"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.The physician he bound by a terrible oath to silence; the nurse he forced back, and, in spite of her disgust and abhorrence, compelled her to nurse and care for me.The dead was buried out of sight; and we had rooms in a distant part of the house, which no one ever entered but my father and the nurse.Though set apart from my birth as something accursed, I had the intellect and capacity of - yes, far greater intellect and capacity than, most children; and, as years passed by, my father, true to his vow, became himself my tutor and companion.He did not love me - that was an utter impossibility; but time so blunts the edge of all things, that even the nurse became reconciled to me, and my father could scarcely do less than a stranger.So I was cared for, and instructed, and educated; and, knowing not what a monstrosity Iwas, I loved them both ardently, and lived on happily enough, in my splendid prison, for my first ten years in this world.
"Then came a change.My nurse died; and it became clear that Imust quit my solitary life, and see the sort of world I lived in.
So my father, seeing all this, sat down in the twilight one night beside me, and told me the story of my own hideousness.I was but a child then, and it is many and many years ago; but this gray summer morning, I feel what I felt then, as vividly as I did at the time.I had not learned the great lesson of life then -endurance, I have scarcely learned it yet, or I should bear life's burden longer; but that first night's despair has darkened my whole after-life.For weeks I would not listen to my father's proposal, to hide what would send all the world from me in loathing behind a mask; but I came to my senses at last, and from that day to the present - more days than either you or I would care to count - it has not been one hour altogether off my face.""I was the wonder and talk of Paris, when I did appear; and most of the surmises were wild and wide of the mark - some even going so far as to say it was all owing to my wonderful unheard-of beauty that I was thus mysteriously concealed from view.I had a soft voice, and a tolerable shape; and upon this, I presume, they founded the affirmation.But my father and I kept our own council, and let them say what they listed.I had never been named, as other children are; but they called me La Masque now.
I had masters and professors without end, and studied astronomy and astrology, and the mystic lore of the old Egyptians, and became noted as a prodigy and a wonder, and a miracle of learning, far and near.
"The arts used to discover the mystery and make me unmask were innumerable and almost incredible; but I baffled them all, and began, after a time, rather to enjoy the sensation I created than otherwise.
