FRANCIS. How many thousands who have drained the voluptuous bowl of pleasure to the dregs have been reclaimed by suffering! And is not the bodily pain which follows every excess a manifest declaration of the divine will! And shall man dare to thwart this by an impious exercise of affection? Shall a father ruin forever the pledge committed to his charge? Consider, father, if you abandon him for a time to the pressure of want will not he be obliged to turn from his wickedness and repent? Otherwise, untaught even in the great school of adversity, he must remain a confirmed reprobate? And then – woe to the father who by a culpable tenderness bath frustrated the ordinances of a higher wisdom! Well, father?
OLD M. I will write to him that I withdraw my protection.
FRANCIS. That would be wise and prudent.
OLD M. That he must never come into my sight again
FRANCIS. 'Twill have a most salutary effect.
OLD M. (tenderly). Until he reforms.
FRANCIS. Right, quite right. But suppose that he comes disguised in the hypocrite's mask, implores your compassion with tears, and wheedles from you a pardon, then quits you again on the morrow, and jests at your weakness in the arms of his harlot. No, my father! He will return of his own accord, when his conscience awakens him to repentance.
OLD M. I will write to him, on the spot, to that effect.
FRANCIS. Stop, father, one word more. Your just indignation might prompt reproaches too severe, words which might break his heart – and then – do you not think that your deigning to write with your own hand might be construed into an act of forgiveness? It would be better, I think, that you should commit the task to me?
OLD M. Do it, my son. Ah! it would, indeed, have broken my heart! Write to him that —
FRANCIS (quickly). That's agreed, then?
OLD M. Say that he has caused me a thousand bitter tears – a thousand sleepless nights – but, oh! do not drive my son to despair!
FRANCIS. Had you not better retire to rest, father? This affects you too strongly.
OLD M. Write to him that a father's heart – But I charge you, drive him not to despair. [Exit in sadness.]
FRANCIS (looking after him with a chuckle). Make thyself easy, old dotard! thou wilt never more press thy darling to thy bosom – there is a gulf between thee and him impassable as heaven is from hell. He was torn from thy arms before even thou couldst have dreamed it possible to decree the separation. Why, what a sorry bungler should I be had I not skill enough to pluck a son from a father's heart; ay, though he were riveted there with hooks of steel! I have drawn around thee a magic circle of curses which he cannot overleap. Good speed to thee, Master Francis. Papa's darling is disposed of – the course is clear. I must carefully pick up all the scraps of paper, for how easily might my handwriting be recognized. (He gathers the fragments of the letter.) And grief will soon make an end of the old gentleman. And as for her – I must tear this Charles from her heart, though half her life come with him.
No small cause have I for being dissatisfied with Dame Nature, and, by my honor, I will have amends! Why did I not crawl the first from my mother's womb? why not the only one? why has she heaped on me this burden of deformity? on me especially? Just as if she had spawned me from her refuse.* Why to me in particular this snub of the Laplander? these negro lips? these Hottentot eyes? On my word, the lady seems to have collected from all the race of mankind whatever was loathsome into a heap, and kneaded the mass into my particular person. Death and destruction! who empowered her to deny to me what she accorded to him? Could a man pay his court to her before he was born? or offend her before he existed? Why went she to work in such a partial spirit?
No! no! I do her injustice – she bestowed inventive faculty, and set us naked and helpless on the shore of this great ocean, the world – let those swim who can – the heavy** may sink. To me she gave naught else, and how to make the best use of my endowment is my present business. Men's natural rights are equal; claim is met by claim, effort by effort, and force by force – right is with the strongest – the limits of our power constitute our laws.
It is true there are certain organized conventions, which men have devised to keep up what is called the social compact. Honor! truly a very convenient coin, which those who know how to pass it may lay out with great advantage.*** Conscience! oh yes, a useful scarecrow to frighten sparrows away from cherry-trees; it is something like a fairly written bill of exchange with which your bankrupt merchant staves off the evil day.
* See Richard III., Act I, Sc. 1, line 17.
**Heavy is used in a double meaning; the German word is plump, which Means lumpish clumsy awkward.
***So Falstaff, Hen. IV., Pt. I., Act V., Sc. 1, "Honor is a mere scutcheon."
Well! these are all most admirable institutions for keeping fools in awe, and holding the mob underfoot, that the cunning may live the more at their ease. Rare institutions, doubtless. They are something like the fences my boors plant so closely to keep out the hares – yes I' faith, not a hare can trespass on the enclosure, but my lord claps spurs to his hunter, and away he gallops over the teeming harvest!
Poor hare! thou playest but a sorry part in this world's drama, but your worshipful lords must needs have hares!
*[This may help to illustrate a passage in Shakespeare which puzzles the commentators – "Cupid is a good hare-finder." – Much ADO, Act I., Sc. 1.
The hare, in Germany, is considered an emblem of abject submission and cowardice. The word may also be rendered "Simpleton," "Sawney," or any other of the numerous epithets which imply a soft condition.]
Then courage, and onward, Francis. The man who fears nothing is as powerful as he who is feared by everybody. It is now the mode to wear buckles on your smallclothes, that you may loosen or tighten them at pleasure. I will be measured for a conscience after the newest fashion, one that will stretch handsomely as occasion may require. Am I to blame? It is the tailor's affair? I have heard a great deal of twaddle about the so-called ties of blood – enough to make a sober man beside himself. He is your brother, they say; which interpreted, means that he was manufactured in the same mould, and for that reason he must needs be sacred in your eyes! To what absurd conclusions must this notion of a sympathy of souls, derived from the propinquity of bodies, inevitably tend? A common source of being is to produce community of sentiment; identity of matter, identity of impulse! Then again, – he is thy father! He gave thee life, thou art his flesh and blood – and therefore he must be sacred to thee! Again a most inconsequential deduction! I should like to know why he begot me;** certainly not out of love for me – for I must first have existed!
**[The reader of Sterne will remember a very similar passage in the first chapter of Tristram Shandy.]
Could he know me before I had being, or did he think of me during my begetting? or did he wish for me at the moment? Did he know what I should be? If so I would not advise him to acknowledge it or I should pay him off for his feat. Am I to be thankful to him that I am a man? As little as I should have had a right to blame him if he had made me a woman. Can I acknowledge an affection which is not based on any personal regard? Could personal regard be present before the existence of its object? In what, then, consists the sacredness of paternity? Is it in the act itself out of which existence arose? as though this were aught else than an animal process to appease animal desires. Or does it lie, perhaps, in the result of this act, which is nothing more after all than one of iron necessity, and which men would gladly dispense with, were it not at the cost of flesh and blood? Do I then owe him thanks for his affection? Why, what is it but a piece of vanity, the besetting sin of the artist who admires his own works, however hideous they may be? Look you, this is the whole juggle, wrapped up in a mystic veil to work on our fears. And shall I, too, be fooled like an infant? Up then! and to thy work manfully. I will root up from my path whatever obstructs my progress towards becoming the master. Master I must be, that I may extort by force what I cannot win by affection.*
*[This soliloquy in some parts resembles that of Richard, Duke of Gloster, in Shakespeare's Henry VI., Act V. Sc. 6.]
SCENE