Page:The Necromancer, or, The Tale of the Black Forest Vol. 2.djvu/189

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NECROMANCER.
183

length with secret pleasure, the most shocking actions; before the termination of my confinement I was superior in wickedness to my instructors in villany, and began to thirst with increasing impatience for liberty and revenge: I hated the whole human race, because every one of my fellow creatures was either happier or less wicked than myself; I fancied to be a martyr to the natural rights of man, and a victim of glaring injustice. I rubbed my chains against the wall in a fit of frenzy, grinding my teeth when the sun was rising behind the rock on which the fortress stood, and experienced with unutterable agony, what a hell an extensive view creates in the bosom of a prisoner."

"The free air whistling through the iron grates of my window, and the swallow perching on the massy bars, seemed to mock me with their liberty, and rendered my imprisonment more hateful and horrid to me. Seized with the burning fangs of"despair,