"Nothing else, dear master," replied Scipio; "only that the
Doctor gave you a powder, and that the snake leapt out upon the
floor."
"No, no!" muttered Roderick to himself, as he shook his head, and
pressed his hands with a more convulsive force upon his breast- "I
feel 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 of
acquaintances and strangers. It was partly the result of
desperation, on finding that the cavern of his own bosom had not
proved deep and dark enough to hide the secret, even while it was so
secure a fortress for the loathsome fiend that had crept into it.
But still more, this craving for notoriety was a symptom of the
intense morbidness which now pervaded his nature. All persons,
chronically diseased, are egotists, whether the disease be of the mind
or body; whether sin, sorrow, or merely the more tolerable calamity of
some endless pain, or mischief among the cords of mortal life. Such
individuals are made acutely conscious of a self, by the torture in
which it dwells.
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