Dear first pair of breeches! I love you, because you are a faithful
friend, and I encounter at every step in life you and your train of sweet
sensations. Are you not the living image of the latest illusion caressed
by our vanity? You, young officer, who still measure your moustaches in
the glass, and who have just assumed for the first time the epaulette and
the gold belt, how did you feel when you went downstairs and heard the
scabbard of your sabre go clink-clank on the steps, when with your cap on
one side and your arm akimbo you found yourself in the street, and, an
irresistible impulse urging you on, you gazed at your figure reflected in
the chemist's bottles? Will you dare to say that you did not halt before
those bottles? First pair of breeches, lieutenant.

You will find them again, these breeches, when you are promoted to be
Captain and are decorated. And later on, when, an old veteran with a
gray moustache, you take a fair companion to rejuvenate you, you will
again put them on; but this time the dear creature will help you to wear
them.

And the day when you will no longer have anything more to do with them,
alas! that day you will be very low, for one's whole life is wrapped up
in this precious garment. Existence is nothing more than putting on our
first pair of breeches, taking them off, putting them on again, and dying
with eyes fixed on them.

Is it the truth that most of our joys have no more serious origin than
those of children? Are we then so simple? Ah! yes, my dear sir, we are
simple to this degree, that we do not think we are. We never quite get
rid of our swaddling clothes; do you see, there is always a little bit
sticking out? There is a baby in every one of us, or, rather, we are