It had no taste; a rank smell of blood oozed from it, and I was forced to
vomit almost immediately. I tried anew. If I could only keep it down, it
would, in spite of all, have some effect. It was simply a matter of
forcing it to remain down there. But I vomited again. I grew wild, bit
angrily into the meat, tore off a morsel, and gulped it down by sheer
strength of will; and yet it was of no use. Just as soon as the little
fragments of meat became warm in my stomach up they came again, worse
luck. I clenched my hands in frenzy, burst into tears from sheer
helplessness, and gnawed away as one possessed. I cried, so that the bone
got wet and dirty with my tears, vomited, cursed and groaned again, cried
as if my heart would break, and vomited anew. I consigned all the powers
that be to the lowermost torture in the loudest voice.
Quiet--not a soul about--no light, no noise; I am in a state of the most
fearful excitement; I breathe hardly and audibly, and I cry with gnashing
teeth, each time that the morsel of meat, which might satisfy me a little,
comes up. As I find that, in spite of all my efforts, it avails me naught,
I cast the bone at the door. I am filled with the most impotent hate;
shriek, and menace with my fists towards Heaven; yell God's name hoarsely,
and bend my fingers like claws, with ill-suppressed fury....
I tell you, you Heaven's Holy Baal, you don't exist; but that, if you did,
I would curse you so that your Heaven would quiver with the fire of hell!
I tell you, I have offered you my service, and you repulsed me; and I turn
my back on you for all eternity, because you did not know your time of
visitation! I tell you that I am about to die, and yet I mock you! You
Heaven God and Apis! with death staring me in the face--I tell you, I
would rather be a bondsman in hell than a freedman in your mansions! I
tell you, I am filled with a blissful contempt for your divine paltriness;
and I choose the abyss of destruction for a perpetual resort, where the
devils Judas and Pharaoh are cast down!
I tell you your Heaven is full of the kingdom of the earth's most
crass-headed idiots and poverty-stricken in spirit! I tell you, you have
filled your Heaven with the grossest and most cherished harlots from here
below, who have bent their knees piteously before you at their hour of
death! I tell you, you have used force against me, and you know not, you
omniscient nullity, that I never bend in opposition! I tell you, all my
life, every cell in my body, every power of my soul, gasps to mock
you--you Gracious Monster on High.
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