Better a thousand times had I envisaged that sinful fact and wrestled with it boldly.

Thus should I have had a chance of conquering myself and winning clear of all the horror that lay before me.
That I was weak and irresolute at such a time, when I most needed strength, I still think to-day--when I can take a calm survey of all--was the fault of the outrageous rearing that was mine.

At Mondolfo they had so nurtured me and so sheltered me from the stinging blasts of the world that I was grown into a very ripe and succulent fruit for the Devil's mouth.

The things to whose temptation usage would have rendered me in some degree immune were irresistible to one who had been tutored as had I.
Let youth know wickedness, lest when wickedness seeks a man out in his riper years he shall be fooled and conquered by the beauteous garb in which the Devil has the cunning to array it.
And yet to pretend that I was entirely innocent of where I stood and in what perils were to play the hypocrite.

Largely I knew; just as I knew that lacking strength to resist, I must seek safety in flight.