pray you? And yet it was the _man_, precisely,
that was loved and taken care of by the mother. It was man she
respected in the wanderings of the child. She seemed to depress her
own influence, and even her superintendence, in order that he might act
and be both free and strong; but, at the same time, she ever surrounded
him as if with an invisible embrace.

There is a peril, I am well aware of it, in this education of love.
What love wishes and desires more than all, is to sacrifice itself, and
everything else--interests, conveniences, habits, and even life, if
necessary. The object of this self-sacrifice may, in his own childish
egotism, receive all the sacrifices as a thing due, allow himself to be
treated as an inert, motionless idol, and become the more incapable of
action, the more they do for him.

This danger is real, but it is counterbalanced by the ardent ambition
of the maternal heart, which places, almost always, her best hopes upon
her child, and burns to realise them. Every mother of any value, has
one firm belief, which is, that her son is destined to be a hero, in
action or in science, no matter which. All that has disappointed her
expectations in her sad experience of this world will now be realised
by this infant. The miseries of the present are already redeemed by
the prospect of this splendid future: everything is miserable now; but
only let _him_ grow, and everything will be prosperous! O poetry! O
hope! where are the limits of maternal thought? "I am only a woman,
but here is a man: I have given a man to the world." Only one thing
perplexes her: will her child be a Bonaparte, a Voltaire, or a Newton?

If, in order to be so, he absolutely must leave her--well! let him go,
let him depart from her; she consents to it: if she must tear her own
heart-strings, she will. Love is capable of doing everything, even of
sacrificing love itself. Yes, let him depart, follow his high destiny,
and accomplish the grand dream she had when she bore him in her bosom,
or upon her knees. And then, a miracle: this fearful woman, who just
before durst not see him walk alone, without fearing he might fall, is
become so brave, that she launches him forth in the most dangerous
career, on the ocean, or else to that bloody war in Africa. She
trembles, she is dying of uneasiness, and yet she persists. What can
support her? Her belief that her child cannot perish, since he is
destined to be a hero.

He return