Horror drove all natural
remorse from my soul. I thought an avenging power had sent my
deserted child to discover his father, to claim his rights, and to
publish me as a disgrace to the name I had stolen from him. And when
I saw my innocent Pembroke, even to his knees, petitioning for the
man who I believed had come to undo him, I became almost deranged.
May the Lord of mercy pardon the fury of that derangement! For under
that temper," added he, putting the trembling hand of Thaddeus to his
streaming eyes, "I drove my first-born to be a wanderer on the face
of the earth, not for his own crimes, but for those of his father;
and Heaven justly punished in the crime the sin of my injustice. When
I thought that evidence of my shame was divided from me by an
insuperable barrier, when I believed that the ocean would soon
separate me from my fears, a righteous Providence brought thee before
me, forlorn and expiring. It was the son of Therese Sobieski I had
exposed to such wretchedness. It was the cherished of her heart I had
delivered to the raging elements! Oh, Thaddeus, my son," cried he,
"can I be forgiven for all this, in this world or in the next?"
"Oh, my father!" returned Thaddeus, with a modest, but a pathetic
energy, "I am thy son! thy happy son, in such acknowledgment!
Therefore no longer upbraid yourself. Did you not act, as by a sacred
impulse, a father's part to me when you knew me not? You raised my
dying head from the earth and laid it on your bosom.
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