her tone. "But where for me are the sentiments which give us strength
to perform them? Nothing from nothing, nothing for nothing,--this,
monsieur, is one of the most inexorable laws of nature, physical or
spiritual. Would you have these trees break into leaf without the sap
which swells the buds? It is the same with our human nature; and in me
the sap is dried up at its source."

"I am not going to speak to you of religious sentiments of which
resignation is born," said the cure, "but of motherhood, madame,
surely--"

"Stop, monsieur!" said the Marquise, "with you I will be sincere.
Alas! in future I can be sincere with no one; I am condemned to
falsehood. The world requires continual grimaces, and we are bidden to
obey its conventions if we would escape reproach. There are two kinds
of motherhood, monsieur; once I knew nothing of such distinctions, but
I know them now. Only half of me has become a mother; it were better
for me if I had not been a mother at all. Helene is not _his_ child!
Oh! do not start. At Saint-Lange there are volcanic depths whence come
lurid gleams of light and earthquake shocks to shake the fragile
edifices of laws not based on nature. I have borne a child, that is
enough, I am a mother in the eyes of the law. But you, monsieur, with
your delicately compassionate soul, can perhaps understand this cry
from an unhappy woman who has suffered no lying illusions to enter her
heart. God will judge me, but surely I have only obeyed His laws by
giving way to the affections which He Himself set in me, and this I
have learned from my own soul.--What is a child, monsieur, but the
image of two beings, the fruit of two sentiments spontaneously
blended? Unless it is owned by every fibre of the body, as by every
chord of tenderness in the heart; unless it recalls the bliss of love,