my hand that
dresses and caresses, encourages and supports him? The feeling that I am
all in all for him further adds a delicious charm of protection to the
delight of having brought him into the world.

When I think that there are women who pass by such joys without turning
their heads. The fools!

Yes, the present is delightful and I am drunk with happiness. There is
also the future, far away in the clouds. I often think of it, and I do
not know why I shudder at the approach of a storm.

Madness! I shall love him so discreetly, I shall render the weight of my
affection so light for him, that why should he wish to separate from me?
Shall I not in time become his friend? Shall I not when a black down
shadows those rosy little lips, when the bird, feeling its wings grown,
seeks to leave the nest, shall I not be able to bring him back by
invisible ties to the arms in which he now is sleeping? Perhaps at that
wretched moment they call a man's youth you will forget me, my little
darling! Other hands than mine perhaps will brush the hair away from your
forehead at twenty. Alas! other lips, pressed burningly where mine are
now pressed, will wipe out with a kiss twenty years of caresses. Yes, but
when you return from this intoxicating and fatiguing journey, tired and
exhausted, you will soon take refuge in the arms that once nursed you,
you will rest your poor, aching head where it rests now, you will ask me
to wipe away your tears and to make you forget the bruises received on
the way, and I shall give you, weeping for joy, the kiss which at once
consoles and fills with hope.

But I see that I am writing a whole volume, dear Marie. I will not
re-read it or I should never dare to send it to you. What would you
have? I am losing my head a little. I am not yet accustomed to all this
happiness.

Yours affectionately.

CHAPTER XXV

FOUR YEARS LATER

Yes, my dear, he is a man and a man for good and all. He has come back
from the country half as big again and as bold as a lion. He climbs on to
the chairs, stops the clocks and sticks his hands in his pockets like a
grown-up person.

When I see in the morning in the anteroom my baby's little shoes standing
proudly beside the paternal boots, I experience, despite myself, a return
toward that past which is yet so near. Yesterday swaddling clothes, today
boots, tomorrow spurs. Ah! how the happy days fly by. Already four years
old. I can scarcely carry him,