CHAPTER XXIV.
What is this soul, then?
Whence Came it ?--It does not seem my own, and I Have no self-passion or identity! Some fearful end must be-- ......
There never lived a mortal man, who bent His appetite beyond his natural sphere, But starved and died .-- KEATS: Endymion.
On entering his home, Warner pushed aside, for the first time in his life with disrespect, his aged and kindly relation, who, as if in mockery of the unfortunate artist stood prepared to welcome and congratulate his return.

Bearing his picture in his arms, he rushed upstairs, hurried into his room, and locked the door.

Hastily he tore aside the cloth which had been drawn over the picture; hastily and tremblingly he placed it upon the frame accustomed to support it, and then, with a long, long, eager, searching, scrutinizing glance, he surveyed the once beloved mistress of his worship.

Presumption, vanity, exaggerated self-esteem, are, in their punishment, supposed to excite ludicrous not sympathetic emotion; but there is an excess of feeling, produced by whatever cause it may be, into which, in spite of ourselves, we are forced to enter.

Even fear, the most contemptible of the passions, becomes tragic the moment it becomes an agony.
"Well, well!" said Warner, at last, speaking very slowly, "it is over,--it was a pleasant dream,--but it is over,--I ought to be thankful for the lesson." Then suddenly changing his mood and tone, he repeated, "Thankful! for what?
that I am a wretch,--a wretch more utterly hopeless and miserable and abandoned than a man who freights with all his wealth, his children, his wife, the hoarded treasures and blessings of an existence, one ship, one frail, worthless ship, and, standing himself on the shore, sees it suddenly go down! Oh, was I not a fool,--a right noble fool,--a vain fool,--an arrogant fool,--a very essence and concentration of all things that make a fool, to believe such delicious marvels of myself! What, man!" (here his eye saw in the opposite glass his features, livid and haggard with disease, and the exhausting feelings which preyed within him)--"what, man! would nothing serve thee but to be a genius,--thee, whom Nature stamped with her curse! Dwarf-like and distorted, mean in stature and in lineament, thou wert, indeed, a glorious being to perpetuate grace and beauty, the majesties and dreams of art! Fame for thee, indeed--ha-ha! Glory--ha-ha! a place with Titian, Correggio, Raphael--ha--ha--ha! O, thrice modest, thrice-reasonable fool! But this vile daub; this disfigurement of canvas; this loathed and wretched monument of disgrace; this notable candidate for--ha--ha--immortality! this I have, at least, in my power." And seizing the picture, he dashed it to the ground, and trampled it with his feet upon the dusty boards, till the moist colours presented nothing but one confused and dingy stain.
This sight seemed to recall him for a moment.