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moments concealed them from my sight, and, satisfied at length with my revenge, I did not care to follow them. CHAPTER IV. Under the direction of a more supple tutor than the first, I finished my education, if so we may call it. William Harding was still my associate . He was still the same nervous, susceptible, gentle youth; and though, as he grew older, the more yielding points of his character became modified in his association with society, he nevertheless did not vary in his mental and moral make very considerably from what I have already described him. Though disapproving of many of my habits and propensities, and continually exhorting me upon them, he yet could not but feel the compliment which my spirit, involuntarily, as it were, rendered to his; and he was not at any time averse to the association which I tendered him. Still he was like me in few respects, if any—no two people could have been more decidedly different; different in attributes of mind—different in purpose and pursuit—different in feelings and sentiments—different in all respects, whether in disposition , in character, or person. It is the somewhat popular notion that sympathy in pursuit, and opinions and sentiments in common, bring about the connexions of friendship and love. I think not—such connexions spring from a thousand causes which have no origin in mutual sympathies. The true source of the relationship is the consciousness of dependence and weakness on the one hand—of strength and capacity for protection on the other. This I know to have been the fact in our case; and I believe it to have its share in that of most of those associations which are styled friendly. With little other society than that of William Harding, years glided away, and if they brought little improvement to my moral attributes, at least, as they brought with them no new provocations to the old nature, so they left in abeyance, and seemingly quite dormant, many of those, which, in my character, were decidedly immoral. Circumstance is the accoucheur in these cases; and virtue and vice, like cat and dog, would lie quietly together on the same hearth-rug for centuries, without the necessity of blow or broomstick, did not the inconsiderate hand sometimes throw them the bone, and unreasonably look to them justly and peacefully to make the division. My physical man decidedly improved in the progress of the years. My features under14 MARTIN FABER Simms-MFaber final pages:Layout 1 4/10/08 11:50 AM Page 14 went a considerable change for the better—my manners were far less objectionable—I had suppressed the more rude and brutal features, and, mingling more with society—that particularly of the other sex— I had seen and obeyed the necessity of a gentlemanly demeanor. But my heart occupied the same place and character—there was no change in that region. There, all was stubbornness and selfishness—a scorn for the possessions and claims of others—a resolute and persevering impulse which perpetually sought to exercise and to elevate its own. The spell of my fate was upon it—it seemed seared and soured—and while it blighted, and sought to blight the fortunes and the feelings of all others, without any sympathy, it seemed nevertheless, invariably, to partake of the blight. In the vexation of my spirit at this strange inconsistency of allotment, I used to curse myself, that I was not like the serpent—that I could not envenom my enemy, without infecting my own system, with the poison meant only for his. To this mood—this fatal mood—the creature of an original nature, made too active by an unhappy education, and most unfortunate indulgence—the want of employment gave activity if not exercise and exhibition. The secretions of my malignity, having no object of development, jaundiced my whole moral existence; and a general hostility to human nature and the things of society, at this stage of my being, vented itself in idle curses, and bitter but futile denunciations. I lived only in the night time. For that matter, my life itself has been a long and weary night, to which, if the starlight ever came, it brought bale only, and bitterness—a night, in which there has been little balm or beauty—a night of many tempests. Talk not of Greenland darkness, or Norwegian ice. The moral darkness is the most solid—and what cold is there like that...

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