"
"Michael!"
"My name is not Michael. I never was your son! I am Nicholas Horparoff,
a merchant of Irkutsk," and suddenly he left the room, while for the
last time the words echoed in his ears.
"My son! My son!"
Michael Strogoff remembered--"For God, for the Czar, and for my native
land," and he had by a desperate effort gone. He did not see his old
mother, who had fallen back almost inanimate on a bench. But when the
Postmaster hastened to assist her, the aged woman raised herself.
Suddenly the thought occurred to her: She denied by her own son! It was
impossible! As for being herself deceived, it was equally impossible. It
was certainly her son whom she had just seen; and if he had not
recognized her, it was because he would not, because he ought not,
because he had some strong reason for acting thus. And then, her mother
feelings arising within her, she had only one thought: Can I unwittingly
have ruined him?
"I am mad," she said to her interrogators. "This young man was not my
son; he had not his voice. Let us think no more of it.
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