"Buy a doll for a boy--_sacré bleu_!" cried my uncle, in a voice of thunder. "Do you wish to dishonour yourself? And it is that old Mag there that you want! Well, I must compliment you, my young fellow! If you grow up with such tastes as that, you will never have any pleasure in life; and your comrades will call you a precious ninny. If you asked me for a sword or a gun, my boy, I would buy them for you with the last silver crown of my pension. But to buy a doll for you--a thousand thunders!--to disgrace you! Never in the world! Why, if I were even to see you playing with a puppet rigged out like that, monsieur, my sister's son, I would disown you for my nephew!" On hearing these words, I felt my heart so wrung that nothing but pride--a diabolic pride--kept me from crying. My uncle, suddenly calming down, returned to his ideas about the Bourbons; but I, still smarting from the blow of his indignation, felt an unspeakable shame. My resolve was quickly made. I promised myself never to disgrace myself--I firmly and for ever renounced that red-cheeked doll. I felt that day, for the first time, the austere sweetness of sacrifice. Captain, though it be true that all your life you swore like a pagan, smoked like a beadle, and drank like a bell-ringer, be your memory nevertheless honoured--not merely because you were a brave soldier, but also because you revealed to your little nephew in petticoats the sentiment of heroism! Pride and laziness had made you almost insupportable, O my Uncle Victor!--but a great heart used to beat under those frogs upon your coat. You always used to wear, I now remember, a rose in your button-hole. That rose which you allowed, as I now have reason to believe, the shop-girls to pluck for you--that, large, open-hearted flower, scattering its petals to all the winds, was the symbol of your glorious youth. You despised neither absinthe nor tobacco; but you despised life. Neither delicacy nor common sense could have been learned from you, captain; but you taught me, even at an age when my nurse had to wipe my nose, a lesson of honour and self-abnegation that I will never forget. THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS [Sidenote: _Dean Swift_] We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. * * * * * The latter part of a wise man's life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former. * * * * * When a true genius appeareth in the world you may know him by this infallible sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. * * * * * Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps as few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold, which the owner knows not of. * * * * *