"Any other man would have turned his eyes inward, would, before all else, have taken himself to task and looked upon the sad and terrible occurrence as a just chastisement of his foolish blindness. But this model man was superior to all such weaknesses. Oh, my good friend, it is not true what philosophy teaches, that the real nature of a man cannot be changed; that it is only his outward conduct that gradually gains a certain power of habit over the true character of the individual. I know this by bitter experience; of that fool who drove his poor child from his home in her shame and misery and forbade her ever to come in his sight again; of that childish and cruel father there is not a vestige left in me--so little that I can search my nature for it as much as I will. With all my other faults and human weaknesses, it is absolutely incomprehensible to me how I could ever have torn my poor flesh and blood from me, and cast it forth into the outside world. "The child bore herself far better and more nobly than her parents. She declared decidedly that having, as she found to her sorrow, forfeited forever the love of father and mother by her weakness, she would no longer accept anything from their bounty. We thought this was merely a fine phrase. But we soon learned how seriously she had meant what she said. The poor girl suddenly disappeared from our house and the city--and probably from the country--for all our efforts to find her were without result. "She had persistently refused to give the name of her betrayer, and we were either compelled or tempted to suspect every friend who had been intimate at our house; so that, although appearances were kept up for a while longer, and a plausible pretext was found for the disappearance of our daughter, our domestic bliss was ended at a blow, and soon vanished utterly. She who had given, life and charm to the most trifling domestic pleasures was wanting. "But we had not yet reached the end of our sorrows; our son, too, was to be taken from us. He studied medicine---a quiet, steady, and, to all appearances, a somewhat phlegmatic man; but he had an exceptionally keen sense of honor. When his sister did not return, this and that began to be gossiped about her. The slightest allusion, often a perfectly innocent speech, would throw him into a state of furious anger. It was some remark of this sort that had as its sequel a duel between him and his best friend. They bore the last joy of our life, bathed in bloody back into our wretched home.