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+Project Gutenberg’s Child Life In Town And Country, by Anatole France
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Child Life In Town And Country
+       1909
+
+Author: Anatole France
+
+Translator: Alfred Allinson
+
+Release Date: May 9, 2008 [EBook #25408]
+Last Updated: October 5, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHILD LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MERRIE TALES OF JACQUES TOURNEBROCHE
+
+AND CHILD LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
+
+By Anatole France
+
+John Lane Company, MCMXIX
+
+Copyright 1909
+
+John Lane Company
+
+
+
+
+
+CHILD LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
+
+
+
+
+FANCHON
+
+[Illustration: 164]
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+FANCHON went early one morning, like Little Red Riding-Hood, to see
+her grandmother, who lives right at the other end of the village. But
+Fanchon did not stop like little Red Riding-Hood, to gather nuts in the
+wood. She went straight on her way and she did not meet the wolf. From
+a long way off she saw her grandmother sitting on the stone step at her
+cottage door, a smile on her toothless mouth and her arms, as dry and
+knotty as an old vine-stock, open to welcome her little granddaughter.
+It rejoices Fanchon’s heart to spend a whole day with her grandmother;
+and her grandmother, whose trials and troubles are all over and who
+lives as happy as a cricket in the warm chimney-corner, is rejoiced too
+to see her son’s little girl, the picture of her own childhood.
+
+They have many things to tell each other, for one of them is coming back
+from the journey of life which the other is setting out on.
+
+“You grow a bigger girl every day,” says the old grandmother to Fanchon,
+“and every day I get smaller; I scarcely need now to stoop at all to
+touch your forehead. What matters my great age when I can see the roses
+of my girlhood blooming again in your cheeks, my pretty Fanchon?”
+
+But Fanchon asked to be told again--for the hundredth time--all about
+the glittering paper flowers under the glass shade, the coloured
+pictures where our Generals in brilliant uniforms are overthrowing their
+enemies, the gilt cups, some of which have lost their handles, while
+others have kept theirs, and grandfather’s gun that hangs above the
+chimney-piece from the nail where he put it up himself for the last
+time, thirty years ago.
+
+But time flies, and the hour is come to get ready the midday dinner.
+Fanchon’s grandmother stirs up the drowsy fire; then she breaks the eggs
+on the black earthenware platter. Fanchon is deeply interested in the
+bacon omelette as she watches it browning and sputtering over the fire.
+There is no one in the world like her grandmother for making omelettes
+and telling pretty stories. Fanchon sits on the settle, her chin on
+a level with the table, to eat the steaming omelette and drink the
+sparkling cider. But her grandmother eats her dinner, from force of
+habit, standing at the fireside. She holds her knife in her right hand,
+and in the other a crust of bread with her toothsome morsel on it. When
+both have done eating:
+
+“Grandmother,” says Fanchon, “tell me the ‘Blue Bird.’”
+
+And her grandmother tells Fanchon how, by the spite of a bad fairy, a
+beautiful Prince was changed into a sky-blue bird, and of the grief the
+Princess felt when she heard of the transformation and saw her love fly
+all bleeding to the window of the Tower where she was shut up.
+
+Fanchon thinks and thinks.
+
+“Grandmother,” she says at last, “is it a great while ago the Blue Bird
+flew to the Tower where the Princess was shut up?”
+
+Her grandmother tells her it was many a long day since, in the times
+when the animals used to talk.
+
+“You were young then?” asks Fanchon.
+
+“I was not yet born,” the old woman tells her.
+
+And Fanchon says:
+
+“So, grandmother, there were things in the world even before you were
+born?”
+
+And when their talk is done, her grandmother gives Fanchon an apple with
+a hunch of bread and bids her:
+
+“Run away, little one; go and play and eat your apple in the garden.”
+
+And Fanchon goes into the garden, where there are trees and grass and
+flowers and birds.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+[Illustration: 168]
+
+HER grandmother’s garden was full of grass and flowers and trees, and
+Fanchon thought it was the prettiest garden in all the world. By this
+time she had pulled out her pocket-knife to cut her bread with, as they
+do in the village. First she munched her apple, then she began upon her
+bread. Presently a little bird came fluttering past her. Then a second
+came, and a third. Soon ten, twenty, thirty were crowding round Fanchon.
+There were grey birds, and red, there were yellow birds, and green, and
+blue. And all were pretty and they all sang. At first Fanchon could not
+think what they wanted. But she soon saw they were asking for bread and
+that they were little beggars. Yes, they were beggars, but they were
+singers as well. Fanchon was too kind-hearted to refuse bread to any one
+who paid for it with songs.
+
+She was a little country girl, and she did not know that once long ago,
+in a country where white cliffs of marble are washed by the blue sea,
+a blind old man earned his daily bread by singing the shepherds’ songs
+which the learned still admire to-day. But her heart laughed to hear the
+little birds, and she tossed them crumbs that never reached the ground,
+for the birds always caught them in the air.
+
+Fanchon saw that the birds were not all the same in character. Some
+would stand in a ring round her feet waiting for the crumbs to fall
+into their beaks. These were philosophers. Others again she could see
+circling nimbly on the wing all about her. She even noticed one little
+thief that darted in and pecked shamelessly at her own slice.
+
+She broke the bread and threw crumbs to them all; but all could not get
+some to eat. Fanchon found that the boldest and cleverest left nothing
+for the others.
+
+“That is not fair,” she told them; “each of you ought to take his proper
+turn.”
+
+But they never heeded; nobody ever does, when you talk of fairness and
+justice. She tried every way to favour the weak and hearten the timid;
+but she could make nothing of it, and do what she would, she fed the big
+fat birds at the expense of the thin ones. This made her sorry; she was
+such a simple child she did not know it is the way of the world.
+
+Crumb by crumb, the bread all went down the little singers’ throats. And
+Fanchon went back very happy to her grandmother’s house.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+[Illustration: 171]
+
+WHEN night fell, her grandmother took the basket in which Fanchon had
+brought her a cake, filled it with apples and grapes, hung it on the
+child’s arm, and said: “Now, Fanchon, go straight back home, without
+stopping to play with the village ragamuffins. Be a good girl always.
+Goodbye.”
+
+Then she kissed her. But Fanchon stood thinking at the door.
+
+“Grandmother?” she said. “What is it, little Fanchon?” “I should like to
+know,” said Fanchon, “if there are any beautiful Princes among the birds
+that ate up my bread.”
