art, as
though betraying the interests he had confided to me.

There were, as I have said, many things I liked not in the chevalier:
the insatiable desire he felt for revenge where he had once been
injured; the spirit of intrigue he cherished; and, perhaps more than
either, I shunned the scoffing habit he had of depreciating what every
one around him loved or respected,--of stripping off every illusion
which made life valuable, and reducing to the miserable standard of
mere selfish gratification all that was great, or noble, or venerable.
Already had his evil influence done me injury in this way. Even now I
felt, that of the few daydreams I once indulged in he had robbed me
of the best, and reduced me to the sad reflection which haunted me
throughout my whole career, and imbittered every passing enjoyment of my
life: I mean, the sorrowful thought of being an alien, of having but the
hireling's part in that career of glory which others followed; that
I alone could have no thrill of patriotism, when all around me were
exulting in its display; that I had neither home nor country! Oh! if
they who feel, or fancy that they feel, the wrongs and oppressions of
misgovernment at home,--who, with high aspirations after liberty and
holy thoughts for the happiness of their fellow-men, war against the
despotism which would repress the one or the cruelty which would despise
the other; if they could only foresee, that in changing allegiance
they did but shift the burden, not rid themselves of the load; that the
service of a foreign land is no requital for the loss of every feeling
which ties a man to kindred and to friends,--which links his manhood
with his youth, his age with both,--which gives him, in the language of
his forefathers, a sympathy with the land that bore them; if they could
know and feel these things; if they could learn how, in surrendering
them, they have made themselves such mere waifs and strays upon life's
ocean that objects of purely selfish and personal advancement must be
to them for evermore in place of the higher and more ennobling thoughts
which mix with other men's ambitions: they might hesitate ere they left
home and country to fight for the cause of the stranger.

If such thoughts found entrance into _my_ heart, how must they have
dwelt in many another's? I, who had neither family nor kindred,--who
from earliest childhood had never tasted the sweets of affection nor
known the blessings of a father's love;