escape, this idiot would assuredly become cunning, in order to blackmail
me, to compromise me and ruin me. He would call out 'papa,' as in my
dream.

"And I said to myself that I had killed the mother and lost this
atrophied creature, this larva of the stable, born and raised amid the
manure, this man who, if brought up like others, would have been like
others.

"And you cannot imagine what a strange, embarrassed and intolerable
feeling comes over me when he stands before me and I reflect that he came
from myself, that he belongs to me through the intimate bond that links
father and son, that, thanks to the terrible law of heredity, he is my
own self in a thousand ways, in his blood and his flesh, and that he has
even the same germs of disease, the same leaven of emotions.

"I have an incessant restless, distressing longing to see him, and the
sight of him causes me intense suffering, as I look down from my window
and watch him for hours removing and carting the horse manure, saying to
myself: 'That is my son.'

"And I sometimes feel an irresistible longing to embrace him. I have
never even touched his dirty hand."

The academician was silent. His companion, a tactful man, murmured: "Yes,
indeed, we ought to take a closer interest in children who have no
father."

A gust of wind passing through the tree shook its yellow clusters,
enveloping in a fragrant and delicate mist the two old men, who inhaled