+
+“Now that there are no more fairies,” her grandmother told her, “the
+birds are all birds and nothing else.”
+
+“Good-bye, grandmother.”
+
+“Good-bye, Fanchon.”
+
+And Fanchon set off across the meadows for her home, the chimneys
+of which she could see smoking a long way off against the red sky of
+sunset.
+
+On the road she met Antoine, the gardener’s little boy. He asked her:
+
+“Will you come and play with me, Fanchon?”
+
+But she answered:
+
+“I won’t stop to play with you, because my grandmother told me not to.
+But I will give you an apple, because I love you very much.”
+
+Antoine took the apple and kissed the little girl.
+
+They loved each other fondly.
+
+He called her his little wife, and she called him her little husband.
+
+As she went on her way, stepping soberly along like a staid, grown-up
+person, she heard behind her a merry twittering of birds, and turning
+round to look, she saw they were the same little pensioners she had fed
+when they were hungry. They came flying after her.
+
+“Good night, little friends,” she called to them, “good night! It’s
+bedtime now, so good night!”
+
+And the winged songsters answered her with little cries that mean “God
+keep you!” in bird language.
+
+So Fanchon came back to her mother’s to the sound of sweet music in the
+air.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+[Illustration: 174]
+
+FANCHON lay down in the dark in her little bed, which a carpenter in
+the village had made long ago of walnut-wood and carved a light railing
+alongside. The good old man had been resting years and years now under
+the shadow of the church, in a grass-grown bed; for Fanchon’s cot had
+been her grandfather’s when he was a little lad, and he had slept where
+she sleeps now. A curtain of pink-sprigged cotton protects her slumbers;
+she sleeps, and in her dreams she sees the Blue Bird flying to his
+sweetheart’s Castle. She thinks he is as beautiful as a star, but she
+never expects him to come and light on her shoulder. She knows _she_
+is not a Princess, and no Prince changed into a blue bird will come to
+visit her. She tells herself that all birds are not Princes; that the
+birds of her village are villagers, and that there might be one perhaps
+found amongst them, a little country lad changed into a sparrow by a
+bad fairy and wearing in his heart under his brown feathers the love of
+little Fanchon. Yes, if _he_ came and she knew him, she would give him
+not bread crumbs only, but cake and kisses. She would so like to see
+him, and lo! she sees him; he comes and perches on her shoulder. He is
+a jack-sparrow, only a common sparrow. He has nothing rich or rare about
+him, but he looks alert and lively. To tell the truth, he is a little
+torn and tattered; he lacks a feather in his tail; he has lost it in
+battle--unless it was through some bad fairy of the village. Fanchon has
+her suspicions he is a naughty bird. But she is a girl, and she does not
+mind her jack-sparrow being a trifle headstrong, if only he has a kind
+heart. She pets him and calls him pretty names. Suddenly he begins to
+grow bigger; his body gets longer; his wings turn into two arms; he is
+a boy, and Fanchon knows who he is--Antoine, the gardener’s little lad,
+who asks her:
+
+“Shall we go and play together, shall we, Fanchon?”
+
+She claps her hands for joy, and away she goes.... But suddenly she
+wakes and rubs her eyes. Her sparrow is gone, and so is Antoine! She is
+all alone in her little room. The dawn, peeping in between the flowered
+curtains, throws a white, innocent light over her cot. She can hear
+the birds singing in the garden. She jumps out of bed in her little
+nightgown and opens the window; she looks out into the garden, which
+is gay with flowers--roses, geraniums, and convolvulus--and spies her
+little pensioners, her little musicians, of yesterday. There they all
+sit in a row on the garden-fence, singing her a morning hymn to pay her
+for their crumbs of bread.
+
+
+
+
+THE FANCY-DRESS BALL
+
+[Illustration: 177]
+
+HERE we have little boys who are conquering heroes and little girls who
+are heroines. Here we have shepherdesses in hoops and wreaths of roses
+and shepherds in satin coats, who carry crooks tied with knots of
+riband. Oh! what white, pretty sheep they must be these shepherds tend!
+Here are Alexander the Great and Zaire, and Pyrrhus and Merope, Mahomet,
+Harlequin, Pierrot, Scapin, Blaise and Babette. They have come from all
+parts, from Greece and Rome and the lands of Faëry, to dance together.
+What a fine thing a fancy ball is, and how delicious to be a great
+King for an hour or a famous Princess! There is nothing to spoil
+the pleasure. No need to act up to your costume, nor even to talk in
+character.
+
+It would be poor fun, mind you, to wear heroes’ clothes if you had to
+have a hero’s heart as well. Heroes’ hearts are torn with all sorts of
+sorrows. They are most of them famous for their calamities. If they had
+lived happy, we should never have heard of them. Merope had no wish to
+dance. Pyrrhus was cruelly slain by Orestes just when he was going to
+wed, and the innocent Zaire perished by the hand of her lover the Turk,
+philosophical Turk though he was. As for Blaise and Babette, the song
+says they suffer fond regrets that go on forever.
+
+Why speak of Pierrot and Scapin? You know as well as I do they were
+scamps, and got their ears pulled more than once. No! glory costs too
+dear, even Harlequin’s. On the contrary, it is very agreeable to be
+little boys and girls, and have the look of being great personages.
+That is why there is no pleasure to compare with a fancy ball, when the
+dresses are splendid enough. Only to wear them makes you feel brave.
+Then think how proud and pretty all your little friends are with their
+feathers and mantles; how gallant and gay and noble they look, and how
+like the fine folks of olden times.
+
+In the gallery, where you cannot see them, the musicians, with sad,
+gentle faces, are tuning up their fiddles. A stately quadrille lies open
+on their stands. They are going to attack the old-fashioned piece. At
+the first notes our heroes and masks will lead off the dance.
+
+
+
+
+THE SCHOOL
+
+[Illustration: 180]
+
+I PROCLAIM Mademoiselle Genseigne’s school the best girls’ school in the
+world. I declare miscreants and slanderers any who shall think or say
+the contrary. Mademoiselle Genseigne’s pupils are all well-behaved and
+industrious, and there is no pleasanter sight to see than all their
+small figures sitting so still, and all the heads in a straight row.
+They look like so many little bottles into which Mademoiselle Gen-seigne
+is busy pouring useful knowledge.
+
+Mademoiselle Genseigne sits very upright at her high desk. She has
+a gentle, serious face; her neatly braided hair and her black tippet
+inspire respect and sympathy.
+
+Mademoiselle Genseigne, who is very clever, is teaching her little
+pupils cyphering.
