Bressant

"Well! let her!" cried the young man, rising roughly from his chair, and

shouldering backward and forward across his room with short, incensed

steps. "If her proofs can prevent my marriage, let her bring them. She'd

better be quick about it! Four days from now! They'd better never have

come at all. It's her interest as much as mine--more than mine. She's a

half-crazy old creature. She can do nothing for herself. If she has any

thing to say, let her say it. I'm no baby, to shape my life after an old

woman's story. Who is she? What is she to me?

"Let something happen, I say," continued he, stretching out his great

arms, with the fists clinched. "I'm tired of this--the life of a dog

with his tail between his legs. Is it I who go about, afraid to look

man or woman in the face? Am I the same who came here six months ago?

Did I come here to learn this? Who was it taught it to me, then? I say,

I've been deceived; it's no work of mine. Professor Valeyon--he's made

me a subject for experiment; he's tried his theories on me; dissected

me, and filled in the parts that were wanting. It's a dangerous

business, Professor Valeyon. You've lost one daughter; the other may go

too."

Bressant's voice, which had been growing hoarser and more rapid as he

went on, abruptly sank, at this last sentence, into a whisper; yet, had

any one been there to listen, the whisper would have sounded louder and

more terrible than the most violent vociferation of angry passion. It

breathed a sudden concentration of evil intelligence, that startled like

the hiss of a serpent.

He stopped his short, passionate walk, and leaned against his table,

with his arms once more folded. The idea that he had been tampered with

had gained possession of him, and nothing tends more to demoralize a

man, and make him unmanageably angry. His was an uncandid position,

without doubt: he was attempting to lay upon others the responsibility

which--the greater part of it, at least--should have been borne by

himself; but still, the vein of reasoning he pursued was connected, and

comprehensible, and was rendered awkward by an ugly little thread of

something like truth and justice, which showed here and there along its

course.

"They've taught me to love; did they think they could stop there? that I

shouldn't learn to lie, as well? and to hate, and be revengeful? and to

be afraid? Was I so bad when I came here, that all this has made me no

worse? I was happy, at any rate; my brain was clear; my mind had no

fear, and no weariness--it was like an athlete; my blood was cool. Look

at me now! Am not I ruined by this patching and mending? I can do no

work. When I think, it's no longer of how I might become great, and

wise, and powerful--of nothing inspiring--nothing noble; but all about

these petty, heated, miserable affairs, that have twisted themselves

around me, and are choking me up. I don't ask myself, any more, whether

my name will be as highly honored and as long remembered as the

Christian Apostles', and Mohammed's, and Luther's. My only question is,

whether I'm to turn out more of a fool, or of a liar! And I love

Sophie Valeyon! I'm to be her husband."