“Poor little thing,” said the milkwoman; “he is left alone in the streets of Paris, where he can find no other father than the All-good God!”

“And that is why you make yourself a mother to them?” I replied, gently.

“What I do is little enough,” said Mother Denis, measuring out my milk; “but every day I get some of them together out of the street, that for once they may have enough to eat.  Dear children! their mothers will make up for it in heaven.  Not to mention that they recall my native mountains to me:  when they sing and dance, I seem to see our old father again.”

Here her eyes filled with tears.

“So you are repaid by your recollections for the good you do them?” resumed I.

“Yes! yes!” said she, “and by their happiness, too!  The laughter of these little ones, sir, is like a bird’s song; it makes you gay, and gives you heart to live.”

As she spoke she cut some fresh slices of bread and cheese, and added some apples and a handful of nuts to them.

“Come, my little dears,” she cried, “put these into your pockets against to-morrow.”

Then, turning to me: 

“To-day I am ruining myself,” added she; “but we must all have our Carnival.”

I came away without saying a word:  I was too much affected.

At last I have discovered what true pleasure is.  After beholding the egotism of sensuality and of intellect, I have found the happy self-sacrifice of goodness.  Pierre, M. Antoine, and Mother Denis had all kept their Carnival; but for the first two, it was only a feast for the senses or the mind; while for the third, it was a feast for the heart.

CHAPTER III

WHAT WE MAY LEARN BY LOOKING OUT OF WINDOW

March 3d

A poet has said that life is the dream of a shadow:  he would better have compared it to a night of fever!  What alternate fits of restlessness and sleep! what discomfort! what sudden starts! what ever-returning thirst! what a chaos of mournful and confused fancies!  We can neither sleep nor wake; we seek in vain for repose, and we stop short on the brink of action.  Two thirds of human existence are wasted in hesitation, and the last third in repenting.

When I say human existence, I mean my own!  We are so made that each of us regards himself as the mirror of the community:  what passes in our minds infallibly seems to us a history of the universe.  Every man is like the drunkard who reports an earthquake, because he feels himself staggering.

And why am I uncertain and restless—­I, a poor day-laborer in the world—­who fill an obscure station in a corner of it, and whose work it avails itself of, without heeding the workman?  I will tell you, my unseen friend, for whom these lines are written; my unknown brother, on whom the solitary call in sorrow; my imaginary confidant, to whom all monologues are addressed and who is but the shadow of our own conscience.