+
+She says to Rose Benoit:
+
+“Rose Benoit, if I take four from twelve, what have I left?”
+
+“Four?” answers Rose Benoît.
+
+Mademoiselle Genseigne is not satisfied with the answer.
+
+“And you, Emmeline Capel, if I take four from twelve, how much have I
+left?”
+
+“Eight,” Emmeline Capel answers.
+
+“You hear, Rose Benoît, I have eight left,” insists Mademoiselle
+Genseigne.
+
+Rose Benoît falls into a brown study. Mademoiselle Genseigne has eight
+left, she is told, but she has no notion if it is eight hats or eight
+handkerchiefs, or possibly eight apples or eight feathers. The doubt has
+long tormented her. She can make nothing of arithmetic.
+
+On the other hand, she is very wise in Scripture History. Mademoiselle
+Genseigne has not another pupil who can describe the Garden of Eden or
+Noah’s Ark as Rose Benoît can. Rose Benoît knows every flower in the
+Garden and all the animals in the Ark. She knows as many fairy tales as
+Mademoiselle Genseigne herself. She knows all the fables of the Fox and
+the Crow, the Donkey and the Little Dog, the Cock and the Hen, and what
+they said to each other. She is not at all surprised to hear that the
+animals used once to talk. The wonder would be if some one told her they
+don’t talk now. She is quite sure she understands what her big dog
+Tom says and her little canary Chirp. She is quite right; animals have
+always talked, and they talk still; but they only talk to their
+friends. Rose Benoît loves them and they love her, and that is why she
+understands what they say. To understand each other there is nothing
+like loving one another.
+
+To-day Rose Benoît has said her lessons without a mistake. She has won
+a good mark. Emmeline Capel has a good mark, too, for knowing her
+arithmetic lesson so well.
+
+On coming out of school, she told her mother she had a good mark. Then
+she asked her:
+
+“A good mark, mother, what’s the use of it?”
+
+“A good mark is of no use,” Emmeline’s mother answered; “that is the
+very reason why we should be proud to get one. You will find out one
+day, my child, that the rewards most highly esteemed are just those that
+bring honour without profit.”
+
+
+
+
+MARIE
+
+[Illustration: 184]
+
+LITTLE girls long to pluck flowers and stars--it is their nature to. But
+stars will not be plucked, and the lesson they teach little girls
+is, that in this world there are longings that are never satisfied.
+Mademoiselle Marie has gone into the park, where she came upon a bed of
+hydrangeas; she saw how pretty the flowers were and that made her gather
+one. It was very difficult; she dragged with both hands, and very nearly
+tumbled over backwards when the stalk broke. She is pleased and proud
+at what she has done. But nurse has seen her. She runs up, snatches at
+Mademoiselle Marie’s arm, scolds her, and sets her to stand and repent,
+not in the black closet, but at the foot of a great chestnut, under the
+shade of a huge Japanese umbrella.
+
+There Mademoiselle Marie sits and thinks, in great surprise and
+perplexity. Her flower in one hand and the umbrella making a bright halo
+round her, she looks like a little idol from overseas.
+
+Nurse has told her: “Marie, you must not put that flower in your mouth.
+If you do it when I tell you not, your little dog Toto will come and eat
+up your ears.” And with these terrible words she walks away.
+
+The young culprit, sitting quite still under her brilliant canopy, looks
+about her and gazes at earth and sky. It is a big world she sees, big
+enough and beautiful enough to amuse a little girl for some while.
+But her hydrangea blossom is more interesting than all the rest put
+together. She thinks to herself: “It is a flower; it must smell good?”
+ And she puts her nose to the pretty pink and blue ball; she sniffs, but
+she cannot smell anything. She is not very good at scenting perfume; it
+is only a short while since she always used to blow at a rose instead of
+inhaling its odour. You must not laugh at her for that; one cannot learn
+everything at once.
+
+Besides, if she had as keen a sense of smell as her mother, she would be
+no better off in this case. A hydrangea _has_ no scent; that is why
+we get tired of it, for all its loveliness. But now Mademoiselle Marie
+begins to think: “Perhaps it’s made of sugar, this flower.” Then she
+opens her mouth very wide and is just going to lift the flower to her
+lips.
+
+But suddenly, _yap!_ goes her little dog. It is Toto, who comes bounding
+over a geranium bed and comes to a stand right in front of Mademoiselle
+Marie, with his ears cocked straight up, and stares hard at her out of
+his sharp little round eyes.
+
+
+
+
+THE PANDEAN PIPES
+
+[Illustration: 182]
+
+THREE children of the same village, Pierre, Jacques, and Jean, stand
+staring, side by side in a row, where they look for all the world like
+a mouth-organ or Pandean Pipes, only with three pipes instead of seven.
+Pierre, to the left, is a tall lad; Jean, to the right, is a short
+child; Jacques, who is betwixt the two, may call himself tall _or_
+short, according as he looks at his left-hand or his right-hand
+neighbour. It is a situation I would beg you to ponder, for it is
+your own, and mine, and everybody else’s. Each one of us is just like
+Jacques, and deems himself great or small according as his neighbours’
+inches are many or few.
+
+That is the reason why it is true to say that Jacques is neither tall
+nor short, and why it is also true to say he is tall _and_ he is short.
+He is what God chooses him to be. For us, he is the middle reed of our
+living Pandean Pipes.
+
+But what is he doing, and what are his two comrades doing? They are
+staring, staring hard, all three. What at? At something that has
+disappeared in the distance, something that has vanished out of
+sight; yet they can see it still, and their eyes are dazzled with its
+splendours. It makes little Jean clean forget his eel-skin whiplash and
+the peg-top he has always been so fond of keeping for ever spinning with
+it in the dusty roads. Pierre and Jacques stand stolidly, their hands
+behind their backs.
+
+What is the wonderful sight that has bewildered all three? A pedlar’s
+cart, a handcart; they had seen it stop in the village street.
+
+Then the pedlar drew back his oil-cloth covering, and all, men, women,
+and children, feasted their eyes on knives, scissors, popguns, jumping
+Jacks, wooden soldiers and lead soldiers, bottles of scent, cakes of
+soap, coloured pictures, and a thousand other splendid objects. The
+servant-wenches from the farm and the mill turned pale with longing;
+Pierre and Jacques flushed red with delight. Little Jean put out his
+tongue at it all. Everything the barrow held seemed to them rich and
+rare. But what they coveted most of all were those mysterious articles
+whose meaning and use they could make nothing of. For instance, there
+were polished globes like mirrors that reflected their feces with the
+features ludicrously distorted. There were Epinal wares with figures in
+impossibly vivid colours; there were little cases and boxes with nobody
+knows what inside.
