"Whatever self-respect or pride I had," returned the dwarf, in a low and bitter tone, "you have trampled upon, and raised up a demoniac spirit in this place. It might have been otherwise once. I loved you--ay! writhe under the word--I loved you; but I was ill-favored, misshapen, stunted, and loathsome to look upon. You thought that love and ambition and high thoughts could not take up with such a frame as this--that they all went with straight limbs and milky faces. Nature could not condescend to endow the dwarf with the attributes of humanity. But I was a man as well as they--had the passions and hopes of a man, the capabilities of good and evil. You never sought the good; you never felt it to be your duty to seek and cultivate the better qualities which my own consciousness of my outward defects made irresolute and wayward in development. You only looked upon the surface: and in the selfishness of your heart you spurned me from you. You never thought of asking yourself whether it was in your power to redeem and elevate, for noble ends, the human soul that was pent up in this weak and distorted body. You never stopped to reflect whether, by your contumely and pride of beauty, you were not destroying the germs of all self-respect, perverting the virtuous instincts into poisonous fangs, and shattering to the core the best resolves of a human being who might be better than yourself. A word of kindness in season--a generous construction of my character--an effort to call my moral strength into action, might have raised me to the dignity of the manhood it was your pleasure to disdain and degrade--might have given me the fortitude and the compensating motive to resign you--might have saved us both! But that word was never on your lips--that effort you were not generous enough to try. What I am, then, you have made me--bitter to the dregs, engrossed by one thought, living but for one object. Life is a curse to me. Every new day that rises upon me, humiliation and despair are before me. Do you believe I will suffer this tamely? What have I to lose? You hate me--I return you hate for hate, loaded with the recollections of years of scorn and defiance. Defiance? Ha! ha! It is my turn now, and no remorse shall step in between us to mitigate my vengeance!" His voice rose almost into a shriek at the close, he had worked himself up to such a height of fanatic excitement; yet, notwithstanding the denunciation with which he ended, it was impossible not to be touched with pity for the real suffering that had reduced him to this condition. A great sorrow had converted this wretched man into a human fiend; and I never before believed that there were the elements of tenderness in him which these references to the past seemed dimly to light up. Astræa heard it all very calmly.