The earth had grown too narrow for him, for the infernal
gifts laid bare for him the secrets of creation--he saw the cause and
foresaw its end. He was shut out from all that men call "heaven" in
all languages under the sun; he could no longer think of heaven.
Then he came to understand the look on his predecessor's face and the
drying up of the life within; then he knew all that was meant by the
baffled hope that gleamed in Melmoth's eyes; he, too, knew the thirst
that burned those red lips, and the agony of a continual struggle
between two natures grown to giant size. Even yet he might be an
angel, and he knew himself to be a fiend. His was the fate of a sweet
and gentle creature that a wizard's malice has imprisoned in a
mis-shapen form, entrapping it by a pact, so that another's will must
set it free from its detested envelope.
As a deception only increases the ardor with which a man of really
great nature explores the infinite of sentiment in a woman's heart, so
Castanier awoke to find that one idea lay like a weight upon his soul,
an idea which was perhaps the key to loftier spheres. The very fact
that he had bartered away his eternal happiness led him to dwell in
thought upon the future of those who pray and believe.
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