Letter III
Godfrey was a criminal. I had reason to believe it from the moment I first saw him, but I simply did not want it to be true. How could a boy so small, so young, so frightened, be guilty of anything? How could a child be a felon?
I offered him shelter on the condition that he would become a scholar. The following day I left him to study and returned to find him running from a neighbour. He had stolen from her. Only an apple, nothing extravagant, but at the time I was still subscribed to the teachings of my father. He believed that sin is sin, and sin is not relative to anything but virtue.
I wondered at the time if the curse of man is to always be defined by what he did and from where he came. Does a man do something once, and then expand to envelope his mistake in its entirety, thus developing a defining trait? Is there no hope that he might change, or stray from the course upon which he was thrust? For this boy had turned away from stealing from the deceased and towards stealing from the elderly, and I could hardly decide which was more wicked.
My questions, however, terrified me as I understood them to also be relevant to myself. After what had happened to me, after what I had become, was reform possible? Could I deny my very nature, if it so displeased me?
I had no answer for that. I fear that, all this time later, I still do not. Throughout the night, the quiet hours in which I cannot busy myself with work, this thought troubles me: have I truly changed or am I simply pretending?