+
+The women made purchases of muslins and laces by the yard, and the
+pedlar rolled the black oil-cloth cover back again over the treasures
+of his barrow. Then, pulling at the collar, he hauled off his load after
+him along the highroad. And now barrow and barrow-man have disappeared
+below the horizon.
+
+
+
+
+ROGER’S STUD
+
+[Illustration: 190]
+
+IT is a great anxiety keeping a stud. The horse is a delicate animal and
+needs a lot of looking after. Just ask Roger if it does n’t!
+
+He is busy now grooming his noble chestnut, which would be the pearl of
+wooden horses, the flower of the Black Forest stud-farms, if only he had
+not lost half his tail in battle. Roger would so like to know whether
+wooden horses’ tails grow again.
+
+After rubbing them down in fancy, Roger gives his horses an imaginary
+feed of oats. That is the proper way to feed these elfin creatures of
+wood on whose backs little boys gallop through the land of dreams.
+
+Now Roger is off for his ride, mounted on his mettled charger. The poor
+beast has no ears left and his mane is all notched like an old broken
+comb; but Roger loves him. Why it would be hard to say! This bay was
+the gift of a poor man; and the presents of the poor are somehow sweeter
+perhaps than any others.
+
+Roger is off. He has ridden far. The flowers of the carpet are the
+blossoms of the tropical forest. Good luck to you, little Roger! May
+your hobby-horse carry you happily through the world! May you never have
+a more dangerous mount! Small and great, we all ride ours! Which of us
+has not his hobby?
+
+Men’s hobbies gallop like mad things along the roads of life; one is
+chasing glory, another pleasure; many leap over precipices and break
+their rider’s neck. I wish you luck, little Roger, and I hope, when
+you are a man, you will bestride two hobbies that will always carry you
+along the right road; one is spirited, the other gentle-tempered; they
+are both noble steeds; one is called Courage and the other Kindness.
+
+
+
+
+COURAGE
+
+[Illustration: 192]
+
+LOUISON and Frédéric are off to school along the village street. The
+sun shines gaily and the two children are singing. They sing like the
+nightingale, because their hearts are light like his. They sing an old
+song their grandmothers sang when they were little girls, a song their
+children’s children will sing one day; for songs are tender flowers that
+never die, they fly from lip to lip down the ages. The lips fade and
+fall silent one after the other, but the song lives on for ever. There
+are songs come down to us from the days when the men were shepherds
+and all the women shepherdesses. That is the reason why they speak of
+nothing but sheep and wolves.
+
+Louison and Frédéric sing; their mouths are as round as a flower and the
+song rises shrill and thin and clear in the morning air.
+
+But listen! suddenly the notes stick in Frederic’s throat.
+
+What unseen power is it has strangled the music on the boy’s lips? It is
+fear. Every day, as sure as fate, he comes upon the butcher’s dog at the
+end of the village street, and every day his heart seems to stop and his
+legs begin to shake at the sight. Yet the butcher’s dog does not fly at
+him, or even threaten to. He sits peaceably at his master’s shop-door.
+But he is black, and he has a staring bloodshot eye and shows a row of
+sharp white teeth. He looks frightful. And then he squats there in the
+middle of bits of meat and offal and all sorts of horrors--which makes
+him more terrifying still. Of course it is n’t his fault, but he is
+the presiding genius. Yes, a savage brute, the butcher’s dog! So, the
+instant Frédéric catches sight of the beast before the shop, he picks up
+a big stone, as he sees grown-up men do to keep off bad-tempered curs,
+and he slinks past close, close under the opposite wall.
+
+That is how he behaved this time; and Louison laughed at him.
+
+She did not make any of those daredevil speeches one generally caps with
+others more reckless still. No, she never said a word; she never stopped
+singing. But she altered her voice and began singing on such a mocking
+note that Frédéric reddened to his very ears. Then his little head began
+to buzz with many thoughts. He learned that we must dread shame even
+more than danger. And he was afraid of being afraid.
+
+So, when school was over and he saw the butcher’s dog, he marched
+undauntedly past the astonished animal.
+
+History adds that he kept a corner of his eye on Louison to see if
+she was looking. It is a true saying that, if there were no dames nor
+damsels in the world, men would be less courageous.
+
+
+
+
+CATHERINE’S “AT HOME”
+
+[Illustration: 195]
+
+IT is five o’clock. Mademoiselle Catherine is “at home” to her dolls.
+It is her “day.” The dolls do not talk; the little Genie that gave them
+their smile did not vouchsafe the gift of speech. He refused it for the
+general good; if dolls could talk, we should hear nobody but them. Still
+there is no lack of conversation. Mademoiselle Catherine talks for her
+guests as well as for herself; she asks questions and gives the answers.
+
+“How do you do?--Very well, thank you. I broke my arm yesterday
+morning going to buy cakes. But it’s quite well now.--Ah! so much the
+better.--And how is your little girl?--She has the whooping-cough.--Ah!
+what a pity! Does she cough much?--Oh! no, it ‘s a whooping-cough where
+there’s no cough. You know I had two more children last week.--Really?
+that makes four doesn’t it?--Four or five, I’ve forgotten which. When
+you have so many, you get confused.--What a pretty frock you
+have.--Oh! I ‘ve got far prettier ones still at home.--Do you go to
+the theatre?--Yes, every evening. I was at the Opera yesterday; but
+Polichinelle wasn’t playing, because the wolf had eaten him.--I go to
+dances every day, my dear.--It is so amusing.--Yes, I wear a blue gown
+and dance with the young men, Generals, Princes, Confectioners, all the
+most distinguished people.--You look as pretty as an angel to-day, my
+dear.--Oh! it’s the spring.--Yes, but what a pity it’s snowing.--_I_
+love the snow, because it’s white.--Oh! there’s black snow, you
+know.--Yes, but that’s the bad snow.” There’s fine conversation for you;
+Mademoiselle Catherine’s tongue goes nineteen to the dozen. Still I have
+one fault to find with her; she talks all the time to the same visitor,
+who is pretty and wears a fine frock.
