All his past coldness and neglect were forgotten in his
present sufferings. I remembered only that he was my parent, and that I
had deserted him. I clasped his knees; my voice was almost stifled with
convulsive sobs. "Pardon - pardon - oh my father!" was all that I could
utter. His apprehension seemed slowly to return to him. He gazed at me
for some moments with a vague, inquiring look; a convulsive tremor
quivered about his lips; he feebly extended a shaking hand, laid it
upon my head, and burst into an infantine flow of tears.
From that moment he would scarcely spare me from his sight. I appeared
the only object that his heart responded to in the world; all else was
as a blank to him. He had almost lost the powers of speech, and the
reasoning faculty seemed at an end. He was mute and passive; excepting
that fits of child-like weeping would sometimes come over him without
any immediate cause. If I left the room at any time, his eye was
incessantly fixed on the door till my return, and on my entrance there
was another gush of tears.
To talk with him of my concerns, in this ruined state of mind, would
have been worse than useless; to have left him, for ever so short a
time, would have been cruel, unnatural.
