"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. You know, dear Marie, that before a child comes we love each other as husband and wife, but we love each other on our own account, while afterward we love each other on his, the dear love, who with his tiny hand has rivetted the chain forever. God, therefore, allows the heart to grow and swell. Mine was full; nevertheless, my baby came and took his place in it. Yet nothing overflowed, and I still feel that there is room for mother and yourself. You told me, and truly, that this would be a new life, a life of deep love and delightful devotion. All my past existence seems trivial and colorless to me, and I perceive that I am beginning to live. I am as proud as a soldier who has been in battle. Wife and mother, those words are our epaulettes. Grandmother is the field-marshal's baton. How sweet I shall render the existence of my two loved ones! How I shall cherish them! I am wild, I weep, I should like to kiss you. I am afraid I am too happy.