Alas! It had, perhaps, been well for me if it had been buried in eternal
oblivion. I read in it the condemnation of my deed, the agonies she was
preparing to suffer, and the indignation that would overflow upon the
author of so signal a calamity.

I had rescued my life by the sacrifice of his. Whereas I should have
died. Wretched and precipitate coward! What had become of my boasted
gratitude? Such was the zeal that I had vowed to her. Such the services
which it was the business of my life to perform. I had snatched her
brother from existence. I had torn from her the hope which she so
ardently and indefatigably cherished. From a contemptible and dastardly
regard to my own safety I had failed in the moment of trial and when
called upon by Heaven to evince the sincerity of my professions.

She had treated my professions lightly. My vows of eternal devotion she
had rejected with lofty disinterestedness. She had arraigned my
impatience of obligation as criminal, and condemned every scheme I had
projected for freeing myself from the burden which her beneficence had
laid upon me. The impassioned and vehement anxiety with which, in former
days, she had deprecated the vengeance of her lover against Wiatte, rung
in my ears. My senses were shocked anew by the dreadful sounds, "Touch
not my brother. Wherever you meet with him, of whatever outrage he be
guilty, suffer him to pass in safety. Despise me; abandon me; kill me.
All this I can bear even from you; but spare, I implore you, my unhappy
brother. The stroke that deprives him of life will not only have the
same effect upon me, but will set my portion in everlasting misery."

To these supplications I had been deaf. It is true I had not rushed upon
him unarmed, intending no injury nor expecting any. Of that degree of
wickedness I was, perhaps, incapable. Alas! I have immersed myself