From time to time my poor little wife squeezed my hand violently, closing her eyes, but not uttering a cry.  The fire sparkled on the hearth.  The pendulum of the clock went on with its monotonous ticking, but it seemed to me that all this calm was only apparent, that everything about me must be in a state of expectation like myself and sharing my emotion.  In the bedroom beyond, the door of which was ajar, I could see the end of the cradle and the shadow of the nurse who was dozing while she waited.

What I felt was something strange.  I felt a new sentiment springing up in my heart, I seemed to have some foreign body within my breast, and this sweet sensation was so new to me that I was, as it were, alarmed at it.  I felt the little creature, who was there without yet being there, clinging to me; his whole life unrolled itself before me.  I saw him at the same time a child and a grown-up man; it seemed to me that my own life was about to be renewed in his and I felt from time to time an irresistible need of giving him something of myself.

Toward half-past eleven, the doctor, like a captain consulting his compass, pulled out his watch, muttered something and drew near the bed.

“Come, my dear lady,” said he to my wife, “courage, we are all round you and all is going well; within five minutes you will hear him cry out.”

My mother-in-law, almost beside herself, was biting her lips and each pang of the sufferer was reflected upon her face.  Her cap had got disarranged in such a singular fashion that, under any other circumstances, I should have burst out laughing.  At that moment I heard the drawing-room door open and saw the heads of my aunts, one above the other, and behind them that of my father, who was twisting his heavy white moustache with a grimace that was customary to him.

“Shut the door,” cried the doctor, angrily, “don’t bother me.”

And with the greatest coolness in the world he turned to my mother-in-law and added, “I ask a thousand pardons.”

But just then there was something else to think of than my old friend’s bluntness.

“Is everything ready to receive him?” he continued, growling.

“Yes, my dear doctor,” replied my mother-in-law.

At length, the doctor lifted into the air a little object which almost immediately uttered a cry as piercing as a needle.  I shall never forget the impression produced on me by this poor little thing, making its appearance thus, all of a sudden, in the middle of the family.  We had thought and dreamed of it; I had seen him in my mind’s eye, my darling child, playing with a hoop, pulling my moustache, trying to walk, or gorging himself with milk in his nurse’s arms like a gluttonous little kitten; but I had never pictured him to myself, inanimate, almost lifeless, quite tiny, wrinkled, hairless, grinning, and yet, charming, adorable, and be loved in spite of all-poor, ugly, little thing.  It was a strange impression, and so singular that it is impossible to understand it, without having experienced it.