Across all this
space I see you; my heart beats with yours. Be sure, therefore, to write
and tell me everything. Your letters create an inner life of passion
within my homely, peaceful household, which reminds me of a level
highroad on a gray day. The only event here, my sweet, is that I am
playing cross-purposes with myself. But I don't want to tell you about
it just now; it must wait for another day. With dogged obstinacy, I pass
from despair to hope, now yielding, now holding back. It may be that
I ask from life more than we have a right to claim. In youth we are so
ready to believe that the ideal and the real will harmonize!

I have been pondering alone, seated beneath a rock in my park, and the
fruit of my pondering is that love in marriage is a happy accident on
which it is impossible to base a universal law. My Aveyron philosopher
is right in looking on the family as the only possible unit in society,
and in placing woman in subjection to the family, as she has been in all
ages. The solution of this great--for us almost awful--question lies in
our first child. For this reason, I would gladly be a mother, were it
only to supply food for the consuming energy of my soul.

Louis' temper remains as perfect as ever; his love is of the active, my
tenderness of the passive, type. He is happy, plucking the flowers which
bloom for him, without troubling about the labor of the earth which has
produced them. Blessed self-absorption! At whatever cost to myself, I
fall in with his illusions, as a mother, in my idea of her, should be
ready to spend herself to satisfy a fancy of her child. The intensity of
his joy blinds him, and even throws its reflection upon me. The smile
or look of satisfaction which the knowledge of his content brings to my
face is enough to satisfy him. And so, "my child" is the pet name which
I give him when we are alone.

And I wait for the fruit of all these sacrifices which remain a secret
between God, myself, and you. On motherhood I have staked enormously;
my credit account is now too large, I fear I shall never receive full
payment. To it I look for employment of my energy, expansion of my
heart, and the compensation of a world of joys. Pray Heaven I be not
deceived! It is a question of all my future and, horrible thought, of my
virtue.

XXI. LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENEE DE L'ESTORADE June.

Dear wedded sweetheart,--Your letter has arrived at the very moment to
hearten me for a bold step w