Paris Spleen: little poems in prose

II: An Old Woman’s Despair

6 ii An Old Woman’s Despair The shrunken little old woman rejoiced to see such a pretty infant whom everybody was making over, whom everyone tried to please; this pretty thing, as fragile as she, the little old woman, and, again like her, short on teeth and hair. So she came closer, wanting to give babyish laughs and make appropriate faces. But the terror-stricken infant writhed under the caresses of the decrepit old woman and filled the house with howls. So the old woman retired into her eternal solitude, crying in a corner , saying: —“Ah, we unhappy old females, past the age of pleasing, even pleasing these innocents; and we horrify the little ones whom we would love.” ...