Toward morning Jeanne became worse, and as her involuntary screams
escaped from between her closed teeth, she thought incessantly of
Rosalie, who had not suffered, who had hardly moaned, who had borne
her child without suffering and without difficulty, and in her
wretched and troubled mind she continually compared their conditions
and cursed God, whom she had formerly thought to be just. She rebelled
at the wicked partiality of fate and at the wicked lies of those who
preach justice and goodness.
At times her sufferings were so great that her mind was a blank. She
had neither strength, life nor knowledge for anything but suffering.
All at once her sufferings ceased. The nurse and the doctor leaned
over her and gave her all attention. Presently she heard a little cry
and, in spite of her weakness, she unconsciously held out her arms.
She was suddenly filled with joy, with a glimpse of a new-found
happiness which had just unfolded. Her child was born, she was
soothed, happy, happy as she never yet had been. Her heart and her
body revived; she was now a mother. She felt that she was saved,
secure from all despair, for she had here something to love.
From now on she had but one thought--her child. She was a fanatical
mother, all the more intense because she had been deceived in her
love, deceived in her hopes. She would sit whole days beside the
window, rocking the little cradle.
The baron and little mother smiled at this excess of tenderness, but
Julien, whose habitual routine had been interfered with and his
overweening importance diminished by the arrival of this noisy and
all-powerful tyrant, unconsciously jealous of this mite of a man who
had usurped his place in the house, kept on saying angrily and
impatiently: "How wearisome she is with her brat!"
She became so obsessed by this affection that she would pass the
entire night beside the cradle, watching the child asleep. As she was
becoming exhausted by this morbid life, taking no rest, growing weaker
and thinner and beginning to cough, the doctor ordered the child to be
taken from her. She got angry, wept, implored, but they were deaf to
her entreaties. His nurse took him every evening, and each night his
mother would rise, and in her bare feet go to the door, listen at the
keyhole to see if he was sleeping quietly, did not wake up and wanted
nothing.
Julien found her here one night when he came home late, after dining
with the Fourvilles. After that they locked her in her room to oblige
her to stay in bed.
The baptism took place at the end of August. The baron was godfather
and Aunt Lison godmother. The child was named Pierre-Simon-Paul and
called Paul for short.
At the beginning of September Aunt Lison left without any commotion.
Her absence was as little felt as her presence.
One evening after dinner the priest appeared. He seemed embarrassed as
if he were burdened by some mystery, and after some idle remarks, he
asked the baroness and her husband to grant him a short interview in
private.