calmly sit here, and rehearse the incidents of my life? Will my strength
be adequate to this rehearsal? Let me recollect the motives that
governed me, when I formed this design. Perhaps a strenuousness may be
imparted by them which, otherwise, I cannot hope to obtain. For the sake
of those, I consent to conjure up the ghost of the past, and to begin a
tale that, with a fortitude like mine, I am not sure that I shall live
to finish.

You are unacquainted with the man before you. The inferences which you
have drawn, with regard to my designs and my conduct, are a tissue of
destructive errors. You, like others, are blind to the most momentous
consequences of your own actions. You talk of imparting consolation. You
boast the beneficence of your intentions. You set yourself to do me a
benefit. What are the effects of your misguided zeal and random efforts?
They have brought my life to a miserable close. They have shrouded the
last scene of it in blood. They have put the seal to my perdition.

My misery has been greater than has fallen to the lot of mortals. Yet it
is but beginning. My present path, full as it is of asperities, is
better than that into which I must enter when this is abandoned.
Perhaps, if my pilgrimage had been longer, I might, at some future day,
have lighted upon hope. In consequence of your interference, I am
forever debarred from it. My existence is henceforward to be invariable.
The woes that are reserved for me are incapable alike of alleviation or
intermission.

But I came not hither to recriminate. I came not hither to accuse
others, but myself. I know the retribution that is appointed for guilt
like mine. It is just. I may shudder at the foresight of my punishment
and shrink in the endurance of it; but I shall be indebted for part of