it, inflicted by those he most loved and respected. What perversion of
ideas! What confusion in the heart, the brain, in all my little being,
intelligent and moral!--let any one, I say, if possible, imagine all
this, for I am incapable of giving the least idea of what passed in my
mind at that period.

My reason was not sufficiently established to enable me to put myself in
the place of others, and judge how much appearances condemned me, I only
beheld the rigor of a dreadful chastisement, inflicted for a crime I had
not committed; yet I can truly affirm, the smart I suffered, though
violent, was inconsiderable compared to what I felt from indignation,
rage, and despair. My cousin, who was almost in similar circumstances,
having been punished for an involuntary fault as guilty of a premediated
crime, became furious by my example. Both in the same bed, we embraced
each other with convulsive transport; we were almost suffocated; and when
our young hearts found sufficient relief to breathe out our indigination,
we sat up in the bed, and with all our force, repeated a hundred times,
Carnifex! Carnifex! Carnifex! executioner, tormentor.

Even while I write this I feel my pulse quicken, and should I live a
hundred thousand years, the agitation of that moment would still be fresh
in my memory. The first instance of violence and oppression is so deeply
engraved on my soul, that every relative idea renews my emotion: the
sentiment of indignation, which in its origin had reference only to
myself, has acquired such strength, and is at present so completely
detached from personal motives, that my heart is as much inflamed at the
sight or relation of any act of injustice (whatever may be the object, or
wheresoever it may be perpetrated) as if I was the immediate sufferer.
When I read the history of a merciless tyrant, or the dark and the subtle
machination of a knavish designing priest, I could on the instant set off