I have deceived you: I have sported with your terrors: I have plotted to destroy your reputation.

I come now to remove your errors; to set you beyond the reach of similar fears; to rebuild your fame as far as I am able.
"This is the amount of my guilt, and this the fruit of my remorse.

Will you not hear me?
Listen to my confession, and then denounce punishment.
All I ask is a patient audience." "What!" I replied, "was not thine the voice that commanded my brother to imbrue his hands in the blood of his children--to strangle that angel of sweetness his wife?
Has he not vowed my death, and the death of Pleyel, at thy bidding?
Hast thou not made him the butcher of his family; changed him who was the glory of his species into worse than brute; robbed him of reason, and consigned the rest of his days to fetters and stripes ?" Carwin's eyes glared, and his limbs were petrified at this intelligence.
No words were requisite to prove him guiltless of these enormities: at the time, however, I was nearly insensible to these exculpatory tokens.
He walked to the farther end of the room, and having recovered some degree of composure, he spoke-- "I am not this villain; I have slain no one; I have prompted none to slay; I have handled a tool of wonderful efficacy without malignant intentions, but without caution; ample will be the punishment of my temerity, if my conduct has contributed to this evil." He paused .-- I likewise was silent.

I struggled to command myself so far as to listen to the tale which he should tell.

Observing this, he continued-- "You are not apprized of the existence of a power which I possess.