It is nearly five months now since baby was born,and not once,dear heart,have I found a single moment for writing to you.When you are a mother yourself,you will be more ready to excuse me,than you are now;for you have punished me a little bit in making your own letters so few and far between.Do write,my darling!Tell me of your pleasures;lay on the blue as brightly as you please.It will not hurt me,for I am happy now,happier than you can imagine.
I went in state to the parish church to hear the Mass for recovery from childbirth,as is the custom in the old families of Provence.Iwas supported on either side by the two grandfathers--Louis'father and my own.Never had I knelt before God with such a flood of gratitude in my heart.I have so much to tell you of,so many feelings to describe,that I don't know where to begin;but from amidst these confused memories,one rises distinctly,that of my prayer in the church.
When I found myself transformed into a joyful mother,on the very spot where,as a girl,I had trembled for my future,it seemed to my fancy that the Virgin on the altar bowed her head and pointed to the infant Christ,who smiled at me!My heart full of pure and heavenly love,Iheld out little Armand for the priest to bless and bathe,in anticipation of the regular baptism to come later.But you will see us together then,Armand and me.
My child--come see how readily the word comes,and indeed there is none sweeter to a mother's heart and mind or on her lips--well,then,dear child,during the last two months I used to drag myself wearily and heavily about the gardens,not realizing yet how precious was the burden,spite of all the discomforts it brought!I was haunted by forebodings so gloomy and ghastly,that they got the better even of curiosity;in vain did I picture the delights of motherhood.My heart made no response even to the thought of the little one,who announced himself by lively kicking.That is a sensation,dear,which may be welcome when it is familiar;but as a novelty,it is more strange than pleasing.I speak for myself at least;you know I would never affect anything I did not really feel,and I look on my child as a gift straight from Heaven.For one who saw in it rather the image of the man she loved,it might be different.
But enough of such sad thoughts,gone,I trust,for ever.
When the crisis came,I summoned all my powers of resistance,and braced myself so well for suffering,that I bore the horrible agony--so they tell me--quite marvelously.For about an hour I sank into a sort of stupor,of the nature of a dream.I seemed to myself then two beings--an outer covering racked and tortured by red-hot pincers,and a soul at peace.In this strange state the pain formed itself into a sort of halo hovering over me.A gigantic rose seemed to spring out of my head and grow ever larger and larger,till it enfolded me in its blood-red petals.The same color dyed the air around,and everything Isaw was blood-red.At last the climax came,when soul and body seemed no longer able to hold together;the spasms of pain gripped me like death itself.I screamed aloud,and found fresh strength against this fresh torture.Suddenly this concert of hideous cries was overborne by a joyful sound--the shrill wail of the newborn infant.No words can describe that moment.It was as though the universe took part in my cries,when all at once the chorus of pain fell hushed before the child's feeble note.
They laid me back again in the large bed,and it felt like paradise to me,even in my extreme exhaustion.Three or four happy faces pointed through tears to the child.My dear,I exclaimed in terror:
"It's just like a little monkey!Are you really and truly certain it is a child?"I fell back on my side,miserably disappointed at my first experience of motherly feeling.
"Don't worry,dear,"said my mother,who had installed herself as nurse."Why,you've got the finest baby in the world.You mustn't excite yourself;but give your whole mind now to turning yourself as much as possible into an animal,a milch cow,pasturing in the meadow."I fell asleep then,fully resolved to let nature have her way.
Ah!my sweet,how heavenly it was to waken up from all the pain and haziness of the first days,when everything was still dim,uncomfortable,confused.A ray of light pierced the darkness;my heart and soul,my inner self--a self I had never known before--rent the envelope of gloomy suffering,as a flower bursts its sheath at the first warm kiss of the sun,at the moment when the little wretch fastened on my breast and sucked.Not even the sensation of the child's first cry was so exquisite as this.This is the dawn of motherhood,this is the /Fiat lux/!
Here is happiness,joy ineffable,though it comes not without pangs.
Oh!my sweet jealous soul,how you will relish a delight which exists only for ourselves,the child,and God!For this tiny creature all knowledge is summed up in its mother's breast.This is the one bright spot in its world,towards which its puny strength goes forth.Its thoughts cluster round this spring of life,which it leaves only to sleep,and whither it returns on waking.Its lips have a sweetness beyond words,and their pressure is at once a pain and a delight,a delight which by every excess becomes pain,or a pain which culminates in delight.The sensation which rises from it,and which penetrates to the very core of my life,baffles all deion.It seems a sort of centre whence a myriad joy-bearing rays gladden the heart and soul.To bear a child is nothing;to nourish it is birth renewed every hour.
