My thrice happy Louise, your letter made me dizzy. For a few moments I
held it in my listless hands, while a tear or two sparkled on it in the
setting sun. I was alone beneath the small barren rock where I have had
a seat placed; far off, like a lance of steel, the Mediterranean shone.
The seat is shaded by aromatic shrubs, and I have had a very large
jessamine, some honeysuckle, and Spanish brooms transplanted there, so
that some day the rock will be entirely covered with climbing plants.
The wild vine has already taken root there. But winter draws near, and
all this greenery is faded like a piece of old tapestry. In this spot I
am never molested; it is understood that here I wish to be alone. It is
named Louise's seat--a proof, is it not, that even in solitude I am not
alone here?
If I tell you all these details, to you so paltry, and try to describe
the vision of green with which my prophetic gaze clothes this bare
rock--on which top some freak of nature has set up a magnificent parasol
pine--it is because in all this I have found an emblem to which I cling.
It was while your blessed lot was filling me with joy and--must I
confess it?--with bitter envy too, that I felt the first movement of my
child within, and this mystery of physical life reacted upon the inner
recesses of my soul. This indefinable sensation, which partakes of
the nature at once of a warning, a delight, a pain, a promise, and a
fulfilment; this joy, which is mine alone, unshared by mortal, this
wonder of wonders, has whispered to me that one day this rock shall be a
carpet of flowers, resounding to the merry laughter of children, that
I shall at last be blessed among women, and from me shall spring forth
fountains of life. Now I know what I have lived for! Thus the first
certainty of bearing within me another life brought healing to my
wounds. A joy that beggars description has crowned for me those long
days of sacrifice, in which Louis had already found his.
Sacrifice! I said to myself, how far does it excel passion! What
pleasure has roots so deep as one which is not personal but creative? Is
not the spirit of Sacrifice a power mightier than any of its results? Is
it not that mysterious, tireless divinity, who hides beneath innumerable
spheres in an unexplored centre, through which all worlds in turn must
pass? Sacrifice, solitary and secret, rich in pleasures only tasted
in silence, which none can guess at, and no profane eye has ever
seen; Sacrifice, jealous God and tyrant, God of strength and victory,
exhaustless spring which, partaking of the very essence of all
that exists, can by no expenditure be drained below its own
level;--Sacrifice, there is the keynote of my life.
For you, Louise, love is but the reflex of Felipe's passion; the life
which I shed upon my little ones will come back to me in ever-growing
fulness. The plenty of your golden harvest will pass; mine, though late,
will be but the more enduring, for each hour will see it renewed. Love
may be the fairest gem which Society has filched from Nature; but what
is motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood? A smile has dried
my tears. Love makes my Louis happy, but marriage has made me a mother,
and who shall say I am not happy also?
With slow steps, then, I returned to my white grange, with the green
shutters, to write you these thoughts.
So it is, darling, that the most marvelous, and yet the simplest,
process of nature has been going on in me for five months; and yet--in
your ear let me whisper it--so far it agitates neither my heart nor
my understanding. I see all around me happy; the grandfather-to-be has
become a child again, trespassing on the grandchild's place; the father
wears a grave and anxious look; they are all most attentive to me, all
talk of the joy of being a mother. Alas! I alone remain cold, and I dare
not tell you how dead I am to all emotion, though I affect a little in
order not to damp the general satisfaction. But with you I may be frank;
and I confess that, at my present stage, motherhood is a mere affair of
the imagination.
Louis was to the full as much surprised as I. Does not this show how
little, unless by his impatient wishes, the father counts for in this
matter? Chance, my dear, is the sovereign deity in child-bearing. My
doctor, while maintaining that this chance works in harmony with nature,
does not deny that children who are the fruit of passionate love are
bound to be richly endowed both physically and mentally, and that often
the happiness which shone like a radiant star over their birth seems to
watch over them through life. It may be then, Louise, that motherhood
reserves joys for you which I shall never know. It may be that the
feeling of a mother for the child of a man whom she adores, as you adore
Felipe, is different from that with which she regards the offspring of
reason, duty, and desperation!
