“This atmosphere was bound to affect my opinions and my conduct.  The errors that have poisoned my life would have lain lightly on many a conscience, but we in the South have a religious faith that leads us to believe in a future life, and in the truths set forth by the Catholic Church.  These beliefs give depth and gravity to every feeling, and to remorse a terrible and lasting power.

“The army were masters of society at the time when I was studying medicine.  In order to shine in women’s eyes, one had to be a colonel at the very least.  A poor student counted for absolutely nothing.  Goaded by the strength of my desires, and finding no outlet for them; hampered at every step and in every wish by the want of money; looking on study and fame as too slow a means of arriving at the pleasures that tempted me; drawn one way by my inward scruples, and another by evil examples; meeting with every facility for low dissipation, and finding nothing but hindrances barring the way to good society, I passed my days in wretchedness, overwhelmed by a surging tumult of desires, and by indolence of the most deadly kind, utterly cast down at times, only to be as suddenly elated.

“The catastrophe which at length put an end to this crisis was commonplace enough.  The thought of troubling the peace of a household has always been repugnant to me; and not only so, I could not dissemble my feelings, the instinct of sincerity was too strong in me; I should have found it a physical impossibility to lead a life of glaring falsity.  There is for me but little attraction in pleasures that must be snatched.  I wish for full consciousness of my happiness.  I led a life of solitude, for which there seemed to be no remedy; for I shrank from openly vicious courses, and the many efforts that I made to enter society were all in vain.  There I might have met with some woman who would have undertaken the task of teaching me the perils of every path, who would have formed my manners, counseled me without wounding my vanity, and introduced me everywhere where I was likely to make friends who would be useful to me in my future career.  In my despair, an intrigue of the most dangerous kind would perhaps have had its attractions for me; but even peril was out of my reach.  My inexperience sent me back again to my solitude, where I dwelt face to face with my thwarted desires.

“At last I formed a connection, at first a secret one, with a girl, whom I persuaded, half against her will, to share my life.  Her people were worthy folk, who had but small means.  It was not very long before she left her simple sheltered life, and fearlessly intrusted me with a future that virtue would have made happy and fair; thinking, no doubt, that my narrow income was the surest guarantee of my faithfulness to her.  From that moment the tempest that had raged within me ceased, and happiness lulled my wild desires and ambitions to sleep.  Such happiness is only possible for a young man who is ignorant of the world, who knows nothing as yet of its accepted codes nor of the strength of prejudice; but while it lasts, his happiness is as all-absorbing as a child’s.  Is not first love like a return of childhood across the intervening years of anxiety and toil?