. He is not
like you. I parted from him twice, I know all that I can suffer, and I
hate you for each individual suffering, great and small.

"I have dismissed my mother from my service. How that would sound in
Rome! I have given her as much money as she can expect and I have got
rid of her. She said that she would not go, that she would write to you,
and many other things. I told her that if she attempted to stay I would
go to the authorities, prove that she was my mother, provide for her, if
the law required it and have her forcibly turned out of my house by the
aid of the same law. I am of age, married, independent, and I cannot be
obliged to entertain my mother either in the character of a servant, or
as a visitor. I suppose she has a right to a lodging under your roof. I
hope she will take advantage of it, as I advised her. She took the money
and went away, cursing me. I think that if she had ever, in all my life,
shown the smallest affection for me--even at the last, when she declared
herself my mother, if she had shown a spark of motherly feeling, of
tenderness, of anything human, I could have accepted her and tolerated
her, half peasant woman as she is, spy as she has been, and cheat and
thief. But she stood before me with the most perfect indifference,
watching my surprise with those bad eyes of hers. I wonder why I have
borne her presence so long. I suppose it had never struck me that I
could get rid of her, in spite of you, if I chose. By the bye, I sent
for a notary when I paid her, and I got a legal receipt signed with her
legal name, Lucrezia Spicca, _ta Ferris_. The document formally
releases me from all further claims. I hope you will understand that you
have no power whatsoever to impose her upon me again, though I confess
that I am expecting your next move with interest. I suppose that you
have not done with me yet, and have some new means of torment in
reserve. Satan is rarely idle long.

"And now I have done. If you were not the villain you are, I should
expect you to go to the man whose happiness I have endangered, if not
destroyed. I should expect you to tell Don Orsino Saracinesca enough of
the truth to make him understand my action. But I know you far too well
to imagine that you would willingly take from my life one thorn of the
many you have planted in it. I will write to Don Orsino myself. I think
you need not fear him--I am sorry that you need not. But I shall not
tell him more than is necess