she blushed when Etienne asked her why she seemed to love him better
at that moment than ever before. She answered that every hour made him
dearer to her. She found in the training of his soul, and in the
culture of his mind, pleasures akin to those she had tasted in feeding
him with her milk. She put all her pride and self-love into making him
superior to herself, and not in ruling him. Hearts without tenderness
covet dominion, but a true love treasures abnegation, that virtue of
strength. When Etienne could not at first comprehend a demonstration,
a theme, a theory, the poor mother, who was present at the lessons,
seemed to long to infuse knowledge, as formerly she had given
nourishment at the child's least cry. And then, what joy suffused her
eyes when Etienne's mind seized the true sense of things and
appropriated it. She proved, as Pierre de Sebonde said, that a mother
is a dual being whose sensations cover two existences.

"Ah, if some woman as loving as I could infuse into him hereafter the
life of love, how happy he might be!" she often thought.

But the fatal interests which consigned Etienne to the priesthood
returned to her mind, and she kissed the hair that the scissors of the
Church were to shear, leaving her tears upon them. Still, in spite of
the unjust compact she had made with the duke, she could not see
Etienne in her visions of the future as priest or cardinal; and the
absolute forgetfulness of the father as to his first-born, enabled her
to postpone the moment of putting him into Holy Orders.

"There is time enough," she said to herself.

The day came when all her cares, inspired by a sentiment which seemed
to enter into the flesh of her son and give it life, had their reward.