The Glass-Blowers by Daphne du Maurier

Author:Daphne du Maurier [du Maurier, Daphne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction / Historical, Fiction / Sagas, Fiction / War & Military
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2013-12-17T08:00:00+00:00

I have no recollection of the weeks that followed. All I remember is that the harvest was safely gathered in, the foundry furnace was started once again, and Edmé came to be with me when my son was born on September the 26th.

He was a lovely boy, the first fruit, so Edmé said, of the Revolution. Because he heralded good news, I called him Gabriel. He lived two weeks… By then our mood of Pentecost had passed.

Part Three

Les Enragés

12

My own grief has no part in this story. Many women lose their first child. My mother, in the days before I was born, lost two within as many years. I had seen it happen twice to Cathie, and with the last she herself went as well. Men call us the weaker sex. Perhaps it’s true. Yet to carry life within us as we do, to feel it bud and flower and come from us fully formed as a living creature, separate though part of ourselves, and watch it fade and die—this asks for strength and spiritual endurance.

Men stand aloof, helpless at such times, their very gestures awkward and ill at ease, as though from the beginning—which indeed is true—their part in the whole business has been secondary.

As to the two masters of the glass-house, I leaned most upon my brother Michel. He was roughly tender, practical as well, bearing away the cradle from my room so that I should not be reminded of my son. He told me too—I had once heard the story from my mother, long ago—of his first fears, when the infant brother and sister had died, that he might have contributed towards their death by plucking off their coverings for fun.

François made himself too humble for my comfort. He went about abashed, as though our child’s loss had been his doing; and, to show this, whispered, or trod on tiptoe through the rooms. When he spoke to me, half cringing in doing so, it nearly drove me mad. He would see the irritation in my face, or hear it in my voice, and naturally, though I could not help it at the time, this contributed to his abject look, making me disfavor him the more. I had no pity, and did not let him near me for six months or longer, and then perhaps—who knows?—it was more from lassitude than inclination. They say it takes a woman her full time again to recover from the birth of a first child, if she should lose it.

Meantime, the Declaration of the Rights of Man made all men equal, if it did not make them brothers, and within a week of its passing into law there were riots in Le Mans, and disturbances in Paris too, with the price of bread as high as it had been before, and unemployment rife. Bakers were blamed in every city for charging too dearly for their four-pound loaf, and they in turn put the blame upon the grain merchants; all men were at fault save those who leveled the accusations.

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