"Do you realize that it is two o'clock. The fire is out. I am—you won't laugh? Well, I am just a little dizzy!"
"That was a famous pâté!"
"A famous pâté! We will have a cup of tea in the morning, eh, dear?"
THE YULE LOG.
From the French of Jules Simon.
Yesterday was my birthday. A number of friends who have never seen me wrote to congratulate me upon having reached the age of eighty. They are mistaken; I am not as old as all that. I can readily understand that a few years more or less make very little difference to them, but they certainly make all the difference in the world to me. I am still far from the dignity of an octogenarian; yet I confess that I am very old, and at my age one likes to recall one's early childhood. It is a very well-known fact that old people,—it seems that I am old, which makes me furious, and I really believe that I should scarcely realize it, if people did not take particular pains, out of pure kindness, of course, to remind me of it every moment,—it is a well-known fact, I say, that old people recall the first scenes of their life with marvellous accuracy. I have often heard Chevreul speak of having been present on the Place de la Révolution at the very moment when Louis XVI. was executed. His nurse had carried him there, the wretch! He neither saw nor understood anything; but he remembered the words of a garde nationale who scolded the woman for having brought a child to such a place. "He delivered there and then a perfect sermon on the subject," he used to say, "and I remember every word of it." But let us not speak of tragedies.