Pagina 220 de 483

"Every conversation of the cottagers now opened new wonders to

me. While I listened to the instructions which Felix bestowed

upon the Arabian, the strange system of human society was

explained to me. I heard of the division of property, of immense

wealth and squalid poverty, of rank, descent, and noble blood.

"The words induced me to turn towards myself. I learned that the

possessions most esteemed by your fellow creatures were high and

unsullied descent united with riches. A man might be respected

with only one of these advantages, but without either he was

considered, except in very rare instances, as a vagabond and a

slave, doomed to waste his powers for the profits of the chosen

few! And what was I? Of my creation and creator I was absolutely

ignorant, but I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no

kind of property. I was, besides, endued with a figure hideously

deformed and loathsome; I was not even of the same nature as man.

I was more agile than they and could subsist upon coarser diet; I

bore the extremes of heat and cold with less injury to my frame;

my stature far exceeded theirs. When I looked around I saw and

heard of none like me. Was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the

earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?