"Perhaps, I have done you injustice, Sir. The distracted state of my mind must be my excuse. I will try and submit with patience to my hard fate."
"It is your only wise course. Hark you, Geoffrey! I am rich, trust in me, and the world shall never sneer at you as a _poor relation_. Those whom Robert Moncton takes by the hand may laugh at doubtful birth and want of fortune."
The scoundrel! how I longed to knock him down, but that would have done me no good, so I mastered my indignation and withdrew.
"Be ye wise as serpents, and harmless as doves," was the advice of the Divine Lawgiver, when he sent his disciples forth on their heavenly mission to reform an evil world.
Religion, as I have before stated, had formed no part in my education. I had read the sacred volume with fear and trembling, and derived no consolation from its mystic pages. I had adopted the fatal idea, that I was one of those pre-condemned beings, for whom the blackness of darkness was reserved for ever, and that no effort on my part could avert the terrible decree.
This shocking and blasphemous belief had taken such deep hold of my mind, that looked upon all religious exercises as perfectly useless. I could not fancy myself one of the elect, and so went from that extreme to the other. If I were to be saved, I should be saved; if a vessel of wrath, only fitted for destruction, it was folly to struggle against fate, and I never suffered my mind to dwell upon the subject. In the multitude of sorrows which pressed sorely on my young heart, I more than ever stood in need of the advice and consolation which the Christian religion can alone bestow.
I left the presence of my uncle, and sought my own chamber. The lonely garret did not appear so repulsive as usual. No one would disturb its gloomy solitude, or intrude upon my grief. There I had free liberty to weep--to vent aloud, if I pleased, the indignant feelings of my heart. My mind was overwhelmed with bitter and resentful thoughts; every evil passion was struggling for mastery, and the worst agony I was called upon to endure, was the hopeless, heart-crushing, downward tending madness of despair.
To die--to get rid of self, the dark consciousness of unmerited contempt and social degradation, was the temptation which continually flitted through my excited brain. I have often since wondered how I resisted the strong impulse which lured me onward to destruction.