bitter life--a bitter life--a joyless life. I would I had never
commenced it. And yet the harsh world scowls upon us: our nerves are
broken, and they wonder we are querulous; our blood curdles, and they ask
why we are not gay; our brain grows dizzy and indistinct, (as with me
just now,) and, shrugging their shoulders, they whisper their neighbours
that we are mad. I wish I had worked at the plough, and known sleep, and
loved mirth--and--and not been what I am."

As the Student uttered the last sentence, he bowed down his head, and a
few tears stole silently down his cheek. Walter was greatly affected--it
took him by surprise; nothing in Aram's ordinary demeanour betrayed any
facility to emotion; and he conveyed to all the idea of a man, if not
proud, at least cold.

"You do not suffer bodily pain, I trust?" asked Walter, soothingly.

"Pain does not conquer me," said Aram, slowly recovering himself. "I am
not melted by that which I would fain despise. Young man, I wronged you--
you have forgiven me. Well, well, we will say no more on that head; it is
past and pardoned. Your father has been kind to me, and I have not
returned his advances; you shall tell him why. I have lived thirteen
years by myself, and I have contracted strange ways and many humours not
common to the world--you have seen an example of this. Judge for yourself
if I be fit for the smoothness, and confidence, and ease of social
intercourse; I am not fit, I feel it! I am doomed to be alone--tell your
father this--tell him to suffer me to live so! I am grateful for his
goodness--I know his motives--but have a certain pride of mind; I cannot
bear sufferance--I loath indulgence. Nay, interrupt me not, I beseech
you. Look round on Nature--behold the only company that humbles me not--
except the dead whose souls speak to us from the immortality of books.