Page:Ernestus Berchtold or the Modern Œdipus.djvu/115

 seemed strangely childish, he did not believe in an immortality, yet he had so strong a love of fame, that there was no reputation he did not covet. He sometimes formed visions of a throne raised upon the blood of his countrymen spilt in civil war; at times, of the fame of a benefactor to debtors and galley slaves. He sought at the same time for the applause of the philosophers and the drunkard, the divine, and th6 libertine. Things, of which, even at the moment of action he was ashamed, were often done by him in the view of proving himself capable of excelling even in vice. It was hard to say, whether he owed a certain frankness and easiness of attachment, to his weakness, or to seeds sown in his breast by nature. But whether it were from his incapability of constantly acting up to his system, or to the overpowering force of nature, it was strange to hear him express himself a follower of a doctrine that has proved the leech of human blood, and at the same time refuse to tread upon a