+
+There she is wrong. A good hostess is equally gracious to all her
+guests. She treats them all with affability, and if she shows any
+particular preference, it is to the more retiring and the less
+prosperous. We should flatter the unhappy; it is the only flattery
+allowable. But Catherine has discovered this for herself. She has
+guessed the secret of true politeness: a kind heart is everything. She
+pours out tea for the company, and forgets nobody. On the contrary, she
+presses the dolls that are poor and unhappy and shy to help themselves
+to invisible cakes and sandwiches made of dominoes.
+
+Some day Catherine will hold a salon where the old French courtesy will
+live again.
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE SEA-DOGS
+
+[Illustration: 198]
+
+THEY are sailor boys, regular little sea-dogs. Look at them; they have
+their caps pulled down over their ears so that the gale blowing in from
+the sea and bringing the spindrift with it may not deafen them with its
+dreadful howling. They wear heavy woollen clothes to keep out the cold
+and wet. Their patched pea-jacket and breeches have been their elders’
+before them. Most of their garments have been contrived out of old
+things of their father’s. Their soul is likewise of the same stuff as
+their father’s; it is simple, brave, and long-suffering. At birth they
+inherited a single-hearted, noble temper. Who and what gave it them?
+After God and their parents, the Sea. The Sea teaches sailors courage by
+teaching them to face danger. It is a rough but kindly instructor.
+
+That is why our little sailor-boys, though their hearts are childlike
+still, have the spirit of gallant veterans. Elbows on the parapet of the
+sea-wall, they gaze out into the offing. It is more than the blue line
+marking the faint division between sea and sky that they see. Their eyes
+care little for the soft, changing colours of the ocean or the vast,
+contorted masses of the clouds. What they see, as they look seawards,
+is something more moving than the hue of the waves or the shape of the
+clouds; it is a suggestion of human love. They are spying for the boats
+that sailed away for the fishing; presently they will loom again on the
+horizon, laden with shrimp to the gunwales, and bringing home uncles
+and big brothers and fathers. The little fleet will soon appear yonder
+betwixt the ocean and God’s sky with its white or brown sails. To-day
+the sky is unclouded, the sea calm; the flood tide floats the fishers
+gently to the shore. But the Ocean is a capricious old fellow, who takes
+all shapes and sings in many voices. To-day he laughs; to-morrow he will
+be growling in the night under his beard of foam. He shipwrecks the most
+handy boats, though they have been blessed by the Priest to the chanting
+of the _Te Deum_; he drowns the most skilful master mariners, and it is
+all his fault you see in the village, before the cottage doors where
+the nets hang to dry beside the fish-creels, so many women wearing black
+widow’s weeds.
+
+
+
+
+GETTING WELL
+
+[Illustration: 201]
+
+GERMAINE is ill. Nobody knows how it began. The arm which sows fever is
+invisible like the dustman’s hand, the old fellow who comes every night
+and makes the little ones so sleepy. But Germaine was not ill very
+long and she was not very bad, and now she is getting well again. This
+getting well is even pleasanter than being quite well, which comes next.
+In the same way hoping and wishing are better, very often, than anything
+we wish for or hope for. Germaine lies in bed in her pretty, bright
+room, and her dreams are as bright-coloured as her room.
+
+She looks, a little languidly still, at her doll, which sleeps beside
+her own bed. There are sympathies that go deep between little girls and
+their dolls. Germaine’s doll fell ill at the same time as her little
+mamma, and now she is getting well with her. She will take her first
+carriage outing sitting by Germaine’s side.
+
+She has seen the doctor too. Alfred came to feel the doll’s pulse. He is
+Doctor “As-bad-as-can-be.” He talks of nothing but cutting off arms and
+legs. But Germaine asked him so earnestly that he agreed to cure her
+dolly without slashing it to pieces. But he prescribed the nastiest
+medicines.
+
+Illness has one advantage at any rate; it makes us know our friends.
+Germaine is sure now she can count on Alfred’s goodness; she is certain
+Lucie is the best of sisters. All the nine days her illness lasted,
+Lucie came to learn her lessons and do her sewing in the sick room. She
+insists on bringing the little patient her herb-tea herself. And it is
+not a bitter potion, such as Alfred ordered; no, it is balmy with the
+scent of wild flowers.
+
+When she smells its perfume, Germaine’s thoughts fly to the flowery
+mountain paths, the haunt of children and bees, where she played so
+often last year. Alfred too remembers the beautiful ways, and the woods,
+and the springs, and the mules that climbed up and up on the brink of
+precipices with a sound of tinkling bells.
+
+
+
+
+ACROSS THE MEADOWS
+
+[Illustration: 204]
+
+AFTER breakfast Catherine! started off to the meadows with her little
+brother Jean. When they set out, the day seemed as young and fresh as
+they were. The sky was not altogether blue; it was grey rather, but of a
+tenderer grey than any blue. Catherine’s eyes are just the same grey, as
+if made out of a bit of morning sky.
+
+Catherine and Jean wander all by themselves through the fields.
+Their mother is a farmer’s wife and is at work at home. They have no
+nurse-maid to take them, and they don’t need one. They know their way,
+and all the woods and fields and hills. Catherine can tell the time by
+looking at the sun, and she has guessed all sorts of pretty secrets of
+Nature that town-bred children have no suspicion of. Little Jean himself
+understands a great many things about the woods, the pools, and the
+mountains, for his little soul is a country soul.
+
+Catherine and Jean go roaming through the flowery meadows. As they go,
+Catherine gathers a nosegay. She picks blue centauries, scarlet poppies,
+cuckoo-flowers, and buttercups, which she also knows as _little chicks_.
+She picks those pretty purple blossoms that grow in hedgerows and are
+called Venus’ looking-glasses. She picks the dark ears of the milkwort,
+and crane’s-bill and lily of the valley, whose tiny white bells shed
+a delicious perfume at the least puff of wind. Catherine loves flowers
+because they are beautiful; and she loves them too because they make
+such pretty ornaments. She is very simply dressed, and her pretty hair
+is hid under a brown linen cap. She wears a cotton check pinafore over
+her plain frock, and goes in wooden shoes. She has never seen rich
+dresses except on the Virgin Mary and the St. Catherine in the parish
+church. But there are some things little girls know directly they are
+born. Catherine knows that flowers are becoming to wear, and that pretty
+ladies who pin nosegays in their bosoms look lovelier than ever. So she
+has a notion she must be very fine indeed now, carrying a nosegay
+bigger than her own head. Her thoughts are as bright and fragrant as her
+flowers. They are thoughts that cannot be put into words; there are no
+words pretty enough. It wants song tunes for that, the liveliest and
+softest airs, the sweetest songs. So Catherine sings, as she gathers her
+nosegay: “Away to the woods alone” and “My heart is for him, my heart is
+for him.”
