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-