Ah! my sweet, how heavenly it was to waken up from all the pain
and haziness of the first days, when everything was still dim,
uncomfortable, confused. A ray of light pierced the darkness; my heart
and soul, my inner self--a self I had never known before--rent the
envelope of gloomy suffering, as a flower bursts its sheath at the first
warm kiss of the sun, at the moment when the little wretch fastened on
my breast and sucked. Not even the sensation of the child's first cry
was so exquisite as this. This is the dawn of motherhood, this is the
_Fiat lux_!
Here is happiness, joy ineffable, though it comes not without pangs. Oh!
my sweet jealous soul, how you will relish a delight which exists only
for ourselves, the child, and God! For this tiny creature all knowledge
is summed up in its mother's breast. This is the one bright spot in its
world, towards which its puny strength goes forth. Its thoughts cluster
round this spring of life, which it leaves only to sleep, and whither
it returns on waking. Its lips have a sweetness beyond words, and their
pressure is at once a pain and a delight, a delight which by every
excess becomes pain, or a pain which culminates in delight. The
sensation which rises from it, and which penetrates to the very core
of my life, baffles all description. It seems a sort of centre whence a
myriad joy-bearing rays gladden the heart and soul. To bear a child is
nothing; to nourish it is birth renewed every hour.
Oh! Louise, there is no caress of lover with half the power of those
little pink hands, as they stray about, seeking whereby to lay hold on
life. And the infant glances, now turned upon the breast, now raised to
meet our own! What dreams come to us as we watch the clinging nursling!
All our powers, whether of mind or body, are at its service; for it we
breathe and think, in it our longings are more than satisfied! The
sweet sensation of warmth at the heart, which the sound of his first cry
brought to me--like the first ray of sunshine on the earth--came again
as I felt the milk flow into his mouth, again as his eyes met mine, and
at this moment I have felt it once more as his first smile gave token of
a mind working within--for he has laughed, my dear! A laugh, a glance,
a bite, a cry--four miracles of gladness which go straight to the heart
and strike chords that respond to no other touch. A child is tied to
our heart-strings, as the spheres are linked to their creator; we cannot
think of God except as a mother's heart writ large.
It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood
in visible and tangible fashion; it is a joy of every moment. The
milk becomes flesh before our eyes; it blossoms into the tips of those
delicate flower-like fingers; it expands in tender, transparent nails;
it spins the silky tresses; it kicks in the little feet. Oh! those baby
feet, how plainly they talk to us! In them the child finds its first
language.
Yes, Louise, nursing is a miracle of transformation going on before
one's bewildered eyes. Those cries, they go to your heart and not your
ears; those smiling eyes and lips, those plunging feet, they speak
in words which could not be plainer if God traced them before you in
letters of fire! What else is there in the world to care about? The
father? Why, you could kill him if he dreamed of waking the baby! Just
as the child is the world to us, so do we stand alone in the world for
the child. The sweet consciousness of a common life is ample recompense
for all the trouble and suffering--for suffering there is. Heaven save
you, Louise, from ever knowing the maddening agony of a wound which
gapes afresh with every pressure of rosy lips, and is so hard to
heal--the heaviest tax perhaps imposed on beauty. For know, Louise, and
beware! it visits only a fair and delicate skin.
My little ape has in five months developed into the prettiest darling
that ever mother bathed in tears of joy, washed, brushed, combed, and
made smart; for God knows what unwearied care we lavish upon those
tender blossoms! So my monkey has ceased to exist, and behold in his
stead a _baby_, as my English nurse says, a regular pink-and-white baby.
He cries very little too now, for he is conscious of the love bestowed
on him; indeed, I hardly ever leave him, and I strive to wrap him round
in the atmosphere of my love.
Dear, I have a feeling now for Louis which is not love, but which ought
to be the crown of a woman's love where it exists. Nay, I am not sure
whether this tender fondness, this unselfish gratitude, is not superior
to love. From all that you have told me of it, dear pet, I gather that
love has something terribly earthly about it, whilst a strain of holy
piety purifies the affection a happy mother feels for the author of her
far-reaching and enduring joys. A mother's happiness is like a beacon,
lighting up the future, but reflected also on the past in the guise of
fond memories.
The old l'Estorade and his son have moreover redoubled their devotion to
me; I am like a new person to them. Every time they see me and speak
to me, it is with a fresh holiday joy, which touches me deeply. 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 I have
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.