He seemed to accommodate his
conversation to the moral structure of others, just as spirits are said to
assume the shape of mortals. There were the sensualities of the gourmet for
his body, and there ended his human nature, as it seemed to me. Through
that semi-transparent structure I thought I could now and then discern the
light or the glare of his inner life. But I understood it not.
He never scoffed at what was good or noble--his hardest critic could not
nail him to one such sentence; and yet, it seemed somehow to me that his
unknown nature was a systematic blasphemy against it all. If fiend he was,
he was yet something higher than the garrulous, and withal feeble, demon of
Goethe. He assumed the limbs and features of our mortal nature. He shrouded
his own, and was a profoundly reticent Mephistopheles. Gentle he had been
to me--kindly he had nearly always spoken; but it seemed like the mild talk
of one of those goblins of the desert, whom Asiatic superstition tells of,
who appear in friendly shapes to stragglers from the caravan, beckon to
them from afar, call them by their names, and lead them where they are
found no more.
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