Self, therefore, grows to be so prominent an object
with them, that they cannot but present it to the face of every casual
passer-by. There is a pleasure- perhaps the greatest of which the
sufferer is susceptible- in displaying the wasted or ulcerated limb,
or the cancer in the breast; and the fouler the crime, with so much
the more difficulty does the perpetrator prevent it from thrusting
up 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 so
scornfully above the common lot of men, now paid full allegiance to
this humiliating law. The snake in his bosom seemed the symbol of a
monstrous egotism, to which everything was referred, and which he
pampered, night and day, with a continual and exclusive sacrifice of
devil-worship.
He soon exhibited what most people considered indubitable tokens of
insanity. In some of his moods, strange to say, he prided and
gloried himself on being marked out from the ordinary experience of
mankind, by the possession of a double nature, and a life within a
life.
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