“I want to see you, and kiss you,” replied the child. “I want to call you ‘Mother,'” he added in so low a voice that only she could hear him.
She uttered a scream, embraced him, and approaching him as by a sudden revelation, fastened her ardent lips on his brow. Then, as though she dreaded someone coming to snatch away this child whom she had found, she drew him entirely into the vehicle, pushed him to its other side, shut the door with her own hand, and lowering the glass to order: “Drive to No. 9 Coq-Heron Street, the first carriage-doorway from Plastriere Street,” she shut the window instantly.
Turning to the boy she asked his name.
“Sebastian? come, Sebastian, come here, on my heart.”
She threw herself back as if going to swoon, muttering: “What new sensation is this? can it be what is called happiness?”
The journey was one long kiss of mother and son.
She had found this son by a miracle, whom the father had torn from her in a terrible night of anguish and dishonor; he had disappeared with no trace but the abductor’s tracks in the snow; this child had been detested until she heard its first wail, whereupon she had loved him; this child had been prayed for, called for, begged for. Her brother had uselessly hunted for him over land and ocean. For fifteen years she had yearned for him, and despaired to behold him again; she had begun to think no more of him but as a cherished spirit. Here he was, running and crying after her, seeking her, in his turn, calling her “Mother!”
He was pillowed on her heart, pressing on her bosom, loving her filially although he had never seen her, as she loved him with maternal affection. Her pure lips recovered all the joys of a lost life in this first kiss given her son.
Above the head of mankind is Something else than the void in which the spheres revolve: in life there is Another Thing than chance and fatality.
After fourteen years she was taken back to the house where he was born, this offspring of the union of the mesmerist Gilbert and the daughter of the House of Taverney, his victim. There he had drawn the first breath of life and thence his father had stolen him.