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On our return to London those of my friends who really desired my welfare implored me to retire abroad, and not to face an impossible trial. You imputed mean motives to them for giving such advice, and cowardice to me for listening to it[13a]. You forced me to stay to brazen it out, if possible, in the box by absurd and silly perjuries. At the end, I was of course arrested and your father became the hero of the hour: more indeed than the hero of the hour merely: your family now ranks, strangely enough, with the Immortals: for with that grotesqueness of effect that is as it were a Gothic element in history, and makes Clio the least serious of all the Muses, your father will always live among the kind pure-minded parents of Sunday school literature[13b], your place is with the Infant Samuel, and in the lowest mire of Malebolge[13.1] I sit between Gilles de Retz[13.2] and the Marquis de Sade[13.3][13c].
我们一回到伦敦，那些真正关心我安危的朋友恳求我避到国外，别去打一场无望的官司。你说他们这是居心不良，我要听他们的话便是胆小鬼[13a]。你逼我留下来，可能的话在审判席上靠荒唐愚蠢的谎言伪证顶住。最终当然是我被捕入狱，而你父亲则成了一时英雄。何止是一时英雄，你们家莫名其妙地跻身于神仙圣人之列。好像历史也带上了一点哥特式的离奇古怪，从而使历史和史诗之神克里奥成了众缪斯中最不正经的一位。靠着这份离奇古怪，结果是你父亲在主日学校的文学里将永远活在那些个心地和善纯良的父母之中[13b]，你将与少年塞缪尔并列，而在地狱最底层的污渎中，我将与崇拜撒旦的雷斯和性变态的萨德侯爵为伍[13c]。
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