Pagina 477 van 483

But now crime has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No

guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found

comparable to mine. When I run over the frightful catalogue of my

sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts

were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the

beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen

angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and

man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.