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"The book from which Felix instructed Safie was Volney's Ruins of
Empires. I should not have understood the purport of this book had not
Felix, in reading it, given very minute explanations. He had chosen
this work, he said, because the declamatory style was framed in
imitation of the Eastern authors. Through this work I obtained a
cursory knowledge of history and a view of the several empires at
present existing in the world; it gave me an insight into the manners,
governments, and religions of the different nations of the earth. I
heard of the slothful Asiatics, of the stupendous genius and mental
activity of the Grecians, of the wars and wonderful virtue of the early
Romans--of their subsequent degenerating--of the decline of that mighty
empire, of chivalry, Christianity, and kings. I heard of the discovery
of the American hemisphere and wept with Safie over the hapless fate of
its original inhabitants.

"These wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings. Was
man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so
vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil
principle and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and
godlike. To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour
that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on
record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more
abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. For a long time I
could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or
even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of
vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased and I turned away with disgust and
loathing.

"Every conversation of the cottagers now opened new wonders to me.
While I listened to the instructions which Felix bestowed upon the
Arabian, the strange system of human society was explained to me. I
heard of the division of property, of immense wealth and squalid
poverty, of rank, descent, and noble blood.

"The words induced me to turn towards myself. I learned that the
possessions most esteemed by your fellow creatures were high and
unsullied descent united with riches. A man might be respected with
only one of these advantages, but without either he was considered,
except in very rare instances, as a vagabond and a slave, doomed to
waste his powers for the profits of the chosen few! And what was I? Of
my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant, but I knew that I
possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property. I was, besides,
endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome; I was not even
of the same nature as man. I was more agile than they and could
subsist upon coarser diet; I bore the extremes of heat and cold with
less injury to my frame; my stature far exceeded theirs. When I looked
around I saw and heard of none like me. Was I, then, a monster, a blot

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