you and I were condemned by the poverty of our youth. And I leave
him ruined! alone! Yes, all my friends will avoid him, and it is I
who have brought this humiliation upon him! Would that I had the
force to send him with one thrust into the heavens to his mother’s
side! Madness! I come back to my disaster—to his. I send him to
you that you may tell him in some fitting way of my death, of his
future fate. Be a father to him, but a good father. Do not tear
him all at once from his idle life, it would kill him. I beg him
on my knees to renounce all rights that, as his mother’s heir, he
may have on my estate. But the prayer is superfluous; he is
honorable, and he will feel that he must not appear among my
creditors. Bring him to see this at the right time; reveal to him
the hard co
