A month after these silent events, Eva gave birth to a son. When, for the first time, they brought the child to her, the widowed mother pronounced the name “William,” and tears, ready tears, too long refused to her grief, gushed in torrents from her eyes. The infant bore the beloved name of William, and its little cradle was placed close by the bed of its mother. Then Eva’s gaze, which had been directed to heaven, returned once more to earth. She now looked on her son as she had on heaven. She would bend over him to trace the likeness to his father, for God had permitted a perfect resemblance between William and the son he was never destined to see. A great change took place. Eva, who had consented to live till her babe was born, I could see wished still to live, since she felt how much it needed the protection of her love. She passed whole days and nights by its cradle, and when I came to see her, O! then she spoke to me, questioned me as to the duties requisite for her son; when he suffered told me of it, and asked me what ought to be done to spare him the smallest pain. She feared for the babe the heat of a ray of the sun or the cold of the least breeze. She would hug him to her bosom and warm him with her caresses; once I even thought I perceived a smile on her lips, but she never would sing to him while rocking the cradle—she called the nurse and told her to sing his lullaby, during which time her tears would flow over her darling William. Poor babe! he was beautiful, mild, tractable, but, as though his mother’s grief had even before his birth had an effect on him, he rarely cried and never smiled. He was calm, and calmness at that age makes us think of suffering. It seemed to me that the tears shed over his cradle had chilled his little soul. I wished that his caressing arms should already be thrown round his mother’s neck; I could have wished him to return the kisses lavished on him. But what am I dreaming? thought I, can one expect that this little creature, scarcely a year old, should have an idea that it was born to love and console this woman? It was, I assure you, ladies, a touching sight to look upon, this young mother, pale, exhausted, having renounced all the future for herself, returning as it were to life for a little infant which could not even say “thanks, mother.” What a mystery is the human heart! that of so little it can make so much! Give it but a grain of sand, it will raise a mountain; or in its last throb show it an atom to love, and it again commences to beat; it does not cease its pulsations forever till nothing is left around it but space, and even the shadow of what was dear to it has fled from earth!