Farewell, dear friend.  What would you?  I built too high on too unstable a soil.  I loved one object too well. 
                       Yours from my heart.

CHAPTER XXVI

OLD RECOLLECTIONS

Cover yourselves with fine green leaves, tall trees casting your peaceful shade.  Steal through the branches, bright sunlight, and you, studious promenaders, contemplative idlers, mammas in bright toilettes, gossiping nurses, noisy children, and hungry babies, take possession of your kingdom; these long walks belong to you.

It is Sunday.  Joy and festivity.  The gaufre seller decks his shop and lights his stove.  The white cloth is spread on the table and piles of golden cakes attract the customer.

The woman who lets out chairs has put on her apron with its big pockets for sous.  The park keeper, my dear little children, has curled his moustache, polished up his harmless sword and put on his best uniform.  See how bright and attractive the marionette theatre looks in the sunshine, under its striped covering.

Sunday requires all this in its honor.

Unhappy are those to whom the tall trees of Luxembourg gardens do not recall one of those recollections which cling to the heart like its first perfume to a vase.

I was a General, under those trees, a General with a plume like a mourning coach-horse, and armed to the teeth.  I held command from the hut of the newspaper vendor to the kiosk of the gaufre seller.  No false modesty, my authority extended to the basin of the fountain, although the great white swans rather alarmed me.  Ambushes behind the tree trunks, advanced posts behind the nursemaids, surprises, fights with cold steel; attacks by skirmishers, dust, encounters, carnage and no bloodshed.  After which our mammas wiped our foreheads, rearranged our dishevelled hair, and tore us away from the battle, of which we dreamed all night.

Now, as I pass through the garden with its army of children and nurses, leaning on my stick with halting step, how I regret my General’s cocked hat, my paper plume, my wooden sword and my pistol.  My pistol that would snap caps and was the cause of my rapid promotion.

Disport yourselves, little folks; gossip, plump nurses, as you scold your soldiers.  Embroider peaceably, young mothers, making from time to time a little game of your neighbors among yourselves; and you, reflective idlers, look at that charming picture-babies making a garden.

Playing in the sand, a game as old as the world and always amusing.  Hillocks built up in a line with little bits of wood stuck into them, represent gardens in the walks of which baby gravely places his little uncertain feet.  What would he not give, dear little man, to be able to complete his work by creating a pond in his park, a pond, a gutter, three drops of water?