第62章 RENEE DE L'ESTORADE TO LOUISE DE MACUMER(3)

The grandfather has,I verily believe,turned child again;he looks at me admiringly,and the first time I came down to lunch he was moved to tears to see me eating and suckling the child.The moisture in these dry old eyes,generally expressive only of avarice,was a wonderful comfort to me.I felt that the good soul entered into my joy.

As for Louis,he would shout aloud to the trees and stones of the highway that he has a son;and he spends whole hours watching your sleeping godson.He does not know,he says,when he will grow used to it.These extravagant expressions of delight show me how great must have been their fears beforehand.Louis has confided in me that he had believed himself condemned to be childless.Poor fellow!he has all at once developed very much,and he works even harder than he did.The father in him has quickened his ambition.

For myself,dear soul,I grow happier and happier every moment.Each hour creates a fresh tie between the mother and her infant.The very nature of my feelings proves to me that they are normal,permanent,and indestructible;whereas I shrewdly suspect love,for instance,of being intermittent.Certainly it is not the same at all moments,the flowers which it weaves into the web of life are not all of equal brightness;love,in short,can and must decline.But a mother's love has no ebb-tide to fear;rather it grows with the growth of the child's needs,and strengthens with its strength.Is it not at once a passion,a natural craving,a feeling,a duty,a necessity,a joy?

Yes,darling,here is woman's true sphere.Here the passion for self-sacrifice can expend itself,and no jealousy intrudes.

Here,too,is perhaps the single point on which society and nature are at one.Society,in this matter,enforces the dictates of nature,strengthening the maternal instinct by adding to it family spirit and the desire of perpetuating a name,a race,an estate.How tenderly must not a woman cherish the child who has been the first to open up to her these joys,the first to call forth the energies of her nature and to instruct her in the grand art of motherhood!The right of the eldest,which in the earliest times formed a part of the natural order and was lost in the origins of society,ought never,in my opinion,to have been questioned.Ah!how much a mother learns from her child!The constant protection of a helpless being forces us to so strict an alliance with virtue,that a woman never shows to full advantage except as a mother.Then alone can her character expand in the fulfilment of all life's duties and the enjoyment of all its pleasures.A woman who is not a mother is maimed and incomplete.

Hasten,then,my sweetest,to fulfil your mission.Your present happiness will then be multiplied by the wealth of my delights.

23rd.

I had to tear myself from you because your godson was crying.I can hear his cry from the bottom of the garden.But I would not let this go without a word of farewell.I have just been reading over what Ihave said,and am horrified to see how vulgar are the feelings expressed!What I feel,every mother,alas!since the beginning must have felt,I suppose,in the same way,and put into the same words.

You will laugh at me,as we do at the naive father who dilates on the beauty and cleverness of his (of course)quite exceptional offspring.

But the refrain of my letter,darling,is this,and I repeat it:I am as happy now as I used to be miserable.This grange--and is it not going to be an estate,a family property?--has become my land of promise.The desert is past and over.A thousand loves,darling pet.

Write to me,for now I can read without a tear the tale of your happy love.Farewell.