+
+Little Jean is of another temper. He follows another line of ideas. He
+is a broth of a boy, he is; Jean is not breeched yet, but his spirit is
+beyond his years and there’s no more rollicking blade than he. While
+he grips his sister’s pinafore with one hand, for fear of tumbling,
+he shakes his whip in the other like a sturdy lad. His father’s head
+stableman can hardly crack his any better when he meets his sweetheart,
+bringing home the horses from watering at the river. Little Jean is
+lulled by no soft reveries. He never heeds the field flowers. The
+games he dreams of are stiff jobs of work. His thoughts dwell on wagons
+stogged in the mire and big carthorses hauling at the collar at his
+voice and under his lash.
+
+Catherine and Jean have climbed above the meadows, up the hill, to a
+high ground from which you can make out all the chimneys of the village
+dotted among the trees and in the far distance the steeples of six
+parishes. Then you see what a big place the world is. Then Catherine can
+better understand the stories she has been taught,--the dove from the
+Ark, the Israelites in the Promised Land, and Jesus going from city to
+city.
+
+“Let’s sit down there,” she says.
+
+Down she sits, and, opening her hands, she sheds her flowery harvest
+all over her. She is all fragrant with blossoms, and in a moment the
+butterflies come fluttering round her. She picks and chooses and matches
+her flowers; she weaves them into garlands and wreaths, and hangs
+flower-bells in her ears; she is decked out now like the rustic image of
+a Holy Virgin the shepherds venerate. Her little brother Jean, who has
+been busy all this while driving a team of imaginary horses, sees her
+in all this bravery. Instantly he is filled with admiration. A religious
+awe penetrates all his childish soul. He stops, and the whip falls from
+his fingers. He feels that she is beautiful and all smothered in lovely
+flowers. He tries in vain to say all this in his soft, indistinct
+speech. But she has guessed. Little Catherine is his big sister, and a
+big sister is a little mother; she foresees, she guesses; she has the
+sacred instinct.
+
+“Yes, darling,” cries Catherine, “I am going to make you a beautiful
+wreath, and you will look like a little king.”
+
+And so she twines together the white flowers, the yellow flowers, and
+the red flowers, into a chaplet. She puts it on little Jean’s head, and
+he flushes with pride and pleasure. She kisses her little brother, lifts
+him in her arms and plants him, all garlanded with blossoms, on a big
+stone. Then she looks at him admiringly, because he is beautiful and
+_she_ has made him so.
+
+And standing there on his rustic pedestal, little Jean knows he is
+beautiful, and the thought fills him with a deep respect for himself. He
+feels he is something holy. Very upright and still, with round eyes and
+tight-drawn lips, arms by his side with the palms open and the fingers
+parted like the spokes of a wheel, he tastes a pious joy to be an
+idol--he is sure he is an idol now. The sky is overhead, the woods
+and fields lie at his feet. He is the hub of the universe. He alone is
+great, he alone is beautiful.
+
+But suddenly Catherine breaks into a laugh. She shouts:
+
+“Oh! how funny you look, little Jean! how funny you do look!”
+
+She runs up and throws her arms round him, she kisses him and shakes
+him; the heavy wreath of flowers slips down over his nose. And she
+laughs again:
+
+“Oh! how funny he looks! how very funny!”
+
+But it is no laughing matter for little Jean. He is sad and sorry,
+wondering why it is all over and he has left off being beautiful. It
+hurts to come down to earth again!
+
+Now the wreath is unwound and tossed on the grass, and little Jean is
+like anybody else once more. Yes, he has left off being beautiful. But
+he is still a sturdy young scamp. He soon has his whip in hand again and
+now he is hauling his team of six, the six big carthorses of his dreams,
+out of that rut. Catherine is still playing with her flowers. But some
+of them are dying. Others are closing in sleep. For the flowers go to
+sleep like the animals, and look! the campanulas, plucked a few hours
+ago, are shutting their purple bells and sinking asleep in the little
+hands that have parted them from life.
+
+A light breeze blows by, and Catherine shivers. It is night coming.
+
+“I am hungry,” says little Jean.
+
+But Catherine has not a bit of bread to give her little brother. She
+says:
+
+“Little brother, let ‘s go back to the house.”
+
+And they both think of the cabbage soup steaming in the pot that hangs
+from the hook right under the great chimney. Catherine gathers her
+flowers in her arm and taking her little brother by the hand, she leads
+him homewards.
+
+The sun sank slowly down to the ruddy West. The swallows swooped past
+the two children, almost touching them with their wings, that hardly
+seemed to move. It was getting dark. Catherine and Jean pressed closer
+together.
+
+Catherine dropped her flowers one after the other by the way. They could
+hear, in the wide silence, the untiring chirp-chirp of the crickets.
+They were afraid, both of them, and they were sad; the melancholy of
+nightfall had entered into their little hearts. All round them was
+familiar ground, but the things they knew the best looked strange and
+uncanny. The earth seemed suddenly to have grown too big and too old for
+them. They were tired, and they began to think they would never reach
+the house, where mother was making the soup for all the family. Jean’s
+whip hung limp and still, and Catherine let the last of her flowers
+slip from her tired fingers. She was dragging Jean along by the arm, and
+neither said a word.
+
+At last they saw a long way off the roof of their house and smoke rising
+in the darkening sky. Then they stopped running, and clapping their
+hands together, shouted for joy. Catherine kissed her little brother;
+then they set off running again as fast as ever their weary legs would
+carry them. When they reached the village, there were women coming back
+from the fields who gave them good evening. They breathed again. Their
+mother was on the door-step, in a white cap, soup-ladle in hand.
+
+“Come along, little ones, come along!” she called to them. And they
+threw themselves into her arms. When she reached the parlour where the
+cabbage soup was smoking on the table, Catherine shivered again. She
+had seen night come down over the earth. Jean, seated on the settle, his
+chin on a level with the table, was already eating his soup.
+
+
+
+
+THE MARCH PAST
+
+[Illustration: 213]
+
+RENÉ, Bernard, Roger, Jacques, and Etienne feel sure there is nothing
+finer in the world than to be a soldier. Francine agrees with them
+and she would love to be a boy to join the army. They think so because
+soldiers wear fine uniforms, epaulettes and gold lace, and glittering
+swords. There is yet another reason for putting the soldier in the front
+rank of citizens--because he gives his life for his Country. There is no
+true greatness in this world but that of sacrifice, and to offer one’s
+life is the greatest of all sacrifices, because it includes all others.
