The great desire in a child is to become a man. But the first symptom
of virility, the first serious step taken in life, is marked by the
assumption of breeches.
This first breeching is an event that papa desires and mamma dreads. It
seems to the mother that it is the beginning of her being forsaken.
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 a
small one. He will have fresh tastes, new wishes; he is no longer only
myself, his personality is asserting itself; he is some ones boy.”
The father, on the contrary, is delighted. He laughs in his moustache to
see the little arching calves peeping out beneath the trousers; he feels
the little body, the outline of which can be clearly made out under
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
jackboots; for a trifle he would buy him spurs. He begins to see himself
in this little one sprung from him; he looks at him in a fresh light,
and, for the first time, he finds a great charm in calling him “my boy.”
As to the baby, he is intoxicated, proud, triumphant, although somewhat
embarrassed as to his arms and legs, and, be it said, without any wish
to offend him, greatly resembling those little poodles we see freshly
shaven on the approach of summer. What greatly disturbed the poor little
fellow is 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 his eye the movements of his papa, who is by no
means ill pleased at this: he clumsily essays a masculine gesture or
two; and this struggle between his past and his present gives him for
some time the most comical air in the world. His petticoats haunt him,
and really he is angry that it is so.
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
only babies grown big.
See the young barrister walking up and down the lobby of the courts.
He is freshly shaven: in the folds of his new gown he hides a pile of
documents, and on his head, in which a world of thought is stirring,
is a fine advocate’s coif, which he bought yesterday, and which this
morning 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 he
will find an excuse for descending the great staircase, and crossing the
courtyard in costume. You may be sure that he will not disrobe except
to go to dinner. What joy in these five yards of black stuff; what
happiness in this ugly bit of cloth stretched over stiff cardboard!
First pair of breeches--I think I recognize you.
And you, Madame, with what happiness do you renew each season the
enjoyment caused by new clothes? Do not say, I beg of you, that such
enjoyments are secondary ones, for their influence is positive upon
your nature and your character. Why, I ask you, did you find so much
captivating 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 little yellow
bonnet, which is a gem, I acknowledge, and which makes you look twice
as pretty. These impressions can scarcely be explained, but they are
invincible. There may be a trifle of childishness in it all, you will
admit, but it is a childishness that can not be got rid of.
As a proof of it, the other day, going to St. Thomas’s to hear Father
Nicholas, who is one of our shining lights, you experienced totally
different sentiments; a general feeling of discontent and doubt and
nervous irritability at every sentence of the preacher. Your soul did
not soar heavenward with the 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 too small and
your husband growing too fat. Why, I again ask you, this string of
vexatious impressions? If you remember rightly, dear Madame, you wore
for the first time the day before yesterday that horrible little violet
bonnet, which is such a disgusting failure. First pair of breeches, dear
Madame.
Would you like a final example? Observe your husband. Yesterday he went
out in a bad temper--he had breakfasted badly--and lo! in the evening,
at a quarter to seven, he came home from the Chamber joyful and
well-pleased, a smile on his lips, and good-humor in his eye. He kissed
you on the forehead with a certain unconstraint, threw a number of
pamphlets and papers with an easy gesture on the sidetable, sat down to
table, found the soup delicious, and 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 of “Hear, hear!” he gave his thoughts a more parliamentary
expression by adding: “The voice of the honorable gentleman who
is speaking does not reach us.” 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.