Leuthold could read no further. He writhed like a worm on the ground beneath the weight of reproach with which this artless creature thus heaped him. The thunderbolt of a god could have inflicted no such punishment upon him as the pure, sweet, angelic love of his child.
He sunk upon his knees, and kissed the letter again and again. "My child! my child!" he cried aloud, racked almost to madness by intense feverish longing. At this moment of weakness he was overwhelmed with remorse. He had banished from his side his dearest possession,--his Gretchen. And why? Because he loved her too dearly to expose her to contact with the ideas that he sought to impress upon the mind of his ward,--because he would not allow his child to breathe the poisoned atmosphere of falsehood in which he chose that Ernestine should dwell. And why had he thus chosen? Because, he loved Gretchen too much to have her always poor and dependent, because he determined to win back the inheritance that he had once thought his own, but which had been so unexpectedly lost to him, and because there was only one way, in his mind, in which this could be done,--by making the possessor of this inheritance so utterly unfit for the world that nothing might wrest her person or her property from his grasp.
But, when he received such a letter as the above, overflowing with the devoted love, the pain at separation, of his exiled child, something stirred in his breast that would not be quieted, demanding whether he might not have expressed his paternal love in another way, whether it were not a desecration of this angel to attempt to make her future happy by a crime? Whether the joy of educating such a child himself would not have outweighed the wealth of the world? And then he began to reckon and compare,--and the account was never balanced,--for the years of separation from his daughter there was no equivalent. These were rare hours when, like a criminal before his judge, he was arraigned in spirit before the pure eyes of his child; but they cost him months of life.
His hair had grown grey,--his powers of mind were enfeebled by all these years of self-control and hypocrisy,--of crime and dread of discovery. He had nothing to hope for for himself--but for Gretchen? And what if he had failed in his reckoning? What if a mischievous chance should again deprive him at the last moment of the fruit of all this sacrifice? The path of sin had separated him from his daughter hitherto. Was it possible that it could ever lead him to her?
His high, narrow forehead was covered with a cold dew as he passed his hand over it. He was indeed to be pitied,--a man who had not the courage to be wholly good nor wholly bad!
The night breeze blew fresh through the open window, and the miserable man was thoroughly chilled. He arose, wrapped himself in his shawl, closed the window, and went to the table where lay the other letter. It was directed in the handwriting of the overseer of the Unkenheim Factory. Leuthold put it down--he had not the courage to read it "What can he have to tell me?" he moaned, utterly dispirited.
At last he roused himself. "What must be, must!"
He unfolded the coarse paper and read--while his face grew ashy pale.
"Umkenheim, July 30, 18--.
"Honoured Sir: