And their
rapture yet increased when, all at once, they noticed that little Gervais
also was awaking to life, acquiring decisive strength. As he struggled in
his little carriage and his mother removed him from it, behold! he took
his flight, and, staggering, made four steps; then hung to his father's
legs with his little fists. A cry of extraordinary delight burst forth.
"Why! he walks, he walks!"
Ah! those first lispings of life, those successive flights of the dear
little ones; the first glance, the first smile, the first step--what joy
do they not bring to parents' hearts! They are the rapturous _etapes_ of
infancy, for which father and mother watch, which they await impatiently,
which they hail with exclamations of victory, as if each were a conquest,
a fresh triumphal entry into life. The child grows, the child becomes a
man. And there is yet the first tooth, forcing its way like a
needle-point through rosy gums; and there is also the first stammered
word, the "pa-pa," the "mam-ma," which one is quite ready to detect amid
the vaguest babble, though it be but the purring of a kitten, the
chirping of a bird. Life does its work, and the father and the mother are
ever wonderstruck with admiration and emotion at the sight of that
efflorescence alike of their flesh and their souls.
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