es I discovered a dreary
waste in the midst of society; for I was an outcast, and I felt no
sympathy with the uses of the world. Chance made me a wretch, and nature
unkindly gave me feelings and sentiments to heighten the misery to which
my existence was doomed. Alas! my dark and repulsive exterior gave an
additional motive to justify the dislike with which I was generally
beheld.

"Such a life," interrupted Caneri, "must have been insupportable."

"It might," nobly answered the renegade, "to a weak mind--not to mine,
for the very injustice of my fate gave me courage to support it. I rose
superior to my misfortunes, and nourished a sensation of mixed hatred
and contempt towards my kind: I assiduously nurtured sentiments
calculated to make me believe myself independent in the bosom of slavery
and degradation.--Yes, I had a beam of cheering hope, a wild and
romantic emulation, a noble ambition, to acquire by my own deeds, my
daring exertion, that which was denied me by the combined oppositions of
birth and station. My pretensions were supported by my pride, and spread
a solitary but brilliant light amidst the darkness with which my
existence was clouded. In these sentiments I grew, hated and abhorring,
despising and contemned. The springs of my heart, which would have
sympathised with human nature, seemed to have been dried up for ever. I
found myself incapable of any kindly feeling, and my whole being was
wrapped in that dismal and isolated gloom which, like the mephitic
vapour, tended to paralyze the exertions and blight the fair prospects
of life. Alas! I was mistaken; for, to my misfortune, I eventually
discovered that I was a man, subject to the weakness of human nature,
that the depths of my heart, which I had judged impenetrable to the
influence of the softer passions, were soon to be deeply stirred, and
that I was fated to experience those sentiments which I had proudly
imagined to be foreign to my nature.

"Amongst the numberless beings who conspired to render me
wretched--amongst the many whom I was forced to look upon more as
natural foes than fellow-creatures, there was one who first beheld me
with a genuine and heavenly feeling of compassion, and from that sweet
and pure emanation of sensibility soon sprung the most tender and
devoted attachment. This being, generous and kind, this solitary
exception to the overwhelming mass of hatred that encompassed me, for
whose dear sake alone I might forgive my parent