No More Learning

Injuries so compound confounded the Captain, who sorrowed to see a
creature so charming, at once deformed by a crooked back and an
excrescent shoulder. ' Arnaud was found and taken back to his parents.
'The bitterest consciousness of his deformity was derived from their
indelicate, though, perhaps, insensible alteration of conduct. . . . Of his
person he continued to speak as of an abhorrent enemy. . . . "Were a
blessing submitted to my choice, I would say, [said Arnaud] be it my
immediate dissolution. " "I think," said his mother, . . . "that you could
wish better.
" "Yes," adjoined Arnaud, "for that wish should be that I
ever had remained unborn. "' He polishes the broken blade of a sword, and
views himself therein; the sight so horrifies him that he determines to
throw himself over a precipice, but draws back at the last moment. He
goes to a cavern, and conjures up the prince of hell. "Arnaud knew
himself to be interrogated. What he required. . . . What was that answer
the effects explain. . . . There passed in liveliest portraiture the
various men distinguished for that beauty and grace which Arnaud so much
desired, that he was ambitious to purchase them with his soul. He felt
that it was his part to chuse whom he would resemble, yet he remained
unresolved, though the spectator of an hundred shades of renown, among
which glided by Alexander, Alcibiades, and Hephestion: at length
appeared the supernatural effigy of a man, whose perfections human
artist never could depict or insculp--Demetrius, the son of Antigonus.
Arnaud's heart heaved quick with preference, and strait he found within
his hand the resemblance of a poniard, its point inverted towards his
breast. A mere automaton in the hands of the Demon, he thrust the point
through his heart, and underwent a painless death.