will, through thee, my Francis, wipe them from my eyes!
FRANCIS. Yes, father, we will wipe them from your eyes. Your Francis will devote—his life to prolong yours. (Taking his hand with affected tenderness.) Your life is the oracle which I will especially consult on every undertaking—the mirror in which I will contemplate everything. No duty so sacred but I am ready to violate it for the preservation of your precious days. You believe me?
OLD M. Great are the duties which devolve on thee, my son—Heaven bless thee for what thou has been, and wilt be to me.
FRANCIS. Now tell me frankly, father. Should you not be a happy man, were you not obliged to call this son your own?
OLD M. In mercy, spare me! When the nurse first placed him in my arms, I held him up to Heaven and exclaimed, "Am I not truly blest?"
FRANCIS. So you said then. Now, have you found it so? You may envy the meanest peasant on your estate in this, that he is not the father of such a son. So long as you call him yours you are wretched. Your misery will grow with his years—it will lay you in your grave.
OLD M. Oh! he has already reduced me to the decrepitude of fourscore.
FRANCIS. Well, then—suppose you were to disown this son.
OLD M. (startled). Francis! Francis! what hast thou said!
FRANCIS. Is not your love for him the source of all your grief? Root out this love, and he concerns you no longer. But for this weak and reprehensible affection he would be dead to you;—as though he had never been born. It is not flesh and blood, it is the heart that makes us sons and fathers! Love him no more, and this monster ceases to be your son, though he were cut out of your flesh. He has till now been the apple of your eye; but if thine eye offend you, says Scripture, pluck it out. It is better to enter heaven with one eye than hell with two! "It is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell." These are the words of the Bible!
OLD M. Wouldst thou have me curse my son?
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