miserable worm that crawls? Do I not embrace your knees, and you most
cruelly repulse me? I know it--I see it--you hate me!"

I was transported by violent emotion, and rising from his feet, at
which I had thrown myself, I leant against a tree, wildly raising my
eyes to heaven. He began to answer with violence: "Yes, yes, I hate
you! You are my bane, my poison, my disgust! Oh! No[!]" And then his
manner changed, and fixing his eyes on me with an expression that
convulsed every nerve and member of my frame--"you are none of all
these; you are my light, my only one, my life.--My daughter, I love
you!" The last words died away in a hoarse whisper, but I heard them
and sunk on the ground, covering my face and almost dead with excess
of sickness and fear: a cold perspiration covered my forehead and I
shivered in every limb--But he continued, clasping his hands with a
frantic gesture:

"Now I have dashed from the top of the rock to the bottom! Now I have
precipitated myself down the fearful chasm! The danger is over; she is
alive! Oh, Mathilda, lift up those dear eyes in the light of which I
live. Let me hear the sweet tones of your beloved voice in peace and
calm. Monster as I am, you are still, as you ever were, lovely,
beautiful beyond expression. What I have become since this last moment
I know not; perhaps I am changed in mien as the fallen archangel. I do
believe I am for I have surely a new soul within me, and my blood
riots through my veins: I am burnt up with fever. But these are
precious moments; devil as I am become, yet that is my Mathilda before
me whom I love as one was never before loved: and she knows it now;
she listens to these words which I thought, fool as I was, would blast
her to death. Come, come, the worst is past: no more grief, tears or
despair; were not those the words you uttered?--We have leapt the