"A thousand tender messages to your lovely Herminie, and a thousand kisses to your dear little Caroline.--Your friend, "ALEX. DUMAS. "_P.S._--"We received yesterday news of your goddaughter Aimée, who is very well; as for Berlick, he grows an inch a month, and runs always on the tips of his toes,--his shoes make no difference." Mocquet left an hour after the letter was written, and three weeks sped by before he rejoined us at Antilly. "Well?" asked my father, seeing him look cheerful and the picture of health--"Well! what about mother Durand?" "Why, General! the old mole has left me. It looks as though she had no power in this district." And now the reader has the right to ask for an explanation of my father's postscript, and to be told who was this Berlick who grew an inch a month and who ran on tiptoe in spite of his shoes. CHAPTER X Who was Berlick?--The fête of Villers-Cotterets--Faust and Polichinelle--The sabots--Journey to Paris--Dollé--Manette--Madame de Mauclerc's pension--Madame de Montesson--_Paul and Virginia_--Madame de Saint-Aubin. I was Berlick: and this is how I obtained the charming nickname. While my mother was _enceinte_ the usual Whitsuntide fête took place at Villers-Cotterets; a delightful fête it was, to which I shall again refer. It took place at the time of the first spring foliage and amid the opening flowers, when butterflies are dancing and linnets singing. In olden days this fête was famed far and wide, and people attended it from twenty leagues round; like all other fêtes, it began as a Corpus Christi festival, but now only exists in the calendar. Well, to this well-attended fête came a man carrying a booth on his back, as a snail carries its shell. This booth contained the essentially national spectacle of Polichinelle, from which Goethe borrowed the idea of his _Faust._ Polichinelle is simply a worn-out, callous, crafty libertine, who abducts women, and flouts brothers and husbands, who thrashes the officers of the law, and ends up by being carried off by the devil. And what else was Faust? A worn-out, callous libertine, not very cunning, it is true, who seduces Marguerite, kills her brother, beats burgomasters and is carried off by Mephistopheles in the end. I will not venture to say that Polichinelle is more picturesque than Faust, but I will go so far as to maintain that he is quite as philosophical and more amusing. Our friend with the booth had set up his show on the green, and gave daily thirty or forty representations of that sublime comedy, which has made us all laugh as children, and ponder over when grown men. My mother was seven months gone in pregnancy when she went to see Polichinelle. The showman was a man of some imagination, and instead of simply calling his devil the devil, he gave him a name. He called him Berlick.