ABSTRACT
I must frankly confess myself at this distance unable to recollect in order of time and place the endless persecutions I have been fated to undergo. No day could I call my own; no hour have I been free from the direst alarm. The watches of the night have been full of terror to me. All day I have watched, not perhaps with the sense of seeing, for that would have been too perilous to me, but with the sense of hearing, for the approach of the foe, for those stealthy steps which I supposed ever at hand to surprise me. If at any time weary nature within me sought for repose, if my senses were steeped in a short oblivion, / this was far from being a refreshment to me. My visions were wild, incoherent, tormenting, beyond the power of words, to describe; my soul was tumultuously hurried along in restless ecstasy; I felt that every thing which presented itself to my inner sense was inconsistent, contradictory, impossible, yet, impossible, as it was, I was compelled to believe it. My dreams were endless; I wandered among rocks and deserts with failing and wearied steps; yet the actual time consumed by these dreams was but as a moment: I started and woke with ever-fresh alarm, as if of some terrific certainty. My blood was fevered; my brain was maddened; my hours were full of delirious imaginations, which again were sobered and reduced to compulsory steadiness by the near apprehension of some fatal violence. The only mitigation I experienced to these tortures was in the presence and soothing care of my daughter, when I could have her near me, which was not always. /
