arms to me; you see I do not know much as yet, I have only just
arrived, but, already, I think of you, I am one of the family, I shall
eat at your table, and bear your name, pa-pa, pa-pa."

He has discovered at once the most delicate of flatteries, the sweetest
of caresses. He enters on life by a master stroke.

Ah! the dear little love! "Pa-pa, pa-pa," I still hear his faint,
hesitating voice, I can still see his two coral lips open and close.
We were all in a circle around him, kneeling down to be on a level with
him. They kept saying to him, "Say it again, dear, say it again. Where
is papa?" And he, amused by all these people about him, stretched out
his arms, and turned his eyes toward me.

I kissed him heartily, and felt that two big tears hindered me from
speaking.

From that moment I was a papa in earnest. I was christened.

CHAPTER XXVIII. BABIES AND PAPAS

When the baby reaches three or four years of age, when his sex shows
itself in his actions, his tastes and his eyes, when he smashes his
wooden horses, cuts open his drums, blows trumpets, breaks the castors
off the furniture, and evinces a decided hostility to crockery; in a
word, when he is a man, it is then that the affection of a father for
his son becomes love. He feels himself invaded by a need of a special
fondness, of which the sweetest recollections of his past life can give
no idea. A deep sentiment envelopes his heart, the countless roots of
which sink into it in all directions. Defects or qualities penetrate
and feed on this sentiment. Thus, we find in paternal love all the
weaknesses and all the greatnesses of humanity. Vanity, abnegation,
pride, and disinterestedness are united together, and man in his
entirety appears in the papa.

It is on the day which the child becomes a mirror in which you recognize
your features, that the heart is moved and awakens. Existence becomes
duplicated, you are no longer one, but one and a half; you feel your
importance increase, and, in the future of the little creature who
belongs to you, you reconstruct your own past; you resuscitate, and are
born again in him. You say to yourself: "I will spare him such and such
a vexation which I had to suffer, I will clear from his path such and
such a stone over which I stumbled, I will make him happy, and he
shall owe all to me; he shall be, thanks to me, full of talents and
attractions." You give him, in advance, all that you did not get
yourself, and in hi