Then the other turned his head and looked at me; and, as he did so, a
great shudder, accompanied by an indescribable feeling of nausea, passed
over me. What occasioned it I could not tell, nor could I remember
having felt anything of the kind before. When it departed, my eyes fixed
themselves on the individual before me. Connecting him in some way with
the unenviable sensation I had just experienced, I endeavoured to
withdraw them again, but in vain. The others gaze was riveted upon
me--so firmly, indeed, that it required but small imagination to believe
it eating into my brain. Good Heavens! how well I recollect that night
and every incident connected with it! I believe I shall remember it
through all eternity. If only I had known enough to have taken him by
the throat then and there, and had dashed his brains out on the stones,
or to have seized him in my arms and hurled him down the steps into the
river below, how much happier I should have been! I might have earned
eternal punishment, it is true, but I should at least have saved myself
and the world in general from such misery as the human brain can
scarcely realise. But I did not know, the opportunity was lost, and, in
that brief instant of time, millions of my fellow-creatures were
consigned unwittingly to their doom.
After long association with an individual, it is difficult, if not
impossible, to set down with any degree of exactness a description of
the effect his personality in the first instance had upon me. In this
case I find it more than usually difficult, for the reason that, as I
came more under his influence, the original effect wore off and quite
another was substituted for it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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