Little Poems in Prose

than that, you want to be dressed like them, and do and say the same things and speak with the same voice . . .” One of the four children, who for some sec- onds past was no longer listening to his talk, but with a startling fixity had fastened his gaze upon I knew not what point of heaven, said suddenly, “Look, look there; do you see Him? He is sitting on that little lonely cloud, that lit- tle fire-coloured cloud that moves so softly, and He too—one would say that He was look- ing at us.” “But who then?” asked the others. “God,” he replied, with an accent of perfect conviction. “Ah, He is already very far away—in a moment you will not be able to see Him any more; I think He must be travelling, to visit every country.—There, there! He is going to pass behind that row of trees that is almost on the horizon; and now He is going down behind the steeple. Ah, I cannot see Him any more.” And the child remained for long turned in the same direction, fixing upon the line which cuts earth from heaven a pair of eyes which shone with an inexpressive expression of ecstasy and of regret. “Silly baby, with His God that nobody but he can see,” then said the third, all of whose little personality was marked by a strange vivacity