And these women wrapped and licked him with the brown flame from their eyes. But he, a child but one month old, was not scared in the least. Waked up by all this noise and leaning back on the cushion with its bows of pink ribbon, he regarded everything with his little cat eyes, the pupils dilated and fixed, with two drops of milk at the corners of his lips. And there he lay, calm and evidently pleased at these apparitions of heads at the windows and these growing noises with which soon mingled the baaing, mooing and braying of the cattle, seized as they were by a formidable nervous imitation, all their necks stretched out and mouths open and jaws yawning to the glory of Roumestan and his offspring! Even then, at a time when everybody else in the carriage was holding their stunned ears with both hands, the little man remained perfectly impassible, so that his coolness even broke up the solemn features of the old President, who said:
“Well, if that fellow was not born for the forum!”
On leaving the market they hoped to be rid of all this, but the crowd followed them, being joined as they went by the weavers on the Chemin-neuf, the yarn-makers in womanly bands and the porters from the Avenue Berchère. The shopmen ran to the threshold of their stores, the balcony of the Club of the Whites was flooded with people and presently with their banners the Orphéons debouched from all the streets singing their choral songs and giving musical bursts, just as if Numa had arrived; but along with it all there went something gayer and more unhackneyed, something beyond the habitual merry-making.
In the finest room belonging to the Portal Mansion, whose white wainscots and rich silks belonged to the last century, Rosalie was stretched upon an invalid’s chair, turning her eyes now upon the empty cradle and then upon the deserted and sunny street; she grew impatient as she waited for the return of her child. On her fine features, pale and creased with fatigue and tears, one might see nevertheless something like a happy restfulness; yet one could read there the whole history of her existence throughout the last two months, her anxieties and tortures, her rupture with Numa, the death of her dear Hortense and at last the birth of the child, which swept everything else into insignificance.
When this great happiness really came to her she did not believe it possible; broken by so many blows, she did not believe herself capable of giving life to anything. During the last days she even imagined that she no longer felt the impatient movements of the little captive, and although cradle and layette were all ready she hid them, moved by a superstitious fear, and merely notified the Englishwoman who took care of her:
“If child’s clothes are asked for, you will know where to find them.”
It is nothing to abandon oneself to a bed of torture with closed eyes and clenched teeth for many, many long hours, interrupted every five minutes by a terrible cry that tears and compels one; it is nothing to undergo one’s destiny as a victim all of whose happy moments must be dearly bought—if there is hope at the end of it all. But what horrible martyrdom in the final pain when, struck by a supreme disillusionment, the almost animal lamentations of the woman are mingled with the deeper sobs of deceived maternity! Half dead and bleeding, she kept repeating from the bottom of her annihilation: “He is dead—he is dead!”—when she heard that trial of a voice, that respiration and cry in one, that appeal for light which the newborn infant makes. Ah, with what overflowing tenderness did she not respond!
“My little one!”
He lived and they brought him to her. So this was hers after all, this little creature short of breath, dazzled and startled—almost blind! This small affair in the flesh connected her again with life, and merely by pressing it against her all the feverishness of her body was drowned by a sensation of comfortable coolness. No more mourning, no more wretchedness! Here was her son, that desire and regret which she had endured for ten years and had burnt her eyes with tears whenever she saw the children of other people, that very same baby which she had kissed so often beforehand upon so many other lovely little rosy cheeks! There he was, and he caused her a new ravishment and surprise every time that she leaned from her bed over his cradle and swept aside the covers that hid a slumber that could hardly be heard and the shivery and contracted positions of a newly born child. She wanted to have him always near her. When he went out she was anxious and counted every minute. But never had she experienced quite so much anguish as upon this morning of the baptism.
“What time is it?” asked she every minute. “How long they are! Heavens, what a time they take!”