FRANCIS. If you are unwell--or are the least apprehensive of being so-- permit me to defer--I will speak to you at a fitter season.--(Half aside.) These are no tidings for a feeble frame.

OLD M. Gracious Heavens? what am I doomed to hear?

FRANCIS. First let me retire and shed a tear of compa.s.sion for my lost brother. Would that my lips might be forever sealed--for he is your son! Would that I could throw an eternal veil over his shame--for he is my brother! But to obey you is my first, though painful, duty--forgive me, therefore.

OLD M. Oh, Charles! Charles! Didst thou but know what thorns thou plantest in thy father's bosom! That one gladdening report of thee would add ten years to my life! yes, bring back my youth! whilst now, alas, each fresh intelligence but hurries me a step nearer to the grave!

FRANCIS. Is it so, old man, then farewell! for even this very day we might all have to tear our hair over your coffin.*

[* This idiom is very common in Germany, and is used to express affliction.]

OLD M. Stay! There remains but one short step more--let him have his will! (He sits down.) The sins of the father shall be visited unto the third and fourth generation--let him fulfil the decree.

FRANCIS (takes the letter out of his pocket). You know our correspondent! See! I would give a finger of my right hand might I p.r.o.nounce him a liar--a base and slanderous liar! Compose yourself!

Forgive me if I do not let you read the letter yourself. You cannot, must not, yet know all.

OLD M. All, all, my son. You will but spare me crutches.*

[* _Du ersparst mir die Krucke_; meaning that the contents of the letter can but shorten his declining years, and so spare him the necessity of crutches.]

FRANCIS (reads). "Leipsic, May 1. Were I not bound by an inviolable promise to conceal nothing from you, not even the smallest particular, that I am able to collect, respecting your brother's career, never, my dearest friend, should my guiltless pen become an instrument of torture to you. I can gather from a hundred of your letters how tidings such as these must pierce your fraternal heart. It seems to me as though I saw thee, for the sake of this worthless, this detestable"--(OLD M. covers his face). Oh! my father, I am only reading you the mildest pa.s.sages-- "this detestable man, shedding a thousand tears." Alas! mine flowed--ay, gushed in torrents over these pitying cheeks. "I already picture to myself your aged pious father, pale as death." Good Heavens! and so you are, before you have heard anything.

OLD M. Go on! Go on!

FRANCIS. "Pale as death, sinking down on his chair, and cursing the day when his ear was first greeted with the lisping cry of 'Father!' I have not yet been able to discover all, and of the little I do know I dare tell you only a part. Your brother now seems to have filled up the measure of his infamy. I, at least, can imagine nothing beyond what he has already accomplished; but possibly his genius may soar above my conceptions. After having contracted debts to the amount of forty thousand ducats,"--a good round sum for pocket-money, father" and having dishonored the daughter of a rich banker, whose affianced lover, a gallant youth of rank, he mortally wounded in a duel, he yesterday, in the dead of night, took the desperate resolution of absconding from the arm of justice, with seven companions whom he had corrupted to his own vicious courses." Father? for heaven's sake, father! How do you feel?

OLD M. Enough. No more, my son, no more!

FRANCIS. I will spare your feelings. "The injured cry aloud for satisfaction. Warrants have been issued for his apprehension--a price is set on his head--the name of Moor"--No, these unhappy lips shall not be guilty of a father's murder (he tears the letter). Believe it not, my father, believe not a syllable.

OLD M. (weeps bitterly). My name--my unsullied name!

FRANCIS (throws himself on his neck). Infamous! most infamous Charles!

Oh, had I not my forebodings, when, even as a boy, he would scamper after the girls, and ramble about over hill and common with ragam.u.f.fin boys and all the vilest rabble; when he shunned the very sight of a church as a malefactor shuns a gaol, and would throw the pence he had wrung from your bounty into the hat of the first beggar he met, whilst we at home were edifying ourselves with devout prayers and pious homilies? Had I not my misgivings when he gave himself up to reading the adventures of Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and other benighted heathens, in preference to the history of the penitent Tobias?

A hundred times over have I warned you--for my brotherly affection was ever kept in subjection to filial duty--that this forward youth would one day bring sorrow and disgrace on us all. Oh that he bore not the name of Moor! that my heart beat less warmly for him! This sinful affection, which I can not overcome, will one day rise up against me before the judgment-seat of heaven.

OLD M. Oh! my prospects! my golden dreams!

FRANCIS. Ay, well I knew it. Exactly what I always feared. That fiery spirit, you used to say, which is kindling in the boy, and renders him so susceptible to impressions of the beautiful and grand--the ingenuousness which reveals his whole soul in his eyes--the tenderness of feeling which melts him into weeping sympathy at every tale of sorrow--the manly courage which impels him to the summit of giant oaks, and urges him over fosse and palisade and foaming torrents--that youthful thirst of honor--that unconquerable resolution--all those resplendent virtues which in the father's darling gave such promise-- would ripen into the warm and sincere friend--the excellent citizen--the hero--the great, the very great man! Now, mark the result, father; the fiery spirit has developed itself--expanded--and behold its precious fruits. Observe this ingenuousness--how nicely it has changed into effrontery;--this tenderness of soul--how it displays itself in dalliance with coquettes, in susceptibility to the blandishments of a courtesan! See this fiery genius, how in six short years it hath burnt out the oil of life, and reduced his body to a living skeleton; so that pa.s.sing scoffers point at him with a sneer and exclaim--"_C'est l'amour qui a fait cela_." Behold this bold, enterprising spirit--how it conceives and executes plans, compared to which the deeds of a Cartouche or a Howard sink into insignificance. And presently, when these precious germs of excellence shall ripen into full maturity, what may not be expected from the full development of such a boyhood? Perhaps, father, you may yet live to see him at the head of some gallant band, which a.s.sembles in the silent sanctuary of the forest, and kindly relieves the weary traveller of his superfluous burden. Perhaps you may yet have the opportunity, before you go to your own tomb, of making a pilgrimage to the monument which he may erect for himself, somewhere between earth and heaven! Perhaps,--oh, father--father, look out for some other name, or the very peddlers and street boys who have seen the effigy of your worthy son exhibited in the market-place at Leipsic will point at you with the finger of scorn!

