The appearance of the first little dress all ready to be pulled on, that which is laid on the cradle at the moment of birth, the sleeves pushed one within the other, the arms spread apart, the little caps blown up to a round shape, made her burst into tears. It seemed to her that her child had lived and that she had known it and held it to her heart. A son, O, certainly it was a boy, a strong and beautiful one, and from his very birth he had the mysterious and deep eyes of his grandfather! To-day he would have been eight years old and have had long curls falling round his shoulders; at that age they still belong to the mother, who takes them walking, dresses them, makes them work. Ah, cruel, cruel life!
But after a while, as she pulled out and twitched into shape these little objects tied together with microscopic bows, with their embroidered flowers and snowy laces, she began to be calm. Well, no; after all, life is not so evil, and while it lasts one must keep up one’s courage. At that terrible turn of her life she had lost all of hers, imagining that the end had come, so far as she was concerned, for believing, loving, being wife and mother; thinking in fact that there only remained for her the pleasure of looking back upon the shining past and watching it disappear in the distance like some shore which one regrets to leave. Then after gloomy years the spring had shot out its fruits slowly beneath the cold snow of her heart; lo and behold, it flowered again in this little creature who was about to live and whom she felt was already vigorous from the terrible little kicks which it gave her during the night. And then her Numa, so changed, so good, quite cured of his brutality and violence! To be sure he still showed weaknesses which she did not like, those roundabout Italian ways which he could not help having, but, even as he said—“O, that?—that is politics!” Besides that, she was no longer the victim of the illusions of her early years; she knew that in order to live happily one must be contented with coming near to what one desires in everything and that complete happiness can only be quarried from the half-happinesses which existence affords us.
A new knock at the door. It is M. Méjean who would like to speak to Madame.
“Very good, I’m coming.”
She found him in the little drawing-room which he was measuring from end to end with excited steps.
“I have a confession to make to you,” said he, using a somewhat brusque tone of familiarity which their old friendship authorized and which both of them would have liked to have turned into a relationship of brother and sister. “Some days ago I put an end to this wretched affair—and did not withhold the statement from you for the sake of keeping this longer in my possession—”
He held out to her the portrait of Hortense obtained from Audiberte.
“Well, at last! O, how happy she is going to be, poor dear!”
She softened at the sight of her sister’s pretty face, her sister sparkling with health and youth in that Provençal disguise, and read at the bottom of the picture in her fine and very firm writing: “I believe in you and I love you—Hortense Le Quesnoy.” Then, remembering that the wretched lover had also read it and that he must have been intrusted with a very sorrowful commission in procuring it, she grasped his hand affectionately:
“Thank you.”