the scorpion

excerpt from billy budd, sailor by herman melville

is envy then such a monster? well, though many an arraigned mortal has in hopes of mitigated penalty pleaded guilty to horrible actions, did ever anybody seriously confess to envy? something there is in it universally felt to be more shameful than even felonious crime. and not only does everybody disown it, but the better sort are inclined to incredulity when it is in earnest imputed to an intelligent man. but since its lodgment is in the heart not the brain, no degree of intellect supplies a guarantee against it. but claggart's was no vulgar form of the passion. nor, as directed toward billy budd, did it partake of that streak of apprehensive jealousy that marred saul's visage perturbedly brooding on the comely young david. claggart's envy struck deeper. if askance he eyed the good looks, cheery health, and frank enjoyment of young life in billy budd, it was because these went along with a nature that, as claggart magnetically felt, had in its simplicity never willed malice or experienced the reactionary bit of that serpent. to him, the spirit lodged within billy, and looking out from his welkin eyes as from windows, that ineffability it was which made the dimple in his dyed cheek, suppled his joints, and dancing in his yellow curls made him pre-eminently the Handsome Sailor. one person excepted, the master-at-arms was perhaps the only man in the ship intellectually capable of adequately appreciating the moral phenomenon presented in billy budd. and the insight but intensified his passion, which assuming various secret forms within him, at times assumed that of cynic disdain, disdain of innocence - to be nothing more than innocent! yet in an aesthetic way he saw the charm of it, the courageous free-and-easy temper of it, and fain would have shared it, but he despaired of it.

with no power to annul the elemental evil in him, though readily enough he could hide it; apprehending the good, but powerless to be it; a nature like claggart's, surcharged with energy as such natures almost invariably are, what recourse is left to it but to recoil upon itself and, like the scorpion for which the creator alone is responsible, act out the end the part allotted it.