g,
won't you?" Her voice was so faint and so tender as she said this, and
she added: "Do not take your hand away, it gives me courage."

I remained beside her, therefore, while the doctor, who had put on my
dressing-gown, vainly strove to button it.

From time to time my poor little wife squeezed my hand violently,
closing her eyes, but not uttering a cry. The fire sparkled on the
hearth. The pendulum of the clock went on with its monotonous ticking,
but it seemed to me that all this calm was only apparent, that
everything about me must be in a state of expectation like myself and
sharing my emotion. In the bedroom beyond, the door of which was ajar,
I could see the end of the cradle and the shadow of the nurse who was
dozing while she waited.

What I felt was something strange. I felt a new sentiment springing up
in my heart, I seemed to have some foreign body within my breast, and
this sweet sensation was so new to me that I was, as it were, alarmed at
it. I felt the little creature, who was there without yet being there,
clinging to me; his whole life unrolled itself before me. I saw him at
the same time a child and a grown-up man; it seemed to me that my own
life was about to be renewed in his and I felt from time to time an
irresistible need of giving him something of myself.

Toward half-past eleven, the doctor, like a captain consulting his
compass, pulled out his watch, muttered something and drew near the bed.

"Come, my dear lady," said he to my wife, "courage, we are all round you
and all is going well; within five minutes you will hear him cry out."

My mother-in-law, almost beside herself, was biting her lips and each
pang of the sufferer was reflected upon her face. Her cap had
got disarranged in such a singular fashion that, under any other
circumstances, I should have burst out laughing. At that moment I heard
the drawing-room door open and saw the heads of my aunts, one above the
other, and behind them that of my father, who was twisting his heavy
white moustache with a grimace that was customary to him.

"Shut the door," cried the doctor, angrily, "don't bother me."

And with the greatest coolness in the world he turned to my
mother-in-law and added, "I ask a thousand pardons."

But just then there was something else to think of than my old friend's
bluntness.

"Is everything ready to receive him?" he continued, growling.

"Yes, my dear doctor," replied my mother-in-law.

At length, the d