"Oh, Uncle dear, how sweet of you to come! Do look at him! Did you ever see such a darling?"
She was so proud of her wonderful masterpiece that she was positively grateful to anyone who would look at him. Clerambault had never seen her so pretty and so sweet. He hardly saw the child, though he went through all the antics that politeness required, making inarticulate admiring noises which the mother expected and snapped up like a bird. He saw only her happy face, her lovely smiling eyes, and heard her charming childish laughter. How good it is to see anyone so happy! All the things that he had come prepared to say to her went clean out of his head—all useless and out of place. The only thing necessary was to gaze on the infant wonder, and share the delight of the hen over her chick, joining in her delicious cluck of innocent vanity.
The shadow of the war, however, did pass before his eyes for a moment, the thought of the brutal, useless carnage, the dead son, the missing husband; and as he bent over the child he could not help thinking with a sad smile:
"Why bring children into the world, if it is to butcher them like this? I wonder what will happen to this poor little chap twenty years hence?"
Thoughts like these did not trouble the mother. They could not dim her sunshine. All cares seemed far away. She could see nothing but the "joy that a man was born into the world."
This man-child is to each mother in turn the incarnation of all the hope of humanity. The sadness and folly of the present day, what do they matter? It is he perhaps who will put an end to them. He is for every mother the miracle, the promised Messiah!…
Just as he was going, Clerambault ventured a word of sympathy as to her husband. She sighed deeply:
"Poor Armand! I'm sure that he was taken prisoner."
"Have you had any news?" asked Clerambault.
"No, no, but it is more than probable…. I am almost certain. If not, you know, I should have heard…."