Little Dorrit, page 259 by Charles Dickens
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e you have only looked at through the bars of this cage. I was young, I was accomplished, I was good-looking, I was independent--by God I was, child!--and people sought me out, and envied me. Envied me!'
'Dear father!' She tried to take down the shaking arm that he flourished in the air, but he resisted, and put her hand away.
'If I had but a picture of myself in those days, though it was ever so ill done, you would be proud of it, you would be proud of it. But I have no such thing. Now, let me be a warning! Let no man,' he cried, looking haggardly about, 'fail to preserve at least that little of the times of his prosperity and respect. Let his children have that clue to what he was. Unless my face, when I am dead, subsides into the long departed look--they say such things happen, I don't know--my children will have never seen me.'
'Father, father!'
'O despise me, despise me! Look away from me, don't listen to me, stop me, blush for me, cry for me--even you, Amy! Do it, do it! I do it to myself! I am hardened now, I have sunk too low to care long even for that.'
'Dear father, loved father, darling of my heart!' She was clinging to him with her arms, and she got him to drop into his chair again, and caught at the raised arm, and tried to put it round her neck.
'Let it lie there, father. Look at me, father, kiss me, father! Only think of me, father, for one little moment!'
Still he went on in the same wild way, though it was gradually breaking down into a miserable whining.
'And yet I have some respect here. I have made some stand against it. I am not quite trodden down. Go out and ask who is the chief person in the place. They'll tell you it's your father. Go out and ask who is never trifled with, and who is always treated with some delicacy. They'll say, your father. Go out and ask what funeral here (it must be here, I know it can be nowhere else) will make more talk, and perhaps more grief, than any that has ever gone out at the gate. They'll say your fathe