The above are incidents which I have hitherto kept within the privacy of my own bosom and which I have confided to none; they were but experiments, which at that time I had no wish to repeat, nor to be requested so to do. I was perfectly aware that such a line of conduct, if followed before the proper time, would give offence to the clergy, not only to the Carlist but the liberal clergy, and likewise to the Government; and it formed no part of my plan to be on ill terms with either. For I remembered that I was a stranger and a labourer on sufferance in Christ's cause in a half-barbaric land, on which the light of freedom and true religion was just beginning to dawn, and I was unwilling by over-precipitance and for the sake of a mere temporary triumph to forego the solid and lasting advantages which I foresaw, and had been told that patience and prudence would assure. I resolved to use the knowledge which I had obtained by these experiments only as a last resource, provided any accident which it was impossible for me then to foresee should overturn all the plans which my friends and myself had been forming for the quiet and peaceful introduction of the Scriptures amongst the Spaniards with the consent or at least with the connivance of the Government and clergy, knowing well that a great part of the latter were by no means disposed to offer any serious opposition to such a measure, they having sense and talent enough to perceive that the old system can no longer be upheld of which the essential part is, as is well known, to keep the people in ignorance of the great sterling truths of Christianity. I now come to the most distressing part of my narrative and likewise to the most miserable of my own life.