, until he or I shall perish in mortal conflict. For
this purpose I will preserve my life; to execute this dear revenge will
I again behold the sun and tread the green herbage of earth, which
otherwise should vanish from my eyes forever. And I call on you,
spirits of the dead, and on you, wandering ministers of vengeance, to
aid and conduct me in my work. Let the cursed and hellish monster
drink deep of agony; let him feel the despair that now torments me." I
had begun my adjuration with solemnity and an awe which almost assured
me that the shades of my murdered friends heard and approved my
devotion, but the furies possessed me as I concluded, and rage choked
my utterance.

I was answered through the stillness of night by a loud and fiendish
laugh. It rang on my ears long and heavily; the mountains re-echoed
it, and I felt as if all hell surrounded me with mockery and laughter.
Surely in that moment I should have been possessed by frenzy and have
destroyed my miserable existence but that my vow was heard and that I
was reserved for vengeance. The laughter died away, when a well-known
and abhorred voice, apparently close to my ear, addressed me in an
audible whisper, "I am satisfied, miserable wretch! You have
determined to live, and I am satisfied."

I darted towards the spot from which the sound proceeded, but the devil
eluded my grasp. Suddenly the broad disk of the moon arose and shone
full upon his ghastly and distorted shape as he fled with more than
mortal speed.

I pursued him, and for many months this has been my task. Guided by a
slight clue, I followed the windings of the Rhone, but vainly. The
blue Mediterranean appeared, and by a strange chance, I saw the fiend
enter by night and hide himself in a vessel bound for the Black Sea. I
took my passage in the same ship, but he escaped, I know not how.

Amidst the wilds of Tartary and Russia, although he still evaded me, I
have ever followed in his track. Sometimes the peasants, scared by
this horrid apparition, informed me of his path; sometimes he himself,
who feared that if I lost all trace of him I should despair and die,
left some mark to guide me. The snows descended on my head, and I saw
the print of his huge step on the white plain. To you first entering
on life, to whom care is new and agony unknown, how can you understand
what I have felt and still feel? Cold, want, and fatigue were the
least pains which I was destined to endure; I was