"Any other man would have turned his eyes inward, would, before all else, have taken himself to task and looked upon the sad and terrible occurrence as a just chastisement of his foolish blindness. But this model man was superior to all such weaknesses. Oh, my good friend, it is not true what philosophy teaches, that the real nature of a man cannot be changed; that it is only his outward conduct that gradually gains a certain power of habit over the true character of the individual. I know this by bitter experience; of that fool who drove his poor child from his home in her shame and misery and forbade her ever to come in his sight again; of that childish and cruel father there is not a vestige left in me--so little that I can search my nature for it as much as I will. With all my other faults and human weaknesses, it is absolutely incomprehensible to me how I could ever have torn my poor flesh and blood from me, and cast it forth into the outside world.
"The child bore herself far better and more nobly than her parents. She declared decidedly that having, as she found to her sorrow, forfeited forever the love of father and mother by her weakness, she would no longer accept anything from their bounty. We thought this was merely a fine phrase. But we soon learned how seriously she had meant what she said. The poor girl suddenly disappeared from our house and the city--and probably from the country--for all our efforts to find her were without result.
"She had persistently refused to give the name of her betrayer, and we were either compelled or tempted to suspect every friend who had been intimate at our house; so that, although appearances were kept up for a while longer, and a plausible pretext was found for the disappearance of our daughter, our domestic bliss was ended at a blow, and soon vanished utterly. She who had given, life and charm to the most trifling domestic pleasures was wanting.
"But we had not yet reached the end of our sorrows; our son, too, was to be taken from us. He studied medicine---a quiet, steady, and, to all appearances, a somewhat phlegmatic man; but he had an exceptionally keen sense of honor. When his sister did not return, this and that began to be gossiped about her. The slightest allusion, often a perfectly innocent speech, would throw him into a state of furious anger. It was some remark of this sort that had as its sequel a duel between him and his best friend. They bore the last joy of our life, bathed in bloody back into our wretched home.
"And now the floodgates were opened. It was all over with our model household. It came out why our daughter had been driven to misery and our son to death. Our friends could not help assuming a certain air of pity toward us, that broke my wife's heart and drove me from the city. I went to North Germany, and there I buried my wife a year later. Soon after I gave up painting. I looked upon engraving, with all its drudgery, as an instrument of chastisement--as a mode of daily forcing down my pride. My dishonored name had become hateful to me, and I had laid it aside when I left Bavaria, But I did not neglect to have an appeal to my outcast child inserted in all the newspapers, begging her to return to her solitary father, to forgive him, and to help him bear his remaining years of life.
"No answer ever came, although I continued to have the notice inserted for many years.
"At last I became thoroughly convinced that she was no longer in this world; and no sooner did this belief, which it had taken ten years to beat into my head, become a settled conviction, than a singular transformation took place in me. I grew calm again, after all my wretched experiences, and at peace with myself; there were times when I had difficulty in recognizing in my present self the man whose guilt and foolishness had worked so much misery. I succeeded so well in outliving my old nature, in working a complete regeneration of my inner man, that I actually felt something like curiosity to see the city in which my predecessor had suffered so much sorrow and shame.
"And so, one day, I came back to Munich, though I scarcely knew it again, for everything at whose birth I had assisted was now completed, and besides a new world had sprung up. Nor did the old city recognize me either. I had grown a white-headed, quiet, solitary man, bore another name, and lived like a hermit--never going out during the day, unless, perhaps, to visit the studio of one of the younger artists who had settled here since my day. It has sometimes happened that I have found myself in a beer-garden seated next to some boon companion of the days of my prosperity, who had no idea who the silent old man was who was eating and drinking at the same table with him.
"And this is the way I have gone on for six or seven years, counting myself always among the departed spirits, and sometimes startled at the sight of my own face if I chanced to catch a glimpse of it in the mirror. It is incredible, my dear friend, how tough the thread of life is sometimes. For really had it not been for my interest in art, and in some good young friends who have shown me confidence and respect, the whole world would have been a blank to me. Besides, when photography came into such general use, it seemed to me that my graver was a very superfluous sort of thing, of little further use except to multiply copies of business cards, labels on wine-bottles, and other things of that sort.
"So I continued to grow more idle, more contemplative, and, if you like, wiser; except that I myself felt little respect, and sometimes even disgust and loathing, for any wisdom that could haunt such a useless wreck of a man."