of trick and cunning, killed with
cold, sullen scorn; and, after all the agony I had suffered, could
obtain no explanation why I was subjected to it. I was still to be
tantalized, tortured, made the cruel sport of one, for whom I would have
sacrificed all. I tore the locket which contained her hair (and which I
used to wear continually in my bosom, as the precious token of her dear
regard) from my neck, and trampled it in pieces. I then dashed the
little Buonaparte on the ground, and stamped upon it, as one of her
instruments of mockery. I could not stay in the room; I could not leave
it; my rage, my despair were uncontrollable. I shrieked curses on her
name, and on her false love; and the scream I uttered (so pitiful and so
piercing was it, that the sound of it terrified me) instantly brought
the whole house, father, mother, lodgers and all, into the room. They
thought I was destroying her and myself. I had gone into the bedroom,
merely to hide away from myself, and as I came out of it, raging-mad
with the new sense of present shame and lasting misery, Mrs. F----
said, "She's in there! He has got her in there!" thinking the cries had
proceeded from her, and that I had been offering her violence. "Oh!
no," I said, "She's in no danger from me; I am not the person;" and
tried to burst from this scene of degradation. The mother endeavoured
to stop me, and said, "For God's sake, don't go out, Mr. ----! for
God's sake, don't!" Her father, who was not, I believe, in the secret,
and was therefore justly scandalised at such outrageous conduct, said
angrily, "Let him go! Why should he stay?" I however sprang down
stairs, and as they called out to me, "What is it?--What has she done to
you?" I answered, "She has murdered me!--She has destroyed me for
ever!--She has doomed my soul to perdition!" I rushed out of the house,
thinking to quit it forever; but I was no sooner in the street, than the
desolation and the darkness became greater, more intolerable; and the
eddying violence of my passion drove me back to the source, from whence
it sprung. This unexpected explosion, with the conjectures to which it
would give rise, could not be very agreeable to the precieuse or her
family; and when I went back, the father was waiting at the door, as if
anticipating this sudden turn of my feelings, with no friendly aspect.
I said, "I have to beg pardon, Sir; but my mad fit is over, and I wish
to say a few words to you in private.