e a great movable lens as of a
microscope, which concentrated the insupportable light. The wild,
hopeless passion that raged within my soul had no outlet in the immovable
apparatus that held me. I was let down among the crowd, and exhibited to
them every secret movement of my being, by some awful process which I
have never fathomed. A burning fire was in my brain; flame seemed to run
along all my nerves; speechless, horrible, incommunicable fury raged in
my soul. But I was like a child--nay, like an image of wood or wax--in
the pitiless hands that held me. What was the cut of a surgeon's knife to
this? And I had thought _that_ cruel! And I was powerless, and could do
nothing--to blast, to destroy, to burn with this same horrible flame the
fiends that surrounded me, as I desired to do.

Suddenly, in the raging fever of my thoughts, there surged up the
recollection of that word which had paralyzed all around, and myself
with them. The thought that I must share the anguish did not restrain me
from my revenge. With a tremendous effort I got my voice, though the
instrument pressed upon my lips. I know not what I articulated save
'God,' whether it was a curse or a blessing. I had been swung out into
the middle of the hall, and hung amid the crowd, exposed to all their
observations, when I succeeded in gaining utterance. My God! my God!
Another moment and I had forgotten them and all my fury in the tortures
that arose within myself. What, then, was the light that racked my brain?
Once more my life from its beginning to its end rose up before me,--each
scene like a spectre, like the harpies of the old fables rending me with
tooth and claw. Once more I saw what might have been, the noble things I
might have done, the happiness I had lost, the turnings of the fated road
which I might have taken,--everything that was once so possible, so
possible, so easy! but now possible no more. My anguish was immeasurable;
I turned and wrenched myself, in the strength of pain, out of the
machinery that held me, and fell down, down among all the curses that
were being hurled at me,--among the horrible and miserable crowd. I had
brought upon them the evil which I shared, and they fell upon me with a
fury which was like that which had prompted myself a few minutes before;
but they could do nothing to me so tremendous as the vengeance I had
taken upon them. I was too miserable to feel the blows that rained upon
me, but presently I suppose I lost co