Gloria Victis! by Ossip Schubin

It was over, -- over and gone, -- sentence had been pronounced, -- her child's life was destroyed. This she repeated to herself again and again, without any clear comprehension of the fact, as she lay, still half-stunned, on the floor where she had sunk down when he left her. After a while she staggered to her feet, and began to move aimlessly to and fro, steadying herself at times by grasping a chair or table. At last she sank into a seat, her memory had given way; -- she asked herself the meaning of the dull weight at her heart, her eyes wandered vaguely around, her thoughts dazed by agony groped backward through the past, and forward through the future, finding no resting-place. She recalled her child's birth, and how every one rejoiced in it, except herself; when the doctor showed her the little thing as a perfect model of a baby, did she not thrust it from her impatiently? Farther back, beyond Oswald's birth, all light faded -- everything was dark. That within her which had sinned had been so long, so completely dead; a woman capable of such a lofty ideal, whom maternal affection had so entirely purified and refined, could not but lose all comprehension of her past.

All her inner life preceding the hours of Oswald's life, was to her mental consciousness misty and undefined; the birth of her child had revealed a new world to her, and though for years she had denied it, and had crushed down the mother in her, it was none the less true that after his birth she had no interest save her child. Urgent regard for her health prompted the physician to order that she should nourish the boy herself, if only for the first two months of his life; she obeyed him fretfully, eyeing the child suspiciously -- nay, well-nigh malignantly, -- when it was first placed in her arms, and then. then she enjoyed it, and longed for the hours when her baby was to be brought to her, and when the two months were over, and the physician informed her that she could now without detriment to her health hand over the child to a hired nurse, she was angry, and felt strangely vexed with the man, who after all had thought only to please her in relieving her of what he supposed was an intolerable burden. What was intolerable to her was the idea of laying her child on the breast of a stranger, and for an instant she was on the point of flatly refusing to do it. But no, that would have been too eccentric, and she gave the boy up.