Read "Martin Faber-The Story of a Criminal" by William Gilmore Simms online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
He came to me in my dungeon--he, my accuser--my enemy--my friend. In the first emotions of my wrath, I would have strangled him, and I shook my chains in his face, and I muttered savage curses and deep threats in his ears. He stood patiently and unmoved. His hands were clasped, and his eyes were dim, and for a while he had no language, no articulations.
"Think not," at last he spoke--"think not I have come to this work with a feeling of satisfaction. I have suffered more agony in its progress than I can well describe or you understand--I will not attempt it. If you cannot, from what you know of my character, conceive the grief and sickness of heart which must have come over me, during the long period and regular and frequent succession of hours, in which I was required to play the hypocrite--I cannot teach it you. I come not for this. I come to ask your forgiveness--to implore your better opinion--and that you may attribute to a necessity which gave me no other alternatives than death or shame, the whole of this painful episode in my life!"