excerpt from "vain beauty"

She replied in a sincere and convincing manner: "If I had not done so, I should have had four more children in the last six years!"

And he exclaimed, "Can a mother speak like that?"

"Oh!" she replied, "I do not at all feel that I am the mother of children who have never been born, it is enough for me to be the mother of those that I have, and to love them with all my heart. I am--we are--women who belong to the civilized world, Monsieur, and we are no longer, and we refuse to be, mere females who restock the earth."