第16章

He, if it were anything but a delusion, still lay coiled in his livingden. The empiric's cure had been a sham, the effect it was supposed,of some stupefying drug, which more nearly caused the death of thepatient than of the odious reptile that possessed him. When RoderickElliston regained entire sensibility, it was to find his misfortunethe town talk- the more than nine days' wonder and horror- while, athis bosom, he felt the sickening motion of a thing alive, and thegnawing of that restless fang, which seemed to gratify at once aphysical appetite and a fiendish spite.

He summoned the old black servant, who had been bred up in hisfather's house, and was a middle-aged man while Roderick lay in hiscradle.

"Scipio!" he began; and then paused, with his arms folded overhis heart. "What do people say of me, Scipio?""Sir! my poor master! that you had a serpent in your bosom,"answered the servant, with hesitation.

"And what else?" asked Roderick, with a ghastly look at the man.

"Nothing else, dear master," replied Scipio; "only that theDoctor gave you a powder, and that the snake leapt out upon thefloor.""No, no!" muttered Roderick to himself, as he shook his head, andpressed his hands with a more convulsive force upon his breast- "Ifeel him still. It gnaws me! It gnaws me!"From this time, the miserable sufferer ceased to shun the world,but rather solicited and forced himself upon the notice ofacquaintances and strangers. It was partly the result ofdesperation, on finding that the cavern of his own bosom had notproved deep and dark enough to hide the secret, even while it was sosecure a fortress for the loathsome fiend that had crept into it.

But still more, this craving for notoriety was a symptom of theintense morbidness which now pervaded his nature. All persons,chronically diseased, are egotists, whether the disease be of the mindor body; whether sin, sorrow, or merely the more tolerable calamity ofsome endless pain, or mischief among the cords of mortal life. Suchindividuals are made acutely conscious of a self, by the torture inwhich it dwells. Self, therefore, grows to be so prominent an objectwith them, that they cannot but present it to the face of every casualpasser-by. There is a pleasure- perhaps the greatest of which thesufferer is susceptible- in displaying the wasted or ulcerated limb,or the cancer in the breast; and the fouler the crime, with so muchthe more difficulty does the perpetrator prevent it from thrustingup its snake-like head to frighten the world; for it is that cancer,or that crime, which constitutes their respective individuality.

Roderick Elliston, who, a little while before had held himself soscornfully above the common lot of men, now paid full allegiance tothis humiliating law. The snake in his bosom seemed the symbol of amonstrous egotism, to which everything was referred, and which hepampered, night and day, with a continual and exclusive sacrifice ofdevil-worship.

He soon exhibited what most people considered indubitable tokens ofinsanity. In some of his moods, strange to say, he prided andgloried himself on being marked out from the ordinary experience ofmankind, by the possession of a double nature, and a life within alife. He appeared to imagine that the snake was a divinity- notcelestial, it is true, but darkly infernal- and that he thence derivedan eminence and a sanctity, horrid, indeed, yet more desirable thanwhatever ambition aims at. Thus he drew his misery around him like aregal mantle, and looked down triumphantly upon those whose vitalsnourished no deadly monster. Oftener, however, his human natureasserted its empire over him, in the shape of a yearning forfellowship. It grew to be his custom to spend the whole day inwandering about the streets, aimlessly, unless it might be called anaim to establish a species of brotherhood between himself and theworld. With cankered ingenuity, he sought out his own disease in everybreast. Whether insane or not, he showed so keen a perception offrailty, error, and vice, that many persons gave him credit forbeing possessed not merely with a serpent, but with an actual fiend,who imparted this evil faculty of recognizing whatever was ugliestin man's heart.

For instance, he met an individual, who, for thirty years, hadcherished a hatred against his own brother. Roderick, amidst thethrong of the street, laid his hand on this man's chest, and lookingfull into his forbidding face,"How is the snake today?"- he inquired, with a mock expression ofsympathy.

"The snake!" exclaimed the brother-hater- "What do you mean?""The snake! The snake! Does he gnaw you?" persisted Roderick.