Nature must be allowed to take her course.
Whatever nature does she does well." And in surprise my lips repeated this lie, while my eyes were fixed upon the frail, innocent woman who was a prey to stupendous nature, which crushed her, rolled her in her blood, and exacted all the suffering from her that she could yield.
The midwife turned up her sleeves and put on her rubber gloves.

She waved her enormous reddish-black, glistening hands like Indian clubs.
And all this turned into a nightmare in which I half believed.

My head grew heavy and I was sickened by the smell of blood and carbolic acid poured out by the bottleful.
At a moment when I, feeling too harrowed, was not looking, I heard a cry different from hers, a cry that was scarcely more than the sound of a moving object, a light grating.

It was the new being that had unloosened itself, as yet a mere morsel of flesh taken from her flesh-- her heart which had just been torn away from her.
This shook me to the depths of my being.

I, who had witnessed everything that human beings undergo, I, at this first signal of human life, felt some paternal and fraternal chord--I do not know what-- vibrating within me.
She laughed.