The little caps are the ones I want, Marie.  Be good enough to send me the pattern of the braces, those of your own invention, you know.  Thanks for your coverlet, it is soft, flexible, warm, and charming, and Baby, amid its white wool, looks like a rosebud hidden in the snow.  I am becoming poetical, am I not?  But what would you have?  My poor heart is overflowing with joy.  My son, do you understand that, dear, my own son?  When I heard the sharp cry of the little being whom my mother showed me lying in her apron, it seemed to me that a burning thrill of love shot through my veins.  My old doctor’s bald head was close to me, I caught hold of it and kissed him thrice.

“Calm yourself, my dear child,” said he.

“Doctor, be quiet, or I will kiss you again.  Give me my baby, my love.  Are you quite sure it is a boy?”

And in the adjoining drawing-room, where the whole family were waiting, I could hear amid the sound of kisses, the delightful words, “It is a boy, a fine boy.”

My poor husband, who for twelve hours had not left me, overcome with fatigue and emotion, was crying and laughing in one corner of the room.

“Come, nurse, swaddle him, quick now.  No pins, confound it all, strings, I will have strings.  What?  Give me the child, you don’t understand anything about it.”

And the good doctor in the twinkling of an eye had dressed my child.

“He looks a Colonel, your boy.  Put him into the cradle with . . . now be calm, my dear patient . . . with a hot-water bottle to his feet.  Not too much fire, especially in the Colonel’s room.  Now, no more noise, repose, and every one out of the way.”

And as through the opening of the door which was just ajar, Aunt Ursula whispered, “Doctor, let me come in; just to press her hand, doctor.”

“Confound it! every one must be off; silence and quiet are absolutely necessary.”  They all left.

“Octave,” continued the doctor, “come and kiss your wife now, and make an end of it.  Good little woman, she has been very brave . . . .  Octave, come and kiss your wife, and be quick about it if you don’t want me to kiss her myself.  I will do what I say,” he added, threatening to make good his words.

Octave, buried in his child’s cradle, did not hear.

“Good, now he is going to suffocate my Colonel for me.”

My husband came at length.  He held out his hand which was quivering with emotion, and I grasped it with all my might.  If my heart at that moment did not break from excess of feeling, it was because God no doubt knew that I should still have need of it.