OLD M. And thou, too, my Francis, thou too? Oh, my children, how unerringly your shafts are levelled at my heart.

FRANCIS. You see that I too have a spirit; but my spirit bears the sting of a scorpion. And then it was "the dry commonplace, the cold, the wooden Francis," and all the pretty little epithets which the contrast between us suggested to your fatherly affection, when he was sitting on your knee, or playfully patting your cheeks? "He would die, forsooth, within the boundaries of his own domain, moulder away, and soon be forgotten;" while the fame of this universal genius would spread from pole to pole! Ah! the cold, dull, wooden Francis thanks thee, heaven, with uplifted hands, that he bears no resemblance to his brother.

OLD M. Forgive me, my child! Reproach not thy unhappy father, whose fondest hopes have proved visionary. The merciful G.o.d who, through Charles, has sent these tears, will, through thee, my Francis, wipe them from my eyes!

FRANCIS. Yes, father, we will wipe them from your eyes. Your Francis will devote--his life to prolong yours. (Taking his hand with affected tenderness.) Your life is the oracle which I will especially consult on every undertaking--the mirror in which I will contemplate everything.

No duty so sacred but I am ready to violate it for the preservation of your precious days. You believe me?

OLD M. Great are the duties which devolve on thee, my son--Heaven bless thee for what thou has been, and wilt be to me.

FRANCIS. Now tell me frankly, father. Should you not be a happy man, were you not obliged to call this son your own?

OLD M. In mercy, spare me! When the nurse first placed him in my arms, I held him up to Heaven and exclaimed, "Am I not truly blest?"

FRANCIS. So you said then. Now, have you found it so? You may envy the meanest peasant on your estate in this, that he is not the father of such a son. So long as you call him yours you are wretched. Your misery will grow with his years--it will lay you in your grave.

OLD M. Oh! he has already reduced me to the decrepitude of fourscore.

FRANCIS. Well, then--suppose you were to disown this son.

OLD M. (startled). Francis! Francis! what hast thou said!

FRANCIS. Is not your love for him the source of all your grief? Root out this love, and he concerns you no longer. But for this weak and reprehensible affection he would be dead to you;--as though he had never been born. It is not flesh and blood, it is the heart that makes us sons and fathers! Love him no more, and this monster ceases to be your son, though he were cut out of your flesh. He has till now been the apple of your eye; but if thine eye offend you, says Scripture, pluck it out. It is better to enter heaven with one eye than h.e.l.l with two! "It is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into h.e.l.l." These are the words of the Bible!

OLD M. Wouldst thou have me curse my son?

FRANCIS. By no means, father. G.o.d forbid! But whom do you call your son? Him to whom you have given life, and who in return does his utmost to shorten yours.

OLD M. Oh, it is all too true! it is a judgment upon me. The Lord has chosen him as his instrument.

FRANCIS. See how filially your bosom child behaves. He destroys you by your own excess of paternal sympathy; murders you by means of the very love you bear him--has coiled round a father's heart to crush it. When you are laid beneath the turf he becomes lord of your possessions, and master of his own will. That barrier removed, and the torrent of his profligacy will rush on without control. Imagine yourself in his place.

How often he must wish his father under ground--and how often, too, his brother--who so unmercifully impede the free course of his excesses.

But call you this a requital of love? Is this filial grat.i.tude for a father's tenderness? to sacrifice ten years of your life to the lewd pleasures of an hour? in one voluptuous moment to stake the honor of an ancestry which has stood unspotted through seven centuries? Do you call this a son? Answer? Do you call this your son?

OLD M. An undutiful son! Alas! but still my child! my child!

FRANCIS. A most amiable and precious child-whose constant study is to get rid of his father. Oh, that you could learn to see clearly! that the film might be removed from your eyes! But your indulgence must confirm him in his vices! your a.s.sistance tend to justify them.

Doubtless you will avert the curse of Heaven from his head, but on your own, father--on yours--will it fall with twofold vengeance.

OLD M. Just! most just! Mine, mine be all the guilt!

FRANCIS. How many thousands who have drained the voluptuous bowl of pleasure to the dregs have been reclaimed by suffering! And is not the bodily pain which follows every excess a manifest declaration of the divine will! And shall man dare to thwart this by an impious exercise of affection? Shall a father ruin forever the pledge committed to his charge? Consider, father, if you abandon him for a time to the pressure of want will not he be obliged to turn from his wickedness and repent?

Otherwise, untaught even in the great school of adversity, he must remain a confirmed reprobate? And then--woe to the father who by a culpable tenderness bath frustrated the ordinances of a higher wisdom!

Well, father?

OLD M. I will write to him that I withdraw my protection.

FRANCIS. That would be wise and prudent.

OLD M. That he must never come into my sight again

FRANCIS. 'Twill have a most salutary effect.

OLD M. (tenderly). Until he reforms.

FRANCIS. Right, quite right. But suppose that he comes disguised in the hypocrite's mask, implores your compa.s.sion with tears, and wheedles from you a pardon, then quits you again on the morrow, and jests at your weakness in the arms of his harlot. No, my father! He will return of his own accord, when his conscience awakens him to repentance.

OLD M. I will write to him, on the spot, to that effect.