Little Poems in Prose

surfaces of the mirrors, the gold of the rods and the cornices; the plump-cheeked pages dragged along by leashed dogs, the ladies laughing at the falcon perched upon their wrists, nymphs and goddesses carrying fruits, pastry and game on their heads, Hebes and Ganymedes offering with outstretched arms a little vase of soothing drinks, or the two- coloured pyramid of mixed ices, all history and all mythology dragged into the service of glut- tony. Directly before us on the pavement stood fixed a fine fellow of forty years old, with tired face and beard gone grey, holding by one hand a little boy, and carrying upon the other arm a little creature too weak to walk. He did a ser- vant’s office and took his children to taste the evening air. All were in rags. These three faces were strangely serious, and these six eyes looked fixedly upon the new café with equal admiration, but coloured differently by age. The eyes of the father said: “How beautiful it is, how beautiful it is; one would say that all the gold of the poor world has come to plaster itself upon these walls.” The eyes of the little boy: “How beautiful it is, how beautiful it is; but it is a house where people like us cannot enter.” As to the eyes of the smallest, they