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"But it is true that I am a wretch. I have murdered the lovely

and the helpless; I have strangled the innocent as they slept and

grasped to death his throat who never injured me or any other

living thing. I have devoted my creator, the select specimen of

all that is worthy of love and admiration among men, to misery; I

have pursued him even to that irremediable ruin. There he lies,

white and cold in death. You hate me, but your abhorrence cannot

equal that with which I regard myself. I look on the hands which

executed the deed; I think on the heart in which the imagination

of it was conceived and long for the moment when these hands will

meet my eyes, when that imagination will haunt my thoughts no

more.