But to-morrow, at ebb, she will return to the beach, that school, that Museum, that inexhaustible amusement for both mother and child. There the delicate and penetrating sense of woman and the tenderness of her heart seize and divine all. Maternity tells her all the secrets of increasing, diminishing, and recreating life. Do you ask why her instinct so quickly reveals creation to her; why she enters as one so thoroughly at home, into the great mystery of Nature? It is because she is Nature herself.
In the depths of the unctuous waters the small algæ, small, but unctuous and nourishing, and other little plants of delicate and pretty figures, form a miniature prairie which is browsed by a vast herd of molluscæ, Limpets, Whelks, and a hundred other species, watch, wait, feed, there, and to-morrow you will find them there still. But do you therefore suppose that they are utterly inert? That they have no confused idea of Love and the Unknown? Of some benevolent thing which at certain hours returns to refresh and nourish them? Oh yes, they both think of it and expect it; those widows of the great Ocean well know that he will return to caress the earth. Anticipatively they look towards the Ocean, and even those which have a fixed abode, turn from the rock and open their shells towards the incoming tide. And if it come in somewhat strongly they are all the more delighted; too happy to hail that living wave that advances so strongly, as in haste to caress them.
"See my child" says the young mother, "at our approach the motionless ones remain, but the quicker have fled. Now see, they take courage again. The active shrimp, with its fine feelers, rainbowed by the water, creates a great commotion in that mimic and miniature sea, and the slow and hesitating sea spider, at once timid and daring, saves herself by ascending to the warm surface, and the crab advancing and surveying, suddenly returns into his miniature forest of sea weed.
"But what do I see now? What is that? A large, motionless shell suddenly takes life, and moves. Oh, but that is not natural, and the impostor betrays himself by his awkward gait and his many stumbles. Yes, yes, we detect you now, you most cunning of all cunning crabs, Sir Bernard the Hermit, who would fain pass yourself off for an innocent mollusc! Your bad conscience agitates you too much."
On the shore of our ocean, strangers to these movements, the animated flowers expand their corollæ. Near to the heavy anemone those charming little annelides appear in the sunlight. From a tortuous tube rises a disc, an umbrella, white or lilac, sometimes flesh color. Thrown, itself, a little on one side, it casts off from itself an object which has nothing comparable to it in the whole vegetable world. Not one of these is like its sister, and all are admirable for their velvety delicacy.
See one of them, without umbrella, which throws off a whole cloud of light cottony threads, scarcely tinted with a silver grey, while five longer filets are of the richest cherry color. They wave, they entwine, they untwist, and their silvery heads form beautiful images in the water. To the coarse senses of man, such a sight as that would suggest no serious thought; but to the nervous and delicate woman, it is much. At those colors, by turns flashing and fading, she reflects on her own young life that now flashes, now fades, and now threatens to expire. Affecting thought! Again she looks into the pretty miniature Ocean of a few feet square, and there she better discerns Nature, the fertile mother, but the stern mother too.
And our fair patient is plunged into an oppressive reverie. Woman would cease to be woman, that is to say, the charm of the world, if she had not that touching gift of Tenderness for everything that lives; pity, and loving tears.
She has not wept as yet, our fair patient, but she has been so near to doing so! Her boy perceives it. Being already attentive and quick, he remains silent; and, silently they return. That was the amiable first day when she first began to spell with her heart the language of Nature. And at her very first lesson that language had so stirred the tenderness of that poor heart! The daylight was dying, the sea bird, on rapid wing, approached the shore and sought his nest. And as our patient and her boy entered their already dark garden, the cry of the night bird was heard. But the aviary was well closed, and the innocent little refugees within were asleep with heads under wings. Having herself seen that all was thus safe, she relieved her heart with a sigh, and embraced her son.