Those kind women had received him well, as Fernan prophesied, and lavished on him all the caresses which a tender mother has for her children when she sees them sad and disconsolate. The poor little fellow, who, notwithstanding the kind manner in which Rodrigo treated him, had been sad and downcast, now recovered courage and joyousness; and even tears of gratitude and pleasure sprang from his beautiful and expressive eyes. Lambra was almost mad with delight on account of the handsome boy; the honoured and faithful dueña, who had envied a thousand times the happiness of mothers who had children to caress and to be caressed by, saw in anticipation the joy she would experience when her mistress and Rodrigo would be married, a joy which was her golden dream, and which would consist in having children by her side, to whom she could be, in a certain sense, a mother. Even Mayor participated in the contentment of her mistress and of the dueña, for without doubt she saw in that pretty child what she hoped the fruit of her love for Fernan would be.
The tender sympathy which binds children to women certainly moves and consoles the soul, whether those women are mothers or those who have never experienced the pains and delights of maternity. A poor, unprotected child often appeals in vain to the heart of a man, but never to that of a woman. When, covered with rags, shivering with cold, and famished with hunger, it appeals to public charity in the streets, let us count the men and the women who aid it, and we will see that the number of the former is very much less than of the latter. What consoling words often escape in such cases from a woman's lips!
"Have you no mother?"
"Poor little angel!"
"Alas for mothers who have given birth to children, to see them thus!"
Such as these are the words which the lips of women pronounce over the unhappy child.
Let us bring back our memory to the calm days of our childhood, let us bring to mind what sex it was that dried our tears, impressed kisses on our cheeks, lulled us to repose with songs, watched over our sleep, took part in our games, divined our wishes in order to satisfy them, wept when we were in grief, and celebrated with deep contentment our good health and joy. The name of a woman will be always bound up with those recollections, whether it be that of our mother or of some other. God, who foresees everything, who never entirely abandons the weak, has given the child a mother in almost every woman.
Let us wander through the streets, let us go into villages, let us enter the dwellings of the wealthy, and then let us pass on to the cottages of the poor—wherever God has not given a vulgar and stony heart, we shall find the essence of poetry and of sentiment in the multitude of names with which, everywhere, women express their tenderness for children.
"My love!" "My delight!" "My treasure!" "My glory!" they exclaim, kissing with rapture the rosy cheek of an angel. And those names, not studied, but rushing spontaneously from the heart, are they not of more value than all the loving expressions that poets have ever invented?