CHAPTER XXVIII

BABIES AND PAPAS

When the baby reaches three or four years of age, when his sex shows itself in his actions, his tastes and his eyes, when he smashes his wooden horses, cuts open his drums, blows trumpets, breaks the castors off the furniture, and evinces a decided hostility to crockery; in a word, when he is a man, it is then that the affection of a father for his son becomes love.  He feels himself invaded by a need of a special fondness, of which the sweetest recollections of his past life can give no idea.  A deep sentiment envelopes his heart, the countless roots of which sink into it in all directions.  Defects or qualities penetrate and feed on this sentiment.  Thus, we find in paternal love all the weaknesses and all the greatnesses of humanity.  Vanity, abnegation, pride, and disinterestedness are united together, and man in his entirety appears in the papa.

It is on the day which the child becomes a mirror in which you recognize your features, that the heart is moved and awakens.  Existence becomes duplicated, you are no longer one, but one and a half; you feel your importance increase, and, in the future of the little creature who belongs to you, you reconstruct your own past; you resuscitate, and are born again in him.  You say to yourself:  “I will spare him such and such a vexation which I had to suffer, I will clear from his path such and such a stone over which I stumbled, I will make him happy, and he shall owe all to me; he shall be, thanks to me, full of talents and attractions.”  You give him, in advance, all that you did not get yourself, and in his future arrange laurels for a little crown for your own brows.

Human weakness, no doubt; but what matter, provided the sentiment that gives birth to this weakness is the strongest and purest of all?  What matter if a limpid stream springs up between two paving stones?  Are we to be blamed for being generous out of egotism, and for devoting ourselves to others for reasons of personal enjoyment?

Thus, in the father, vanity is the leading string.  Say to any father:  “Good heavens! how like you he is!” The poor man may hesitate at saying yes, but I defy him not to smile.  He will say, “Perhaps . . . .  Do you think so? . . .  Well, perhaps so, side face.”

And do not you be mistaken; if he does so, it is that you may reply in astonishment:  “Why, the child is your very image.”

He is pleased, and that is easily explained; for is not this likeness a visible tie between him and his work?  Is it not his signature, his trade-mark, his title-deed, and, as it were, the sanction of his rights?