"Madame, there is no sense in that at all," she said, "and you really deserve a good scolding as a lesson. . . . Why just look at your little Jean! . . . He is just like a little quail. Now tell her, tell her, my little Jean, that you are well and brave! . . . Look, look at him laughing, the little creature. . . . Put your arms around him, Madame."
"No, no!" my mother cried out wildly. "I must not. . . . Later. . . . Take him away! . . ."
It was impossible to make her abandon this idea. Marie well understood that if her mistress had any chance at all to come back to normal life, to cure herself of her "black moods," it was not in being separated from her child. In the sad state in which my mother found herself, she had but one means of recovery and now she rejected it, impelled to do so by some new and unknown fit of madness. All that a little baby brings of joy, uneasiness, activity, anxiety, forgetfulness of self to the heart of a mother was exactly what she needed and yet she said:
"No, no. . . . I must not. . . . Later. . . . Take him away! . . ."
In her own language, familiar and rude, to which her long devotions entitled her, the old servant maid brought forward all the reasoning and arguments dictated by her common sense and by her simple peasant heart. She even reproached my mother for neglecting her duties, she spoke of her selfishness and declared that a good mother who had any religion at all or even a savage beast wouldn't act as she did.
"Yes," she ended, "that is bad! . . . you have already been so unkind to your husband, poor fellow. Must you now make your child unhappy?"
But mother, always sobbing, could but repeat:
"No, no. . . . I must not. . . . Later. . . . Take him away! . . ."
