There, as Schnitzel expressed it,
"I saw 'mine,' and I took it." To trace back the criminal instinct that
led Schnitzel to steal and sell the private letters of his employer was
not difficult. In all of his few early years I found it lying latent. Of
every story he told of himself, and he talked only of himself, there was
not one that was not to his discredit. He himself never saw this, nor
that all he told me showed he was without the moral sense, and with an
instinctive enjoyment of what was deceitful, mean, and underhand. That,
as I read it, was his character.
[Illustration: Schnitzel was smiling to himself]
In appearance he was smooth-shaven, with long locks that hung behind
wide, protruding ears. He had the unhealthy skin of bad blood, and his
eyes, as though the daylight hurt them, constantly opened and shut. He
was like hundreds of young men that you see loitering on upper Broadway
and making predatory raids along the Rialto. Had you passed him in that
neighborhood you would have set him down as a wire-tapper, a racing
tout, a would-be actor.
As I worked it out, Schnitzel was a spy because it gave him an
importance he had not been able to obtain by any other effort.
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