to me; and when we met, we sometimes conversed upon it. 'You are poor,
with all your wisdom,' said he. 'I know nothing; but I am never poor. Why
is this? The world is my treasury.--I live upon my kind.--Society is my
foe.--Laws order me to starve; but self-preservation is an instinct more
sacred than society, and more imperious then laws.'

"The undisguised and bold manner of his discourse impressed while it
revolted me. I looked upon him as a study, and I combated, in order to
learn, him. He had been a soldier--he had seen the greatest part of
Europe--he possessed a strong shrewd sense--he was a villain--but a
villain bold--adroit--and not then thoroughly unredeemed. His
conversation created dark and perturbed reflections. What was that state
of society--was it not at war with its own elements--in which vice
prospered more than virtue? Knowledge was my dream, that dream I might
realize, not by patient suffering, but by active daring. I might wrest
from society, to which I owed nothing, the means to be wise and great.
Was it not better and nobler to do this, even at my life's hazard, than
lie down in a ditch and die the dog's death? Was it not better than such
a doom--ay better for mankind--that I should commit one bold wrong, and
by that wrong purchase the power of good? I asked myself that question.
It is a fearful question; it opens a labyrinth of reasonings, in which
the soul may walk and lose itself for ever.

"One day Houseman met me, accompanied by a stranger who had just visited
our town, for what purpose you know already. His name--supposed name--was
Clarke. Man, I am about to speak plainly of that stranger--his character
and his fate. And yet--yet you are his son! I would fain soften the
colouring; but I speak truth of myself, and I must not, unless I would
blacken my name yet deeper than it deserves, varnish truth when I speak
of others. Houseman joined, and presented to me this person. From the