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

Shortly after Elliston's separation from his wife- now nearly
four years ago- his associates had observed a singular gloom spreading
over his daily life, like those chill, gray mists that sometimes steal
away the sunshine from a summer's morning. The symptoms caused them
endless perplexity. They knew not whether ill health were robbing
his spirits of elasticity; or whether a canker of the mind was
gradually eating, as such cankers do, from his moral system into the
physical frame, which is but the shadow of the former. They looked for
the root of this trouble in his shattered schemes of domestic bliss-
wilfully shattered by himself-but could not be satisfied of its
existence there. Some thought that their once brilliant friend was
in an incipient stage of insanity, of which his passionate impulses
had perhaps been the forerunners; others prognosticated a general
blight and gradual decline. From Roderick's own lips, they could learn
nothing. More than once, it is true, he had been heard to say,
clutching his hands convulsively upon his breast- "It gnaws me! It
gnaws me!"- but, by different auditors, a great diversity of
explanation was assigned to this ominous expression. What could it be,
that gnawed the breast of Roderick Elliston? Was it sorrow? Was it
merely the tooth of physical disease? Or, in his reckless course,
often verging upon profligacy, if not plunging into its depths, had he
been guilty of some deed, which made his bosom a prey to the
deadlier fangs of remorse? There was plausible ground for each of
these conjectures; but it must not be concealed that more than one
elderly gentleman, the victim of good cheer and slothful habits,
magisterially pronounced the secret of the whole matter to be
Dyspepsia!

Meanwhile, Roderick seemed aware how generally he had become the
subject of curiosity and conjecture, and, with a morbid repugnance
to such notice, or to any notice whatsoever, estranged himself from
all companionship. Not merely the eye of man was a horror to him;
not merely the light of a friend's countenance; but even the blessed
sunshine, likewise, which, in its universal beneficence, typifies
the radiance of the Creator's face, expressing his love for all the
creatures of his hand. The dusky twilight was now too transparent
for Roderick Elliston; the blackest midnight was his chosen hour to
steal abroad; and if ever he were seen, it was when the watchman's
lantern gleamed upon his figure, gliding along the street with his
hands clutched upon his bosom, still muttering: "It gnaws me! It gnaws
me!" What could it be that gnawed him?

After a time, it became known that Elliston was in the habit of
resorting to all the noted quacks that infested the city, or whom
money would tempt to journey thither from a distance. By one of
these persons, in the exultation of a supposed cure, it was proclaimed
far and wide, by dint of hand-bills and little pamphlets on dingy
paper, that a distinguished gentleman, Roderick Elliston, Esq., had
been relieved of a SNAKE in his stomach! So here was the monstrous
secret, ejected from its lurking-place into public view, in all its