ce, and you repulsed
me; and I turn my back on you for all eternity, because you did not
know your time of visitation! I tell you that I am about to die, and
yet I mock you! You Heaven God and Apis! with death staring me in the
face--I tell you, I would rather be a bondsman in hell than a freedman
in your mansions! I tell you, I am filled with a blissful contempt for
your divine paltriness; and I choose the abyss of destruction for a
perpetual resort, where the devils Judas and Pharaoh are cast down!

I tell you your Heaven is full of the kingdom of the earth's most
crass-headed idiots and poverty-stricken in spirit! I tell you, you
have filled your Heaven with the grossest and most cherished harlots
from here below, who have bent their knees piteously before you at
their hour of death! I tell you, you have used force against me, and
you know not, you omniscient nullity, that I never bend in opposition!
I tell you, all my life, every cell in my body, every power of my soul,
gasps to mock you--you Gracious Monster on High. I tell you, I would,
if I could, breathe it into every human soul, every flower, every leaf,
every dewdrop in the garden! I tell you, I would scoff you on the day
of doom, and curse the teeth out of my mouth for the sake of your
Deity's boundless miserableness! I tell you from this hour I renounce
all thy works and all thy pomps! I will execrate my thought if it dwell
on you again, and tear out my lips if they ever utter your name! I tell
you, if you exist, my last word in life or in death--I bid you
farewell, for all time and eternity--I bid you farewell with heart and
reins. I bid you the last irrevocable farewell, and I am silent, and
turn my back on you and go my way.... Quiet.

I tremble with excitement and exhaustion, and stand on the same spot,
still whispering oaths and abusive epithets, hiccoughing after the
violent crying fit, broken down and apathetic after my frenzied
outburst of rage. I stand there for maybe an hour, hiccough and
whisper, and hold on to the door. Then I hear voices--a conversation
between two men who are coming down the passage. I slink away from the
door, drag myself along the walls of the houses, and come out again
into the light streets. As I jog along Young's Hill my brain begins to
work in a most peculiar direction. It occurs to me that the wretched
hovels down at the corner of the market-place, the stores for loose
materials, the old booths for second-hand clothes,