I love the baby that runs about under the trees of the Tuileries; I
love the pretty little fair-haired girls with nice white stockings and
unmanageable crinolines. I like to watch the tiny damsels decked out
like reliquaries, and already affecting coquettish and lackadaisical
ways. It seems to me that in each of them I can see thousands of
charming faults already peeping forth. But all these miniature men and
women, exchanging postage stamps and chattering of dress, have something
of the effect of adorable monstrosities on me.
I like them as I like a bunch of grapes in February, or a dish of green
peas in December.
In the babies’ kingdom, my friend, my favorite is the country baby,
running about in the dust on the highway barefoot and ragged, and
searching for black birds’ and chaffinches’ nests on the outskirts
of the woods. I love his great black wondering eye, which watches you
fixedly from between two locks of un combed hair, his firm flesh bronzed
by the sun, his swarthy forehead, hidden by his hair, his smudged face
and his picturesque breeches kept from falling off by the paternal
braces fastened to a metal button, the gift of a gendarme.
Ah! what fine breeches; not very long in the legs, but, then, what room
everywhere else! He could hide away entirely in this immense space which
allows a shirt-tail, escaping through a slit, to wave like a flag. These
breeches preserve a remembrance of all the garments of the family; here
is a piece of maternal petticoat, here a fragment of yellow waistcoat,
here a scrap of blue handkerchief; the whole sewn with a thread that
presents the twofold advantage of being seen from a distance, and of not
breaking.
But under these patched clothes you can make out a sturdy little
figure; and, besides, what matters the clothes? Country babies are not
coquettish; and when the coach comes down the hill with jingling bells
and they rush after it, stumbling over their neighbors, tumbling with
them in the dust, and rolling into the ditches, what would all these
dear little gamins do in silk stockings?
I love them thus because they are wild, taking alarm, and fleeing away
at your approach like the young rabbits you surprise in the morning
playing among the wild thyme. You must have recourse to a thousand
subterfuges in order to triumph over their alarm and gain their
confidence. But if at length, thanks to your prudence, you find yourself
in their company, at the outset play ceases, shouts and noise die away;
the little group remain motionless, scratching their heads, and all
their uneasy eyes look fixedly at you. This is the difficult moment.
A sharp word, a stern gesture, may cause an eternal misunderstanding
with them, just as a kind remark, a smile, a caress will soon accomplish
their conquest. And this conquest is worth the trouble, believe me.
One of my chief methods of winning them was as follows: I used to take
my watch out of my pocket and look at it attentively. Then I would see
my little people stretch their necks, open their eyes, and come a step
nearer; and it would often happen that the chickens, ducklings, and
geese, which were loitering close by in the grass, imitated their
comrades and drew near too. I then would put my watch to my ear and
smile like a man having a secret whispered to him. In presence of this
prodigy my youngsters could no longer restrain themselves, and would
exchange among themselves those keen, simple, timid, mocking looks,
which must have been seen to be understood. They advanced this time in
earnest, and if I offered to let the boldest listen, by holding out my
watch to him, he would draw back alarmed, although smiling, while the
band would break into an outburst of joy; the ducklings flapping their
wings, the white geese cackling, and the chickens going chk, chk. The
game was won.
How many times have I not played this little farce, seated under a
willow on the banks of my little stream, which ripples over the white
stones, while the reeds bend tremblingly. The children would crowd round
me to hear the watch, and soon questions broke forth in chorus to an
accompaniment of laughter. They inspected my gaiters, rummaged in my
pockets and leant against my knees. The ducklings glided under my feet,
and the big geese tickled my back.
How enjoyable it is not to alarm creatures that tremble at everything. I
would not move for fear of interrupting their joy, and was like a child
who is building a house of cards and who has got to the third story. But
I marked all these happy little faces standing out against the blue sky;
I watched the rays of the sun stealing into the tangles of their fair
hair, or spreading in a patch of gold on their little brown necks; I
followed their gestures full of awkwardness and grace; I sat down on the
grass to be the nearer to them; and if an unfortunate chicken came to
grief, between two daisies, I quickly stretched out my arm and replaced
it on its legs.
