Read Books Online, for Free |
Mosses From An Old Manse | Nathaniel Hawthorne | |
Egotism; or, The Bosom Serpent |
Page 5 of 9 |
"You have swallowed a snake in a cup of sacramental wine," quoth he. "Profane wretch!" exclaimed the divine; but, nevertheless, his hand stole to his breast. He met a person of sickly sensibility, who, on some early disappointment, had retired from the world, and thereafter held no intercourse with his fellow-men, but brooded sullenly or passionately over the irrevocable past. This man's very heart, if Roderick might be believed, had been changed into a serpent, which would finally torment both him and itself to death. Observing a married couple, whose domestic troubles were matter of notoriety, he condoled with both on having mutually taken a house adder to their bosoms. To an envious author, who depreciated works which he could never equal, he said that his snake was the slimiest and filthiest of all the reptile tribe, but was fortunately without a sting. A man of impure life, and a brazen face, asking Roderick if there were any serpent in his breast, he told him that there was, and of the same species that once tortured Don Rodrigo, the Goth. He took a fair young girl by the hand, and gazing sadly into her eyes, warned her that she cherished a serpent of the deadliest kind within her gentle breast; and the world found the truth of those ominous words, when, a few months afterwards, the poor girl died of love and shame. Two ladies, rivals in fashionable life who tormented one another with a thousand little stings of womanish spite, were given to understand that each of their hearts was a nest of diminutive snakes, which did quite as much mischief as one great one. But nothing seemed to please Roderick better than to lay hold of a person infected with jealousy, which he represented as an enormous green reptile, with an ice-cold length of body, and the sharpest sting of any snake save one. "And what one is that?" asked a by-stander, overhearing him. |
Who's On Your Reading List? Read Classic Books Online for Free at Page by Page Books.TM |
Mosses From An Old Manse Nathaniel Hawthorne |
Home | More Books | About Us | Copyright 2004