tears would steal along my
cheeks, and my heart vibrated to the very finest emotions; at others,
I was possessed with an almost demoniac fierceness, that seemed only in
search of some object to wreak its vengeance upon. A strange impression,
however, haunted me through both these opposite states, and this was,
that my life was menaced by some one or other, and that I went in hourly
peril of assassination. This sense of danger impressed me with either a
miserable timidity, or a reckless, even an insolent, intrepidity.

By degrees, all other thoughts were merged in this one, and every
incident, no matter how trifling, served to strengthen and confirm it.
Fortunately for my reader, I have no patience to trace out the fancies
by which I was haunted. I imagined that kings and emperors were in the
conspiracy against me, and that cabinets only plotted how to entrap me.
I sold the last remnant of my wardrobe and my few remaining books, and
quitted my dwelling, to forsake it again for another, after a few days.
Grim want was, at length, before me, and I found myself one morning--it
was a cold one of December--with only a few pence remaining. It chanced
to be one of my days of calmer temperament; for some previous ones I had
been in a state bordering on frenzy; and now the reaction had left me
weak and depressed, but reasonable.

I went over, to myself, as well as I was able, all my previous life; I
tried to recall the names of the few with whom my fate seemed to connect
me, and of whose whereabouts I knew nothing; I canvassed in my own mind
how much might be true of these stories which I used to hear of my
birth and parentage, and whether the whole might not possibly have been
invented to conceal some darker history. Such doubts had possibly not
assailed me in other times; but now, with broken hopes and shattered
strength, they took a bold possession of me. I actually possessed
nothing which might serve to confirm my pretension to station. Documents
or papers I had none; nor was there, so far as I knew, a living
witness to bear testimony to my narrative. In pondering thus I suddenly
remembered that, in the letter which I once had addressed to Mr. Pitt,
were enclosed some few memoranda in corroboration of my story.

What they were exactly, and to what extent they went, I could not recall
to memory; but it was enough that they were, in some shape, evidences
of that which already to my own mind was assuming the character of a
de