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Our Children: Scenes from the Country and the Town
MARY
Little girls have a natural desire to gather flowers and stars. But stars won’t let themselves be picked and so seem to teach little girls that in this world there are some desires that are destined never to be satisfied.
Miss Mary went out in the park, where she discovered a basket of hortensias. She knew that the flowers of hortensias are pretty, and so she picked one. It was very hard to pick too. She seized the plant in both hands, at great risk of sitting down hard when the stem broke. She was very pleased and proud at what she’d done. But her nurse saw her: and scolded and darted at Miss Mary, seizing her by the arm. To make her do penance she did not put her in the dark closet this time, but posted her underneath a great chestnut tree, in the shade of a big Japanese umbrella.
There Miss Mary sits, surprised and astonished, and thinks it all over. Her flower in her hand, with the stripes of the umbrella making rays around her, she looked like some queer little foreign idol.
THE LITTLE PENITENT, PERFECTLY STILL BENEATH HER SHINING FRAME, LOOKS AROUND HER AT THE SKY AND THE EARTH. THEY ARE LARGE, THE EARTH AND SKY, AND CAN AMUSE A LITTLE GIRL FOR A WHILE. BUT THE HYDRANGEA INTERESTS HER MORE THAN ANYTHING.
Printed in France
Her nurse said: “Mary, I forbid you to carry that flower in your mouth. If you disobey me your little dog Toto will eat your ears up for you” – with which warning she departed.
The little penitent, perfectly still beneath her shining frame, looks around her at the sky and the earth. They are large, the earth and sky, and can amuse a little girl for a while. But the hortensia flower interests her more than anything. She reflects: “A flower should smell good.” And she raises nearer to her nose the beautiful rosy, blue tempered ball. She tries to smell it but can smell nothing. She is not clever at smelling perfumes. Not so very, very long ago she used to breathe over the roses instead of sniffing them in. We must not laugh at her for that: one can’t learn everything at once. Besides, she might have had, like her mother, a very subtle sense of smell that could smell nothing. The flower of the hortensia has no odor. That is why one grows tired of it, in spite of its beauty. But Miss Mary thinks: “This flower is made of sugar, maybe.” With that she opens her mouth wide, and starts to raise the flower to her lips.
A cry recalls her. Yap!
It is the little dog Toto, who, darting round a border of geraniums, comes and sets himself, his ears straight up, before Miss Mary and looks at her warningly with his round bright eyes.
PAN PIPES
Three children of the same village, Peter, James and John, are standing up looking off at something. Ranged side by side they form together the outline of a Pan Pipes with three reeds. Peter, at the left, is a big boy; John, at the right, is small; James, between the two, may consider himself big or little, according as he regards his neighbor on the left or right. It is a situation upon which I invite you to meditate, for it is yours, as it is mine or any one in the world’s. Each one of us, just like James, may consider himself great or small, according as his neighbor cuts a big or little figure in the world.
That’s why one can truthfully say that James is neither big nor little; that he is both big and little. It is as God wishes it to be. He is the last reed of all in our living Pan Pipes.
THREE CHILDREN OF THE SAME VILLAGE, PETER, JAMES AND JOHN, ARE STANDING UP LOOKING OFF AT SOMETHING. RANGED SIDE BY SIDE THEY FORM TOGETHER THE OUTLINE OF A PAN PIPES WITH THREE REEDS.
Printed in France
But what are his two comrades doing? They are gazing off into space, all three of them. At what? At something which has disappeared below the horizon, something which they can’t see any more but still see in their mind’s eye, and which still dazzles them. Little John has forgotten his eel-skin whip with which just now he incessantly beat up his wooden shoes in the dusty road. Peter and James, their hands behind their backs, gaze stolidly.
What they saw, all three, was the wagon of a travelling peddler, a wagon drawn by his own arms, which had stopped in the village street.
The peddler pulled back the oilcloth that covered his wagon, and in a minute any quantity of knives, scissors, little guns, puppets, soldiers of wood and lead, cologne bottles, cakes of soap, pictures, a thousand dazzling things were exposed to the admiring view of all the men, women and children in the town. The servants from the farm and the mill were pale with longing; Peter and James were red with joy. Little John lost his tongue. Everything in the wagon seemed beautiful and precious to them. But the most desirable things of all were the unknown articles of which they could not guess either use or reason: as for example the bowls polished like mirrors that reflected your face comically deformed; paintings of Epinol, covered with faces more lively than reality; needle cases and mysterious boxes that contained unimaginable things.
The women made purchases of guimpes and lace by the yard, and the peddler rolled the black oilcloth back again over the riches in his wagon, and putting himself in the traces once more started on his further way; and now the wagon and the waggoner have disappeared below the horizon.