Your daughter Caroline is exceedingly proud of the somewhat rounded form of her waist. All women display an innocent artfulness, the first time they find themselves facing motherhood. Like a soldier who makes a brilliant toilet for his first battle, they love to play the pale, the suffering; they rise in a certain manner, and walk with the prettiest affectation. While yet flowers, they bear a fruit; they enjoy their maternity by anticipation. All those little ways are exceedingly charming—the first time.
Your wife, now the mother-in-law of Adolphe, subjects herself to the pressure of tight corsets. When her daughter laughs, she weeps; when Caroline wishes her happiness public, she tries to conceal hers. After dinner, the discerning eye of the co-mother-in-law divines the work of darkness.
Your wife also is an expectant mother! The news spreads like lightning, and your oldest college friend says to you laughingly: “Ah! so you are trying to increase the population again!”
You have some hope in a consultation that is to take place to-morrow. You, kind-hearted man that you are, you turn red, you hope it is merely the dropsy; but the doctors confirm the arrival of a little last one!
In such circumstances some timorous husbands go to the country or make a journey to Italy. In short, a strange confusion reigns in your household; both you and your wife are in a false position.
“Why, you old rogue, you, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!” says a friend to you on the Boulevard.
“Well! do as much if you can,” is your angry retort.
“It’s as bad as being robbed on the highway!” says your son-in-law’s family. “Robbed on the highway” is a flattering expression for the mother-in-law.
The family hopes that the child which divides the expected fortune in three parts, will be, like all old men’s children, scrofulous, feeble, an abortion. Will it be likely to live? The family awaits the delivery of your wife with an anxiety like that which agitated the house of Orleans during the confinement of the Duchess de Berri: a second son would secure the throne to the younger branch without the onerous conditions of July; Henry V would easily seize the crown. From that moment the house of Orleans was obliged to play double or quits: the event gave them the game.
The mother and the daughter are put to bed nine days apart.