Indeed, it excites no deeper thrill
judge, even the jailer. to whom contact
with crime is part of their professional work.
Sust the peasant, who is accustomed to
see the worst physical pain infllcted-on
animals at least-as q matter of course, and
even to endure good deal himself with dull
fortitude, makes light of the horrors even of a
mothers martyrdom, though prompted by his
own greed, while he considers with the keenest
interest the best mode of alternating the suf-
ferings of his victims In the spiritual world and
sincerely, though most impiously, entreats the
blessing of heaven on the transit of the
sufferers soul 1t is hardly possible
to conceive a grimmer contrast than
the feelings of man, while he held
his mother-in-law on the Are with rake, prayed
for her soul and congratulated himself that he
had secured her the absoution of the church for
her sins. One could partly understand the cal
lousness OF simple brutality carried to any de-
gree of supreme Indifference to the victims
pangs; but such brutal callousness as was
shown in this case, in close proximity to genu-
inc anxiety for the victims spiritual welfare, is
hardly laraeled, we should think, in the long
story of the morbid eccentricities of crime.