"Hawthorne, Nathaniel - Egotism or The Bosom Serpent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawthorne Nathaniel)

to his heart's core.

"Do you know me, George Herkimer?" asked the snake-possessed.

Herkimer did know him. But it demanded all the intimate and
practical acquaintance with the human face, acquired by modelling
actual likenesses in clay, to recognize the features of Roderick
Elliston in the visage that now met the sculptor's gaze. Yet it was
he. It added nothing to the wonder, to reflect that the once brilliant
young man had undergone this odious and fearful change, during the
no more than five brief years of Herkimer's abode at Florence. The
possibility of such a transformation being granted, it was as easy
to conceive it effected in a moment as in an age. Inexpressibly
shocked and startled, it was still the keenest pang, when Herkimer
remembered that the fate of his cousin Rosina, the ideal of gentle
womanhood, was indissolubly interwoven with that of a being whom
Providence seemed to have unhumanized.

"Elliston! Roderick!" cried he, "I had heard of this; but my
conception came far short of the truth. What has befallen you? Why
do I find you thus?"

"Oh, 'tis a mere nothing! A snake! A snake! The commonest thing
in the world. A snake in the bosom- that's all," answered Roderick
Elliston. "But how is your own breast?" continued he, looking the
sculptor in the eye, with the most acute and penetrating glance that
it had ever been his fortune to encounter. "All pure and wholesome? No
reptile there? By my faith and conscience, and by the devil within me,
here is a wonder! A man without a serpent in his bosom!"

"Be calm, Elliston," whispered George Herkimer, laying his hand
upon the shoulder of the snake-possessed. "I have crossed the ocean to
meet you. Listen- let us be private- I bring a message from Rosina!
from your wife!"

"It gnaws me! It gnaws me!" muttered Roderick.

With this exclamation, the most frequent in his mouth, the
unfortunate man clutched both hands upon his breast, as if an
intolerable sting or torture impelled him to rend it open, and let out
the living mischief, even where it intertwined with his own life. He
then freed himself from Herkimer's grasp, by a subtle motion, and
gliding through the gate, took refuge in his antiquated family
residence. The sculptor did not pursue him. He saw that no available
intercourse could be expected at such a moment, and was desirous,
before another meeting, to inquire closely into the nature of
Roderick's disease, and the circumstances that had reduced him to so
lamentable a condition. He succeeded in obtaining the necessary
information from an eminent medical gentleman.