Little Poems in Prose

My profession of painter impels me to look attentively at every face which I see in the course of the day, and you know well what en- joyment we draw from this faculty which ren- ders life more living and significant to our eyes than it is for other men. In the retired district where I dwelt, and where broad brass-covered spaces still separate the buildings, I often saw a child whose eager and merry face attracted me at the first glance more than did that of anyone else. He had posed more than once for me, and I have turned him at one time into a little gipsy, at another into an angel, at an- other into a Cupid; I have made him carry the stroller’s violin, the Crown of Thorns and the Nails of Christ’s Passion, and the torch of Eros. I took finally so lively a pleasure in all the droll ways of the gutter snipe that one day I asked his parents—poor folk enough—to give him to me altogether, promising to clothe him well, to give him some money, and not to impose any harder task upon him than that of cleaning my brushes and running my errands. The little fel- low, once cleaned up, became charming, and the life which he led in my house seemed to him heaven compared to that which he had undergone in the paternal garret. But I must tell you that the little chap sometimes aston- ished me by strange attacks of precocious sad-