First Part Chapter 30

LOUISE DE MACUMER TO RENEE DE L'ESTORADE
January 1826.

Macumer has just wakened me, darling, with your husband's letter.
First and foremost--Yes. We shall be going to Chantepleurs about the
end of April. To me it will be a piling up of pleasure to travel, to
see you, and to be the godmother of your first child. I must, please,
have Macumer for godfather. To take part in a ceremony of the Church
with another as my partner would be hateful to me. Ah! if you could
see the look he gave me as I said this, you would know what store this
sweetest of lovers sets on his wife!

"I am the more bent on our visiting La Crampade together, Felipe," I
went on, "because I might have a child there. I too, you know, would
be a mother! . . . And yet, can you fancy me torn in two between you
and the infant? To begin with, if I saw any creature--were it even my
own son--taking my place in your heart, I couldn't answer for the
consequences. Medea may have been right after all. The Greeks had some
good notions!" And he laughed.

So, my sweetheart, you have the fruit without the flowers; I the
flowers without the fruit. The contrast in our lives still holds good.
Between the two of us we have surely enough philosophy to find the
moral of it some day. Bah! only ten months married! Too soon, you will
admit, to give up hope.