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A fierce Myself, such is the envious man.
He had other qualities. Barkilphedro was discreet, secret, concrete. He
kept in everything and racked himself with his hate. Enormous baseness
implies enormous vanity. He was liked by those whom he amused, and hated
by all others; but he felt that he was disdained by those who hated
him, and despised by those who liked him. He restrained himself. All
his gall simmered noiselessly in his hostile resignation. He was
indignant, as if rogues had the right to be so. He was the furies'
silent prey. To swallow everything was his talent. There were deaf
wraths within him, frenzies of interior rage, black and brooding flames
unseen; he was a smoke-consuming man of passion. The surface was
smiling. He was kind, prompt, easy, amiable, obliging. Never mind to
whom, never mind where, he bowed. For a breath of wind he inclined to
the earth. What a source of fortune to have a reed for a spine! Such
concealed and venomous beings are not so rare as is believed. We live
surrounded by ill-omened crawling things. Wherefore the malevolent? A
keen question! The dreamer constantly proposes it to himself, and the
thinker never resolves it. Hence the sad eye of the philosophers ever
fixed upon that mountain of darkness which is destiny, and from the top
of which the colossal spectre of evil casts handfuls of serpents over
the earth.
Barkilphedro's body was obese and his face lean. A fat bust and a bony
countenance. His nails were channelled and short, his fingers knotted,
his thumbs flat, his hair coarse, his temples wide apart, and his
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