hich would have amused him, murmured to my mother: "Just
tell me again that line of yours which always comforts me so much on
these occasions. Oh, yes:

What virtues, Lord, Thou makest us abhor!

Good, that is, very good."

I never took my eyes off my mother. I knew that when they were at table
I should not be permitted to stay there for the whole of dinner-time,
and that Mamma, for fear of annoying my father, would not allow me to
give her in public the series of kisses that she would have had in my
room. And so I promised myself that in the dining-room, as they began
to eat and drink and as I felt the hour approach, I would put beforehand
into this kiss, which was bound to be so brief and stealthy in
execution, everything that my own efforts could put into it: would
look out very carefully first the exact spot on her cheek where I would
imprint it, and would so prepare my thoughts that I might be able,
thanks to these mental preliminaries, to consecrate the whole of the
minute Mamma would allow me to the sensation of her cheek against my
lips, as a painter who can have his subject for short sittings only
prepares his palette, and from what he remembers and from rough notes
does in advance everything which he possibly can do in the sitter's
absence. But to-night, before the dinner-bell had sounded, my
grandfather said with unconscious cruelty: "The little man looks tired;
he'd better go up to bed. Besides, we are dining late to-night."

And my father, who was less scrupulous than my grandmother or mother in
observing the letter of a treaty, went on: "Yes, run along; to bed with
you."

I would have kissed Mamma then and there, but at that moment the
dinner-bell rang.

"No, no, leave your mother alone. You've said good night quite enough.
These exhibitions are absurd. Go on upstairs."

And so I must set forth without viaticum; must climb each step of the
staircase 'against my heart,' as the saying is, climbing in opposition
to my heart's desire, which was to return to my mother, since she had
not, by her kiss, given my heart leave to accompany me forth. That
hateful staircase, up which I always passed with such dismay, gave out
a smell of varnish which had to some extent absorbed, made definite and
fixed the special quality of sorrow that I felt each evening, and made
it perhaps even more cruel to my sensibility because, when it assumed
this olfactory guise, my intellect was powerless to resist it. When we
hav