intercourse with Ludlow, I embarked for Barcelona. A restless
curiosity and vigorous application have distinguished my character
in every scene. Here was spacious field for the exercise of all my
energies. I sought out a preceptor in my new religion. I entered
into the hearts of priests and confessors, the ~hidalgo~ and the
peasant, the monk and the prelate, the austere and voluptuous
devotee were scrutinized in all their forms.

Man was the chief subject of my study, and the social sphere
that in which I principally moved; but I was not inattentive to
inanimate nature, nor unmindful of the past. If the scope of
virtue were to maintain the body in health, and to furnish its
highest enjoyments to every sense, to increase the number, and
accuracy, and order of our intellectual stores, no virtue was ever
more unblemished than mine. If to act upon our conceptions of
right, and to acquit ourselves of all prejudice and selfishness in
the formation of our principles, entitle us to the testimony of a
good conscience, I might justly claim it.

I shall not pretend to ascertain my rank in the moral scale.
Your notions of duty differ widely from mine. If a system of
deceit, pursued merely from the love of truth; if voluptuousness,
never gratified at the expense of health, may incur censure, I am
censurable. This, indeed, was not the limit of my deviations.
Deception was often unnecessarily practised, and my biloquial
faculty did not lie unemployed. What has happened to yourselves
may enable you, in some degree, to judge of the scenes in which my
mystical exploits engaged me. In none of them, indeed, were the
effects equally disastrous, and they were, for the most part, the
result of well digested projects.