After the ceremony was performed, a large party assembled at my father’s; it was agreed that Elizabeth and I should proceed immediately to the shores of Lake Como.

That night we stopped at an inn.  I reflected how fearful a combat, which I momentarily expected, would be to my wife, and earnestly entreated her to retire.  She left me, and I walked up and down the passages of the house inspecting every corner that might afford a retreat to my adversary.

Suddenly I heard a shrill and dreadful scream.  It came from the room into which Elizabeth had retired.  I rushed in.  There, lifeless and inanimate, thrown across the bed, her head hanging down, and her pale and distorted features half covered with her hair, was the purest creature on earth, my love, my wife, so lately living, and so dear.

And at the open window I saw a figure the most hideous and abhorred.  A grin was on the face of the monster as with his fiendish finger he pointed towards the corpse.

Drawing a pistol I fired; but he eluded me, and running with the swiftness of lightning, plunged into the lake.

The report of the pistol brought a crowd into the room.  I pointed to the spot where he had disappeared, and we followed the track with boats.  Nets were cast, but in vain.  On my return to Geneva, my father sank under the tidings I bore, for Elizabeth had been to him more than a daughter, and in a few days he died in my arms.

Then I decided to tell my story to a criminal judge in the town, and beseech him to assert his whole authority for the apprehension of the murderer.  This Genevan magistrate endeavoured to soothe me as a nurse does a child, and treated my tale as the effects of delirium.  I broke from the house angry and disturbed, and soon quitted Geneva, hurried away by fury.  Revenge has kept me alive; I dared not die and leave my adversary in being.

For many months this has been my task.  Guided by a slight clue, I followed the windings of the Rhone, but vainly.  The blue Mediterranean appeared; and, by a strange chance, I saw the fiend hide himself in a vessel bound for the Black Sea.

Amidst the wilds of Tartary and Russia, although he still evaded me, I have ever followed in his track.  Sometimes the peasants informed me of his path; sometimes he himself left some mark to guide me.  The snows descended on my head, and I saw the print of his huge step on the white plain.

My life, as it passed thus, was indeed hateful to me, and it was during sleep alone that I could taste joy.

As I still pursued my journey to the northward, the snows thickened and the cold increased in the degree almost too severe to support.  I found the fiend had pursued his journey across the frost-bound sea in a direction that led to no land, and exchanging my land sledge for one fashioned for the Frozen Ocean I followed him.

I cannot guess how many days have passed since then.  I was about to sink under the accumulation of distress when you took me on board.  But I had determined, if you were going southward, still to trust myself to the mercy of the seas rather than abandon my purpose—­for my task is unfulfilled.