enmity of Wiatte rendered efficacious, and the instrument of his
destruction changed into the executioner of his revenge.

Such is the tale of my crimes. It is not for me to hope that the curtain
of oblivion will ever shut out the dismal spectacle. It will haunt me
forever. The torments that grow out of it can terminate only with the
thread of my existence, but that, I know full well, will never end.
Death is but a shifting of the scene; and the endless progress of
eternity, which to the good is merely the perfection of felicity, is to
the wicked an accumulation of woe. The self-destroyer is his own enemy:
this has ever been my opinion. Hitherto it has influenced my actions.
Now, though the belief continues, its influence on my conduct is
annihilated. I am no stranger to the depth of that abyss into which I
shall plunge. No matter. Change is precious for its own sake.

Well, I was still to live. My abode must be somewhere fixed. My conduct
was henceforth the result of a perverse and rebellious principle. I
banished myself forever from my native soil. I vowed never more to
behold the face of my Clarice, to abandon my friends, my books, all my
wonted labours and accustomed recreations.

I was neither ashamed nor afraid. I considered not in what way the
justice of the country would affect me. It merely made no part of my
contemplations. I was not embarrassed by the choice of expedients for
trammelling up the visible consequences and for eluding suspicion. The
idea of abjuring my country and flying forever from the hateful scene
partook, to my apprehension, of the vast, the boundless, and strange; of
plunging from the height of fortune to obscurity and indigence,
corresponded with my present state of mind. It was of a piece with the
tremendous and wonderful events that had just happened.