lived?--by this time, I shall have pretty well prepared myself for what I
have been contemplating from the first. I will become a religious teacher,
and promulgate a faith, and prove it by prophecies and miracles; for my
long experience will enable me to do the first, and the acquaintance which
I shall have formed with the mysteries of science will put the latter at
my fingers' ends. So I will be a prophet, a greater than Mahomet, and will
put all man's hopes into my doctrine, and make him good, holy, happy; and
he shall put up his prayers to his Creator, and find them answered,
because they shall be wise, and accompanied with effort. This will be a
great work, and may earn me another rest and pastime."

[_He would see, in one age, the column raised in memory of some great
dead of his in a former one_.]

"And what shall that be?" asked Sibyl Dacy.

"Why," said Septimius, looking askance at her, and speaking with a certain
hesitation, "I have learned, Sibyl, that it is a weary toil for a man to
be always good, holy, and upright. In my life as a sainted prophet, I
shall have somewhat too much of this; it will be enervating and sickening,
and I shall need another kind of diet. So, in the next hundred years,
Sibyl,--in that one little century,--methinks I would fain be what men
call wicked. How can I know my brethren, unless I do that once? I would
experience all. Imagination is only a dream. I can imagine myself a
murderer, and all other modes of crime; but it leaves no real impression
on the heart. I must live these things."

[_The rampant unrestraint, which is the characteristic of
wickedness_.]