“We were not shaking our fists at you,” replied the angered ones, “but at that calf.”

“Ah! you know him then?” returned Vivier.  “I was not aware of it.”

In time Vivier’s calf became the subject of a legend, according to which the animal (still in Vivier’s apartments) grew to be an ox, and so annoyed the neighbours by his lowing that; the proprietor of the house insisted on its being sent away.  Vivier told him to come; and take it, when it was found that the calf of other days had grown to such a size that it was impossible to get it downstairs.

MONSIEUR SYLVESTRE BONNARD:  A CONFESSION
[Sidenote:  Anatole France, translated by Lafcadio Hearn]

I can see once more, with astonishing vividness, a certain doll which, when I was eight years old, used to be displayed in the window of an ugly little shop of the Rue de la Seine.  I was very proud of being a boy; I despised little girls; and I longed impatiently for the day (which, alas! has come) when a strong white beard should bristle on my chin.  I played at being a soldier; and, under the pretext of obtaining forage for my rocking-horse, I used to make sad havoc among the plants my poor mother used to keep on her window-sill.  Manly amusements those, I should say! and nevertheless, I was consumed with longing for a doll.  Characters like Hercules have such weaknesses occasionally.  Was the one I had fallen in love with at all beautiful?  No.  I can see her now.  She had a splotch of vermilion on either cheek, short soft arms, horrible wooden hands, and long sprawling legs.  Her flowered petticoat was fastened at the waist with two pins.  It was a decidedly vulgar doll—­smelt of the faubourg.  I remember perfectly well that, even child as I was then, before I had put on my first pair of trousers, I was quite conscious in my own way that this doll lacked grace and style—­that she was gross, that she was coarse.  But I loved her in spite of that; I loved her just for that; I loved her only; I wanted her.  My soldiers and my drums had become as nothing in my eyes.  I ceased to stick sprigs of heliotrope and veronica into the mouth of my rocking-horse.  That doll was all the world to me.  I invented ruses worthy of a savage to oblige Virginie, my nurse, to take me by the little shop in the Rue de la Seine.  I would press my nose against the window until my nurse had to take my arm and drag me away.  “Monsieur Sylvestre, it is late, and your mamma will scold you.”  Monsieur Sylvestre in those days made very little of either scoldings or whippings.  But his nurse lifted him up like a feather, and Monsieur Sylvestre yielded to force.  In after years, with age, he degenerated, and sometimes yielded to fear.  But at that time he used to fear nothing.

I was unhappy.  An unreasoning but irresistible shame prevented me from telling my mother about the object of my love.  Thence all my sufferings.  For many days that doll, incessantly present in fancy, danced before my eyes, stared at me fixedly, opened her arms to me, assuming in my imagination a sort of life which made her appear at once mysterious and weird, and thereby all the more charming and desirable.