The mental labor which the expression of ideas necessitates has
revived the old, old feelings which give me so much pain when they
come suddenly; and if in this confession of my past they break
forth in a way that wounds you, remember that you threatened to
punish me if I did not obey your wishes, and do not, therefore,
punish my obedience. I would that this, my confidence, might
increase your love.

Until we meet,

Felix.




CHAPTER I

TWO CHILDHOODS

To what genius fed on tears shall we some day owe that most touching
of all elegies,--the tale of tortures borne silently by souls whose
tender roots find stony ground in the domestic soil, whose earliest
buds are torn apart by rancorous hands, whose flowers are touched by
frost at the moment of their blossoming? What poet will sing the
sorrows of the child whose lips must suck a bitter breast, whose
smiles are checked by the cruel fire of a stern eye? The tale that
tells of such poor hearts, oppressed by beings placed about them to
promote the development of their natures, would contain the true
history of my childhood.