was in a moment
of repentance and melancholy, this Marana of the nineteenth century
stood with her feet in the slime and her head raised to heaven. She
cursed the blood in her veins, she cursed herself, she trembled lest she
should have a daughter, and she swore, as such women swear, on the honor
and with the will of the galleys--the firmest will, the most scrupulous
honor that there is on earth--she swore, before an altar, and believing
in that altar, to make her daughter a virtuous creature, a saint, and
thus to gain, after that long line of lost women, criminals in love, an
angel in heaven for them all.

The vow once made, the blood of the Maranas spoke; the courtesan
returned to her reckless life, a thought the more within her heart. At
last she loved, with the violent love of such women, as Henrietta Wilson
loved Lord Ponsonby, as Mademoiselle Dupuis loved Bolingbroke, as the
Marchesa Pescara loved her husband--but no, she did not love, she adored
one of those fair men, half women, to whom she gave the virtues which
she had not, striving to keep for herself all that there was of vice
between them. It was from that weak man, that senseless marriage
unblessed by God or man which happiness is thought to justify, but which
no happiness absolves, and for which men blush at last, that she had a
daughter, a daughter to save, a daughter for whom to desire a noble life
and the chastity she had not. Henceforth, happy or not happy, opulent or
beggared, she had in her heart a pure, untainted sentiment, the highest
of all human feelings because the most disinterested. Love has its
egotism, but motherhood has none. La Marana was a mother like none
other; for, in her total, her eternal shipwreck, motherhood might still
redeem her. To accomplish sacredly through life the task of sending
a pure soul to heaven, was not that a better thing than a tardy
repentance? was it not, in truth, the only spotless prayer which she
could lift to God?

So, when this daughter, when her Marie-Juana-Pepita (she would fain have
given her all the saints in the calendar as guardians), when this dear
little creature was granted to her, she became possessed of so high an
idea of the dignity of motherhood that she entreated vice to grant her a
respite. She made herself virtuous and lived in solitude. No more fetes,
no more orgies, no more love. All joys, all fortunes were centred now
in the cradle of her child. The tones of that infant voice made an oas