"
"And did they judge truly?" said Isabella.
"You shall hear. He, at least, was fully aware of his own deficiency;
the sense of it haunted him like a phantom. 'I am,' was his own
expression to me,--I mean to a man whom he trusted,--'I am, in spite
of what you would say, a poor miserable outcast, fitter to have been
smothered in the cradle than to have been brought up to scare the world
in which I crawl.' The person whom he addressed in vain endeavoured to
impress him with the indifference to external form which is the natural
result of philosophy, or entreat him to recall the superiority of mental
talents to the more attractive attributes that are merely personal.
'I hear you,' he would reply; 'but you speak the voice of cold-blooded
stoicism, or, at least, of friendly partiality. But look at every book
which we have read, those excepted of that abstract philosophy which
feels no responsive voice in our natural feelings. Is not personal form,
such as at least can be tolerated without horror and disgust, always
represented as essential to our ideas of a friend, far more a lover?
Is not such a mis-shapen monster as I am, excluded, by the very fiat
of Nature, from her fairest enjoyments? What but my wealth prevents
all--perhaps even Letitia, or you--from shunning me as something foreign
to your nature, and more odious, by bearing that distorted resemblance
to humanity which we observe in the animal tribes that are more hateful
to man because they seem his caricature?'"
"You repeat the sentiments of a madman," said Miss Vere.
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