When we reflect that ordinary life is so short, and that so many die very young, we hesitate to abridge this first, this best period of life, when the child, free under its mother's protection, lives in Grace, and not in the Law. But if it be true, as I think, that this time, which people believe lost, is precisely the only precious and irreparable period, in which among childish games sacred genius tries its first flight, the season when, becoming fledged, the young eagle tries to fly—ah! pray do not shorten it. Do not banish the youth from the maternal paradise before his time; give him one day more; to-morrow, all well and good; God knows it will be soon enough! To-morrow, he will bend to his work and crawl along the furrow. But to-day, leave him there, let him gain full strength and life, and breathe with an open heart the vital air of liberty. An education which is too zealous and restless, and which exacts too much, is dangerous for children. We are ever increasing the mass of study and science, and such exterior acquisitions; but the interior suffers for it. The one is nothing but Latin, the next shines in Mathematics; but where is the man, I pray you? And yet it was the man, precisely, that was loved and taken care of by the mother. It was man she respected in the wanderings of the child. She seemed to depress her own influence, and even her superintendence, in order that he might act and be both free and strong; but, at the same time, she ever surrounded him as if with an invisible embrace.
There is a peril, I am well aware of it, in this education of love. What love wishes and desires more than all, is to sacrifice itself, and everything else—interests, conveniences, habits, and even life, if necessary. The object of this self-sacrifice may, in his own childish egotism, receive all the sacrifices as a thing due, allow himself to be treated as an inert, motionless idol, and become the more incapable of action, the more they do for him.
This danger is real, but it is counterbalanced by the ardent ambition of the maternal heart, which places, almost always, her best hopes upon her child, and burns to realise them. Every mother of any value, has one firm belief, which is, that her son is destined to be a hero, in action or in science, no matter which. All that has disappointed her expectations in her sad experience of this world will now be realised by this infant. The miseries of the present are already redeemed by the prospect of this splendid future: everything is miserable now; but only let him grow, and everything will be prosperous! O poetry! O hope! where are the limits of maternal thought? "I am only a woman, but here is a man: I have given a man to the world." Only one thing perplexes her: will her child be a Bonaparte, a Voltaire, or a Newton?
If, in order to be so, he absolutely must leave her—well! let him go, let him depart from her; she consents to it: if she must tear her own heart-strings, she will. Love is capable of doing everything, even of sacrificing love itself. Yes, let him depart, follow his high destiny, and accomplish the grand dream she had when she bore him in her bosom, or upon her knees. And then, a miracle: this fearful woman, who just before durst not see him walk alone, without fearing he might fall, is become so brave, that she launches him forth in the most dangerous career, on the ocean, or else to that bloody war in Africa. She trembles, she is dying of uneasiness, and yet she persists. What can support her? Her belief that her child cannot perish, since he is destined to be a hero.
He returns. How much he is changed! What! is this fierce soldier my son? He departed a child, and he comes back a man: he seeks to be married. This is another sacrifice, which is not less serious. He loves another! And his mother, in whose heart he is, and ever will be the first, will possess the second place in his affections—alas! a very small place in the moments of his passion. She seeks for, and chooses her own rival: she loves her on his account; she adorns her; she becomes her attendant, and leads her to the altar; and all she asks for there is, that the mother may not be forgotten in the wife!
CHAPTER IV.
LOVE.—LOVE WISHES TO RAISE, NOT TO ABSORB.—THE FALSE THEORY OF OUR ADVERSARIES, AND THEIR DANGEROUS PRACTICE.—LOVE WISHES TO FORM FOR ITSELF AN EQUAL WHO MAY LOVE FREELY.—LOVE IN THE WORLD, AND IN THE CIVIL WORLD.—LOVE IN FAMILIES.—LITTLE UNDERSTOOD BY THE MIDDLE AGES.—FAMILY RELIGION.
Will it be said that, in the preceding chapter, being seduced by a sweeter subject, I have lost sight of the whole subject in dispute hitherto pursued in my book?
I think I have, on the contrary, thrown much light upon the question. Maternal love (that miracle of God) and maternal education enable us to understand what every education, direction, or initiation ought to be.