Even now my blood boils at the recollection of this injustice.
"But it is true that I am a wretch. I have murdered the lovely and the
helpless; I have strangled the innocent as they slept and grasped to
death his throat who never injured me or any other living thing. I
have devoted my creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of
love and admiration among men, to misery; I have pursued him even to
that irremediable ruin.
"There he lies, white and cold in death. You hate me, but your
abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself. I look on the
hands which executed the deed; I think on the heart in which the
imagination of it was conceived and long for the moment when these
hands will meet my eyes, when that imagination will haunt my thoughts
no more.
"Fear not that I shall be the instrument of future mischief. My work
is nearly complete. Neither yours nor any man's death is needed to
consummate the series of my being and accomplish that which must be
done, but it requires my own. Do not think that I shall be slow to
perform this sacrifice. I shall quit your vessel on the ice raft which
brought me thither and shall seek the most northern extremity of the
globe; I shall collect my funeral pile and consume to ashes this
miserable frame, that its remains may afford no light to any curious
and unhallowed wretch who would create such another as I have been.
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