MY DEAR FATHER:

"Forgive me if for the first time in my life I disobey you in refusing
to leave this place or to renounce my project. Your advice and your
entreaty are what were to be expected from a kind, good father. My
obstinacy is natural in an insensate son; but something strange is
taking place within me; obstinacy and honor have become so blended and
confounded in my mind that the bare idea of desisting from my purpose
makes me ashamed. I have changed greatly. The fits of rage that agitate
me now were formerly unknown to me. I regarded the violent acts, the
exaggerated expressions of hot-tempered and impetuous men with the
same scorn as the brutal actions of the wicked. Nothing of this kind
surprises me any longer, for in myself I find at all times a certain
terrible capacity for wickedness. I can speak to you as I would speak to
God and to my conscience; I can tell you that I am a wretch, for he is a
wretch who is wanting in that powerful moral force which enables him
to chastise his passions and submit his life to the stern rule of
conscience. I have been wanting in the Christian fortitude which exalts
the spirit of the man who is offended above the offences which he
receives and the enemies from whom he receives them. I have had the
weakness to abandon myself to a mad fury, putting myself on a level with
my detractors, returning them blow for blow, and endeavoring to confound
them by methods learned in their own base school. How deeply I regret
that you were not at my side to turn me from this path! It is now too
late. The passions will not brook delay. They are impatient, and demand
their prey with cries and with the convulsive eagerness of a fierce
moral thirst. I have succumbed. I cannot forget what you so often
said to me, that anger may be called the worst of the passions, since,
suddenly transforming the character, it engenders all the others, and
lends to each its own infernal fire.

"But it is not anger alone that has brought me to the state of mind
which I have described. A more expansive and noble sentiment--the
profound and ardent love which I have for my cousin, has also
contributed to it, and this is the one thing that absolves me in my own
estimation. But if love had not done so, pity would have impelled me
to brave the fury and the intrigues of your terrible sister; for poor
Rosario, placed between an irresistible affection and her mother, is
at the present moment one of the most unhappy being