You women and mothers who submit consciously to the law of God, you are the only ones who,--in our miserable, mutilated circle, which has lost all semblance of humanity,--know the whole true meaning of life according to the law of God; and you are the only ones who, by your example, can show men the happiness of that submission to God's law, of which they rob themselves. You are the only ones who know the joy and happiness which takes possession of one's whole being,--the bliss which is the share of every man who does not deviate from God's law. You know the joy of love to your husband,--a joy never ending, never destroyed, like all other joys, but forming the beginning of another new joy--love to your child. You are the only ones, when you are simple and submissive to God's law, who know, not the farcical pretence of labour, which men of your world call labour, but that true labour which is imposed by God upon men, and you know the rewards for it,--the bliss which it gives. You know it, when after the joys of love, you expect with emotion, fear, and hope, the torturing state of pregnancy, which makes you ill for nine months, and brings you to the brink of death and to unbearable sufferings and pains: you know the conditions of true labour, when with joy you expect the approach and increase of the most dreadful sufferings, after which comes the bliss, known to you only. You know it when, directly after those sufferings, without rest, without interruption, you undertake another series of labours and sufferings,--those of nursing; for the sake of which you subjugate to your feeling, and renounce, the strongest human necessity,--that of sleep, which, according to the saying, is sweeter than father and mother. For months and years you do not sleep two nights running, and often you do not sleep whole nights; walking alone to and fro, rocking in your wearied arms an ailing baby, whose sufferings tear your heart. When you do all this, unapproved and unseen by anybody, not expecting any praise or reward for it; when you do this, not as a great deed, but as the labourer of the gospel parable, who came from the field, considering that you are only doing your duty,--you know then what is false, fictitious labour,--for human fame; and what is true labour,--the fulfilment of God's will, the indication of which you feel in your heart. You know, if you are a true mother, that not only has nobody seen and praised your labour, considering that it is only what ought to be, but even those for whom you toiled are not only ungrateful to you, but often torment and reproach you. With the next child you do the same,--again you suffer, again you bear unseen, terrible toil, and again you do not expect any reward from anybody, and feel the same satisfaction.