confess myself guilty, and still more, afflicted--am I as guilty as they
say, and is there no excuse, which, in the eyes of indulgent and
impartial readers, can extenuate my crime?

In order to judge as to this, I have but one question to ask you, and the
public, which deigns with distracted finger to turn these pages. My
question is this:

Is it to myself, or to others, that the published pages of these
_Confidences_ can have done injury in the view of those who have read
them? Is there a single man now living, is there a single memory of one
of the dead, on whom these recollections have cast an odious or even
unfavorable light, whether on his name, his family, his life, or his
grave? Have they brought sadness to the soul of our mother in the heaven
where she resides? Has the manly face of our father been lessened in the
respect of his descendants? Has _Graziella_, that precocious and withered
flower of my early manhood, received aught beyond a few tears of young
girls shed on a tomb at Portici? Has Julia, the worship of my young
enthusiasm, lost in the imagination of those who know the name, that
purity which she has preserved in my heart? And my masters, those pious
Jesuits, whose name I love not, but whose virtue I venerate; my friends,
dearest and first harvested, Virieu Vignet, the Abbe Dumont, could they
complain, returning here below, that I have disfigured their beautiful
natures, discolored their noble images, or soiled one place in their
lives? I appeal to all who have read. Would a single shade command me to
efface a single line? Many of whom I have spoken are still living, or
their sisters, or their sons, or their friends: have I humiliated them?
They would have told me.

No! I have embalmed only pure recollections. My shroud was poor, but it