visits to our room I used to hold my breath and hide my head behind my
mother's gown.

I think my mother must have suffered both from my fear of my father and
from my father's indifference to me, for she made many efforts to
reconcile him to my existence. Some of her innocent schemes, as I recall
them now, seem very sweet but very pitiful. She took pride, for
instance, in my hair, which was jet black even when I was a child, and
she used to part it in the middle and brush it smooth over my forehead
in the manner of the Madonna, and one day, when my father was with us,
she drew me forward and said:

"Don't you think our Mary is going to be very pretty? A little like the
pictures of Our Lady, perhaps--don't you think so, Daniel?"

Whereupon my father laughed rather derisively and answered:

"Pretty, is she? Like the Virgin, eh? Well, well!"

I was always fond of music, and my mother used to teach me to sing to a
little upright piano which she was allowed to keep in her room, and on
another day she said:

"Do you know our Mary has such a beautiful voice, dear? So sweet and
pure that when I close my eyes I could almost think it is an angel
singing."

Whereupon my father laughed as before, and answered:

"A voice, has she? Like an angel's, is it? What next, I wonder?"