I am become a fiend, the sight
of whom destroys. Yet tell me my offense! You have linked curses
with my name; you ascribe to me a malice monstrous and infernal. I
look around: all is loneliness and desert! This house and your
brother's are solitary and dismantled! You die away at the sight
of me! My fear whispers that some deed of horror has been
perpetrated; that I am the undesigning cause."
What language was this? Had he not avowed himself a ravisher? Had
not this chamber witnessed his atrocious purposes? I besought him
with new vehemence to go.
He lifted his eyes:--"Great heaven! what have I done? I think I
know the extent of my offenses. I have acted, but my actions have
possibly effected more than I designed. This fear has brought me
back from my retreat. I come to repair the evil of which my
rashness was the cause, and to prevent more evil. I come to
confess my errors."
"Wretch!" I cried, when my suffocating emotions would permit me to
speak, "the ghosts of my sister and her children,--do they not rise
to accuse thee? Who was it that blasted the intellect of Wieland?
Who was it that urged him to fury and guided him to murder? Who,
but thou and the devil, with whom thou art confederated?"
At these words a new spirit pervaded his countenance.
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