s on the face of the
earth. The love which she has for me, and which responds to mine--does
it not give me the right to open, in whatever way I can, the doors of
her house and take her out of it; employing the law, as far as the law
reaches, and using force at the point where the law ceases to support
me? I think that your rigid moral scrupulosity will not give an
affirmative answer to this question; but I have ceased to be the upright
and methodical character whose conscience was in exact conformity with
the dictates of the moral law. I am no longer the man whom an almost
perfect education enabled to keep his emotions under strict control.
To-day I am a man like other men; at a single step I have crossed the
line which separates the just and the good from the unjust and the
wicked. Prepare yourself to hear of some dreadful act committed by me. I
will take care to notify you of all my misdeeds.

"But the confession of my faults will not relieve me from the
responsibility of the serious occurrences which have taken place and
which are taking place, nor will this responsibility, no matter how
much I may argue, fall altogether on your sister. Dona Perfecta's
responsibility is certainly very great. What will be the extent of mine!
Ah, dear father! believe nothing of what you hear about me; believe
only what I shall tell you. If they tell you that I have committed a
deliberate piece of villany, answer that it is a lie. It is difficult,
very difficult, for me to judge myself, in the state of disquietude in
which I am, but I dare assure you that I have not deliberately given
cause for scandal. You know well to what extremes passion can lead when
circumstances favor its fierce, its all-invading growth.

"What is most bitter to me is the thought of having employed artifice,
deceit, and base concealments--I who was truth itself. I am humiliated
in my own estimation. But is this the greatest perversity into which the
soul can fall? Am I beginning now, or have I ended? I cannot tell. If
Rosario with her angelic hand does not take me out of this hell of
my conscience, I desire that you should come to take me out of it. My
cousin is an angel, and suffering, as she has done, for my sake, she has
taught me a great many things that I did not know before.

"Do not be surprised at the incoherence of what I write. Diverse
emotions inflame me; thoughts at times assail me truly worthy of my
immortal soul; but at times also I fall into a la