The resources of my personal strength, my ingenuity, and my eloquence, I estimated at nothing.

The dignity of virtue, and the force of truth, I had been accustomed to celebrate; and had frequently vaunted of the conquests which I should make with their assistance.
I used to suppose that certain evils could never befall a being in possession of a sound mind; that true virtue supplies us with energy which vice can never resist; that it was always in our power to obstruct, by his own death, the designs of an enemy who aimed at less than our life.

How was it that a sentiment like despair had now invaded me, and that I trusted to the protection of chance, or to the pity of my persecutor?
His words imparted some notion of the injury which he had meditated.

He talked of obstacles that had risen in his way.

He had relinquished his design.