"This is the recital of my misfortunes which you alone can assuage. Remember that you must at last stand before God."
Then the text continued:
Since my tireless enemies and malevolent fate are combined for the purpose of forcing me to die beneath a spurious name and destitute of the rights to which my birth entitles me; since you, yourself (in whom I had faith because it seemed monstrous to doubt you), have discredited my claim: I hold up to you a mirror reflecting the insistent memories of which you are so great a part, that your remorse may hereafter be the greater, if this appeal I make softens not your heart and if the impositions of royalty outweigh the supplications of blood.
A day shall come, Thérèse, when posterity, marveling at my abandoned condition, will indignantly ask why the powers of Europe made no protest at the iniquity practised upon me. But that posterity should consider the fate of our parents,—yours and mine, Thérèse,—the fate of the ignominious journey to the guillotine as well as the indifference before that spectacle of those who should have burned their last cartridge in defence of the victims! Ah, Thérèse! In vain do you seek to restore THE PRINCIPLE,—to use the expression you of the Court employ—in vain do you seek to restore THE PRINCIPLE which is the basis of our national glory. Our country's weakness at the present time consists in the repudiation of that PRINCIPLE.
Perhaps I seem a dreamer or a lunatic, but, nevertheless, 'tis by the light of my unparalleled misfortunes that I perceive the impending cataclysm. The PRINCIPLE has suicided and the INSTITUTION has received its death blow. What life remains to it will be puerile and despicable. Trampled by its enemies, humiliated, scourged, manacled, crowned in mockery, buffeted, its purple mantle in shreds, it shall at last be crucified, not to await a glorious resurrection but to crumble to dust in a fleur de lis cemetery.
Fools are those who build above a raging torrent. Lay not the flattering unction to your soul, Thérèse, that you have saved the dynasty by sacrificing your brother. God is no Moloch to be propitiated by such holocausts. Sterile has been your womb as a warning to you, and other lessons, tremendous and desolating, have you yet to learn. As for me, my descendants will toil and sweat over labors as arduous as my own, and so shall the ages expiate.
How dreadful is my fate, Thérèse! I live, I breathe, but I, as I, do not exist; that I has been buried in an empty coffin, in the angle of two walls of a cemetery. At times I doubt my very senses and all that I am about to relate to you seems the very fabric of a dream,—but then no dream has ever been so long and fearful. 'Tis only my anguish that convinces me of reality. I co-ordinate my memories and perceive that I am not a deluded fool. Once I described my misgivings to a physician in Germany, saying that in believing myself to be another I feared at times that I was demented. He said he had known similar cases and advised me to summon all my mental strength and hold a powerful light to the mirror of my consciousness.
"Impostors have there been who were not liars," said the doctor fixing upon me a penetrating look. "Those impostors have believed their asseverations." Thérèse, I appeal to you to rescue me from this appalling phenomenon.
And as I am opening my heart to you,—the heart which throbs, not the inert heart which was offered you with the assurance that it had been taken from my dead body and which you refused to accept,—since I conceal nothing from you, Thérèse, O listen! I implore you to convince me that I am a wretched dupe of the Revolution, for perhaps 'twould be best that I should be persuaded that my reason is diseased. Be pitiful, Thérèse, even tho you refuse me love.
And now, whether I rave or speak truth, I summon my life's memories even from infancy. I stand in that incomparable summer palace in which we lived before the bursting forth of the Revolution. I walk through the magnificent salons adorned by rare artists, and amid those marvelous gardens wherein the skill of Le Nôtre surpassed itself. But more vivid still than the memories of these splendors is the image of the charming villa of diminutive blue lakes and rustic kiosks and the verdant farm where our mother in simple muslin (how beautiful she was, Thérèse!) delighted to drink fresh milk, gather wild flowers and scatter grain to the birds. How gay we were, you and I, participating in these innocent amusements, in our straw hats and cool white dresses. One day an artist painted us so, and, as I grew restive and troublesome during the sitting, my mother said gently, "Charles Louis, I shall soon know whether or not you love me." This sweet remonstrance quieted me. I so loved my mother that the sound of her voice in singing always brought tears to my eyes.