me. In both cases there is the
same necessity of idealization, the same tendency to personify the
unknown. And it may be said that between Punch and Jupiter, Mother
Hubbard and Venus, there is only a hair's breadth.

CHAPTER XXIX

HIS FIRST BREECHES

The great desire in a child is to become a man. But the first symptom of
virility, the first serious step taken in life, is marked by the
assumption of breeches.

This first breeching is an event that papa desires and mamma dreads. It
seems to the mother that it is the beginning of her being forsaken. She
looks with tearful eyes at the petticoat laid aside for ever, and murmurs
to herself, "Infancy is over then? My part will soon become a small one.
He will have fresh tastes, new wishes; he is no longer only myself, his
personality is asserting itself; he is some ones boy."

The father, on the contrary, is delighted. He laughs in his moustache to
see the little arching calves peeping out beneath the trousers; he feels
the little body, the outline of which can be clearly made out under the
new garment, and says to himself; "How well he is put together, the
rascal. He will have broad shoulders and strong loins like myself. How
firmly his little feet tread the ground." Papa would like to see him in
jackboots; for a trifle he would buy him spurs. He begins to see himself
in this little one sprung from him; he looks at him in a fresh light,
and, for the first time, he finds a great charm in calling him "my boy."

As to the baby, he is intoxicated, proud, triumphant, although somewhat
embarrassed as to his arms and legs, and, be it said, without any wish to
offend him, greatly resembling those little poodles we see freshly shaven
on the approach of summer. What greatly disturbed the poor little fellow
is past. How many men of position are there who do not experience similar
inconvenience. He knows very well that breeches, like nobility, render
certain things incumbent on their possessor, that he must now assume new
ways, new gestures, a new tone of voice; he begins to scan out of the
corner of his eye the movements of his papa, who is by no means ill
pleased at this: he clumsily essays a masculine gesture or two; and this
struggle between his past and his present gives him for some time the
most comical air in the world. His petticoats haunt him, and really he is
angry that it is so.

Dear first pair of breeches! I love you, because you are a faithful
friend, and I