"While I was overcome by these feelings, I left the spot where I had
committed the murder, and seeking a more secluded hiding-place, I
entered a barn which had appeared to me to be empty. A woman was
sleeping on some straw; she was young, not indeed so beautiful as her
whose portrait I held, but of an agreeable aspect and blooming in the
loveliness of youth and health. Here, I thought, is one of those whose
joy-imparting smiles are bestowed on all but me. And then I bent over
her and whispered, `Awake, fairest, thy lover is near--he who would
give his life but to obtain one look of affection from thine eyes; my
beloved, awake!'
"The sleeper stirred; a thrill of terror ran through me. Should she
indeed awake, and see me, and curse me, and denounce the murderer? Thus
would she assuredly act if her darkened eyes opened and she beheld me.
The thought was madness; it stirred the fiend within me--not I, but
she, shall suffer; the murder I have committed because I am forever
robbed of all that she could give me, she shall atone. The crime had
its source in her; be hers the punishment! Thanks to the lessons of
Felix and the sanguinary laws of man, I had learned now to work
mischief. I bent over her and placed the portrait securely in one of
the folds of her dress. She moved again, and I fled.
"For some days I haunted the spot where these scenes had taken place,
sometimes wishing to see you, sometimes resolved to quit the world and
its miseries forever.
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