“Meanwhile our property began to be exhausted. M. Goffredi had left to his wife the whole of his little fortune, which I was to have inherited after her. A family council of the kinsmen assembled under these circumstances, as was alleged, both in order to protect my interests, and to provide for carrying out my father’s intentions in this respect. One member, a lawyer, was of opinion that the control of the property should be taken away from poor Sophia; that all artists, founders, mechanics and tradesmen should be formally notified not to fill orders from her, and that she herself should be confined in a lunatic asylum, since the proposed measure, being contrary to her wishes, would certainly throw her into a paroxysm of fury, in which she would be dangerous to others.”
“The lawyer was right,” said M. Goefle. “It was a painful step, but a necessary one.”
“I really beg pardon, Monsieur Goefle, but I judged otherwise. As I was the sole heir of Goffredi, I had a perfect right to permit my guardian to expend my property.”
“No, you had not that right. You were a minor, and the law protects those who cannot protect themselves.”
“That is just what I was told; but I was so sufficiently able to protect myself, that I threatened to throw the lawyer out of the window if he did not withdraw his infamous proposition. To put my mother into a lunatic asylum! I should have had to be shut up with her, for she could not bear to be without me a moment; she would quickly have died under the distress of being attended by hirelings. To deprive her of this sole occupation that could quiet her; that exerted an influence upon her little less than magical! To prevent her from expressing and soothing her sorrows by these works—senseless and ruinous in themselves, I readily admit, but which neither harmed nor wronged any one! And what mattered our house full of tomb-stones to that fat and prosperous lawyer? No one obliged him to volunteer his regret for money thrown away, or to mock at the aberrations of the poor widow’s mind, unsettled by her grief. I persisted, the family blamed me, and the lawyer declared I was out of my wits myself; but my mother was kept comfortable.”
“Ah, ah, my boy!” said M. Goefle, smiling, “that’s the way you treat lawyers, is it? Come, give me your hand!” he added, looking upon Cristiano with eyes wet with tenderness and sympathy.
Cristiano pressed the hands of the worthy Goefle, and raised them to his lips, in the Italian manner.
“I accept your kind feelings to me,” he said, “but I cannot accept your praises for my conduct. It was perfectly natural; to have been influenced by selfish motives in such a situation would have been infamous. Have I not told you how much I had been loved, petted, indulged, by these two parents—for such I felt them, even by blood as well as by heart. Ah! I had been happy with them, very happy, Monsieur Goefle—so much so, that no matter what disasters shall come upon me, I shall never have the right to complain of Providence. I had certainly not deserved so much happiness before I was born. I surely was bound to try and deserve it after I had lived a little while!”
“And what became of poor Sophia?” asked M. Goefle, after a few moments’ meditation.
“Alas! I promised to tell you my story as gayly as possible, and I have only shown you its melancholy side! I ask your pardon; I have saddened you. All I need say is, that the poor lady is no longer living.”