It was too much joy, too much happiness. Her blood circulated more quickly, and soon the warmth came to her cheeks, the tears to her eyes. She lay there weeping quietly, while her little one was held fast to her motherly breast. With God's help, she would try to accomplish the rest. III A LECTURE CHAPTER I DETHRONED Fru Tomasine Rendalen herself carried the child to the font, and gave him her own name. Little Tomas's cradle stood by the side of the bed in which she slept. The room was both her reading and working room. The other remained vacant as though only for show. Through her friends in England, France, and Germany she obtained books in three languages on the bringing up of children. But she soon laid them aside; they were all either too vague, or too dogmatic. She began to widen her acquirements in other respects. She wished to be his teacher in everything. But, from the time that he was six months old her work was much interrupted, for he was a most restless child. The doctor assured her that, so far as he could see, the boy ailed nothing. He did not scream from pain. If, at the moment he opened his eyes, for example, the person he wanted was not there--that is to say, the one who could give him food--he not only screamed till she came, which was to be expected, but after she had come and had forced him to drink, he screamed while the milk ran out of his mouth, and continued to give blows, slaps, and spiteful cries. He could not forget. If there were anything he did not like, he screamed himself black in the face, and made himself rigid. Sometimes it seemed to Tomasine as though she had a log on her lap, and not a human being. When he was nine months old, she was obliged to give up nursing him, for he kept her in such a state of irritation and terror, that his health became affected through her. The struggle which ensued on this, was terrible. It lasted altogether for three days and nights, during which time he could only be induced to touch a drop of the strange food by artifice. As Tomasine hung about in the outer room or in the passage, listening to the hoarse screams, for he had no voice left--not allowed to see him, or go to his help--she remembered more than once, with shame, what she had thought and determined before he was born. The boy cried inside, the mother outside, and no one could get her away. And this, his first great fight in the world, to keep possession of his mother's breast, had no happy influence upon him, for from that time he tried, more than ever, to get everything by screaming.