Such sadness was very quick to pass. Much sooner, however, I had borrowed from my new friends, the animals, an art of ridiculing which I found most delightful. I could see no one without finding his double among the beasts. Tem Bossette with his flat face and goggle eyes became a frog--the very frog that tried to make himself as big as the ox; Mimi Pachoux with his furtive step and sudden disappearance I compared to a rat, and The Hanged, who always seemed to find difficulty in using his arms, to a kangaroo, with his very short front legs. This turn of mind shocked and disturbed my mother. One day she received in my presence a visit from a person of a certain age who was superintending a work room, founding an orphan asylum, building a school, in a word, directing more works in the parish than actually existed. Her name was Mlle Tapinois. She was tall and dried up, with a pointed nose, sloping shoulders and a frigid air. She cooed softly without a moment’s interruption. When she was gone I showed mother, in my book, an old dove in a night gown, with a candle-stick in its claw: “Mademoiselle Tapinois,” I said triumphantly. Mother protested against my unseemly comparison. “She is a holy woman,” she concluded, by way of arousing my sympathy. But though she did not admit it, I saw that she had recognised the likeness. Encouraged by the degree of success I had achieved with Mlle Tapinois, I thenceforth watched our visitors to deal out to them the same treatment, and the facility of this game amazed me. I had no difficulty in finding a stout landed proprietor for the elephant, a woe-begone collector of mortgages for the owl, a pianist for the centipede. An old nobleman with a Roman nose reminded me of the falcon whom the _Revolutions had ruined_. In a very short while my collection was further enriched by the bear, the chameleon, and several rabbits, drawn from the registry or the tax office. But the region at that time had no departmental muse worthy to be catalogued among the martlets. They tell me that there are swarms of them now-a-days. Grandfather, to whom I confided my observations, gave them his full approbation. “Now you know,” he said, “that animals and men are brothers. But the animals are better fellows than we.” Nevertheless a secret instinct warned me not to consult my parents on this subject. II THE DESIRE FINE weather had come. Three months still lay between us and the long vacation. Father, agreeing with the timid little colleague whom he had again called in to support his own opinion, declared that I was not to return to school until the end of the vacation next October. “The child needs out-of-door air. The first thing is to build up his health.”