"O!" I exclaimed, in a voice broken by sobs, "what a task is mine! Compelled to hearken to charges which I feel to be false, but which I know to be believed by him that utters them; believed too not without evidence, which, though fallacious, is not unplausible.
"I came hither not to confess, but to vindicate.

I know the source of your opinions.

Wieland has informed me on what your suspicions are built.

These suspicions are fostered by you as certainties; the tenor of my life, of all my conversations and letters, affords me no security; every sentiment that my tongue and my pen have uttered, bear testimony to the rectitude of my mind; but this testimony is rejected.

I am condemned as brutally profligate: I am classed with the stupidly and sordidly wicked.
"And where are the proofs that must justify so foul and so improbable an accusation?
You have overheard a midnight conference.