"
Having read this extraordinary epistle to the end, so monstrous in
the character of its sentiments and its language, when compared with
all he had hitherto known of the pure and simple mind from which it
came, a terrible revulsion seized on his own, and, almost maddened
with horror at every name in that letter, he foreswore his family
forever! Hastening, as for one drop of heaven's dew upon his burning
brain, to seek Therese Sobieski, he found her alone, and though
without such aim when he rushed so frenzied into her presence, he
besought her "to heal a miserable and broken heart, which could only
be saved to endure any continuance of life by an acknowledgment that
she loved him!" Alas! the avowal was too soon wrung from that tender
and noble spirit! and yielding to a paroxysm of a rash and blinding
revenge, he hurried her to a neighboring convent and secretly married
her.
This most unrighteous act perpetrated, he in vain sought
tranquillity. He was now stung within by a constant sense of
increasing guilt. Before this act he was the injured party--injured
by those in whom he had confided his dearest earthly happiness; and
he could raise his head in conscious truth, though all his fondest
hopes had been wrecked by their falsehood. But now he was the
betrayer of a young and innocent heart, which had implicitly trusted
in him. And he had insulted with a base and treacherous ingratitude,
by that act of deceit, without excuse, the honor of her father, whose
generous confidence had also been implicitly placed in him.
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