your 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