To write much of Carlotta’s happiness would be to treat of sacred things at which I can only guess. She dwelt in rapture. The joy and meaning of the universe were concentrated in the tiny bundle of pink flesh that lay on her bosom. I used to sit by her side while she talked unwearyingly of him. He was a thing of infinite perfections. He had such a lot of hair.
“She won’t believe, sir,” said the nurse, “that it will all drop off and a new crop come.”
“Oh-h!” said Carlotta. “It can’t be so cruel. For it is my hair—see, Seer Marcous, darling; isn’t it just my hair?”
It was her great solicitude that the boy should resemble her.
“I don’t know about his nose,” she remarked critically. “There is so little of it yet and it is so soft—feel how soft it is. But his eyes are brown like mine, and his mouth—now look, aren’t they just the same?”
She put her cheek next to the child’s and invited me to compare the two adjacent baby mouths. They were, of a truth, very much alike.
She was jealous of the baby, desirous of having it always with her to tend and fondle, impatient of the nurse and Antoinette. It was a thing so intensely hers that she resented other hands touching it. Oddly enough, of me she made an exception. Nothing delighted her more than to put the little creature into my awkward and nervous arms, and watch me carry it about the room. I think she wanted to give me something, and this share in the babe was the most precious gift she could devise.
Of Pasquale she continued to say nothing. In her intense joy of motherhood he seemed to have become the dim creature of a dream. I had registered the birth without consulting her—in the legal names of the parents.
“What are you going to call him, Carlotta?” I asked one day.
“Mon petit chou. That’s what Antoinette says. It’s a beautiful name.”