The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 3: Books for ChildrenLamb, Charles
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The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 3: Books for Children
Lamb, Charles
Children's poetry; Children's stories
A tender sight it was to see the meeting between this father and
daughter: to see the struggles between the joy of this poor old king
at beholding again his once darling child, and the shame at receiving
such filial kindness from her whom he had cast off for so small a
fault in his displeasure; both these passions struggling with the
remains of his malady, which in his half-crazed brain sometimes
made him that he scarce remembered where he was, or who it was that
so kindly kissed him and spoke to him: and then he would beg the
standers-by not to laugh at him, if he were mistaken in thinking this
lady to be his daughter Cordelia! And then to see him fall on his
knees to beg pardon of his child; and she, good lady, kneeling all the
while to ask a blessing of him, and telling him that it did not become
him to kneel, but it was her duty, for she was his child, his true and
very child Cordelia! And she kissed him (as she said) to kiss away
all her sisters' unkindness, and said that they might be ashamed of
themselves, to turn their old kind father with his white beard out
into the cold air, when her enemy's dog, though it had bit her (as she
prettily expressed it), should have staid by her fire such a night as
that, and warmed himself. And she told her father how she had come
from France with purpose to bring him assistance; and he said, that
she must forget and forgive, for he was old and foolish, and did not
know what he did; but that to be sure she had great cause not to love
him, but her sisters had none. And Cordelia said, that she had no
cause, no more than they had.
So we will leave this old king in the protection of this dutiful and
loving child, where, by the help of sleep and medicine, she and her
physicians at length succeeded in winding up the untuned and jarring
senses which the cruelty of his other daughters had so violently
shaken. Let us return to say a word or two about those cruel
daughters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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