No! It cannot be forgotten, or forgiven!—Cruel, malignant, remorseless wretch!
Can you speak thus of the present?—You know you cannot!—And wherefore unjustly insist on the past? Be firm! Conquer this pride of heart!
Why, ay—Pride of heart! It is the very damning sin of my soul!
Exorcise the foul fiend then, and in its stead give welcome to firm but unassuming self-respect. Arise! Shake torpor from you, and feel your strength! It is Atlean; made to bear a world! Cherish life, and become worthy of yourself! What! Would you kill a mind so mighty? Do you not feel it, now; possessing you, emanating, flaming, bursting to spread itself?
Why, that were something!—Could I but once again get into my own good liking—! You are a strange fellow!—You will not hate me! Nay, will not suffer me to hate myself!—Damnation! To be cast at such an immense distance! Oh it is intolerable! It is contemptible!—But I will have my revenge!—Some how or another I will yet have my revenge! And, since hate must not be the word, why—! But no matter—I will have no more vaunting—Yet, if I do not—! I have had a glimpse, and begin to know you—The soul of benevolence, of tenderness, of attention, of love, of all the divine faculties that make men deities, infuses itself and pervades you—Had I but been wholly fool, I had been but partly villain—But I!—Oh monstrous!—The fiends with whom I was leagued to me were angels!
Why, ay; contemplate the picture, but do not forget it is that of a man you once knew, who is now no more. He has disappeared, and in his stead an angel of light is come!
Stop!—Go not too fast!—I promise nothing—Mark that!—I promise nothing—Do not imagine I am now in the feverish repentance of white wine whey—You would have me stay in a world which I myself have rendered hateful—I will think of it—I know your arts—You would realize the fable of Pygmalion, and would infuse soul into marble!
There is no need; you have a soul already; inventive, capacious, munificent, sublime!
Ay, ay—I know—You have a choice collection of words.
A soul of ten thousand! Nay, an army of souls in one!