It seemed as if he
discerned Satan in those graces which God had so liberally bestowed
upon him. He boiled with inward anger at the sight of his own
comeliness; he was like a shell within which a puny evil genius
was ever busy in crushing the inner pearl. In the heroic ages of
Christianity, he would have sought out the keen agony of martyrdom,
but failing that he paid such constant court to death that she, whom
alone he loved, embraced him at last. He went out to Canada, and the
cholera which raged at Montreal gave him an excellent opportunity for
attaining his end. He nursed the sick with eager joy and died.
I have always thought that there must have been a hidden romance
in the life of M. Gottofrey, and that he had undergone some
disappointment in love. He had perhaps expected too much from it, and
finding that it was not boundless, had broken it as he would an idol.
At all events he was not one of those who, knowing how to love have
not known how to die. At times I fancy that I can see him in heaven
amid the hosts of rosy-hued angels which Correggio loved to paint: at
others, I imagine that the woman whom he might have taught to love
him to distraction is scourging him through all eternity. Where he was
unjust was in making his reason, which was in nowise to blame, suffer
for the perturbation of his uneasy nature (or spirit). He practised
the studied absurdity of Tertullian and emulated the exaltation of
St. Paul. His lectures on philosophy were an absolute travesty, as his
contempt for philosophy was made apparent in every sentence; and
M.
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