“What luck you have!” said the doctor, holding the child toward me; “it is a boy.”

“A boy!”

“And a fine one.”

“Really, a boy!”

That was a matter of indifference to me now.  What was causing me indescribable emotion was the living proof of paternity, this little being who was my own.  I felt stupefied in presence of the great mystery of childbirth.  My wife was there, fainting, overcame, and the little living creature, my own flesh, my own blood, was squalling and gesticulating in the hands of Jacques.  I was overwhelmed, like a workman who had unconsciously produced a masterpiece.  I felt myself quite small in presence of this quivering piece of my own handiwork, and, frankly, a little bit ashamed of having made it so well almost without troubling about it.  I can not undertake to explain all this, I merely relate my impressions.

My mother-in-law held out her apron and the doctor placed the child on his grandmother’s knees, saying:  “Come, little savage, try not to be any worse than your rascal of a father.  Now for five minutes of emotion.  Come, Captain, embrace me.”

We did so heartily.  The doctor’s little black eyes twinkled more brightly than usual; I saw very well that he was moved.

“Did it make you feel queer, Captain?  I mean the cry?  Ah!  I know it, it is like a needle through the heart . . . .  Where is the nurse?  Ah! here she is.  No matter, he is a fine boy, your little lancer.  Open the door for the prisoners in the drawing-room.”

I opened the door.  Every one was listening on the other side of it.  My father, my two aunts, still holding in their hands, one her rosary and the other her Voltaire, my own nurse, poor old woman, who had come in a cab.

“Well,” they exclaimed anxiously, “well?”

“It is all over, it is a boy; go in, he is there.”

You can not imagine how happy I was to see on all their faces the reflection of my own emotion.  They embraced me and shook hands with me, and I responded to all these marks of affection without exactly knowing where they came from.

“Damn it all!” muttered my father, in my ear, holding me in his arms, with his stick still in his hand and his hat on his head, “Damn it all!”

But he could not finish, however brave he might wish to appear; a big tear was glittering at the tip of his nose.  He muttered “Hum!” under his moustache and finally burst into tears on my shoulder, saying:  “I can not help it.”

And I did likewise—­I could not help it either.

However, everybody was flocking round the grandmamma, who lifted up a corner of her apron and said: 

“How pretty he is, the darling, how pretty!  Nurse, warm the linen, give me the caps.”

“Smile at your aunty,” said my aunt, jangling her rosary above the baby’s head, “smile at aunty.”

“Ask him at the same time to recite a fable,” said the doctor.