e were overwhelmed; and what hurt him so deeply was less the
painful sense of having been cheated by such coarse cunning, than
the annihilation of the treasured hopes which he had founded on the
experiences of the past night. He felt as though a brutal foot had
trampled down the promise of future joys on which he had counted; his
sister's revelations had spoiled not merely his life on earth, but all
eternity beyond the grave. Where hope ends despair steps in; and Philip,
with reckless vehemence, flung himself, as it were, into its arms. His
was an excitable nature; he had never thought of any one but himself,
but labored with egotistical zeal to cultivate his own mind and outdo
his fellows in the competition for learning. The sullen words in which
he called himself the most wretched man on earth, and the victim of the
blackest ill-fortune, fell from his lips like stones. He rudely repelled
his sister's encouraging words, like a sick child whose pain is the
greater for being pitied, till at last she appealed to his sense of
duty, reminding him that something must be done to rescue her father and
Alexander.

"They also! They also!" he cried. "It falls on us all. Blind Fate drives
us all, innocent as we are, to death and despair, like the Tantalides.
What sin have you committed, gentle, patient child; or our father, or
our happy-hearted and gifted brother; or I--I myself? Have those whom
we call the rulers of the universe the right to punish me because I make
use of the inquiring spirit they have bestowed on me? Ah, and how well
they know how to torture us! They hate me for my learning, and so they
turn my little errors to account to allow me to be cheated like a fool!
They are said to be just, and they behave like a father who disinherits
his son because, as a man, he notes his parent's weakness. With tears
and anguish have I striven for truth and knowledge. There is not a
province of thought whose deepest depths I have not tried to fathom;
and when I recognized that it is not given to mortals to apprehend the
essence of the divinity because the organs bestowed on us are too small
and feeble; when I refused to pronounce whether that which I can not
apprehend exists or not, was that my fault, or theirs? There may be
divine forces which created and govern the universe; but never talk to
me of their goodness, and reasonableness, and care for human creatures!
Can a reasonable being, who cares for the happiness of another, stre