The servants perceived that I was an unwelcome intruder in the paternal mansion, and, menial-like, they treated me with neglect.  Thus baffled at every point; my affections outraged wherever they would attach themselves, I became sullen, silent, and despondent.  My feelings driven back upon myself, entered and preyed upon my own heart.  I remained for some days an unwelcome guest rather than a restored son in my father’s house.  I was doomed never to be properly known there.  I was made, by wrong treatment, strange even to myself; and they judged of me from my strangeness.

I was startled one day at the sight of one of the monks of my convent, gliding out of my father’s room.  He saw me, but pretended not to notice me; and this very hypocrisy made me suspect something.  I had become sore and susceptible in my feelings; every thing inflicted a wound on them.  In this state of mind I was treated with marked disrespect by a pampered minion, the favorite servant of my father.  All the pride and passion of my nature rose in an instant, and I struck him to the earth.

My father was passing by; he stopped not to inquire the reason, nor indeed could he read the long course of mental sufferings which were the real cause.  He rebuked me with anger and scorn; he summoned all the haughtiness of his nature, and grandeur of his look, to give weight to the contumely with which he treated me.  I felt I had not deserved it—­I felt that I was not appreciated—­I felt that I had that within me which merited better treatment; my heart swelled against a father’s injustice.  I broke through my habitual awe of him.  I replied to him with impatience; my hot spirit flushed in my cheek and kindled in my eye, but my sensitive heart swelled as quickly, and before I had half vented my passion I felt it suffocated and quenched in my tears.  My father was astonished and incensed at this turning of the worm, and ordered me to my chamber.  I retired in silence, choking with contending emotions.

I had not been long there when I overheard voices in an adjoining apartment.  It was a consultation between my father and the monk, about the means of getting me back quietly to the convent.  My resolution was taken.  I had no longer a home nor a father.  That very night I left the paternal roof.  I got on board a vessel about making sail from the harbor, and abandoned myself to the wide world.  No matter to what port she steered; any part of so beautiful a world was better than my convent.  No matter where I was cast by fortune; any place would be more a home to me than the home I had left behind.  The vessel was bound to Genoa.  We arrived there after a voyage of a few days.