His mother let it grow free and long like
her own, and his father perpetually cut it. The boy would have
been glad enough to be rid of it, but when he grew a little older,
he comprehended his father's motive, and thenceforth he was on his
guard.
When the people on the estate had told him something of his
father's highly-coloured histories of his feats of strength and
his achievements by land and water, the boy began to feel a shy
admiration for him, but at the same time he felt all the more
strongly the intolerable yoke which he laid upon them--upon every
living being on the estate. It became a secret religion with him
to oppose his father and help his mother, for it was she who
suffered. He would resemble her even to his hair, he would protect
her, he would make it all up to her. It was a positive delight to
him when his father made him suffer: he absolutely felt proud when
he called him Rafaella, instead of Rafael, the name which his
mother had chosen for him; it was the one that she loved best.
No one was allowed to use the boats or the carriage, no one might
walk through the woods, which had been fenced in, the horses were
never taken out.
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