The doors were well closed, the curtains carefully drawn. Baby hoisted
himself on to his tall chair and stretched out his neck for his napkin to
be tied round it, exclaiming at the same time with his hands in the air:
"Nice cabbage soup." And, smiling to myself, I said: "The youngster has
all my tastes."

Mamma soon came, and cheerfully pulling off her tight gloves: "There,
sir, I think, is something that you are very fond of," she said to me.

It was a pheasant day, and instinctively I turned round a little to catch
a glimpse on the sideboard of a dusty bottle of my old Chambertin.
Pheasant and Chambertin! Providence created them for one another and my
wife has never separated them.

"Ah! my children, how comfortable you are here," said I, and every one
burst out laughing. Poor gendarmes! poor doctor!

Yes, yes, I am very fond of the autumn, and my darling boy liked it as
well as I did, not only on account of the pleasure there is in gathering
round a fine large fire, but also on account of the squalls themselves,
the wind and the dead leaves. There is a charm in braving them. How
many times we have both gone out for a walk through the country despite
cold and threatening clouds. We were wrapped up and shod with thick
boots; I took his hand and we started off at haphazard. He was five
years old then and trotted along like a little man. Heavens! it is
five-and-twenty years ago. We went up the narrow lane strewn with damp
black leaves; the tall gray poplars stripped of their foliage allowed a
view of the horizon, and we could see in the distance, under a violet sky
streaked with cold and yellowish bands, the low thatched roofs and the
red chimneys from which issued little bluish clouds blown away by the