From my earliest infancy the principal and dominant—too dominant—feature in my face, was an immense nose.

Now that this organ is a little disguised by a thick moustache, my friends, to flatter me, compare it to an eagle’s beak. But when I had no moustache, my companions who had no wish to flatter me, compared it to the beak of a Toucan. Unfortunately for me this was only too good a comparison, and, what was worse than all, when I was frightened (which alas! happened very often) my nose turned very pale.

“Now then,” would my father exclaim, “there’s that miserable nose of yours turned white again: rub it, do, so as to give it a little colour.”

I was such a simple little fellow, that I used seriously to follow my father’s advice, given in derision, and I would fall to rubbing my poor, large nose most furiously: labour wasted! it turned pale just the same.

My father went on reading the newspaper which he had thrown down as I have described; and I did not stir; I did not sit down nor did I dare go out of the room, but I remained sulking in the corner.

I say sulking, because I can find no other word to describe the state that my father’s fits of anger put me into. Anyone who had come into the room and seen me in that corner would have said, “Here is a sulky little boy!” But no, I was not really sulky; I felt very much hurt that my father should speak so harshly to me to cure me of a fault which wounded my own self-respect as much as it did his. I was not sulky then, only deeply distressed; but all sorts of contradictory thoughts passed through my head, and I knew neither how to utter nor explain them: I remained silent and uncomfortable, and people made the mistake of thinking me sulky.

I grieved over my father’s reprimand, and pondered sadly while he read the newspaper. I asked myself, “How is it that other little boys can help being cowards?”

I then made up my mind that for the future I would be brave; yet I could not help feeling an inward consciousness that, when the opportunity came for me to show courage, I should only play the coward again. I endured real torture that hour I passed in the corner, and was finding my trouble insupportable, when suddenly the door opened to admit my father’s old friend Colonel Boissot.