Page:Eugene Aram vol 3 - Lytton (1832).djvu/247

 a man like myself, born to poverty, yet he had always enjoyed what to him was wealth. This seemed a mystery to me; and when we met, we sometimes conversed upon it. 'You are poor, with all your wisdom,' said he. 'I know nothing; but I am never poor. Why is this? The world is my treasury.—I live upon my kind.—Society is my foe.—Laws order me to starve; but self-preservation is an instinct more sacred than society, and more imperious then laws.'

"The undisguised and bold manner of his discourse impressed while it revolted me. I looked upon him as a study, and I combated, in order to learn, him. He had been a soldier—he had seen the greatest part of Europe—he possessed a strong shrewd sense—he was a villain—but a villain bold—adroit—and not then thoroughly unredeemed. His conversation created dark and perturbed reflections. What was that state of society—was it not at war with its own elements—in which vice prospered more than virtue? Knowledge was my dream, that dream I might realize.