But presently I found a handsome young soldier walking with a young girl; the soldier was pushing the young girl's wheel-barrow before him and she was carrying the trooper's pipe and sword. Further on, another young girl holding the tail of a plough and an aged ploughman goading the oxen; further on, an old man begging for a blind child; further on, a cross. In a hamlet, a dozen children's heads, at the window of an unfinished house, looked like a group of angels in a glory. Here is a tiny girl of five or six, sitting on the threshold of a cottage-door, with bare head, fair hair, a dirty face, pulling a little grimace because of a cold wind blowing; with her two white shoulders peeping from a torn frock, her arms crossed over her knees drawn up close to her chest, looking at what was going on around her with the curiosity of a bird, Raphael would have sketched her; as for me, I felt inclined to steal her from her mother.
France.
At the entrance to Forbach, a troop of learned dogs appeared: the two biggest harnessed to the costume-wagon; five or six others of different tails, noses, sizes and colours followed the baggage, each with its piece of bread in its mouth. Two grave instructors, one carrying a big drum, the other carrying nothing, led the band. Go, my friends, go round the world as I have done, in order to learn to know the nations. You have your place in the world just as much as I; you are quite as good as the dogs of my kind. Give a paw to Diane, to Mirza, to Pax, with your hat on your ear, your sword by your side, your tail sticking out like a trumpet between the skirts of your coat: dance for a bone, or for a kick, as we men do; but do not go making the mistake of jumping for the King!
Reader, bear with these arabesques; the hand that traced them will never do you any other harm: it is withered. Remember, when you see them, that they are only the freakish scrolls drawn by a painter on the vault of his tomb.
At the custom-house, an elderly junior clerk made a pretense at examining my calash. I had got a five-franc piece ready; he saw it in my hand, but dared not take it, because of his superiors, who were watching him. He took off his cap, on the pretext of searching me better, laid it on the seat in front of me and said, in an under-tone:
"In my cap, please."
Oh, what a great phrase! It comprises the history of the human race; how often have liberty, loyalty, friendship, devotion, love said:
"In my cap, please!"
I shall give that phrase to Béranger for the chorus of a song.
I was struck, on entering Metz, by something which I had not noticed in 1821; the modern fortifications surround the Gothic fortifications: Guise and Vauban[37] are two names that go well together.