The Sorrows of Satan: or, The Strange Experience of One Geoffrey Tempest, Millionaire: A Romance — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The Sorrows of Satan: or, The Strange Experience of One Geoffrey Tempest, Millionaire: A Romance
John Stuart Mill · en
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I pause here, and look at myself in the mirror. How beautiful I am!
I note with admiration the deep and dewy lustre of my eyes and their
dark silky fringes,--I see the delicate colouring of my cheeks and
lips,--the dear rounded chin with its pretty dimple,--the pure lines
of my slim throat and snowy neck,--the glistening wealth of my long
hair. All this was given to me for the attraction and luring of men,
but my love, whom I love with all this living, breathing, exquisite
being of mine, can see no beauty in me, and rejects me with such
scorn as pierces my very soul. I have knelt to him,--I have prayed
to him,--I have worshipped him,--in vain! Hence it comes that I must
die. Only one thing he said that had the sound of hope, though the
utterance was fierce, and his looks were cruel,--'Patience!' he
whispered--'we shall meet ere long!' What did he mean?--what
possible meeting can there be now, when death must close the gate of
life, and even love would come too late!
* * * * *
I have unlocked my jewel-case and taken from it the deadly thing
secreted there,--a poison that was entrusted to me by one of the
physicians who lately attended my mother. 'Keep this under lock and
key,' he said, 'and be sure that it is used only for external
purposes. There is sufficient in this flask to kill ten men, if
swallowed by mistake.' I look at it wonderingly. It is
colourless,--and there is not enough to fill a teaspoon, ... yet ...
it will bring down upon me an eternal darkness, and close up for
ever the marvellous scenes of the universe! So little!--to do so
much! I have fastened Lucio's wedding-gift round my waist,--the
beautiful snake of jewels that clings to me as though it were
charged with an embrace from him,--ah! would I could cheat myself
into so pleasing a fancy! ... I am trembling, but not with cold or
fear,--it is simply an excitation of the nerves,----an instinctive
recoil of flesh and blood at the near prospect of death.... How
brilliantly the sun shines through my window!--its callous golden
stare has watched so many tortured creatures die without so much as
a cloud to dim its radiance by way of the suggestion of pity! If
there were a God I fancy He would be like the sun,--glorious,
changeless, unapproachable, beautiful, but pitiless!
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