Singular as it may appear, the
sufferer had now contracted a sort of affection for his tormentor;
mingled, however, with the intensest loathing and horror. Nor were
such discordant emotions incompatible; each, on the contrary, imparted
strength and poignancy to its opposite. Horrible love- horrible
antipathy- embracing one another in his bosom, and both
concentrating themselves upon a being that had crept into his
vitals, or been engendered there, and which was nourished with his
food, and lived upon his life, and was as intimate with him as his own
heart, and yet was the foulest of all created things! But not the less
was it the true type of a morbid nature.
Sometimes, in his moments of rage and bitter hatred against the
snake and himself, Roderick determined to be the death of him, even at
the expense of his own life. Once he attempted it by starvation.
But, while the wretched man was on the point of famishing, the monster
seemed to feed upon his heart, and to thrive and wax gamesome, as if
it were his sweetest and most congenial diet.
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