Pagina 473 di 483

"And do you dream?" said the daemon. "Do you think that I was

then dead to agony and remorse? He," he continued, pointing to

the corpse, "he suffered not in the consummation of the deed. Oh!

Not the ten-thousandth portion of the anguish that was mine

during the lingering detail of its execution. A frightful

selfishness hurried me on, while my heart was poisoned with

remorse. Think you that the groans of Clerval were music to my

ears? My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and

sympathy, and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did

not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you

cannot even imagine.