First Part Chapter 43

MME. DE MACUMER TO THE COMTESSE DE L'ESTORADE

For the first time in my life, my dear Renee, I have been alone and
crying. I was sitting under a willow, on a wooden bench by the side of
the long Chantepleurs marsh. The view there is charming, but it needs
some merry children to complete it, and I wait for you. I have been
married nearly three years, and no child! The thought of your quiver
full drove me to explore my heart. And this is what I find there.

"Oh! if I had to suffer a hundred-fold
what Renee suffered when my godson was born; if I had to see my child
in convulsions, even so would to God that I might have a cherub of my
own, like your Athenais!" I can see her from here in my mind's eye,
and I know she is beautiful as the day, for you tell me nothing about
her--that is just like my Renee!I believe you divine my trouble.

Each time my hopes are disappointed, I fall a prey for some days to
the blackest melancholy. Then I compose sad elegies. When shall I
embroider little caps and sew lace edgings to encircle a tiny head?
When choose the cambric for the baby-clothes? Shall I never hear baby
lips shout "Mamma," and have my dress pulled by a teasing despot whom
my heart adores? Are there to be no wheelmarks of a little carriage on
the gravel, no broken toys littered about the courtyard? Shall I never
visit the toy-shops, as mothers do, to buy swords, and dolls, and
baby-houses? And will it never be mine to watch the unfolding of a
precious life--another Felipe, only more dear? I would have a son, if
only to learn how a lover can be more to one in his second self.