r
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 stone