No duty so sacred but I am ready to violate it for the preservation of
your precious days. You believe me?

OLD M. Great are the duties which devolve on thee, my son--Heaven bless
thee for what thou has been, and wilt be to me.

FRANCIS. Now tell me frankly, father. Should you not be a happy man,
were you not obliged to call this son your own?

OLD M. In mercy, spare me! When the nurse first placed him in my arms,
I held him up to Heaven and exclaimed, "Am I not truly blest?"

FRANCIS. So you said then. Now, have you found it so? You may envy
the meanest peasant on your estate in this, that he is not the father of
such a son. So long as you call him yours you are wretched. Your
misery will grow with his years--it will lay you in your grave.

OLD M. Oh! he has already reduced me to the decrepitude of fourscore.

FRANCIS. Well, then--suppose you were to disown this son.

OLD M. (startled). Francis! Francis! what hast thou said!

FRANCIS. Is not your love for him the source of all your grief? Root
out this love, and he concerns you no longer. But for this weak and
reprehensible affection he would be dead to you;--as though he had never
been born. It is not flesh and blood, it is the heart that makes us
sons and fathers! Love him no more, and this monster ceases to be your
son, though he were cut out of your flesh. He has till now been the
apple of your eye; but if thine eye offend you, says Scripture, pluck it