第17章

"Did you take counsel with him this morning, when you should have beensaying your prayers? Did he sting, when you thought of yourbrother's health, wealth, and good repute? Did he caper for joy,when you remembered the profligacy of his only son? And whether hestung, or whether he frolicked, did you feel his poison throughoutyour body and soul, converting everything to sourness andbitterness? That is the way of such serpents. I have learned the wholenature of them from my own!""Where is the police?" roared the object of Roderick's persecution,at the same time giving an instinctive clutch to his breast. "Why isthis lunatic allowed to go at large?""Ha, ha!" chuckled Roderick, releasing his grasp of the man. "Hisbosom serpent has stung him then!"Often, it pleased the unfortunate young man to vex people with alighter satire, yet still characterized by somewhat of snake-likevirulence. One day he encountered an ambitious statesman, andgravely inquired after the welfare of his boa-constrictor; for of thatspecies, Roderick affirmed, this gentleman's serpent must needs be,since its appetite was enormous enough to devour the whole country andconstitution. At another time, he stopped a close-fisted old fellow,of great wealth, but who skulked about the city in the guise of ascare-crow, with a patched blue surtout, brown hat, and mouldyboots, scraping pence together, and picking up rusty nails. Pretendingto look earnestly at this respectable person's stomach, Roderickassured him that his snake was a copper-head, and had been generatedby the immense quantities of that base metal, with which he dailydefiled his fingers. Again, he assaulted a man of rubicund visage, andtold him that few bosom serpents had more of the devil in them, thanthose that breed in the vats of a distillery. The next whom Roderickhonored with his attention was a distinguished clergyman, who happenedjust then to be engaged in a theological controversy, where humanwrath was more perceptible than divine inspiration.

"You have swallowed a snake, in a cup of sacramental wine," quothhe.

"Profane wretch!" exclaimed the divine; but, nevertheless, his handstole to his breast.

He met a person of sickly sensibility, who, on some earlydisappointment, had retired from the world, and thereafter held nointercourse with his fellow-men, but brooded sullenly orpassionately over the irrevocable past. This man's very heart, ifRoderick might be believed, had been changed into a serpent, whichwould finally torment both him and itself to death. Observing amarried couple, whose domestic troubles were matter of notoriety, hecondoled with both on having mutually taken a house-adder to theirbosoms. To an envious author, who deprecated works which he couldnever equal, he said that his snake was the slimiest and filthiestof all the reptile tribe, but was fortunately without a sting. A manof impure life, and a brazen face, asking Roderick if there were anyserpent in his breast, he told him that there was, and of the samespecies that once tortured Don Rodrigo, the Goth. He took a fair younggirl by the hand, and gazing sadly into her eyes, warned her thatshe cherished a serpent of the deadliest kind within her gentlebreast; and the world found the truth of those ominous words, when,a few months afterwards, the poor girl died of love and shame. Twoladies, rivals in fashionable life, who tormented one another with athousand little stings of womanish spite, were given to understand,that each of their hearts was a nest of diminutive snakes, which didquite as much mischief as one great one.

But nothing seemed to please Roderick better than to lay hold ofa person infected with jealousy, which he represented as an enormousgreen reptile, with an ice-cold length of body, and the sharpest stingof any snake save one.

"And what one is that?" asked a bystander, overhearing him.

It was a dark-browed man, who put the question; he had an evasiveeye, which, in the course of a dozen years, had looked no mortaldirectly in the face. There was an ambiguity about this person'scharacter- a stain upon his reputation- yet none could tellprecisely of what nature; although the city-gossips, male andfemale, whispered the most atrocious surmises. Until a recent periodhe had followed the sea, and was, in fact, the very ship-master whomGeorge Herkimer had encountered, under such singular circumstances, inthe Grecian Archipelago.

"What bosom-serpent has the sharpest sting?" repeated this man: buthe put the question as if by a reluctant necessity, and grew palewhile he was uttering it.

"Why need you ask?" replied Roderick, with a look of darkintelligence. "Look into your own breast! Hark, my serpent bestirshimself! He acknowledges the presence of a master-fiend!"And then, as the bystanders afterwards affirmed, a hissing soundwas heard, apparently in Roderick Elliston's breast. It was said, too,that an answering hiss came from the vitals of the shipmaster, as if asnake were actually lurking there, and had been aroused by the call ofits brother-reptile. If there were in fact any such sound, it mighthave been caused by a malicious exercise of ventriloquism, on the partof Roderick.