Volume 2 — TWENTY-THIRD PAPER.
Reading edition
THAT old scoundrel! he took my great-coat from me, for I did not give it to him; and then he left me this rag, his odious jacket. For whom shall I be taken?
It was not from indifference, or from charity, that I let him take it. No; but because he was stronger than I! If I had refused, he would have beaten me with those great coarse hands. Charity, indeed! I was full of bad feeling; I should like to have strangled him with my own hands, the old thief!—to have trampled him under my feet.
I feel my heart full of rage and bitterness, and my nature turned to gall: the approach of violent death renders one wicked.