I look in the glass at my bony, hawk-like face, on which the
stamp of futility seems eternally set, and I am seized with a
prodigious wonder; but the fact remains that to me unlovely and
unworthy has been given that thing without price, a woman's love.
I remember Pasquale laughing merrily at this valuation. He said
the love of women was as cheap as dirt, and the only use for it
was to make mud pies. The damned cynical villain! "Always
reflect," said he, on another occasion, "that although a man may
be as ugly as sin, the probability is that he is just as
pleasant. Beauties will find hitherto unsuspected amenities in
Beasts till the end of time." But I am such a poor and sorry
Beast, without the chance of a transformation; a commonplace
Beast, dull and didactic; a besotted, purblind, despicable Beast!
Yet Judith loved me. Instead of thanking on my knees the high
gods for the boon conferred, I rejected it, and went mad for
craving of the infinitely lesser glory of Carlotta's baby lips
and gold-bronze hair.
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