others each so tenderly expansive in contemplation of her child, so
happy in its health and strength, so joyous and so proud of its small
progress, the recollection of a phenomenon which I had not at first
observed struck me with all the force of a vivid actuality.

I should say, by the way, that it is much more to the strength of my
memory than to the present observation of facts, that I owe these
remarks. Stability is the _sine qua non_ of the things one proposes to
examine, and the memory must possess the singular power of communicating
fixity to fugitive things, permanence to instantaneousness, and
actuality to the past.

Now, the phenomena of life occurring with the rapidity of lightning can
only be studied retrospectively; that is to say, in the domain of
memory, except to be verified if the attention, free from all other
preoeccupation, allows us to seize them on the wing once more. The remark
suggested to me by memory seemed all the more interesting because it
formed in a new order of facts a flagrant opposition to the opinion
formulated by my masters under the title of theory. Thus nature once
more proved to me that the only point in which I had found them to
agree, rested upon a fundamental error. I have since recognized that it
is thus in the majority of cases, so that one may almost certainly
pronounce erroneous any statement in regard to which all the masters of
art agree.

This proposition at first seems inexplicable, but its reason is readily
understood by those who know the sway of falsehood over a society
perverted in its opinions as in its tastes; to those who know the
deplorable facility with which error is spread and the tenacity with
which it clings to our poor mind. Error, moreover, owes to our abasement
which it flatters and crushes, the privilege of freedom from
contradiction, and it is only in regard to truth that the minds of men
are divided and contend.

On retracing in my memory the walks I had taken in the Tuileries, I was
struck by an important fact amidst the phenomena called up: the voice
of the nurse or mother, when she caressed her child, invariably assumed
the double character of tenuity and acuteness. It was in a voice equally
sweet and high-pitched that she uttered such words as these: "How lovely
he is!" ... "Smile a little bit for mamma!" Now this caressing
intonation, impressed by nature upon the upper notes of all these
voices, forms a strange contrast to the direction which