Explore "Spalatro" by Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"In the heart of a gay capital, possessed of funds which, to my shortsighted inexperience, seemed all but inexhaustible, full of ardour, curiosity, and passion, I threw myself heart and soul into the intoxication and excitement of all the folly, vice, and extravagance which revolved around me; with more of inquisitiveness than of depravity, I hunted out vice in all its secure and secret haunts, where, undisguised, and maddening, and terrible, it ruled and rioted. The adventures and perils of the wild scenes in which I mixed, had for me a strange attraction; I panted to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; I longed to try and prove those old and mighty rulers of the human kind -- the ancient vices of the world in the high places of their power; recklessly I courted danger: wildly I plunged into the unfathomable gulf of sin, and madly did time fly by.
"My acquaintances were among the madcap young nobles of the city. There was nothing to withdraw me from the headlong career of sins and follies in which I was borne, except prudence or religion -- and I had neither. I resolutely closed my eyes against all distant consequences: I saw but the present -- I would see no more. I felt that when my wealth was squandered, I would find a way to get more; I cared not how, provided it were boldly, and in the manner of a soldier of fortune. Even then my coming destiny filled the vision of my mind; I beheld it perhaps with awe, but undismayed; for me it had a dreadful fascination -- I rushed towards it with a bosom full of defiance and scornful recklessness.