"The tender and sacred duties which nature imposed, became a source of
additional happiness to those affectionate mothers, whose mutual friendship
acquired new strength at the sight of their children, alike the offspring
of unhappy love. They delighted to place their infants together in the same
bath, to nurse them in the same cradle, and sometimes changed the maternal
bosom at which they received nourishment, as if to blend with the ties of
friendship that instinctive affection which this act produces.

'My friend,' cried Madame de la Tour, 'we shall each of us have two
children, and each of our children will have two mothers.' As two buds
which remain on two trees of the same kind, after the tempest has broken
all their branches, produce more delicious fruit, if each, separated from
the maternal stem, be grafted on the neighbouring tree; so those two
children, deprived of all other support, imbibed sentiments more tender
than those of son and daughter, brother and sister, when exchanged at the
breast of those who had given them birth. While they were yet in their
cradle, their mothers talked of their marriage; and this prospect of
conjugal felicity, with which they soothed their own cares, often called
forth the tears of bitter regret. The misfortunes of one mother had arisen
from having neglected marriage, those of the other from having submitted to
its laws: one had been made unhappy by attempting to raise herself above
her humble condition of life, the other by descending from her rank. But
they found consolation in reflecting that their more fortunate children,
far from the cruel prejudices of Europe, those prejudices which poison the
most precious sources of our happiness, would enjoy at once the pleasures
of love and the blessings of equality.

"Nothing could exceed that attachment which those infants already displayed
for each other. If Paul complained, his mother pointed to Virginia; and at