the thing possessed is seldom the thing that we dreamed of.

Beneath Melmoth's omnipotence lurked this tragical anticlimax of so
many a passion, and now the inanity of human nature was revealed to
his successor, to whom infinite power brought Nothingness as a dowry.

To come to a clear understanding of Castanier's strange position, it
must be borne in mind how suddenly these revolutions of thought and
feeling had been wrought; how quickly they had succeeded each other;
and of these things it is hard to give any idea to those who have
never broken the prison bonds of time, and space, and distance. His
relation to the world without had been entirely changed with the
expansion of his faculties.

Like Melmoth himself, Castanier could travel in a few moments over the
fertile plains of India, could soar on the wings of demons above
African desert spaces, or skim the surface of the seas. The same
insight that could read the inmost thoughts of others, could apprehend
at a glance the nature of any material object, just as he caught as it
were all flavors at once upon his tongue. He took his pleasure like a
despot; a blow of the axe felled the tree that he might eat its
fruits. The transitions, the alternations that measure joy and pain,
and diversify human happiness, no longer existed for him. He had so
completely glutted his appetites that pleasure must overpass the
limits of pleasure to tickle a palate cloyed with satiety, and
suddenly grown fastidious beyond all measure, so that ordinary
pleasures became distasteful. Conscious that at will he was the master
of all the women that he could desire, knowing that his power was
irresistible, he did not care to exercise it; they were pliant to his
unexpressed wishes, to his most extravagant caprices, until he felt a