that he was busy carrying out my orders, and he must obey me first.  For the moment the child was taken aback.  How could he think they would really let him go out alone, him, who, in his own eyes, was the most important person in the world, who thought that everything in heaven and earth was wrapped up in his welfare?  However, he was beginning to feel his weakness, he perceived that he should find himself alone among people who knew nothing of him.  He saw beforehand the risks he would run; obstinacy alone sustained him; very slowly and unwillingly he went downstairs.  At last he went out into the street, consoling himself a little for the harm that might happen to himself, in the hope that I should be held responsible for it.

This was just what I expected.  All was arranged beforehand, and as it meant some sort of public scene I had got his father’s consent.  He had scarcely gone a few steps, when he heard, first on this side then on that, all sorts of remarks about himself.  “What a pretty little gentleman, neighbour?  Where is he going all alone?  He will get lost!  I will ask him into our house.”  “Take care you don’t.  Don’t you see he is a naughty little boy, who has been turned out of his own house because he is good for nothing?  You must not stop naughty boys; let him go where he likes.”  “Well, well; the good God take care of him.  I should be sorry if anything happened to him.”  A little further on he met some young urchins of about his own age who teased him and made fun of him.  The further he got the more difficulties he found.  Alone and unprotected he was at the mercy of everybody, and he found to his great surprise that his shoulder knot and his gold lace commanded no respect.

However, I had got a friend of mine, who was a stranger to him, to keep an eye on him.  Unnoticed by him, this friend followed him step by step, and in due time he spoke to him.  The role, like that of Sbrigani in Pourceaugnac, required an intelligent actor, and it was played to perfection.  Without making the child fearful and timid by inspiring excessive terror, he made him realise so thoroughly the folly of his exploit that in half an hour’s time he brought him home to me, ashamed and humble, and afraid to look me in the face.

To put the finishing touch to his discomfiture, just as he was coming in his father came down on his way out and met him on the stairs.  He had to explain where he had been, and why I was not with him. [Footnote:  In a case like this there is no danger in asking a child to tell the truth, for he knows very well that it cannot be hid, and that if he ventured to tell a lie he would be found out at once.] The poor child would gladly have sunk into the earth.  His father did not take the trouble to scold him at length, but said with more severity than I should have expected, “When you want to go out by yourself, you can do so, but I will not have a rebel in my house, so when you go, take good care that you never come back.”