If there were in fact any such sound, it might
have been caused by a malicious exercise of ventriloquism, on the part
of Roderick.
Thus, making his own actual serpent- if a serpent there actually
was in his bosom- the type of each man's fatal error, or hoarded
sin, or unquiet conscience, and striking his sting so unremorsefully
into the sorest spot, we may well imagine that Roderick became the
pest of the city. Nobody could elude him; none could withstand him. He
grappled with the ugliest truth that he could lay his hand on, and
compelled his adversary to do the same. Strange spectacle in human
life, where it is the instinctive effort of one and all to hide
those sad realities, and leave them undisturbed beneath a heap of
superficial topics, which constitute the materials of intercourse
between man and man! It was not to be tolerated that Roderick Elliston
should break through the tacit compact, by which the world has done
its best to secure repose, without relinquishing evil. The victims
of his malicious remarks, it is true, had brothers enough to keep them
in countenance; for, by Roderick's theory, every mortal bosom harbored
either a brood of small serpents, or one overgrown monster, that had
devoured all the rest.
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