Sometimes he thought that I felt deeply the degradation of being obliged to answer a charge of murder, and he endeavoured to prove to me the futility of pride.
"Alas! My father," said I, "how little do you know me.

Human beings, their feelings and passions, would indeed be degraded if such a wretch as I felt pride.

Justine, poor unhappy Justine, was as innocent as I, and she suffered the same charge; she died for it; and I am the cause of this--I murdered her.

William, Justine, and Henry--they all died by my hands." My father had often, during my imprisonment, heard me make the same assertion; when I thus accused myself, he sometimes seemed to desire an explanation, and at others he appeared to consider it as the offspring of delirium, and that, during my illness, some idea of this kind had presented itself to my imagination, the remembrance of which I preserved in my convalescence.
I avoided explanation and maintained a continual silence concerning the wretch I had created.

I had a persuasion that I should be supposed mad, and this in itself would forever have chained my tongue.