s have
saluted your ear, in which you imagine yourself to have recognized
mine, and that of a detected villain. The sentiments expressed were
not allowed to outweigh the casual or concerted resemblance of voice.
Sentiments the reverse of all those whose influence my former life had
attested, denoting a mind polluted by grovelling vices, and entering
into compact with that of a thief and a murderer. The nature of these
sentiments did not enable you to detect the cheat, did not suggest to
you the possibility that my voice had been counterfeited by another.

"You were precipitate and prone to condemn. Instead of rushing on the
impostors, and comparing the evidence of sight with that of hearing, you
stood aloof, or you fled. My innocence would not now have stood in
need of vindication, if this conduct had been pursued. That you did not
pursue it, your present thoughts incontestibly prove. Yet this conduct
might surely have been expected from Pleyel. That he would not hastily
impute the blackest of crimes, that he would not couple my name with
infamy, and cover me with ruin for inadequate or slight reasons, might
reasonably have been expected." The sobs which convulsed my bosom would
not suffer me to proceed.

Pleyel was for a moment affected. He looked at me with some expression
of doubt; but this quickly gave place to a mournful solemnity. He fixed
his eyes on the floor as in reverie, and spoke:

"Two hours hence I am gone. Shall I carry away with me the sorrow that
is now my guest? or shall that sorrow be accumulated tenfold? What is
she that is now before me? Shall every hour supply me with new proofs of
a wickedness beyond example? Already I deem her the most abandoned and
detestable of human creatures. Her coming and her tears imparted a gleam
of hope, but that gleam has vanished."

He now fixed his eyes upon me, and every muscle in his face trembled.
His tone was hollow and terrible--"Thou knowest that I was a witness of
your interview, yet thou comest hither to upbraid me for injustice! Thou
canst look me in the face and say that I am deceived!--An inscrutable
providence has fashioned thee for some end. Thou wilt live, no doubt, to
fulfil the purposes of thy maker, if he repent not of his workmanship,
and send not his vengeance to exterminate thee, ere the measure of thy
days be full. Surely nothing in the shape of man can vie with thee!

"But I thought I had stifled this fury. I am not constituted thy judge.
My