I assure you that they were all grateful. If one loves these little
people at all, there is one thing that strikes you when you watch them
closely. Ducklings dabbling along the edge of the water or turning head
over heels in their feeding trough, young shoots thrusting forth their
tender little leaves above ground, little chickens running along before
their mother hen, or little men staggering among the grass-all these
little creatures resemble one another. They are the babies of the great
mother Nature; they have common laws, a common physiognomy; they have
something inexplicable about them which is at once comic and graceful,
awkward and tender, and which makes them loved at once; they are
relations, friends, comrades, under the same flag. This pink and white
flag, let us salute it as it passes, old graybeards that we are. It is
blessed, and is called childhood.
All babies are round, yielding, weak, timid, and soft to the touch as
a handful of wadding. Protected by cushions of good rosy flesh or by a
coating of soft down, they go rolling, staggering, dragging along
their little unaccustomed feet, shaking in the air their plump hands
or featherless wing. See them stretched haphazard in the sun without
distinction of species, swelling themselves with milk or meal, and dare
to say that they are not alike. Who knows whether all these children of
nature have not a common point of departure, if they are not brothers of
the same origin?
Since men with green spectacles have existed, they have amused
themselves with ticketing the creatures of this world. These latter are
arranged, divided into categories and classified, as though by a careful
apothecary who wants everything about him in order. It is no slight
matter to stow away each one in the drawer that suits him, and I have
heard that certain subjects still remain on the counter owing to their
belonging to two show-cases at once.
And what proves to me, indeed, that these cases exist? What is there to
assure me that the whole world is not one family, the members of which
only differ by trifles which we are pleased to regard as everything?
Have you fully established the fact of these drawers and compartments?
Have you seen the bars of these imaginary cages in which you imprison
kingdoms and species? Are there not infinite varieties which escape
your analysis, and are, as it were, the unknown links uniting all the
particles of the animated world? Why say, “For these eternity, for those
annihilation?”
Why say, “This is the slave, that is the sovereign?” Strange boldness
for men who are ignorant of almost everything!
Man, animal or plant, the creature vibrates, suffers or enjoys--exists
and encloses in itself the trace of the same mystery. What assures me
that this mystery, which is everywhere the same, is not the sign of a
similar relationship, is not the sign of a great law of which we are
ignorant?
I am dreaming, you will say. And what does science do herself when she
reaches that supreme point at which magnifying glasses become obscure
and compasses powerless? It dreams, too; it supposes. Let us, too,
suppose that the tree is a man, rough skinned dreamy and silent, who
loves, too, after his fashion and vibrates to his very roots when some
evening a warm breeze, laden with the scents of the plain, blows through
his green locks and overwhelms him with kisses. No, I do not accept
the hypothesis of a world made for us. Childish pride, which would be
ridiculous did not its very simplicity lend it something poetic, alone
inspires it. Man is but one of the links of an immense chain, of the two
ends of which we are ignorant. [See Mark Twain’s essay: ‘What is Man.’
D.W.]
Is it not consoling to fancy that we are not an isolated power to which
the remainder of the world serves as a pedestal, that one is not a
licensed destroyer, a poor, fragile tyrant, whom arbitrary decrees
protect, but a necessary note of an infinite harmony? To fancy that the
law of life is the same in the immensity of space and irradiates worlds
as it irradiates cities and as it irradiates ant-hills. To fancy that
each vibration in ourselves is the echo of another vibration. To fancy a
sole principle, a primordial axiom, to think the universe envelops us
as a mother clasps her child in her two arms; and say to one’s self, “I
belong to it and it to me; it would cease to be without me. I should
not exist without it.” To see, in short, only the divine unity of laws,
which could not be nonexistent, where others have only seen a ruling
fancy or an individual caprice.
It is a dream. Perhaps so, but I have often dreamed it when watching the
village children rolling on the fresh grass among the ducklings.