at me! Like the horse that scents the stable, I hasten my pace as
I near my lodgings. There it is--that great human hive, in which
I have a cell, for the purpose of therein distilling the somewhat
acrid honey of erudition. I climb the stairs with slow effort.
Only a few steps more, and I shall be at my own door. But I divine,
rather than see, a robe descending with a sound of rustling silk.
I stop, and press myself against the balustrade to make room. The
lady who is coming down is bareheaded; shi is young; she sings; her
eyes and teeth gleam in the shadow, for she laughs with lips and
eyes at the same time. She is certainly a neighbor, and a very
familiar one. She holds in her arms a pretty child, a little boy--
quite naked, like the son of a goddess; he has a medal hung round
his neck by a little silver chain. I see him sucking his thumb and
looking at me with those big eyes so newly opened on this old universe.
The mother simultaneously looks at me in a sly, mysterious way; she
stops--I think blushes a little--and holds out the little creature
to me. The baby has a pretty wrinkle between wrist and arm, a pretty
wrinkle about his neck, and all over him, from head to foot, the
daintiest dimples laugh in his rosy flesh.

The mamma shows him to me with pride.

"Monsieur," she says, "don't you think he is very pretty--my little
boy?"

She takes one tiny hand, lifts it to the child's own lips, and,
drawing out the darling pink fingers again towards me, says,

"Baby, throw the gentleman a kiss."