Monsieur, Madame, and Bebe -- V

he first symptom of virility, the first serious step

She looks with tearful eyes at the petticoat laid aside for ever, and murmurs to herself, "Infancy is over then? My part will soon become

the new garment, and says to himself; "How well he is put together, the rascal. He will have broad shoulders and strong loins like myself. How firmly his little feet tread the ground." Papa would like to see him in

past. How many men of position are there who do not experience similar inconvenience. He knows very well that breeches, like nobility, render certain things incumbent on their possessor, that he must now assume new ways, new gestures, a new tone of voice; he begins to scan out of the corner of

l 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 a

. And later on, when, an old veteran with a gray moustache, you take a fair companion to rejuve

low, for one's whole life is wrapped up in this precious garment. Existence is nothing more than putting

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

orning he coquettishly crushed in with a blow from his fist before putting it on. This young fellow is happy; amid the general din he can distinguish the echo of his own footsteps, and the ring of his bootheels sounds to him like the great bell of Notre Dame. In a few minutes h

reeches-I think

ivating logic, so much persuasive eloquence, in the sermon of Father Paul? Why did you weep on quitting the church, and embrace your husband as soon as you got home? You know better than I do, Madame, that it was because on that day you had put on for the first time that litt

same unreserved confidence; you left St. Thomas's with your head hot and your feet cold; and you so far forgot yourself as to say, as you got into your carriage, that Father Nicholas was a Gallican devoid of eloquence. Your coachman heard it. And, finally, on reaching home you thought your drawing-room

ate joyously. "What is the matter with my husband?" you asked yourself . . . . I will explain. Your husband spoke yesterday for the first time in the building, you know. He said- the sitting was a noisy one, the Left were threshing out some infernal questions-he said, during the height of the uproar, and rapping with his paper-knife on his desk: "But we can not hear!" And as these words were received on all sides with universal approbation and cries

, if you feel happier, if you are proud of yourself? To win a great victory or put on a

icates him, if, when he wears them, he thinks his shadow longer and the tre

rancis the First, of their perukes under Louis XIV, and later on of their appetites and stoutness. A man is proud of h