These words were like a thrust at his heart. He turned pale, not with pleasure, but with rage and jealousy. The old envy boiled up inside. It seemed to him that he had all the right on his side, and he would not go into the house, but stayed outside, angry. Then his father went out and entreated him: “Come, for your brother has come back and has asked after you, and will be glad to see you, and we will feast together.” But the serious-minded young man could not contain himself, and for the first time in his life ventured to reprove his father to his face. “Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment; yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends: But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf.” With these few words he discloses all the ignominy of his soul hidden until then under the Pharisaical cloak of good behavior. He reproaches his father with his own obedience, he reproaches him with his avarice. “You have never given me even a kid”—and he reproaches him, he, a loveless son, for being a too-loving father. “This thy son.” He does not say “brother.” His father may recognize him as son, but he will not recognize him as brother. “He hath devoured thy living with harlots. Money that was not his, with women that were not his; while I stayed with thee sweating on thy fields with no recompense.” But his father pardoned this son, as he did the other son. “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad; for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.” The father is sure that these words will be enough to silence the other. “He was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found. What other reasons can be needed, and what other reasons can be better than these—grant that he has done what he has done, that he has spent my money on women; he has dissipated as much as he could; he left me without a greeting; he left me to weep. He could have done worse than that and still would have been my son. He could have stolen on the streets, could have murdered the guiltless, he could have offended me even more, but I never could forget that he is my son, my own blood. He was gone and has returned, was disappeared and has reappeared, was lost and is found, was dead and is alive again. This is enough for me and to celebrate this miracle a fatted calf seems little to me. Thou hast never left me, I always enjoyed thee, all my kids are thine if thou asketh for them; thou hast eaten every day at my table; but he was gone for so many days and weeks and months! I saw him only in my dreams; he has not eaten a single piece of bread with me in all that time. Have I not the right to triumph at least this day?”