"I gave birth to you in this room, Michel on this very spot. It was then a sort of garret, long unused, which had been transformed into a prison, in order to conceal the shame of my condition. Nobody knew what had happened to me! I could hardly have described it, I had hardly understood it, I was so young and my imagination was so pure. I foresaw that the truth would bring fresh disasters upon the child I was carrying within me, and on his father. My governess had died on the day after our catastrophe, without saying a word, whether because she could not or did not choose to. No one could extort my secret from me, even during the pains of childbirth; and when my father and my uncle, standing by my bed, as pitiless as inquisitors, threatened me with death if I did not confess what they called my sin, I replied simply that I was innocent before God, and that it was for Him alone to punish or save the culprit. Whether or not they ever discovered that I was the wife of Castro-Reale, I could never find out; his name was never mentioned to me, I was never questioned concerning him. Nor do I know whether they procured his assassination, or whether Abbé Ninfo assisted them to surprise him; but unfortunately I do not think them incapable of it. I know only this, that at the time of his death, when I had barely recovered from my confinement, they tried to compel me to marry. Hitherto they had held up before me as an everlasting punishment, the impossibility of finding a husband. They took me from my prison, where I had been secluded so carefully that everyone supposed that I was in the convent at Palermo, and nothing had transpired out-of-doors. I was rich, fair, and of noble birth. Twenty suitors came forward. I repelled with horror the idea of deceiving an honest man, or of confessing my misfortune to a man who was mean-spirited enough to accept me because of my wealth. My resistance irritated my father to frenzy. He pretended to take me back to Palermo. But he brought me back to this room at night, and kept me imprisoned here for another whole year.