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 
vision of hope that it will be vigorous 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 childbirth 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. 
