My father and Ernest yet lived, but the former sunk under the tidings that I bore.

I see him now, excellent and venerable old man! His eyes wandered in vacancy, for they had lost their charm and their delight--his Elizabeth, his more than daughter, whom he doted on with all that affection which a man feels, who in the decline of life, having few affections, clings more earnestly to those that remain.
Cursed, cursed be the fiend that brought misery on his grey hairs and doomed him to waste in wretchedness! He could not live under the horrors that were accumulated around him; the springs of existence suddenly gave way; he was unable to rise from his bed, and in a few days he died in my arms.
What then became of me?
I know not; I lost sensation, and chains and darkness were the only objects that pressed upon me.

Sometimes, indeed, I dreamt that I wandered in flowery meadows and pleasant vales with the friends of my youth, but I awoke and found myself in a dungeon.

Melancholy followed, but by degrees I gained a clear conception of my miseries and situation and was then released from my prison.

For they had called me mad, and during many months, as I understood, a solitary cell had been my habitation.
Liberty, however, had been a useless gift to me, had I not, as I awakened to reason, at the same time awakened to revenge.