And this is what I find there.  “Oh! if I had to suffer a hundred-fold what Renee suffered when my godson was born; if I had to see my child in convulsions, even so would to God that I might have a cherub of my own, like your Athenais!” I can see her from here in my mind’s eye, and I know she is beautiful as the day, for you tell me nothing about her—­that is just like my Renee!  I believe you divine my trouble.

Each time my hopes are disappointed, I fall a prey for some days to the blackest melancholy.  Then I compose sad elegies.  When shall I embroider little caps and sew lace edgings to encircle a tiny head?  When choose the cambric for the baby-clothes?  Shall I never hear baby lips shout “Mamma,” and have my dress pulled by a teasing despot whom my heart adores?  Are there to be no wheelmarks of a little carriage on the gravel, no broken toys littered about the courtyard?  Shall I never visit the toy-shops, as mothers do, to buy swords, and dolls, and baby-houses?  And will it never be mine to watch the unfolding of a precious life—­another Felipe, only more dear?  I would have a son, if only to learn how a lover can be more to one in his second self.

My park and castle are cold and desolate to me.  A childless woman is a monstrosity of nature; we exist only to be mothers.  Oh! my sage in woman’s livery, how well you have conned the book of life!  Everywhere, too, barrenness is a dismal thing.  My life is a little too much like one of Gessner’s or Florian’s sheepfolds, which Rivarol longed to see invaded by a wolf.  I too have it in me to make sacrifices!  There are forces in me, I feel, which Felipe has no use for; and if I am not to be a mother, I must be allowed to indulge myself in some romantic sorrow.

I have just made this remark to my belated Moor, and it brought tears to his eyes.  He cannot stand any joking on his love, so I let him off easily, and only called him a paladin of folly.

At times I am seized with a desire to go on pilgrimage, to bear my longings to the shrine of some madonna or to a watering-place.  Next winter I shall take medical advice.  I am too much enraged with myself to write more.  Good-bye.

XLIV

THE SAME TO THE SAME
Paris, 1829.

A whole year passed, my dear, without a letter!  What does this mean?  I am a little hurt.  Do you suppose that your Louis, who comes to see me almost every alternate day, makes up for you?  It is not enough to know that you are well and that everything prospers with you; for I love you, Renee, and I want to know what you are feeling and thinking of, just as I say everything to you, at the risk of being scolded, or censured, or misunderstood.  Your silence and seclusion in the country, at the time when you might be in Paris enjoying all the Parliamentary honors of the Comte de l’Estorade, cause me serious anxiety.  You know that your husband’s “gift of gab” and unsparing zeal have won for him quite a position here, and he will doubtless receive some very good post when the session is over.  Pray, do you spend your life writing him letters of advice?  Numa was not so far removed from his Egeria.