or, dear little child, so
I shall never see thee more! It is over! It always seems to me that it
happened yesterday! My God! my God! it would have been better not to
give her to me than to take her away so soon. Did you not know that our
children are part of ourselves, and that a mother who has lost her child
no longer believes in God? Ah! wretch that I am to have gone out that
day! Lord! Lord! to have taken her from me thus; you could never have
looked at me with her, when I was joyously warming her at my fire, when
she laughed as she suckled, when I made her tiny feet creep up my breast
to my lips? Oh! if you had looked at that, my God, you would have taken
pity on my joy; you would not have taken from me the only love which
lingered, in my heart! Was I then, Lord, so miserable a creature, that
you could not look at me before condemning me?--Alas! Alas! here is
the shoe; where is the foot? where is the rest? Where is the child? My
daughter! my daughter! what did they do with thee? Lord, give her back
to me. My knees have been worn for fifteen years in praying to thee,
my God! Is not that enough? Give her back to me one day, one hour,
one minute; one minute, Lord! and then cast me to the demon for all
eternity! Oh! if I only knew where the skirt of your garment trails, I
would cling to it with both hands, and you would be obliged to give me
back my child! Have you no pity on her pretty little shoe? Could you
condemn a poor mother to this torture for fifteen years? Good Virgin!
good Virgin of heaven! my infant Jesus has been taken from me, has been
stolen from me; they devoured her on a heath, they drank her blood, they
cracked her bones! Good Virgin, have pity upon me. My daughter, I want
my daughter! What is it to me that she is in paradise? I do not want
your angel, I want my child! I am a lioness, I want my whelp. Oh! I will
writhe on the earth, I will break the stones with my forehead, and I
will damn myself, and I will curse you, Lord, if you keep my child from
me! you see plainly that my arms are all bitten, Lord! Has the good God
no mercy?--Oh! give me only salt and black bread, only let me have my
daughter to warm me like a sun! Alas! Lord my God. Alas! Lord my God,
I am only a vile sinner; but my daughter made me pious. I was full of
religion for the love of her, and I beheld you through her smile as
through an opening into heaven. Oh! if I could only once, just once
more, a single time, put this shoe on her pre