+That is why the hearts of the crowd beat high when a regiment goes by.
+
+René is the General. He wears a cocked hat and rides a war-horse. The
+hat is made of paper and the horse is a chair. His army consists of a
+drummer and four men--of whom one is a girl! “Shoulder arms! Forward,
+march!” and the march past begins. Francine and Roger look quite
+imposing under arms. True, Jacques does not hold his gun very valiantly.
+He is a melancholy lad. But we must not blame him for that; dreamers
+can be just as brave as those who never dream at all. His little
+brother Etienne, the tiniest mite in the regiment, looks pensive. He is
+ambitious; he would like to be a general officer right away, and that
+makes him sad.
+
+“Forward! forward!” René shouts the order. “We are to fall on the
+Chinese, who are in the dining-room.” The Chinese are chairs. When you
+play at fighting, chairs make first-rate Chinese. They fall--and what
+better can the Chinese do? When all the chairs are feet in air, René
+announces: “Soldiers, now we have beaten the Chinese, we will have our
+rations.” The idea is well received on all hands. Yes, soldiers
+must eat. This time the Commissariat has furnished the best of
+victuals--buns, maids of honour, coffee cakes and chocolate cakes,
+red-currant syrup. The army falls to with a will. Only Etienne will eat
+nothing. He frowns and looks enviously at the sword and cocked hat which
+the General has left on a chair. He creeps up, snatches them, and slips
+into the next room. There he stands alone before the glass; he puts on
+the cocked hat and waves the sword; he is a general, a general
+without an army, a general all to himself. He tastes the pleasures of
+ambition--pleasures full of vague forecastings and long, long hopes.
+
+
+
+
+DEAD LEAVES
+
+[Illustration: 216]
+
+AUTUMN is here. The wind blowing through the woods whirls about the dead
+leaves. The chestnuts are stripped bare already and lift their black
+skeleton arms in the air. And now the beeches and hornbeams are shedding
+_their_ leaves. The birches and aspens are turned to trees of gold, and
+only the great oak keeps his coronal of green.
+
+The morning is fresh; a keen wind is chasing the clouds across a grey
+sky and reddening the youngsters’ fingers. Pierre, Babet, and Jeannot
+are off to collect the dead leaves, the leaves that once, when they were
+still alive, were full of dew and songs of birds, and which now strew
+the ground in thousands and thousands with their little shrivelled
+corpses. They are dead, but they smell good. They will make a fine
+litter for Riquette, the goat, and Roussette, the cow. Pierre has taken
+his big basket; he is quite a little man. Babet has her sack; she is
+quite a little woman. Jeannot comes last trundling the wheelbarrow.
+
+Down the hill they go at a run. At the edge of the wood they find the
+other village children, who are come too to lay in a store of dead
+leaves for the winter. It is not play, this; it is work.
+
+But never think the children are sad, because they are at work. Work is
+serious, yes; it is not sad. Very often the little ones mimic it in fun,
+and children’s games, most times, are copies of their elders’ workaday
+doings.
+
+Now they are hard at it. The boys do their part in silence. They are
+peasant lads, and will soon be men, and peasants do not talk much. But
+it is different with the little peasant girls; _their_ tongues go at a
+fine pace, as they fill the baskets and bags.
+
+But now the sun is climbing higher and warming the country pleasantly.
+From the cottage roofs rise light puffs of smoke. The children know what
+that means. The smoke tells them the pease-soup is cooking in the pot.
+One more armful of dead leaves, and the little workers will take the
+road home. It is a stiff climb. Bending under sacks or toiling behind
+barrows, they soon get hot, and the sweat comes out in beads. Pierre,
+Babet and Jeannot stop to take breath.
+
+But the thought of the pease-soup keeps up their courage. Puffing and
+blowing, they reach home at last. Their mother is waiting for them on
+the door-step and calls out: “Come along, children, the soup is ready.”
+
+Our little friends find this capital. There’s no soup so good as what
+you have worked for.
+
+
+
+
+SUZANNE
+
+[Illustration: 219]
+
+THE Louvre, as you know, is a museum where beautiful things and ancient
+things are kept safe--and this is wisely done, for old age and beauty
+are both alike venerable. Among the most touching of the antiquities
+treasured in the Louvre Museum is a fragment of marble, worn and cracked
+in many places, but on which can still be clearly made out two maidens
+holding each a flower in her hand. Both are beautiful figures; they were
+young when Greece was young. They say it was the age of perfect beauty.
+The sculptor who has left us their image represents them in profile,
+offering each other one of those lotus flowers that were deemed sacred.
+In the blue cups of their blossoms the world quaffed oblivion of the
+ills of life. Our men of learning have given much thought to these two
+maidens. They have turned over many books to find out about them, big
+books, bound some in parchment, others in vellum, and many in pig-skin;
+but they have never fathomed the reason why the two beautiful maidens
+hold up a flower in their hands.
+
+What they could not discover after so much labour and thought, so
+many arduous days and sleepless nights, Mademoiselle Suzanne knew in a
+moment.
+
+Her papa had taken her to the Louvre, where he had business.
+Mademoiselle Suzanne looked wonderingly at the antiques, and seeing gods
+with missing arms and legs and heads, she said to herself: “Ah! yes,
+these are the grown-up gentlemen’s dolls; I see now gentlemen break
+their dollies the same as little girls do.” But when she came to the two
+maidens who, each of them, hold a flower, she threw them a kiss, because
+they looked so charming. Then her father asked her: “Why do they give
+each other a flower?” And Suzanne answered at once: “To wish each other
+a happy birthday.” Then, after thinking a moment, she added:
+
+“They have the same birthday; they are both alike and they are offering
+each other the same flower. Girl friends should always have the same
+birthday.”
+
+Now Suzanne is far away from the Louvre and the old Greek marbles; she
+is in the kingdom of the birds and the flowers. She is spending the
+bright spring days in the meadows under shelter of the woods. She plays
+in the grass, and that is the sweetest sort of play. She remembers
+to-day is her little friend Jacqueline’s birthday; and so she is going
+to pick flowers which she will give Jacqueline, and kiss her.
