Mamma spent that night in my room: when I had just committed a sin so
deadly that I was waiting to be banished from the household, my parents
gave me a far greater concession than I should ever have won as the reward
of a good action. Even at the moment when it manifested itself in this
crowning mercy, my father's conduct towards me was still somewhat
arbitrary, and regardless of my deserts, as was characteristic of him and
due to the fact that his actions were generally dictated by chance
expediencies rather than based on any formal plan. And perhaps even what I
called his strictness, when he sent me off to bed, deserved that title
less, really, than my mother's or grandmother's attitude, for his nature,
which in some respects differed more than theirs from my own, had probably
prevented him from guessing, until then, how wretched I was every evening,
a thing which my mother and grandmother knew well; but they loved me
enough to be unwilling to spare me that suffering, which they hoped to
teach me to overcome, so as to reduce my nervous sensibility and to
strengthen my will. As for my father, whose affection for me was of
another kind, I doubt if he would have shewn so much courage, for as soon
as he had grasped the fact that I was unhappy he had said to my mother:
"Go and comfort him.
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