"Up to this time she had been quiet and passive, bearing her fate
with a sort of dumb resignation; but now a spirit of vengeance,
fiercer and more terrible than his own, began to kindle within
her; and, kneeling down before the ghastly thing, she breathed a
wish - a prayer - to the avenging Jehovah, so unutterably
horrible, that even her husband had to fly with curdling blood
from the room. That dreadful prayer was heard - that wish
fulfilled in me; but long before I looked on the light of day
that frantic woman had repented of the awful deed she had done.
Repentance came too late the sin of the father was visited on the
child, and on the mother, too, for the moment her eyes fell upon
me, she became a raving maniac, and died before the first day of
my life had ended.
"Nurse and physician fled at the sight of me; but my father,
though thrilling with horror, bore the shock, and bowed to the
retributive justice of the angry Deity she had invoked. His
whole life, his whole nature, changed from that hour; and,
kneeling beside my dead mother, as he afterward told me, he vowed
before high Heaven to cherish and love me, even as though I had
not been the ghastly creature I was.
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