Book XII

With this book begins the work of darkness, in which I have for the last
eight years been enveloped, though it has not by any means been possible
for me to penetrate the dreadful obscurity. In the abyss of evil into
which I am plunged, I feel the blows reach me, without perceiving the
hand by which they are directed or the means it employs. Shame and
misfortune seem of themselves to fall upon me. When in the affliction of
my heart I suffer a groan to escape me, I have the appearance of a man
who complains without reason, and the authors of my ruin have the
inconceivable art of rendering the public unknown to itself, or without
its perceiving the effects of it, accomplice in their conspiracy.
Therefore, in my narrative of circumstances relative to myself, of the
treatment I have received, and all that has happened to me, I shall not
be able to indicate the hand by which the whole has been directed, nor
assign the causes, while I state the effect. The primitive causes are
all given in the preceding books; and everything in which I am
interested, and all the secret motives pointed out. But it is impossible
for me to explain, even by conjecture, that in which the different causes
are combined to operate the strange events of my life. If amongst my
readers one even of them should be generous enough to wish to examine the
mystery to the bottom, and discover the truth, let him carefully read
over a second time the three preceding books, afterwards at each fact he
shall find stated in the books which follow, let him gain such
information as is within his reach, and go back from intrigue to
intrigue, and from agent to agent, until he comes to the first mover of
all. I know where his researches will terminate; but in the meantime I
lose myself in the crooked and obscure subterraneous path through which
his steps must be directed.

During my stay at Yverdon, I became acquainted with all the family of my
friend Roguin, and amongst others with his niece, Madam Boy de la Tour,
and her daughters, whose father, as I think I have already observed,
I formerly knew at Lyons. She was at Yverdon, upon a visit to her uncle
and his sister; her eldest daughter, about fifteen years of age,
delighted me by her fine understanding and excellent disposition.
I conceived the most tender friendship for the mother and the daughter.
The latter was destined by M. Rougin to the colonel, his nephew, a man
already verging towards the decline of life, and who showed me marks of
great esteem and affection; but although the heart of the uncle was set
upon this marriage, which was much wished for by the nephew also, and I
was greatly desirous to promote the satisfaction of both, the great
disproportion of age, and the extreme repugnancy of the young