bitterness.
"Since I have found my mother, I have learned for the first time what
love is."

"Hartmut!"

The boy seemed almost staggered by this strange tone, vibrating with
pain, which he had never heard in all his life before, and the defiance
which was about to break forth anew, died on his lips.

"Because I have had no flattering words and caresses for you, because I
have been strict and severe in my training, have you doubted my love?"
said Falkenried, even in that same strange tone. "Do you know what that
severity has cost me against my only, my dearly loved child?"

"Father!" The word had a shy, hesitating sound, but it was not the old
shyness and fear; there lay in it a joyful, almost incredulous
astonishment, and Hartmut gazed on his father's face as if he could
never take his eyes from it. Falkenried put his hand on his son's arm
and drew him nearer, while he continued:

"Once I was ambitious, had proud hopes of life, great plans and
projects, but I received a blow from which I could never recover. If I
strive and struggle now, Hartmut, the only spur I have in life, besides
my sense of duty, is you, my son. All my ambitions are centered in you.
I strive for nought else on earth but to make your future great and
happy; and you can become great my boy, for your talents are unusual,
and your mind is as capable for good as for evil. But there is
something more, there are dangerous elements in your nature which are
less your fault than your fate, and which must be curbed in time, before
they obtain a mastery over you, and plunge you into misery. I have been
severe with you in order to expel the germs, but it has not been easy
for me."

The youth's countenance was in a glow, he hung with bated breath upon
his father's every word, and now he said in a whisper, behind which he
could scarcely conceal his joy:

"I never dared to think you loved me, you were always so inflexible, so
unapproachable--" he broke off and looked up at his father, who put his
arm around him and drew him closer to himself. Their eyes met in a long,
tender gaze, and the iron man's voice broke as he said softly:

"You are my only child, Hartmut, all that remains to me of a dream of
happiness which vanished, leaving only bitterness and disenchantment in
its wake. I lost much and bore it;--but if I were to lose you, you,--I
could not bear it."

He held his son close in his arms, and the boy threw himself sobbing on
his breast, and in th