As to the baby, he is intoxicated, proud, triumphant, although somewhat embarrassed as to his arms and legs, and, be it said, without any wish to offend him, greatly resembling those little poodles we see freshly shaven on the approach of summer.  What greatly disturbed the poor little fellow is past.  How many men of position are there who do not experience similar inconvenience.  He knows very well that breeches, like nobility, render certain things incumbent on their possessor, that he must now assume new ways, new gestures, a new tone of voice; he begins to scan out of the corner of his eye the movements of his papa, who is by no means ill pleased at this:  he clumsily essays a masculine gesture or two; and this struggle between his past and his present gives him for some time the most comical air in the world.  His petticoats haunt him, and really he is angry that it is so.

Dear first pair of breeches!  I love you, because you are a faithful friend, and I encounter at every step in life you and your train of sweet sensations.  Are you not the living image of the latest illusion caressed by our vanity?  You, young officer, who still measure your moustaches in the glass, and who have just assumed for the first time the epaulette and the gold belt, how did you feel when you went downstairs and heard the scabbard of your sabre go clink-clank on the steps, when with your cap on one side and your arm akimbo you found yourself in the street, and, an irresistible impulse urging you on, you gazed at your figure reflected in the chemist’s bottles?  Will you dare to say that you did not halt before those bottles?  First pair of breeches, lieutenant.

You will find them again, these breeches, when you are promoted to be Captain and are decorated.  And later on, when, an old veteran with a gray moustache, you take a fair companion to rejuvenate you, you will again put them on; but this time the dear creature will help you to wear them.

And the day when you will no longer have anything more to do with them, alas! that day you will be very low, for one’s whole life is wrapped up in this precious garment.  Existence is nothing more than putting on our first pair of breeches, taking them off, putting them on again, and dying with eyes fixed on them.

Is it the truth that most of our joys have no more serious origin than those of children?  Are we then so simple?  Ah! yes, my dear sir, we are simple to this degree, that we do not think we are.  We never quite get rid of our swaddling clothes; do you see, there is always a little bit sticking out?  There is a baby in every one of us, or, rather, we are only babies grown big.