The Plaything of the Poor

I should like to give you an idea for an innocent diversion. There are
so few amusements that are not guilty ones!

When you go out in the morning for a stroll along the highways, fill
your pockets with little penny contrivances--such as the straight
merryandrew moved by a single thread, the blacksmiths who strike the
anvil, the rider and his horse, with a whistle for a tail--and, along
the taverns, at the foot of the trees, make presents of them to the
unknown poor children whom you meet. You will see their eyes grow
beyond all measure. At first, they will not dare to take; they will
doubt their good fortune. Then their hands will eagerly seize the
gift, and they will flee as do the cats who go far off to eat the bit
you have given them, having learned to distrust man.

On a road, behind the rail of a great garden at the foot of which
appeared the glitter of a beautiful mansion struck by the sun, stood
a pretty, fresh child, clad in those country garments so full of
affectation.

Luxury, freedom from care, and the habitual spectacle of wealth, make
these children so pretty that one would think them formed of other
paste than the sons of mediocrity or of poverty.

Beside him on the grass lay a splendid toy, fresh as its master,
varnished, gilt, clad in a purple robe, covered with plumes and beads
of glass. But the child was not occupied with his favored plaything,
and this is what he was watching:

On the other side of the rail, on the road, among the thistles and
the thorns, was another child, puny, dirty, fuliginous, one of those
pariah-brats the beauty of which an impartial eye might discover if,
as the eye of the connoisseur divines an ideal painting beneath the
varnish of the coach-maker, it cleansed him of the repugnant patina of
misery.

Across the symbolic bars which separate two worlds, the highway and
the mansion, the poor child was showing the rich child his own toy,
which the latter examined eagerly, as a rare and unknown object. Now,
this toy, which the ragamuffin was provoking, tormenting, tossing in a
grilled box, was a live rat! His parents, doubtless for economy, had
taken the toy from life itself.

And the two children were laughing together fraternally, with teeth of
equal whiteness!