haps, but she is red, and
positively ugly. She feels this keenly and cries. She weeps. Ah, my
God, how she weeps! Her cries and lamentations now are really
distressing.

Tears stream from her in floods. She feels deeply and copiously like
M. Alphonse de Lamartine in his Confessions.

If you are her mother, Madame, you will fancy worms; you will examine
her linen for pins, and what not. Ah, hypocrite! you, even YOU,
misunderstand her.

Yet she has charming natural impulses. See how she tosses her dimpled
arms. She looks longingly at her mother. She has a language of her
own. She says, "goo goo," and "ga ga."

She demands something--this infant!

She is faint, poor thing. She famishes. She wishes to be restored.
Restore her, Mother!

It is the first duty of a mother to restore her child!

III.

THE DOLL.

She is hardly able to walk; she already totters under the weight of a
doll.

It is a charming and elegant affair. It has pink cheeks and
purple-black hair. She prefers brunettes, for she has already, with
the quick knowledge of a French infant, perceived she is a blonde, and
that her doll cannot rival her. Mon Dieu, how touching! Happy child!
She spends hours in preparing its toilet. She begins to show her taste
in the exquisite details of its dress. She loves it madly, devotedly.
She will prefer it to bonbons. She already anticipates the wealth of
love she will hereafter pour out on her lover, her mother, her father,
and finally, perhaps, her husband.

This is the time the anxious parent will guide these first outpourings.
She will read her extracts from Michelet's L'Amour, Rousseau's Heloise,
and the Revue des deux Mondes.

IV.

THE MUD PIE.

She was in tears to-day.

She had stolen away from her bonne and was with some rustic infants.
They had noses in the air, and large, coarse hands and feet.

They had seated themselves around a pool in the road, and were
fashioning fantastic shapes in the clayey soil with their hands. Her
throat swelled and her eyes sparkled with delight as, for the first
time, her soft palms touched the plastic mud. She made a graceful and
lovely pie. She stuffed it with stones for almonds and plums. She
forgot everything. It was being baked in the solar rays, when madame
came and took her away.

She weeps. It is night, and she is weeping still.

V.

HER FIRST LOVE.

She no longer doubts her beauty. She is loved. She saw him secretly