e Germans. I never deserted, as you have heard
that I did--your mother invented that story.

ADELE. Mother never lied--

DURAND.--So, so. Now the ghost has risen and stands between us again. I
cannot enter an action against the dead, but I swear I am speaking the
truth. Do you hear? And as far as your dowry is concerned, that is to
say your maternal inheritance, these are the facts: first, your mother
through carelessness and foolish speculations ruined your paternal
inheritance so completely that I had to give up my business and start
this pension. After that, part of her inheritance had to be used in the
bringing-up of you children, which of course cannot be looked upon as
thrown away. So it was also untrue that--

ADELE. No, that's not what mother said on her death-bed--

DURAND.--Then your mother lied on her death-bed, just as she had done
all through her life. And that's the curse that has been following me
like a spook. Think how you have innocently tortured me with these two
lies for so many years! I didn't want to put disquiet into your young
lives which would result in your doubting your mother's goodness. That's
why I kept silent. I was the bearer of her cross throughout our married
life; carried all her faults on my back, took all the consequences of
her mistakes on myself until at last I believed that I was the guilty
one. And she was not slow, first to believe herself to be blameless,
and then later the victim. "Blame it on me," I used to say, when she had
become terribly involved in some tangle. And she blamed and I bore!
But the more she became indebted to me, the more she hated me, with the
limitless hatred of her indebtedness. And in the end she despised me,
trying to strengthen herself by imagining she had deceived me. And last
of all she taught you children to despise me, because she wanted support
in her weakness. I hoped and believed that this evil but weak spirit
would die when she died; but evil lives and grows like disease, while
soundness stops at a certain point and then retrogrades. And when I
wanted to change what was wrong in the habits of this household, I was
always met with "But mother said," and therefore it was true; "Mother
used to do this way," and therefore it was right. And to you I became
a good-for-nothing when I was kind, a miserable creature when I was
sensitive, and a scamp when I let you all have your way and ruin the
house.

ADELE. It's honorable to accuse the dead who c