to confess to my daughter.

"She died, and I stood alone, my violent nature confronting the enigma
of life.

"Although I could not give my children a stepmother, I became a
stepfather to them. Yes, let me speak on: I am unsparing toward myself.
I know that if others heard me, they would say that I am using too
strong language. It is the fashion to be indulgent nowadays, but I am
not in the mode. I put my children away from me. I placed you with your
aunt, until you entered the convent, and Bruno remained with me until
he went to the seminary. You were in fine institutions, with expensive
fees, but you were nevertheless put away from me. You did not know your
father; you merely knew that he was alive, but did not live with him.
You grew up like orphaned children.

"It is only two years since I confessed this to myself. For weeks, it
robbed me of sleep, of feeling and of thought, and still I adhered to
it. The demon called sophistry was ever telling me: 'You could have
been of no use to your children. You had still too much to do for
yourself, and it is better for them that they should become free human
agents through their own unaided efforts than through you.' There may
be some truth in it, but nevertheless, I've put my children away from
me."

The old man paused. Irma laid her hand upon his and gently stroked it.

"'Tis well. I've said it at last.

"I remained here, leading a solitary but not a lonely life. I communed
with the greatest minds and, at the same time, easily managed our
estate.

"I devoted myself to national affairs, but soon withdrew. I can't
belong to a party, not even to the one that calls itself the party of
freedom. It includes many noble-hearted men whom I honor and respect,
but they put up with too many frivolous comrades who, while they prate
of equality and of the highest good of man, do not hesitate to
sacrifice their fellow-beings to themselves. Aristocratic triflers are
simply vicious, but democratic triflers are corrupters of ideas. He who
dare not wish that the whole people should think and act as he does,
has no right to term himself a free and honest man.

"If liberty does not rest on morality, what is there to distinguish it
from tyranny? What is tyranny? The egotistical abuse of beings endowed
with equal rights to ourselves. A tyrant, in effect, denies his God. A
frivolous democrat blasphemes Him. By the term God, I mean the full
conception of the world's moral law. I was a herm