La Grenadiere | Page 8

no undutiful children
without undutiful mothers, for a child's affection is always in
proportion to the affection that it receives-- in early care, in the first
words that it hears, in the response of the eyes to which a child first
looks for love and life. All these things draw them closer to the mother
or drive them apart. God lays the child under the mother's heart, that
she may learn that for a long time to come her heart must be its home.
And yet--there are mothers cruelly slighted, mothers whose sublime,

pathetic tenderness meets only a harsh return, a hideous ingratitude
which shows how difficult it is to lay down hard-and-fast rules in
matters of feeling.
Here, not one of all the thousand heart ties that bind child and mother
had been broken. The three were alone in the world; they lived one life,
a life of close sympathy. If Mme. Willemsens was silent in the morning,
Louis and Marie would not speak, respecting everything in her, even
those thoughts which they did not share. But the older boy, with a
precocious power of thought, would not rest satisfied with his mother's
assertion that she was perfectly well. He scanned her face with uneasy
forebodings; the exact danger he did not know, but dimly he felt it
threatening in those purple rings about her eyes, in the deepening
hollows under them, and the feverish red that deepened in her face. If
Marie's play began to tire her, his sensitive tact was quick to discover
this, and he would call to his brother:
"Come, Marie! let us run in to breakfast, I am hungry!"
But when they reached the door, he would look back to catch the
expression on his mother's face. She still could find a smile for him,
nay, often there were tears in her eyes when some little thing revealed
her child's exquisite feeling, a too early comprehension of sorrow.
Mme. Willemsens dressed during the children's early breakfast and
game of play; she was coquettish for her darlings; she wished to be
pleasing in their eyes; for them she would fain be in all things lovely, a
gracious vision, with the charm of some sweet perfume of which one
can never have enough.
She was always dressed in time to hear their lessons, which lasted from
ten till three, with an interval at noon for lunch, the three taking the
meal together in the summer-house. After lunch the children played for
an hour, while she--poor woman and happy mother--lay on a long sofa
in the summer-house, so placed that she could look out over the soft,
ever-changing country of Touraine, a land that you learn to see afresh
in all the thousand chance effects produced by daylight and sky and the
time of year.
The children scampered through the orchard, scrambled about the
terraces, chased the lizards, scarcely less nimble than they;
investigating flowers and seeds and insects, continually referring all
questions to their mother, running to and fro between the garden and

the summer-house. Children have no need of toys in the country,
everything amuses them.
Mme. Willemsens sat at her embroidery during their lessons. She never
spoke, nor did she look at masters or pupils; but she followed
attentively all that was said, striving to gather the sense of the words to
gain a general idea of Louis' progress. If Louis asked a question that
puzzled his master, his mother's eyes suddenly lighted up, and she
would smile and glance at him with hope in her eyes. Of Marie she
asked little. Her desire was with her eldest son. Already she treated him,
as it were, respectfully, using all a woman's, all a mother's tact to
arouse the spirit of high endeavor in the boy, to teach him to think of
himself as capable of great things. She did this with a secret purpose,
which Louis was to understand in the future; nay, he understood it
already.
Always, the lesson over, she went as far as the gate with the master,
and asked strict account of Louis' progress. So kindly and so winning
was her manner, that his tutors told her the truth, pointing out where
Louis was weak, so that she might help him in his lessons. Then came
dinner, and play after dinner, then a walk, and lessons were learned till
bedtime.
So their days went. It was a uniform but full life; work and amusements
left them not a dull hour in the day. Discouragement and quarreling
were impossible. The mother's boundless love made everything smooth.
She taught her little sons moderation by refusing them nothing, and
submission by making them see underlying Necessity in its many forms;
she put heart into them with timely praise; developing and
strengthening all that was best