+
+
+
+
+FISHING
+
+[Illustration: 222]
+
+JEAN set out betimes in the morning with his sister Jeanne, a
+fishing-pole over his shoulder and a basket on his arm. It is holiday
+time and the school is shut; that is why Jean goes off every day with
+his sister Jeanne, a rod over his shoulder and a basket on his arm,
+along the river bank. Jean is a Tourainer, and Jeanne a lass of
+Touraine. The river is Tourainer too. It runs crystal-clear between
+silvery sallows under a moist, mild sky. Morning and evening white mists
+trail over the grass of the water-meadows.’ But Jean and Jeanne love the
+river neither for the greenery of its banks nor its clear waters that
+mirror the heavens. They love it for the fish in it. They stop presently
+at the most likely place, and Jeanne sits down under a pollard
+willow. Laying down his baskets, Jean unwinds his tackle. This is very
+primitive--a switch, with a piece of thread and a bent pin at the end
+of it. Jean supplied the rod, Jeanne gave the line and the hook; so the
+tackle is the common property of brother and sister. Both want it all
+to themselves, and this simple contrivance, only meant to do mischief to
+the fishes, becomes the cause of domestic broils and a rain of blows by
+the peaceful riverside. Brother and sister fight for the free use of
+the rod and line. Jean’s arm is black and blue with pinches and Jeanne’s
+cheek scarlet from her brother’s slaps. At last, when they were tired of
+pinching and hitting, Jean and Jeanne consented to share amicably what
+neither could appropriate by force. They agreed that the rod should pass
+alternately from the brother’s hands to the sister’s after each fish
+they caught.
+
+Jean begins. But there’s no knowing when he will end. He does not break
+the treaty openly, but he shirks its consequences by a mean trick.
+Rather than have to hand over the tackle to his sister, he refuses to
+catch the fish that come, when they nibble the bait and set his float
+bobbing.
+
+Jean is artful; Jeanne is patient. She has been waiting six hours. But
+at last she seems tired of doing nothing. She yawns, stretches, lies
+down in the shade of the willow, and shuts her eyes. Jean spies her out
+of one corner of his, and he thinks she is asleep. The float dives.
+He whips out the line, at the end of which gleams a flash of silver. A
+gudgeon has taken the pin.
+
+“Ah! it’s my turn now,” cries a voice behind him.
+
+And Jeanne snatches the rod.
+
+
+
+
+THE PENALTIES OF GREATNESS
+
+[Illustration: 225]
+
+IT was to go and see their friend Jean that Roger, Marcel, Bernard,
+Jacques, and Etienne set out along the broad highroad that winds like a
+handsome yellow riband through the fields and meadows. Now they are off.
+They start all abreast; it is the best way. Only there is one defect in
+the arrangement this time; Etienne is too little to keep up.
+
+He tries hard and puts his best foot foremost. His short legs stretch
+their widest. He swings his arms into the bargain. But he is too little;
+he cannot go as fast as his companions. He falls behind because he is
+too small; it is no use.
+
+The big boys, who are older, should surely wait for him, you say, and
+suit their pace to his. So they should, but they don’t. Forward! cry the
+strong ones of this world, and they leave the weaklings in the lurch.
+But hear the end of the story. All of a sudden our four tall, strong,
+sturdy friends see something jumping on the ground. It jumps because
+it is a frog, and it wants to reach the meadow along the roadside. The
+meadow is froggy’s home, and he loves it; he has his residence there
+beside a brook. He jumps, and jumps.
+
+He is a green frog, and he looks like a leaf that is alive. Now the lads
+are in the meadow; very soon they feel their feet sinking in the soft
+ground where the rank grass grows. A few steps more, and they are up to
+their knees in mud. The grass hid a swamp underneath.
+
+They just manage to struggle out. Shoes, socks, calves are all as black
+as ink. The fairy of the green field has put gaiters of mire on the four
+bad boys.
+
+Etienne comes up panting for breath. He hardly knows, when he sees them
+in this pickle, if he should be glad or sorry. His simple little heart
+is filled with a sense of the catastrophes that befall the great and
+strong. As for the four muddy urchins, they turn back piteously the way
+they came, for how can they, I should like to know, how can they go and
+see their friend Jean with their shoes and stockings in this state? When
+they get home again, their mothers will know how naughty they have been
+by the evidence of their legs, while little Etienne’s innocence will be
+legible on his sturdy little stumps.
+
+
+
+
+A CHILD’S DINNER PARTY
+
+[Illustration: 228]
+
+WHAT fun it is playing at dinner parties! You can have a very plain
+dinner or a very elaborate one, just as you like. You can manage it with
+nothing at all. Only you have to pretend a great deal then.
+
+Thérèse and her little sister Pauline have asked Pierre and Marthe to
+a dinner in the country. Proper invitations have been issued, and they
+have been talking about it for days. Mamma has given her two little
+girls good advice--and good things to eat, too. There will be nougat
+and sweet cakes, and a chocolate cream. The table will be laid in the
+arbour.
+
+“If only it will be fine!” cries Thérèse, who is nine now. At her age
+one knows the fondest hopes are often disappointed in this world and you
+cannot always do what you propose. But little Pauline has none of these
+worries. She cannot think it will be wet. It will be fine, because she
+wants it to.
+
+And lo! the great day has broken clear and sunny. Not a cloud in the
+sky. The two guests have come. How fortunate! For this was another
+subject of anxiety for Thérèse. Marthe had caught a cold, and perhaps
+she would not be better in time. As for little Pierre, everybody knows
+he always misses the train. You cannot blame him for it. It is
+his misfortune, not his fault. His mother is unpunctual by nature.
+Everywhere and always little Pierre arrives after everybody else; he has
+never in his life seen the beginning of anything. This has given him a
+dull, resigned look.
+
+The dinner is served; ladies and gentlemen, take your places! Thérèse
+presides. She is thoughtful and serious; the housewifely instinct is
+awaking in her bosom. Pierre carves valiantly. Nose in the dish and
+elbows above his head, he struggles to divide the leg of a chicken. Why,
+his feet even take their part in the tremendous effort. Mademoiselle
+Marthe eats elegantly, without any ado or any noise, just like a
+grown-up lady. Pauline is not so particular; she eats how she can and as
+much as she can.
+
+Thérèse, now serving her guests, now one of them herself, is content;
+and contentment is better than joy. The little dog Gyp has come to eat
+up the scraps, and Thérèse thinks, as she watches him crunching the
+bones, that dogs know nothing of all the dainty ways that make grown-up
+dinners, and children’s too, so refined and delightful.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg’s Child Life In Town And Country, by Anatole France
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