ABSTRACT
For the sake of Catherine there was still one experiment that I was contented to try. And this was how far, by a well concerted enterprise, I could divest myself of the indications of my identity so completely, that I might face my enemies, and appear in the midst of them without danger of being detected. I had heard, and I believed, that such an experiment had been made, and with success. The most striking examples of this that have hitherto been known, have been of persons happily endowed, either in bodily conformation or intellectual temperament, for the purpose, who, in mere wantonness and the pride of what has been / supposed an unique talent, have imposed successfully upon those to whom they have been familiarly known, nay upon their most intimate and sacred connections, satisfying them that they were the strangers they pretended to be. But, if this has been done in sport, and for the mere exhibition of superior skill, sometimes perhaps solely for the amusement and wonder of a convivial party, who were several of them in the secret, why should I suppose that, when life and fame and all that was dear to me were at stake, when the alternative was a dungeon, public conviction before a court of justice, and an ignominious execution, I could not be equally adroit, persevering and successful? I had heard one of the persons most renowned for this sort of experiment say, I would undertake to keep up this disguise for any length of time; I would go though France and Switzerland, not less successful and triumphant at the last stage of my journey than at the first. /
