"I meditated a retirement from the world of a kind which should be absolute, which should excite no inquiries, no interest, except a retrospective one.
To have merely disappeared would not have suited my purpose; search would have been instituted.

The connections and influence of my family would have made such a plan liable to constant disaster.

From Palermo, after superintending the making of my tombstone, I came straight back here, to a house which I had already prepared for myself under an anonymous name.

I travelled with the utmost secrecy; I married, as you have seen, a native wife; and from that day to this I have never beheld a European face but yours.

Your arrival was so unexpected as to shiver resolve and habit; but I have no reason to regret, as far as I can see, my confidence.