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

at the same time giving an instinctive clutch to his breast. "Why is
this lunatic allowed to go at large?"

"Ha, ha!" chuckled Roderick, releasing his grasp of the man. "His
bosom serpent has stung him then!"

Often, it pleased the unfortunate young man to vex people with a
lighter satire, yet still characterized by somewhat of snake-like
virulence. One day he encountered an ambitious statesman, and
gravely inquired after the welfare of his boa-constrictor; for of that
species, Roderick affirmed, this gentleman's serpent must needs be,
since its appetite was enormous enough to devour the whole country and
constitution. At another time, he stopped a close-fisted old fellow,
of great wealth, but who skulked about the city in the guise of a
scare-crow, with a patched blue surtout, brown hat, and mouldy
boots, scraping pence together, and picking up rusty nails. Pretending
to look earnestly at this respectable person's stomach, Roderick
assured him that his snake was a copper-head, and had been generated
by the immense quantities of that base metal, with which he daily
defiled his fingers. Again, he assaulted a man of rubicund visage, and
told him that few bosom serpents had more of the devil in them, than
those that breed in the vats of a distillery. The next whom Roderick
honored with his attention was a distinguished clergyman, who happened
just then to be engaged in a theological controversy, where human
wrath was more perceptible than divine inspiration.

"You have swallowed a snake, in a cup of sacramental wine," quoth
he.

"Profane wretch!" exclaimed the divine; but, nevertheless, his hand
stole to his breast.

He met a person of sickly sensibility, who, on some early
disappointment, had retired from the world, and thereafter held no
intercourse with his fellow-men, but brooded sullenly or
passionately over the irrevocable past. This man's very heart, if
Roderick might be believed, had been changed into a serpent, which
would finally torment both him and itself to death. Observing a
married couple, whose domestic troubles were matter of notoriety, he
condoled with both on having mutually taken a house-adder to their
bosoms. To an envious author, who deprecated works which he could
never equal, he said that his snake was the slimiest and filthiest
of all the reptile tribe, but was fortunately without a sting. A man
of impure life, and a brazen face, asking Roderick if there were any
serpent in his breast, he told him that there was, and of the same
species that once tortured Don Rodrigo, the Goth. He took a fair young
girl by the hand, and gazing sadly into her eyes, warned her that
she cherished a serpent of the deadliest kind within her gentle
breast; and the world found the truth of those ominous words, when,
a few months afterwards, the poor girl died of love and shame. Two