Among the gray-blue envelopes with foreign postmarks was one of heavy cream-colored paper. There was no address on the back, but it was closed and sealed with sealing-wax, stamped with the ducal arms. He tore open the envelope hastily.
“What’s this?” he exclaimed. “She must have put it here, herself. I don’t remember it.”
He drew out the letter and read the following message, written in the shaky, uncertain hand of one almost too weak to grasp a pen:
“I do not reproach you for myself because I am leaving you forever. But I warn you that if you are not kind to my little boy, you shall not keep him.
“Maddelina.”
At the bottom she had added:
“Why do you wish to be hated and feared? Does it make you any happier?”
He read the note over and over so many times that it seemed to be written in letters of fire on his brain. Then he stood the picture against the inkstand and looked at it with a strange, frightened expression.
“Am I that kind of a man?” he said out loud. “Hated and feared?”
“Of course,” the picture seemed to answer. “There is not one human being who loves you, not even your son, Max, who is much fonder of your half-brother than of you; not a servant; nor a dependent nor an equal. No one. You are alone in the world, a cold, cruel, pitiless man, despised and distrusted.”
“It’s true,” he answered. “Great heavens, Maddelina, it’s true! And what have I gained by it? Nothing. People have always been so afraid of me that if I had tried to be kind to them, they wouldn’t have understood. I know Max is afraid of me, and Arthur is probably happier wherever he is. ‘I shall not keep him.’ What did she mean? Is he dead? No, no, Maddelina, not that,” he cried, starting violently.