And
this again, that that insurgent horror was knit to him closer than
a wife, closer than an eye; lay caged in his flesh, where he heard
it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every hour of
weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against him,
and deposed him out of life. The hatred of Hyde for Jekyll was of
a different order. His terror of the gallows drove him
continually to commit temporary suicide, and return to his
subordinate station of a part instead of a person; but he loathed
the necessity, he loathed the despondency into which Jekyll was
now fallen, and he resented the dislike with which he was himself
regarded. Hence the ape-like tricks that he would play me,
scrawling in my own hand blasphemies on the pages of my books,
burning the letters and destroying the portrait of my father; and
indeed, had it not been for his fear of death, he would long ago
have ruined himself in order to involve me in the ruin. But his
love of me is wonderful; I go further: I, who sicken and freeze at
the mere thought of him, when I recall the abjection and passion
of this attachment, and when I know how he fears my power to cut
him off by suicide, I find it in my heart to pity him.
It is useless, and the time awfully fails me, to prolong this
description; no one has ever suffered such torments, let that
suffice; and yet even to these, habit brought--no, not
alleviation--but a certain callousness of soul, a certain
acquiescence of despair; and my punishment might have gone on for
years, but for the last calamity which has now fallen, and which
has finally severed me from my own face and nature.
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