"But not satisfied with raging against me with such fury when I was present, he pursued me when I had fled from him and, out of hatred to me, rages against you, the dearest part of my soul--rages, I say, with that most terrible of human weapons, with slander. O poison of snakes, worse than any aconite, than any froth from the fangs of Cerberus! That a monster like this should gaze upon the fair light of the sun, should breathe,--nay! poison the vital air! That our common earth should bear such a disgrace! The imagination of the Poets was never able to conjure up a mischief so horrible, so pestilent, so accursed that this monster would not easily surpass it. For what Cerberus, what Sphinx, what Chimæra, what Tisiphone, what hobgoblin can rightly be compared with this evil thing which _Gothia_ [?] has lately spewed out upon us? What scorpion, what viper, what basilisk has its poison handier? Venomous things seldom give forth their poison except when irritated. Lions repay kindness with kindness; dragons grow gentle under kind treatment; but this old man is made mad by good-will. There is a poisoned soul for you! "Now that you may see how solid is my proof; if one marks carefully his savage face, the whole habit of his body, does not one seem to see as it were the very image of all vices? And herein is the wisdom of Nature to be praised, that she has pent this soul of deformity in a fitting body. Beneath the bristling forest of his eyebrows lurk his retreating eyes with their savage gaze. A brow of stone, that in his evil doing no blush of shame may ever be seen. His nostrils, filled with a grove of bristles, puff out a polypus. His cheeks are drooping, his lips livid, his voice belched out rather than breathed out--such is the man's impotence--you would think him barking rather than speaking. His twisted neck, his crooked legs--nothing that Nature has not branded with some stigma. So we brand criminals and malefactors; so we hang a bell upon a biting dog; so we mark a vicious ox by the hay bound about his horns. "To share my learning with this base monster! for his sake to waste so much time, talent and energy! If this had gone for naught, I should be less wretched, for now I see that I have sown the dragon's teeth and they are springing up to my destruction."