"Have you read," said Boulmier, "the 'Tableau des Abbayes Bénédictines en 1600,' by Sylvestre Bonnard?"
"Good!" I said to myself, for the third time.
"Ma foi! no!" replied Gélis. "Bonnard is an idiot!"
Turning my head, I perceived that the shadow had reached the place where I was sitting. It was growing chilly, and I thought to myself what a fool I was to have remained sitting there, at the risk of getting the rheumatism, just to listen to the impertinence of those two young fellows!
"Well! well!" I said to myself as I got up. "Let this prattling fledgeling write his thesis, and sustain it! He will find my colleague Quicherat, or some other professor at the school, to show him what an ignoramus he is. I consider him neither more nor less than a rascal; and really, now that I come to think of it, what he said about Michelet awhile ago was quite insufferable, outrageous! To talk in that way about an old master replete with genius! It was simply abominable!"
CHILD-LIFE
From 'The Book of My Friend'
Everything in immortal nature is a miracle to the little child.
I was happy. A thousand things at once familiar and mysterious filled my imagination, a thousand things which were nothing in themselves, but which made my life. It was very small, that life of mine; but it was a life—which is to say, the centre of all things, the kernel of the world. Do not smile at what I say,—or smile only in sympathy, and reflect: whoever lives, be it only a dog, is at the centre of all things.