Hence the sympathy between him and Basil, both being capable
of patriotism, and feeling a desire in the depths of their hearts to
live as they would have lived had they been born in an earlier time.
But whereas Basil nursed this disposition, regarding it as
altogether laudable, Marcian could only see in it an outcome of
original sin, and after every indulgence of such mundane thoughts
did penance as for something worse than weakness. His father had
died in an anguish of compunction for a life stained with
sensuality; his mother had killed herself by excessive rigours of
penitence; these examples were ever before his mind. Yet he seldom
spoke, save to spiritual counsellors, of this haunting trouble, and
only the bitterness of envy, an envy entirely human, had drawn from
him the words which so astonished Basil in their last conversation.
Indeed, the loves of Basil and Veranilda made a tumult in his soul;
at times it seemed to him that he hated his friend, so intolerable
was the jealousy that racked him. Veranilda he had never seen, but
the lover's rapture had created in his imagination a face and form
of matchless beauty which he could not cease from worshipping.
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