66 THE EGG. 



tration and clairvoyance of love. Through the thick calcareous 

 shell, where your rude hand perceives nothing, she feels by a 

 delicate tact the mysterious being which she nourishes and forms. 

 It is this feeling which sustains her during the arduous labour of 

 incubation, during her protracted captivity. She sees it delicate 

 and charming in its soft down of infancy, and she predicts with the 

 \dsion of hope that it will be vigorovis and bold, when, with out- 

 spread wings, it shall eye the sun and breast the storm. 



Let us profit by these days. Let us hasten nothing. Let us 

 contemplate at our leisure this delightful image of the maternal 

 reverie — of that second cliildbirth by which she completes the 

 invisible object of her love — the unknown offspring of desire. 



A delightful spectacle, but even more sublime than delightful. 

 Let us be modest here. With us the mother loves that which stirs 

 in her bosom— that which she touches, clasps, enfolds in assured 

 possession ; she loves the reality, certain, agitated and moving, which 

 responds to her own movements. But this one loves the future 

 and unknown ; her heart beats alone, and nothing as yet responds 

 to it. Yet is not her love the less intense ; she devotes herself and 

 suffers ; she will suffer unto death for her dream and her faith. 



A faith powerful and efficacious ! It produces a world, and one 

 of the most wonderful of worlds. Speak not to me of suns, of the 

 elementary chemistry of globes. The marvel of a humming-bird's egg 

 transcends the Milky Way. 



