“What my father is I will be,” said he, softly; and I thought that it was another and a holier version of Eugen’s words to me, wrung out of the inner bitterness of his heart. “The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children, even unto the third and fourth generation, whether they deserve it or not.” The child, who knew nothing of the ancient saying, merely said with love and satisfaction swelling his voice to fullness, “What my father is, I will be.”
“Couldst thou give up something very dear for his sake?”
“What a queer question!” said Sigmund. “I want nothing when I am with him.”
“Ei! mein kind! Thou dost not know what I mean. What is the greatest joy of thy life? To be near thy father and see him, hear his voice, and touch him, and feel him near thee; nicht?”
“Yes,” said he, in a scarcely audible whisper.
There was a pause, during which I was racking my brains to think of some way of introducing the rest without shocking him too much, when suddenly he said, in a clear, low voice:
“That is it. He would never let me leave him, and he would never leave me.”
Silence again for a few moments, which seemed to deepen some sneaking shadow in the boy’s mind, for he repeated through clinched teeth, and in a voice which fought hard against conviction, “Never, never, never!”
“Sigmund—never of his own will. But remember what I said, that he is sad, and there is something in his life which makes him not only unable to do what he likes, but obliged to do exactly what he does not like—what he most hates and fears—to—to part from thee.”