s 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 bec