I could see nothing but the horror of being recognised and declared publicly to my face a thief, liar, and traducer."[32] When he says that he feared punishment little, his analysis of his mind is most likely wrong, for nothing is clearer than that a dread of punishment in any physical form was a peculiarly strong feeling with him at this time.

However that may have been, the same over-excited imagination which put every sense on the alarm and led him into so abominable a misdemeanour, brought its own penalties.

It led him to conceive a long train of ruin as having befallen Marion in consequence of his calumny against her, and this dreadful thought haunted him to the end of his life.

In the long sleepless nights he thought he saw the unhappy girl coming to reproach him with a crime that seemed as fresh to him as if it had been perpetrated the day before.[33] Thus the same brooding memory which brought back to him the sweet pain of his gentle kinswoman's household melody, preserved the darker side of his history with equal fidelity and no less perfect continuousness.
Rousseau expresses a hope and belief that this burning remorse would serve as expiation for his fault; as if expiation for the destruction of another soul could be anything but a fine name for self-absolution.

We may, however, charitably and reasonably think that the possible consequences of his fault to the unfortunate Marion were not actual, but were as much a hallucination as the midnight visits of her reproachful spirit.