“And you—and you—you—” cried D'Esmonde, gasping.
“I am your father. Ay, you can hear the words here, and needn't start at the sound of them. We're in the condemned cell of a jail, and nobody near us. You are my son. Mr. Godfrey paid for you as a student till—till—But it's all over now. I never meant you to know the truth; but a lie would n't serve you any longer. Oh, Matthew, Matthew!” cried he—and of a sudden his voice changed, and softened to accents of almost choking sorrow—“haven't you one word for me?—one word of affection for him that you brought to this, and who forgives you for it?—one word, even to call me your own father?” He fell at the other's feet, and clasped his arms around his knees as he spoke, but the appeal was unheard.
Pale as a corpse, with his head slightly thrown forward, and his eyes wildly staring before him, D'Esmonde sat, perfectly motionless. At last the muscles of his mouth fashioned themselves into a ghastly smile, a look of mockery so dreadful to gaze upon that the prisoner, terror-stricken at the sight, rushed to the door, and beat loudly against it, as he screamed for help. It was opened on the instant, and the Jailer, followed by two others, entered.
“He's ill; his reverence is taken bad,” said the old man, while he trembled from head to foot with agitation.
“What's this paper? What is he clutching in his hands?” cried the jailer.
D'Esmonde started at the words. For the first time a gleam of intelligence shot over his features, and as suddenly he bent a look of withering hate on the speaker; and then, with a passionate vehemence that told of a frantic brain, he tore the paper into fragments, and, with a wild yell, as if of triumph, he fell senseless on the ground. When they lifted him up, his features were calm, but passionless, his eye was vacant, and his lips slightly parted. An expression of weariness and exhaustion, rather than of actual pain, pervaded the face. He never spoke again. The lamp of intellect was extinguished forever, and not even a flicker or a spark remained to cheer the darkness within him. Hopeless and helpless idiotcy was ever after the lot of one whose mind, once stored with the most lofty ambitions, never scrupled, at any cost, to attain its object. And he whose proud aspirings soared to the very grandest of earthly prizes, who gave his counsel among princes, now lives on, bereft of mind and intelligence, without consciousness of the past, or a hope for the future.