It was not much certainly, and the amendment may have been carried all
the same, but after all it was a step; a triumph, to tell the truth,
since your husband has from day to day put off the delivery of his maiden
speech. Behold a happy deputy, a deputy who has just--put on his first
pair of breeches.

What matter whether the reason be a serious or a futile one, if your
blood flows faster, if you feel happier, if you are proud of yourself?
To win a great victory or put on a new bonnet, what matters it if this
new bonnet gives you the same joy as a laurel crown?

Therefore do not laugh too much at baby if his first pair of breeches
intoxicates him, if, when he wears them, he thinks his shadow longer and
the trees less high. He is beginning his career as a man, dear child,
nothing more.

How many things have not people been proud of since the beginning of the
world? They were proud of their noses under Francis the First, of their
perukes under Louis XIV, and later on of their appetites and stoutness.
A man is proud of his wife, his idleness, his wit, his stupidity, the
beard on his chin, the cravat round his neck, the hump on his back.




CHAPTER XXX

COUNTRY CHILDREN

I love the baby that runs about under the trees of the Tuileries; I love