Oh, Matilda, if tears could expiate such a crime, ere this I had been clear as the guileless infant. If incessant and bitter reproaches could overweigh a guilt of the first magnitude, mine had been obliterated. But no; the words I wrote were words of blood. Each of them was a barbed arrow pointed at the heart. There was no management, there was no qualification. And when we add to this the object against which all my injuries were directed, what punishment can be discovered sufficiently severe? The mind that invented it, must have been callous beyond all common hardness. The hand that wrote it must be accursed for ever.
And yet, Matilda, it is not merely pardon that I seek. Even that would be balm to my troubled spirit. It would somewhat soften the harsh outlines, and the aggravated features of a crime, which I shall never, never forgive to my own heart. But no, think, most amiable of women, of the height of felicity I once had full in view, and excuse my present presumption. While indeed my mind was guiltless, and my hand unstained with blood, while I had not yet insulted the woman to whose affections I aspired, nor awakened the anger of the gentlest nature, of a heart made up of goodness, and tenderness and sympathy, I might have aspired with somewhat less of arrogance. Neither your heart nor mine, Matilda, were ever very susceptible to the capricious distinctions of fortune.
But, alas, how hard is it for a mind naturally ambitious to mould and to level itself to a state of degradation. Believe me, I have put forth an hundred efforts, I have endeavoured to blot your memory from a soul, in which it yet does, and ever will reign unrivalled. No, it is to fight with impassive air, it is to lash the foaming tempest into a calm. Time, which effaces all other impressions, increases that which is indelibly written upon my heart. A man whose countenance is pale and wan, and who every day approaches with hasty and unremitted strides to the tomb, may forget his situation, may call up a sickly smile upon his countenance, and lull his mind to lethargy and insensibility. Such, Matilda, is all the peace reserved for me, if yet I have no power in influencing the determinations of your mind. Stupidity, thou must be my happiness! Torpor, I will bestow upon thee all the endearing names, that common mortals give to rapture!