Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
page 24 of 98 (24%)
page 24 of 98 (24%)
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Richmond, were before us, behind and about us the darkening room, and on
the stony face of the sufferer--for the character of his face, though still gentle and sweet, was changed--rested that dim, odd glow which seems to descend and produce, where it touches, lights, sudden though faint, which are lost, almost without gradation, in darkness. The silence, too, was utter: not a distant wheel, or bark, or whistle from without; and within the depressing stillness of an invalid bachelor's house. I guessed well the nature, though not even vaguely the particulars of the revelations I was about to receive, from that fixed face of suffering that so oddly flushed stood out, like a portrait of Schalken's, before its background of darkness. "It began," he said, "on the 15th of October, three years and eleven weeks ago, and two days--I keep very accurate count, for every day is torment. If I leave anywhere a chasm in my narrative tell me. "About four years ago I began a work, which had cost me very much thought and reading. It was upon the religious metaphysics of the ancients." "I know," said I, "the actual religion of educated and thinking paganism, quite apart from symbolic worship? A wide and very interesting field." "Yes, but not good for the mind--the Christian mind, I mean. Paganism is all bound together in essential unity, and, with evil sympathy, their religion involves their art, and both their manners, and the subject is a degrading fascination and the Nemesis sure. God forgive me! |
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