Страница 335 из 483

Even if they were to leave Europe and inhabit the deserts of the

new world, yet one of the first results of those sympathies for

which the daemon thirsted would be children, and a race of devils

would be propagated upon the earth who might make the very

existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full

of terror. Had I right, for my own benefit, to inflict this curse

upon everlasting generations? I had before been moved by the

sophisms of the being I had created; I had been struck senseless

by his fiendish threats; but now, for the first time, the

wickedness of my promise burst upon me; I shuddered to think that

future ages might curse me as their pest, whose selfishness had

not hesitated to buy its own peace at the price, perhaps, of the

existence of the whole human race.