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"Mother Love" 
Cara Soror, 
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. 
You enthusiastically remark that the love of the mother 
for the off-spring is something that no man can understand: 
and you appear to prize it! 
Well, some men have had a jolly good shot at it, notably 
Emile Zola. The Usher goes into the corridor, and calls that 
name in strident and stentorian tones. In he waddles, the 
squat, obese, bespectacled, studious Jew, with the most 
devastating of all his thunderbolts under his arm-La Terre, 
and so what? 
La Terre to him is indeed the mother of all men, sole 
source of our essential nourishment, the earth to which we 
are all bound in chains by our inexorable bodies, our 
ineluctable need of life-and death. 
Sublime the thesis? What does he make of it? Theme No. I 
in the first chapter: rural love. How exquisite, how delicate, 
first flush of dawn upon the glowing meadows! The young 
man who is courting is not idle, either; he serves great Nature 
in yet other ways. He is taking a prize cow to be "served": on 
him depend our milk, cheese, butter veal and beef. He also 
contributes to our Wienerschnitzel Holstein, our Filet de 
Boeuf a la Robespierre, our Sole au Gratin and our oeufs a la 
Neige. 
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