you were
the author of my miseries, or only connived at them. This I know, that I
have suffered too exquisitely on your account, for me to feel the least
remaining claim on your part to my making any voluntary sacrifice.

"You say that benevolence and humanity require this sacrifice of me. No;
it would only be a sacrifice to your mad and misguided love of fame,--to
that passion which has been the source of all your miseries, of the most
tragical calamities to others, and of every misfortune that has happened
to me. I have no forbearance to exercise towards that passion. If you be
not yet cured of this tremendous and sanguinary folly, at least I will
do nothing to cherish it. I know not whether from my youth I was
destined for a hero; but I may thank you for having taught me a lesson
of insurmountable fortitude.

"What is it that you require of me? that I should sign away my own
reputation for the better maintaining of yours. Where is the equality of
that? What is it that casts me at such an immense distance below you, as
to make every thing that relates to me wholly unworthy of consideration?
You have been educated in the prejudice of birth. I abhor that
prejudice. You have made me desperate, and I utter what that desperation
suggests.

"You will tell me perhaps that I have no reputation to lose; that, while
you are esteemed faultless and unblemished, I am universally reputed a
thief, a suborner, and a calumniator. Be it so. I will never do any
thing to countenance those imputations. The more I am destitute of the
esteem of mankind, the more careful I will be to preserve my own. I will
never from fear, or any other mistaken motive, do any thing of which I
ought to be ashamed.

"You are determined to be for ever my enemy. I have in no degree
deserved this eternal abhorrence. I have always esteemed and pitied you.
For a considerable time I rather chose to expose myself to every kind
of misfortune, than disclose the secret that was so dear to you. I was
not deterred by your menaces--(what could you make me suffer more than
I actually suffered?)--but by the humanity of my own heart; in which,
and not in means of violence, you ought to have reposed your confidence.
What is the mysterious vengeance that you can yet execute against me?
You menaced me before; you can menace no worse now. You are wearing out
the springs of terror. Do with me as you please; you teach me to hear
you with an unshrinking and desperate firmness.