The writer of a moral history must needs explore all these sweet recesses of a woman’s soul, where so mysterious a work is accomplished. Later on we shall see the women bustling about on the public stage, giving the world what it demands of them. Here, in the silence of the heart, they act only for themselves; yet, even from the social standpoint, they will never do a loftier or more efficacious work. On the rugged path on which so many of the unhappy are apt to lose their philosophy, is it not well to spread a soft thick carpet, so that the wayfarers may step more lightly and be less roughly jolted? This of itself is surely a genuine work of love, in full accord with the words of Christ: “To her much shall be forgiven, for she loved much!” From the very outset of their life, painfully spelling out the meaning of wedlock, women are, almost unknown to themselves, winging their flight towards the ideal, towards love. Here, love calls itself charity, that is to say, love for the sick, love for the poor, love for all who are weak and all who suffer. CHAPTER III THE CHILDREN Their mission as mothers, thanks to the precautions of which we have spoken, did not weigh very heavily upon the women. The tide was set against large families; in the country, six children were thought an enormous encumbrance, and as a rule the higher the rank the smaller the family. There were not a few houses which had no children at all. Somewhere in Lombardy, indeed, there was an old law granting exemption from taxes to families of twelve children, but it did not result in an embarrassed exchequer. The physicians questioned on this phenomenon return only evasive explanations. Placing themselves as they did at a special standpoint, they held the women more especially responsible, accusing the detestable experiments some of them indulged in with a view to preserving their figure, such as drinking water or vinegar, eating sour foods, never setting foot to ground; or a life at high pressure, well calculated to develop morbid germs and increase nervous over-excitement; the sort of St. Vitus’s dance which affects some people; and the thousand other causes of moral and cerebral derangement. Evidently, in their view, nothing would be so likely to facilitate motherhood as a life spent in feeding the pigs and the poultry. Yet women resign themselves better than men to the trials that a family brings upon them.