Thoughts such as these, which I bury in my inmost heart, add to the
preoccupation only natural to a woman soon to be a mother. And yet, as
the family cannot exist without children, I long to speed the moment
from which the joys of family, where alone I am to find my life, shall
date their beginning. At present I live a life all expectation and
mystery, except for a sickening physical discomfort, which no doubt
serves to prepare a woman for suffering of a different kind. I watch my
symptoms; and in spite of the attentions and thoughtful care with which
Louis' anxiety surrounds me, I am conscious of a vague uneasiness,
mingled with the nausea, the distaste for food, and abnormal longings
common to my condition. If I am to speak candidly, I must confess,
at the risk of disgusting you with the whole business, to an
incomprehensible craving for rotten fruit. My husband goes to Marseilles
to fetch the finest oranges the world produces--from Malta, Portugal,
Corsica--and these I don't touch. Then I hurry there myself, sometimes
on foot, and in a little back street, running down to the harbor, close
to the Town Hall, I find wretched, half-putrid oranges, two for a sou,
which I devour eagerly. The bluish, greenish shades on the mouldy parts
sparkle like diamonds in my eyes, they are flowers to me; I forget
the putrid odor, and find them delicious, with a piquant flavor, and
stimulating as wine. My dear, they are the first love of my life! Your
passion for Felipe is nothing to this! Sometimes I can slip out secretly
and fly to Marseilles, full of passionate longings, which grow more
intense as I draw near the street. I tremble lest the woman should be
sold out of rotten oranges; I pounce on them and devour them as I stand.
It seems to me an ambrosial food, and yet I have seen Louis turn aside,
unable to bear the smell. Then came to my mind the ghastly words of
Obermann in his gloomy elegy, which I wish I had never read, "Roots
slake their thirst in foulest streams." Since I took to this diet, the
sickness has ceased, and I feel much stronger. This depravity of taste
must have a meaning, for it seems to be part of a natural process and to
be common to most women, sometimes going to most extravagant lengths.
When my situation is more marked, I shall not go beyond the grounds,
for I should not like to be seen under these circumstances. I have
the greatest curiosity to know at what precise moment the sense of
motherhood begins. It cannot possibly be in the midst of frightful
suffering, the very thought of which makes me shudder.
Farewell, favorite of fortune! Farewell, my friend, in whom I live
again, and through whom I am able to picture to myself this brave love,
this jealousy all on fire at a look, these whisperings in the ear,
these joys which create for women, as it were, a new atmosphere, a new
daylight, fresh life! Ah! pet, I too understand love. Don't weary of
telling me everything. Keep faithful to our bond. I promise, in my turn,
to spare you nothing.
Nay--to conclude in all seriousness--I will not conceal from you that,
on reading your letter a second time, I was seized with a dread which
I could not shake off. This superb love seems like a challenge to
Providence. Will not the sovereign master of this earth, Calamity, take
umbrage if no place be left for him at your feast? What mighty edifice
of fortune has he not overthrown? Oh! Louise, forget not, in all this
happiness, your prayers to God. Do good, be kind and merciful; let your
moderation, if it may be, avert disaster. Religion has meant much more
to me since I left the convent and since my marriage; but your Paris
news contains no mention of it. In your glorification of Felipe it seems
to me you reverse the saying, and invoke God less than His saint.
But, after all, this panic is only excess of affection. You go to church
together, I do not doubt, and do good in secret. The close of this
letter will seem to you very primitive, I expect, but think of the too
eager friendship which prompts these fears--a friendship of the type
of La Fontaine's, which takes alarms at dreams, at half-formed, misty
ideas. You deserve to be happy, since, through it all, you still think
of me, no less than I think of you, in my monotonous life, which, though
it lacks color, is yet not empty, and, if uneventful, is not unfruitful.
God bless you, then!