Every one, as far as my story has been known, has refused to assist me in my distress, and has execrated my name.

I have not deserved this treatment.

My own conscience witnesses in behalf of that innocence, my pretensions to which are regarded in the world as incredible.

There is now, however, little hope that I shall escape from the toils that universally beset me.

I am incited to the penning of these memoirs only by a desire to divert my mind from the deplorableness of my situation, and a faint idea that posterity may by their means be induced to render me a justice which my contemporaries refuse.