The sight of Berlick impressed my mother terribly. Berlick was as black as a devil. Berlick had a scarlet tongue and tail. Berlick spoke with a sort of growl, like the noise made by a syphon of Seltzer water when the bottle is just running empty; an unknown sound in those days, before the invention of syphons, and therefore all the more awful. My mother's mind was so taken up with this queer figure, that, on leaving the booth, she leant on a neighbour and exclaimed: "Oh! my dear, it is all up with me. I shall give birth to a Berlick!" Her neighbour, who was also in the same condition, was called Madame Duez. She replied: "Then, my dear, if you give birth to a Berlick, I, who have been with you, shall give birth to a Berlock." The two friends returned home laughing. But my mother's laugh was half-hearted, and she remained convinced that she would bring forth a black-faced child with a red tail and a tongue of flame. The day of her confinement drew near, and, the nearer it came, the firmer grew my mother's belief. She imagined I leapt inside her womb as only a demon could, and when I kicked she could feel the claws with which my feet were furnished. At length the 24th of July arrived. It struck half-past four in the morning, and I was born. But in coming into the world it seems I turned and twisted in such a manner that the umbilical cord got round my neck, and I looked purple and half-strangled. The woman who was with my mother uttered a cry, and my mother took it up. "Oh, my God!" she murmured,--"it is black, is it not?" The woman dared not answer her: there is so very little difference of colour between dark purple and black that it was not worth while to contradict. The next moment I cried, as that creature destined to sorrow, whom we call man, generally does as he comes into the world. The cord pressed round my neck so that I could only utter a kind of growl, similar in its nature to the noise that was always ringing in my mother's ears. "Berlick! Berlick!" my mother cried out in despair. Happily the doctor hastened to reassure her: he set my neck free, my face took its natural colour, and my cries were the wailings of an infant, and not the growls of a demon. But I was none the less baptized with the name of Berlick, and it stuck to me ever after.