In after years, with age, he degenerated,
and sometimes yielded to fear. But at that time he used to fear nothing.
I was unhappy. An unreasoning but irresistible shame prevented me from
telling my mother about the object of my love. Thence all my sufferings.
For many days that doll, incessantly present in fancy, danced before my
eyes, stared at me fixedly, opened her arms to me, assuming in my
imagination a sort of life which made her appear at once mysterious and
weird, and thereby all the more charming and desirable.
Finally, one day--a day I shall never forget--my nurse took me to see my
uncle, Captain Victor, who had invited me to breakfast. I admired my
uncle a great deal, as much because he had fired the last French
cartridge at Waterloo as because he used to make with his own hands, at
my mother's table, certain chapons-a-l'ail, which he afterwards put into
the chicory-salad. I thought that was very fine! My Uncle Victor also
inspired me with much respect by his frogged coat, and still more by his
way of turning the whole house upside down from the moment he came into
it. Even now I cannot tell just how he managed it, but I can affirm that
whenever my Uncle Victor found himself in any assembly of twenty
persons, it was impossible to see or to hear anybody but him.
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