“And now that I am about to lay down my pen, I feel a secret trouble at my heart, which will disturb the rest of my life. It has been impossible for me to defend myself without offending others; and I fear, that, for the first time, I shall begin to feel I have enemies whom I have myself made such. But, wounded in that honor which is my life, and asking in vain for an authority that would protect and rescue me, I have been compelled to attempt my own defence by my own pen; the only weapon left in my hands. To use it with absolute moderation, when I was driven on by an anguish so sharp, was a hard task. One more dexterous in such contests might, by the cunning of his art, have oftener inflicted wounds, and received them more rarely; but, feeling myself to be fiercely attacked, and coming to the contest unskilled and alone, I threw my unprotected person into it, and, in order to free myself from the more imminent danger before me, took no thought of any that might follow. Indeed, such was the impulse by which I was driven on, that I lost sight, at once, of considerations which, at another time, might well have prevailed with me. Veneration for public authority, respect for official station, the private affections of friendship and personal attachment,--every thing within me yielded to the love of justice, and to the earnest desire that truth and innocence should triumph over calumny and falsehood. And can I, after this, be pardoned, either by those who have assailed me, or by those who have refused me their protection? Surely it matters little. The time has come in which all disapprobation, except that of honorable men and the friends of justice, must be indifferent to me. For now that I find myself fast approaching the final limits of human life, now that I am alone and in poverty, without a home or a shelter, what remains for me to ask, beyond the glory and liberty of my country, but leave to die with the good name I have labored to earn in its service?” At the moment when this eloquent defence of himself was published, the French, by a sudden incursion, took military possession of his native city; and he hurried for safety on board a slight vessel, hardly knowing whither his course should be directed. After suffering severely from a storm of eight days’ continuance in the Bay of Biscay, he disembarked to obtain relief at the obscure port of Vega. But his strength was gone; and on the 27th of November, within forty-eight hours from the time of his landing, he died. He was nearly sixty-eight years old.