I told myself that he would be yours—your child, Monique, much more than mine. He would inherit from you not only the fortune so long missing from Woroïno (and while a fortune, my dear, does not give happiness, it often makes it possible) but also your lovely, calm gestures, your intelligence, and that radiant smile which greets us in French paintings. At least I hoped this would be the case. With some blind feeling of duty I had made myself responsible for his life, which ran considerable risk of not being happy since he was my son, and my only saving grace had been to give him an admirable mother. Nevertheless, I told myself that he was a Géra, that he belonged to that family in which the members passed on, as if they were precious jewels, thoughts so ancient that no one has them any more, like gilded sleighs and court carriages. He was descended, like me, from Polish, Podolian, and Bohemian ancestors. He would have their passions, their sudden depressions, their taste for sadness and bizarre pleasures, all their fate together with my own. For we come from a very curious race, where madness and melancholy alternate from century to century like black eyes and blue eyes. Daniel and I have blue eyes. The child was sleeping now in the cradle placed next to the bed, and the lamps which had been put on the table illuminated things indistinctly, including the family portraits, which one usually does not notice since one has seen them so often. But now these portraits ceased to be a presence and became an apparition. Thus, the will those ancestral figures expressed had been realized: our marriage had produced a child. By means of him, this ancient race would prolong itself into the future, and it was now of little importance whether my own existence continued. I no longer interested the dead, and I in turn could disappear, die, or else begin again to live.