"I have made a long journey," I said, "especially to see you."
"How have I deserved so great an honor," she asked, her eyes flashing scorn at me, "from one so powerful and rich? You have something to say to me--of course you have, else why should you have troubled yourself to come to me? Is what you have to say about a man or a woman, Gustave Fink?"
"It is about your son Gideon," I replied.
"About my dear son Gideon," she cried "I guessed as much, I guessed as much! It is for evil you are here--you are capable of nothing else. Have you come to complain of my boy? Have you come to set a mother against her son? Well done, well done, Gustave Fink! Have you come to tell me that Gideon ought to work twenty hours a day for you instead of eighteen, and that he does not pay his debt to you quick enough to satisfy your grasping soul? How is it possible, when you starve him, when you cheat him, when you rob him of his rest? Is that the way to treat the man who has slaved for you, who has worked his fingers to the bone for you, who has made you rich, and who brings all the custom to your shop? Yon would have been in the gutter had it not been for the exertions of my noble boy, who found out too late that he was bound to a monster without a heart. Did you think I was ignorant of your wicked doings? Evil actions such as yours cannot be forever hidden. Go, go, or I shall strike you!"
And indeed she raised her feeble hand to put her threat into execution.
I comprehended instantly the lying and backbiting that had been going on, and the kind of character that villain Gideon had been giving me all the time he had eaten my bread and been sheltered under my roof. This was the return he had made for my kindness and consideration. Where could that young man have got his secret and wicked mind from? Not from his mother, whose heart had been always open to tender impressions, and who, the moment she saw me, could not help speaking frankly. It was the father who had bestowed upon his son the curse of his venomous nature. Heavens! What some parents have to answer for! There must have been a time in the world when human creatures were suckled at the teats of treacherous animals.
How could I be angry with the unfortunate woman? I pitied her--from my heart I pitied her. What a fate was hers! First the father, then the son. She was born to be deceived. She put her trust in rocks that wounded her body and brought anguish to her soul. In what way was it all to end?
My mission was useless, I saw that clearly enough, and I was almost tempted to exclaim, "Never again will I attempt to do good to any living creature!" I had been animated by the best intentions, and they were turned as poisonous arrows against me. After what I had heard I was convinced that Louisa Wolf would put a wrong construction upon every word I uttered concerning her son. Her mother's love was too strong a shield for me to hope to produce any good effect upon it in my desire to assist her. Perhaps it was as well; it was labor saved. Her son's nature was too bad to be altered for the better; it was rotten to the core.
But I was desirous to ascertain the full extent of his misrepresentations.
"You know, then," I said," how much your son is indebted to me."