ve borne a child, that is enough, I am a
mother in the eyes of the law. But you, monsieur, with your delicately
compassionate soul, can perhaps understand this cry from an unhappy
woman who has suffered no lying illusions to enter her heart. God will
judge me, but surely I have only obeyed His laws by giving way to the
affections which He Himself set in me, and this I have learned from my
own soul.--What is a child, monsieur, but the image of two beings, the
fruit of two sentiments spontaneously blended? Unless it is owned by
every fibre of the body, as by every chord of tenderness in the heart;
unless it recalls the bliss of love, the hours, the places where two
creatures were happy, their words that overflowed with the music of
humanity, and their sweet imaginings, that child is an incomplete
creation. Yes, those two should find the poetic dreams of their intimate
double life realized in their child as in an exquisite miniature; it
should be for them a never-failing spring of emotion, implying their
whole past and their whole future.

"My poor little Helene is her father's child, the offspring of duty and
of chance. In me she finds nothing but the affection of instinct, the
woman's natural compassion for the child of her womb. Socially speaking,
I am above reproach. Have I not sacrificed my life and my happiness to
my child? Her cries go to my heart; if she were to fall into the water,
I should spring to save her, but she is not in my heart.

"Ah! love set me dreaming of a motherhood far greater and more complete.
In a vanished dream I held in my arms a child conceived in desire before
it was begotten, the exquisite flower of life that blossoms in the soul
before it sees the light of day. I am Helene's mother only in the sense
that I brought her forth. When she needs me no longer, there will be an
end of my motherhood; with the extinction of the cause, the effects will
cease. If it is a woman's adorable prerogative that her motherhood
may last through her child's life, surely that divine persistence of
sentiment is due to the far-reaching glory of the conception of the
soul? Unless a child has lain wrapped about from life's first beginnings
by the mother's soul, the instinct of motherhood dies in her as in the
animals. This is true; I feel that it is true. As my poor little one
grows older, my heart closes. My sacrifices have driven us apart. And
yet I know, monsieur, that to another child my heart would have gone
ou