none to suffer pain. I
make them at the cost of my own feelings alone, and in some sense I do
so as an act of atonement and reparation to a world that, with some
hard lessons, has still treated me with kindness, and to whom, with the
tremulous fingers of old age, I write myself most grateful.

If they who read this story suppose that I should not have hesitated to
propose myself a claimant for an estate to which I had no right, I have
no better answer to give them than a mere denial, and even that uttered
in all humility, since it comes from one whose good name has been
impeached, and whose good faith may be questioned. Still do I repeat
it, this was an act I could not have done. There is a kind of half-way
rectitude in the world which never scruples at the means of any success
so long as it injures no other, but which recoils from the thought of
any advantage obtained at another's cost and detriment. Such I suspect
to have been mine. At least, I can declare with truth that I am not
conscious of an incident in my life which will bear the opposite
construction.

But to what end should I endeavor to defend my motives, since my actions
are already before the world, and each will read them by the light his
own conscience lends? Let me rather hasten to complete a task which,
since it has involved an apology, has become almost painful to pursue.

So successfully had Ysaffich employed his time at Brussels that a
well-known notary there had already consented to aid our plans and
furnish means for our journey to England. I cannot go over with
minuteness details in which the deceptions I had to concur in still
revive my shame. I could, it is true, recite the story of my birth and
parentage, my early years abroad, and so on, with the conscious force of
truth; but there were supplementary evidences required of me with which
I could not bring myself to comply. Ysaffich, naturally enough, could
not understand the delicacy of scruples which only took alarm by mere
caprice, nor could he comprehend why he who was willing to feign a name
and falsify a position should hesitate about assuming any circumstances
that might be useful to sustain it.

Of course I could not explain this mystery, and was obliged to endure
all the sarcastic allusions he vented on the acuteness of my sense of
honor and the extreme susceptibility of my notions of right. It
chanced, however, that this very repugnance on my part should prove more
favorable for us