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Updated: June 1, 2025
'I can't help being, said the child, 'I have by me a lady who is sense itself. 'Go and tell her, replied the king, 'that you will give her this evening a hundred thousand francs for your sugar-plums. The mother gets me into trouble with the king, the son makes my peace with him; I am never for two days together in the same situation, and I do not get accustomed to this sort of life, I who thought I could make myself used to anything."
Its jest is the littleness of common life. That false prudence which dotes on health and wealth is the butt and merriment of heroism. Heroism, like Plotinus, is almost ashamed of its body. What shall it say, then, to the sugar-plums, and cats'-cradles, to the toilet, compliments, quarrels, cards, and custard, which rack the wit of all human society.
He measured the sugar-plums in a little cubical tin box; and this, it was affirmed, he heaped up to the top, and pressed down before he poured out the contents into the open hands of his approving customers.
Neither he nor his stalwart son would dream for a moment of touching spade or hoe; but if the ladies of the family could only be made to see their duty, an honest penny might easily be turned by oats or rye. I gave him a large packet of sugar-plums, which he seized with childish delight and hid away exactly like the big monkeys at the Zoo.
A discovery! a discovery that concerns all who have ever bought the sweetest, and most admirable sugar-plums ever sold in Naples." The crowd gathered from all parts of the square as he spoke. "We have bought," and "We have bought of those sugar-plums," cried several little voices at once, "if you mean Piedro's."
Then they talked, too, of all that the Christ-Child was going to bring them, of all he was going to put in their shoes which, you might be sure, they would take good care to leave in the chimney place before going to bed; and the eyes of these little urchins, as lively as a cage of mice, were sparkling in advance over the joy they would have when they awoke in the morning and saw the pink bag full of sugar-plums, the little lead soldiers ranged in companies in their boxes, the menageries smelling of varnished wood, and the magnificent jumping-jacks in purple and tinsel.
Life may be compared to a gamut of music: there are seven notes from our birth to our marriage; and thus may we run up the first octave milk, sugar-plums, apples, cricket, cravat, gun, horse; then comes the wife, a da capo to a new existence, which is to continue until the whole diapason is gone through. Lord Aveleyn ran up his scale like others before him.
"I don't think heaven can be any gooder than this," sighed one small girl, as she looked about her in a blissful maze, holding her full apron with one hand, while she luxuriously carried sugar-plums to her mouth with the other.
He offered her sweetmeats he had in a box. "Here be sugar-plums to suck, madame; they are sweet and sugared, but not so sweet as your lips." To which the lady retorted he was a vain, silly fop to make boast of a fruit he had never tasted. He answered her meetly, kissing her forthwith on the mouth. She manifested scarce any annoyance and said only she was an honest woman and a true wife.
As she saw him she smiled, threw the last sugar-plums and came towards him. "Do you want me?" she said, coming up to him. His lips trembled. "Yes," he said, "I want you." Something in his voice seemed to startle her, but she said nothing more, only stood looking at him. The children, who had followed her, crowded round them, touching their clothes curiously. "Send them away," he said.
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