sures of maternal love as night after
night I have thought of these things. While writing this letter,
sentence by sentence, projecting my thoughts into the life you are
about to lead, I went often to my window. Looking at the towers of
Frapesle, visible in the moonlight, I said to myself, "He sleeps,
I wake for him." Delightful feelings! which recall the happiest of
my life, when I watched Jacques sleeping in his cradle and waited
till he wakened, to feed him with my milk. You are the man-child
whose soul must now be strengthened by precepts never taught in
schools, but which we women have the privilege of inculcating.
These precepts will influence your success; they prepare the way
for it, they will secure it. Am I not exercising a spiritual
motherhood in giving you a standard by which to judge the actions
of your life; a motherhood comprehended, is it not, by the child?
Dear Felix, let me, even though I may make a few mistakes, let me
give to our friendship a proof of the disinterestedness which
sanctifies it.

In yielding you to the world I am renouncing you; but I love you
too well not to sacrifice my happiness to your welfare. For the
last four months you have made me reflect deeply on the laws and
customs which regulate our epoch. The conversations I have had
with my aunt, well-known to you who have replaced her, the events
of Monsieur de Mortsauf's life, which he has told me, the tales
related by my father, to whom society and the court are familiar
in their greatest as well as in their smallest aspects, all these
have risen in my memory for the benefit of my adopted child at the
moment when he is about to be launched, well-nigh alone, among
men; about to act without adviser in a world where many are
wrecked by their own best qualities thoughtlessly displayed, while
others succeed through a judicious use of their worst.

I ask you to ponder this statement of my opinion of society as a
whole; it is concise, for to you a few words are sufficient.

I do not know whether societies are of divine origin or whether
they were invented by man. I am equally ignorant of the direction
in which they tend. What I do know certainly is the fact of their
existence. No sooner therefore do you enter society, instead of
living a life apart, than you are bound to consider its conditions
binding; a contract is signed between you. Does society in these
day