Clerambault had never seen
her so pretty and so sweet. He hardly saw the child, though he went
through all the antics that politeness required, making inarticulate
admiring noises which the mother expected and snapped up like a bird.
He saw only her happy face, her lovely smiling eyes, and heard her
charming childish laughter. How good it is to see anyone so happy! All
the things that he had come prepared to say to her went clean out of
his head--all useless and out of place. The only thing necessary was
to gaze on the infant wonder, and share the delight of the hen over
her chick, joining in her delicious cluck of innocent vanity.
The shadow of the war, however, did pass before his eyes for a moment,
the thought of the brutal, useless carnage, the dead son, the missing
husband; and as he bent over the child he could not help thinking with
a sad smile:
"Why bring children into the world, if it is to butcher them like
this? I wonder what will happen to this poor little chap twenty years
hence?"
Thoughts like these did not trouble the mother. They could not dim her
sunshine. All cares seemed far away. She could see nothing but the
"joy that a man was born into the world."
This man-child is to each mother in turn the incarnation of all the
hope of humanity.
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