And I waited.

“Buy a doll for a boy—­sacre bleu!” cried my uncle, in a voice of thunder.  “Do you wish to dishonour yourself?  And it is that old Mag there that you want!  Well, I must compliment you, my young fellow!  If you grow up with such tastes as that, you will never have any pleasure in life; and your comrades will call you a precious ninny.  If you asked me for a sword or a gun, my boy, I would buy them for you with the last silver crown of my pension.  But to buy a doll for you—­a thousand thunders!—­to disgrace you!  Never in the world!  Why, if I were even to see you playing with a puppet rigged out like that, monsieur, my sister’s son, I would disown you for my nephew!”

On hearing these words, I felt my heart so wrung that nothing but pride—­a diabolic pride—­kept me from crying.

My uncle, suddenly calming down, returned to his ideas about the Bourbons; but I, still smarting from the blow of his indignation, felt an unspeakable shame.  My resolve was quickly made.  I promised myself never to disgrace myself—­I firmly and for ever renounced that red-cheeked doll.

I felt that day, for the first time, the austere sweetness of sacrifice.

Captain, though it be true that all your life you swore like a pagan, smoked like a beadle, and drank like a bell-ringer, be your memory nevertheless honoured—­not merely because you were a brave soldier, but also because you revealed to your little nephew in petticoats the sentiment of heroism!  Pride and laziness had made you almost insupportable, O my Uncle Victor!—­but a great heart used to beat under those frogs upon your coat.  You always used to wear, I now remember, a rose in your button-hole.  That rose which you allowed, as I now have reason to believe, the shop-girls to pluck for you—­that, large, open-hearted flower, scattering its petals to all the winds, was the symbol of your glorious youth.  You despised neither absinthe nor tobacco; but you despised life.  Neither delicacy nor common sense could have been learned from you, captain; but you taught me, even at an age when my nurse had to wipe my nose, a lesson of honour and self-abnegation that I will never forget.

THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS
[Sidenote:  Dean Swift]

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

* * * * *

The latter part of a wise man’s life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former.

* * * * *

When a true genius appeareth in the world you may know him by this infallible sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

* * * * *

Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps as few know their own strength.  It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold, which the owner knows not of.