frightful image; and the representations of terror and severity were
those which first took hold of his lively imagination, and which the
longest retained their empire over it. His God was an object of terror,
a being whose occupation is to chastise; and the adoration he paid him
was either slavish fear, or a blind submission which stifled all his
energies. In all his youthful propensities, which a vigorous growth and
a fine constitution naturally excited to break out with the greater
violence, religion stood in his way; it opposed everything upon which
his young heart was bent; he learned to consider it not as a friend,
but as the scourge of his passions; so that a silent indignation was
gradually kindled against it in his heart, which, together with a
bigoted faith and a blind fear, produced an incongruous mixture of
feelings, and an abhorrence of a ruler before whom he trembled.

"It is no wonder, therefore, that he took the first opportunity of
escaping from so galling a yoke--but he fled from it as a bond-slave
who, escaping from his rigorous master, drags along with him a sense of
his servitude, even in the midst of freedom; for, as he did not renounce
the faith of his earlier years from a deliberate conviction, and did not
wait till the maturity and improvement of his reasoning had weaned him
from it, but escaped from it like a fugitive, upon whose person the
rights of his master are still in force, so was he obliged, even after
his widest separation, to return to it at last. He had escaped with his
chain, and for that reason must necessarily become the prey of any one
who should discover it, and know how to make use of the discovery. That
such a one presented himself, the sequel of this history will prove;
most likely the reader has already surmised it.

"The confessions of the Sicilian left a deeper impression upon his mind
than they ought, considering the circumstances; and the small victory
which his reason had thence gained over this weak imposture, remarkably
increased his reliance upon his own powers. The facility with which he
had been able to unravel this deception appeared to have surprised him.
Truth and error were not yet so accurately distinguished from each other
in his mind but that he often mistook the arguments which were in favor
of the one for those in favor of the other. Thence it arose that the
same blow which destroyed his faith in wonders made the whole edifice of
it totter. In this instan