The mystery was out; but not so the bosom serpent.
He, if it were anything but a delusion, still lay coiled in his living
den. The empiric's cure had been a sham, the effect it was supposed,
of some stupefying drug, which more nearly caused the death of the
patient than of the odious reptile that possessed him. When Roderick
Elliston regained entire sensibility, it was to find his misfortune
the town talk- the more than nine days' wonder and horror- while, at
his bosom, he felt the sickening motion of a thing alive, and the
gnawing of that restless fang, which seemed to gratify at once a
physical appetite and a fiendish spite.
He summoned the old black servant, who had been bred up in his
father's house, and was a middle-aged man while Roderick lay in his
cradle.
"Scipio!" he began; and then paused, with his arms folded over
his 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.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25