Pagina 241 de 483

I did not pretend to enter into the merits of the case, yet I

inclined towards the opinions of the hero, whose extinction I

wept, without precisely understanding it.

"As I read, however, I applied much personally to my own feelings

and condition. I found myself similar yet at the same time

strangely unlike to the beings concerning whom I read and to

whose conversation I was a listener. I sympathised with and

partly understood them, but I was unformed in mind; I was

dependent on none and related to none. 'The path of my departure

was free,' and there was none to lament my annihilation. My

person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean?

Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my

destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was

unable to solve them.