onger remember this.

I am in a hurry for him to grow up and be able to listen; I should like
to talk to him. I have found words for the others, though they awoke in
me only an uncertain love and set my heart in chaos. He has given me an
intelligible emotion, and to him I have said nothing.

I love him as I love no one, because he is the sole human being for whom
I am _responsible_. My love is responsibility first and foremost. If he
bends over, I suppress a cry; if the sun shines too strong on him, I
shield him with my body; if he makes a new gesture, a slight disquiet
flits through me. In whatever concerns him danger seems to lurk. He is a
lively, approachable child, people like him, and when they come up and
speak to him, I smile a pleasant, natural smile, though his life and his
death keep up an incessant sport within me and incessantly it devolves
upon me to secure his life. It is a tragic stake, a terribly cruel
problem; it is the entire basis of mother-love.

* * * * *

He has run as far as the ivy thicket, thirty yards from my chair. I
tremble so that I have to get up and leave my work. Every now and then
he comes tottering to present me with a shaving of wood fished up from
the sand he plays in, a big earth-coated pebble, treasure-troves of all
sorts. "Look, mother." His attention flatters me.

If I were to disappear without leaving anything?... Without leaving a
will? Or suppose that from beyond the tomb I were to say: "Before you
took your first steps your life was all arranged. In order that you
should be happy I kept you from having dignity or a sense of justice. No
need for you to undergo the bitter struggle that presses upon a man, the
primordial cares of existence, honesty--honor, in short. Are you not my
child? If I have taken trouble and pains it was to deprive human beings
all for your sake. You will be exempted from earning your bread and
pursuing an occupation. You will depend upon the labor of others, you
will be under the delusion that you are distinguished from those upon
whom you depend. That is the end to which my efforts will have served."
But this is wrong, unwholesome, dishonorable.

* * * * *

When he is grown up into a tall young man whom people take notice of,
shall I have the courage to look him in the face and say:

"You are not everything to me: you never have been my whole passion. I
have cherished you on my knees,