How many times have I not played this little farce, seated under a willow on the banks of my little stream, which ripples over the white stones, while the reeds bend tremblingly.  The children would crowd round me to hear the watch, and soon questions broke forth in chorus to an accompaniment of laughter.  They inspected my gaiters, rummaged in my pockets and leant against my knees.  The ducklings glided under my feet, and the big geese tickled my back.

How enjoyable it is not to alarm creatures that tremble at everything.  I would not move for fear of interrupting their joy, and was like a child who is building a house of cards and who has got to the third story.  But I marked all these happy little faces standing out against the blue sky; I watched the rays of the sun stealing into the tangles of their fair hair, or spreading in a patch of gold on their little brown necks; I followed their gestures full of awkwardness and grace; I sat down on the grass to be the nearer to them; and if an unfortunate chicken came to grief, between two daisies, I quickly stretched out my arm and replaced it on its legs.

I assure you that they were all grateful.  If one loves these little people at all, there is one thing that strikes you when you watch them closely.  Ducklings dabbling along the edge of the water or turning head over heels in their feeding trough, young shoots thrusting forth their tender little leaves above ground, little chickens running along before their mother hen, or little men staggering among the grass-all these little creatures resemble one another.  They are the babies of the great mother Nature; they have common laws, a common physiognomy; they have something inexplicable about them which is at once comic and graceful, awkward and tender, and which makes them loved at once; they are relations, friends, comrades, under the same flag.  This pink and white flag, let us salute it as it passes, old graybeards that we are.  It is blessed, and is called childhood.

All babies are round, yielding, weak, timid, and soft to the touch as a handful of wadding.  Protected by cushions of good rosy flesh or by a coating of soft down, they go rolling, staggering, dragging along their little unaccustomed feet, shaking in the air their plump hands or featherless wing.  See them stretched haphazard in the sun without distinction of species, swelling themselves with milk or meal, and dare to say that they are not alike.  Who knows whether all these children of nature have not a common point of departure, if they are not brothers of the same origin?

Since men with green spectacles have existed, they have amused themselves with ticketing the creatures of this world.  These latter are arranged, divided into categories and classified, as though by a careful apothecary who wants everything about him in order.  It is no slight matter to stow away each one in the drawer that suits him, and I have heard that certain subjects still remain on the counter owing to their belonging to two show-cases at once.