Here especially is one which I cannot forbear
stopping to look at. What I chiefly delight to contemplate there is a
decanter with lemonade in it. The decanter reflects in miniature on its
polished sides the trees around it and the women that pass by and the
skies. It has a lemon on the top of it which gives it a sort of oriental
air. However, it is not its shape nor its colour that is the attraction
in my eyes; I cannot keep my gaze from it because it reminds me of
my childhood. At the sight of it, innumerable delightful scenes come
thronging into my memory. Once again do I behold those shining hours,
those hours divine of early childhood. Ah, what would I not give to be
again the little boy of those days and to drink once more a glass of
that precious liquid!

[Illustration: 024]

In that little shop, I find once more, besides the lemonade and the
gooseberry syrup, all those divers things wherein my childhood took
delight. Here be whips, trumpets, swords, guns, cartridge-pouches,
belts, scabbards, sabretaches, all those magic toys which, from five
to nine years old, made me feel that I was fulfilling the destiny of
a Napoleon. I played that mighty role, in my tenpenny soldier's kit,
I played it from start to finish, bating only Waterloo and the years of
exile. For, mark you, I was always the victor. Here, too, are coloured
prints from Epinal. It was on them that I began to spell out those signs
which to the learned reveal a few faint traces of the Mighty Riddle.
Yes, the sorriest little coloured daub that ever came out of a village
in the Vosges consists of print and pictures, and what is the sum and
substance of Science after all but just pictures and print?

From those Epinal prints I learned things far finer and more useful
than anything I ever got from the little grammar and history books my
schoolmasters gave me to pore over. Epinal prints, you see, are stories,
and stories are mirrors of destiny. Blessed is the child that is brought
up on fairy-tales. His riper years should prove rich in wisdom and
imagination. And see! here is my own favourite story _The Blue Bird_. I
know him by his outspread tail. 'Tis he right enough. It is as much as
I can do to prevent myself flinging my arms round the old shop-woman's
neck and kissing her flabby cheeks. The Blue Bird, ah me, what a debt
I owe him! If I have ever wrought any good in my life, it is all due to
him. Whenever we were drafting a Bill with our Chief, the memor