The
ceremony we can well dispense with. Now you shall see how well I shall
grow, and how strong."
XXVI
My mother was still alive and was living in Italy. I wrote her a
letter, earnest and upright, to inform her of what had happened. This
was one of the things I did to establish my position, to make it final,
without myself believing in the success of my action. The answer was
such that I had to hide it from Elsje, and shall also refrain from
repeating it here. There is something awful in seeing persons whom one
has known and loved as tender-hearted human beings grow hard in age.
And for me there was something still more awful in the chief reproach
contained in my mother's letter - that I, her only son, for whom she
would have sacrificed her life, and who should have been the support of
her declining years, now poisoned her life and made her old age lonely
and miserable. Of Elsje she spoke with scornful, malicious contempt, as
of an immoral, shameless monster, a she-devil who had beguiled me with
sensual charms and had wantonly destroyed my domestic happiness.
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