"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."