Then I sank down by the coffin, and prayed. I knew not what or why.
But never since the first human prayer was breathed did there rise to
heaven a supplication so incoherent and so wild as mine. Then I rose,
and laying my hand upon my father's cold brow, I said: 'You have
forgiven me for all the wild words that I uttered in my long agony.
They were but the voice of intolerable misery rebelling against
itself. You, who suffered so much--who know so well those flames
burning at the heart's core--those flames before which all the forces
of the man go down like prairie-grass before the fire and wind--you
have forgiven me. You who knew the meaning of the wild word Love--you
have forgiven your suffering son, stricken like yourself. You have
forgiven me, father, and forgiven him, the despoiler of your tomb:
you have removed the curse, and his child--his innocent child--is
free.'
I replaced the coffin-lid, and screwing it down left the crypt, so
buoyant and exhilarated that I stopped in the churchyard and asked
myself: 'Do I, then, really believe that she was under a curse? Do I
really relieve that my restoring the amulet has removed it? Have I
really come to this?'
Throughout all these proceedings--yes, even amidst that prayer to
Heaven, amidst that impassioned appeal to my dead father--had my
reason been keeping up that scoffing at my heart which I have before
described.
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