One day, when he had persuaded her to ride in the forest, and he was certain to be alone for two or three hours, he wrote the following words to his foe and his judge:
'Sir,----You will perhaps refuse to read anything written by me. Yet I send you this letter, because I desire to say to you what the physical weakness which was upon me the other night prevented my having time or strength to explain. I desire also to put in your hands a proof absolute against myself, with which you can do as you please, so that the forbearance which you exercised, if it be your pleasure to continue it, shall not be surprised from you by any momentary generosity, but shall be your deliberate choice and decision. I have another course of action to propose to you, to which I will come later. For the present permit me to give you the outline of all the circumstances which have governed my acts. I am not coward enough to throw the blame on fate or chance; I am well aware that good men and great men combat and govern both. Yet, something of course there lies in these, or, if not, excuse at least explanation. You knew me (when you were a boy) as Vassia Kazán, the natural son of the Prince Paul Ivanovitch Zabaroff. Up to nine years old I dwelt with my grandmother, a Persian woman, on the great plain between the Volga water and the Ural range. Thence I was taken to the Lycée Clovis, a famous college. Prince Zabaroff I never saw but one day in my Volga village, until, when I was fifteen years old, I was sent to his house, Fleur de Roi, near Villerville, where I remained two months, and where you insulted me and I chastised you, and you gave me the wound that I have the mark of to this day. I then returned to the Lycée, and stayed there two years unnoticed by him. One day I was summoned by the principal, and told abruptly that the Prince Zabaroff was dead--my protector, as they termed him--and that I was penniless, with the world before me. I could not hope to make you understand the passions that raged in me. You, who have always been in the light of fortune, and always the head of a mighty family, could comprehend nothing of the sombre hatreds, the futile revolts, the bitter wrath against heaven and humanity which consumed me then, thus left alone without even the remembrance of a word from my father. I should have returned straightway to the Volga plains, and buried my fevered griefs under their snows, had not I known that my grandmother Maritza, the only living being I had ever loved, had died half a year after I had been taken from her to be sent to the school in Paris. You see, had I been left there I should have been a hunter of wild things or a raftsman on the Volga all my years, and have done no harm. I had a great passion in my childhood for an open-air, free life; my vices, like my artificial tastes, were all learned in Paris. They, and the love of pleasure they created, checked in me that socialistic spirit which is the usual outcome of such â social anomaly as they had made of me. I might have been a Nihilist but for that, and for the instinctive tendency towards aristocratic and absolutist theories which were in my blood. I was a true Russian noble, though a bastard one; and those three months which I had passed at Fleur de Roi had intoxicated me with the thirst for pleasure and enervated me with the longing to be rich and idle. An actress whom I knew intimately also at that time did me much harm. When Paul Zabaroff died he left me nothing, not even a word. It is true that he died suddenly. I quitted the Lycée Clovis with my clothes and my books; I had nothing else in the world. I sold some of these and got to Havre. There I took a passage on a barque going to Mexico with wine. The craft was unseaworthy; she went down with all hands off the Pinos Island, and I, swimming for miles, alone reached the shore. Women there were good to me. I got away in a canoe, and rowed many miles and many days; the sea was calm, and I had bread, fruit, and water enough to last two weeks. At the end of ten days I neared a brig, which took me to Yucatan. My adventurous voyage made me popular there. I gave a false name, of course, for I hated the name of Vassia Kazán. War was going on at the time in Mexico, and I went there and offered myself to the military adventurer who was at the moment uppermost. I saw a good deal of guerilla warfare for a year. I liked it: I fear I was cruel. The ruler of the hour, who was scarcely more than a brigand, was defeated and assassinated. At the time of his fall I was at the head of a few troopers far away in the interior. Bands of Indians fell on us in great numbers. I was shot down and left for dead. A stranger found me on the morning after, carried me to his hut, and saved my life by his skill and care.