not know, but it seems to
me that I can still see the boots of the dear little one placed there
on the mat beside my own, two grains of sand by two paving stones, a tom
tit beside an elephant. They were his every-day boots, his playfellows,
those with which he ascended sand hills and explored puddles. They were
devoted to him, and shared his existence so closely that something of
himself was met with again in them. I should have recognized them among
a thousand; they had an especial physiognomy about them; it seemed to
me that an invisible tie attached them to him, and I could not look at
their undecided shape, their comic and charming grace, without recalling
their little master, and acknowledging to myself that they resembled
him.

Everything belonging to a baby becomes a bit babyish itself, and assumes
that expression of unstudied and simple grace peculiar to a child.

Beside these laughing, gay, good-humored little boots, only asking
leave to run about the country, my own seemed monstrous, heavy, coarse,
ridiculous, with their heels. From their heavy and disabused air one
felt that for them life was a grave matter, its journeys long, and the
burden borne quite a serious one.

The contrast was striking, and the lesson deep. I would softly approach
these little boots in order not to wake the little man who was still
asleep in the adjoining room; I felt them, I turned them over, I looked
at them on all sides, and I found a delightful smile rise to my lips.
Never did the old violet-scented glove that lay for so long in the
inmost recess of my drawer procure me so sweet an emotion.

Paternal love is no trifle; it has its follies and weaknesses, it is
puerile and sublime, it can neither be analyzed nor explained, it is
simply felt, and I yielded myself to it with delight.

Let the papa without weakness cast the first stone at me; the mammas
will avenge me.

Remember that this little laced boot, with a hole in the toe, reminded
me of his plump little foot, and that a thousand recollections were
connected with that dear trifle.

I recalled him, dear child, as when I cut his toe nails, wriggling
about, pulling at my beard, and laughing in spite of himself, for he was
ticklish.

I recalled him as when of an evening in front of a good fire, I pulled
off his little socks. What a treat.

I would say "one, two." And he, clad in his long nightgown, his hands
lost in the sleeves, would wait with glittering eyes, and rea