iage, was now his nearest ally,
prolonged his confinement, in order to enjoy the management of his
immense estates. There was one who owed his all to the sufferer, an
humble friend, but grateful and faithful. By unceasing exertion, and
repeated invocation of justice, he at length succeeded in obtaining
his patron's freedom, and reinstatement in the management of his own
property, to which was soon added that of his intended bride, who having
died without male issue, her estates reverted to him, as heir of entail.
But freedom and wealth were unable to restore the equipoise of his mind;
to the former his grief made him indifferent--the latter only served him
as far as it afforded him the means of indulging his strange and wayward
fancy. He had renounced the Catholic religion, but perhaps some of
its doctrines continued to influence a mind, over which remorse and
misanthropy now assumed, in appearance, an unbounded authority. His life
has since been that alternately of a pilgrim and a hermit, suffering
the most severe privations, not indeed in ascetic devotion, but in
abhorrence of mankind. Yet no man's words and actions have been at
such a wide difference, nor has any hypocritical wretch ever been more
ingenious in assigning good motives for his vile actions, than this
unfortunate in reconciling to his abstract principles of misanthropy,
a conduct which flows from his natural generosity and kindness of
feeling."
"Still, Mr. Ratcliffe--still you describe the inconsistencies of a
madman."
"By no means," replied Ratcliffe. "That the imagination of this
gentleman is disordered, I will not pretend to dispute; I have already
told you that it has sometimes broken out into paroxysms approaching
to real mental alienation. But it is of his common state of mind that I
speak; it is irregular, but not deranged; the shades are as gradual as
those that divide the light of noonday from midnight. The courtier who
ruins his fortune for the attainment of a title which can do him no
good, or power of
Notka biograficzna
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