Moreover, he had a sense of
religion, which at times, taking the form of an overpowering sense
of sin, plunged him into gloom. Though burdened in conscience with
no crime, he was subject in a notable degree to that malady of his
world, the disposition to regard all human kind, and himself
especially, as impure, depraved. Often at the mercy of his passions,
he refrained from marriage chiefly on this very account, the married
state seeming to him a mere compromise with the evil of the flesh;
but in his house were two children, born to him by a slave now dead,
and these he would already have sent into a monastery, but that
human affection struggled against what he deemed duty. The man lived
in dread of eternal judgment; he could not look at a setting sun
without having his thought turned to the fires of hell, and a night
of wakefulness, common enough in his imperfect health, shook him
with horrors unutterable. Being of such mind and temper, it was
strange that he had not long ago joined the multitude of those who
day by day fled from worldly life into ascetic seclusion; what
withheld him was a spark of the ancestral spirit, some drops of the
old Roman blood, prompting his human nature to assert and justify
itself.
Pages:
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237