I am sure he regretted it immediately, and was grateful for the opportunity you gave him to right the wrong he had done. He told me that as he had chosen to heal that harm, you did not inform the authorities in Maulberg of his crime, but instead, Mrs Westerman, you urged him to learn to know better the son for whom he had taken such drastic actions. I thank you both from the bottom of my heart. I am a better man for having known my father, even for this short time.
I still supply cosmetics of the finest qualities to the court, but have also begun a course of medical studies at the university so that I may use what I have learned to help my fellow men, as well as beautify them. Thus, though my father’s path and mine are quite different, our goals in the end became the same. To heal. Politics I have quite abandoned.
Let me add this to my thanks for your kindness. In his final hours my father’s delusions were generous to him. He died convinced that in his last experiments he had discovered the Philosopher’s Stone, and succeeded in producing the source of a universal medicine. His laboratory was wrecked so no trace of what he thought he had found remained, but his last coherent words were as great a legacy, and I close this letter with them.
‘In the end it is love that will save us, that will make us live beyond our years. It is the first material of any cure, it is the salt and substance of life. It is where we long to be, and where we find who and what we are.’
With my regards to you and your friends,
Theodore Adam Kupfel
Crowther replaced the letter on the desk, and Harriet said in a low voice, ‘How strange, it all seems so far away.’ She turned from the window and looked up at him. ‘Poor man, but there is a truth there, Gabriel, is there not?’
‘There is, Mrs Westerman.’ He let his hand rest briefly on her shoulder, and for a while they watched the children in silence.