"When this new series of outrages came to my knowledge, I threatened to
disinherit him. He laughed at me. He knew how I loved him for his
mother's sake, and, with that hold upon my affections, he defied me.
"To heartless indifference he gradually added insults, and often cursed
me, his own father, in this very room, where his mother has rocked his
cradle a thousand times while she listened to my reading of an old poem
or novel. The last of his crimes of which I have heard, was brought to
my knowledge about six weeks ago. It was a piece of treachery the most
villanous, and I told my son, in plain words, what I thought of it. I
was weak and nervous from an illness which is hereditary in my family,
and I reprimanded him with more severity than usual. I told him, that if
God, in His infinite mercy, spared him, yet he was not secure from just
punishment from the friends of those whom he had wronged, and that the
human vengeance, which had been so long postponed, would surely come. He
looked at me with malice in his small gray eyes (not his mother's eyes),
and, when I ceased speaking, raised both hands to heaven, and, with the
most horrible blasphemy, called down its curses upon me; and then he
swore, that if I crossed his path, or thwarted his plans, or refused him
money, he would kill me.
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