Chapter 8

• “during the whole of this wretched mockery of justice I suffered living torture.”
• and I the cause!
• “A thousand times rather would I have confessed myself guilty of the crime ascribed to Justine; but I was absent when it was committed, and such a declaration would have been considered the ravings of a madman”
• “for all the kindness which her beauty might otherwise have excited, was obliterated in the minds of the spectators by the imagination of the enormity she was supposed to have committed.”
• but I have no power of explaining it
• when I see a fellow creature about to perish through the cowardice of her pretended friends, I wish to be allowed to speak
• “a murmur of approbation followed Elizabeth’s simple and powerful appeal; but it was excited by her generous interference, and not in favour of poor Justine, on whom the public indignation was turned with renewed violence, charging her with the blackest ingratitude.”
• I perceived that the popular voice, and the countenances of the judges, had already condemned my unhappy victim
• my lips and throat were parched
• How shall I ever again believe in human goodness?
• I did confess; but I confessed a lie. I confessed, that I might obtain absolution; but now that falsehood lies heavier at my heart than all my other sins. The God of heaven forgive me!
• my confessor has besieged me; he threatened and menaced until I almost began to think that I was the monster that he said I was.
• I am resigned to the fate awaiting me.
• “During this conversation I had retired to a corner of the prison-room, [...] Despair! Who dared talk of that? The poor victim, who on the morrow was to pass the awful boundary between life and death, felt not as I did, such deep and bitter agony.”
• gnashed my teeth and ground them together, uttering a groan
• “How sweet is the affection of others to such a wretch as I am! It removes more than half my misfortune”
• But I, the true murderer, felt the never-dying worm alive in my bosom, which allowed of no hope or consolation.
• “my prophetic soul [...] William and Justine, the first hapless victims to my unhallowed arts.”