I always imagine that this happened somewhere in one of the huge cities, on the very night of Christmas. And the weather was terribly icy.

A child. A child of six years or less awoke one morning shivering with cold in a cellar oozing with damp. He was wearing a small thing resembling a shirt, and the breath issuing from his mouth took the shape of rings of white vapor. Crouched in a corner, on a wooden box, he amused himself watching this vapor to drive away his boredom.

But he was hungry; he felt a pressing desire to eat something. Many times during the day he had drawn near the mat on which his mother lay, on a bit of straw shaped like a bed, and under her head a heap of old clothes that served her in place of a pillow.

How did she happen to be in this place?

She must have come with her child from another city and been struck down suddenly by illness. The police had summoned the mistress of the cellar. The rest of the lodgers had scattered at this hour of the night — it was the holiday... and no one was left but the old-clothes peddler, who lay sleeping off the drink he had swallowed twenty-four hours before, without waiting for the holiday to come.

In the other lodging there was a frail old woman crippled by rheumatism, who lay moaning and groaning. In a time gone by, and in another land, she had been a pampered little girl. But now she was alone, sighing and complaining and scolding the little boy, who had come to fear approaching that corner.

He had managed to find something to drink in the passage. But he had not found a single morsel of bread. Ten times at least he had gone up to his mother, trying to wake her. But fear of the darkness took hold of his little heart, and terror overwhelmed him. Night had let down its curtains long since, and still no light lit the place.

He had felt his mother's face and found it cold as the wall. He wondered at her, how she stayed without moving... and he exclaimed to himself: "How cold it is here!" His hand came to rest mechanically on his dead mother's shoulder. He blew on his little fingers to put some warmth into them. And after searching for his cap

on the mat, he left the cellar without a sound, feeling his way with his hands. He would gladly have left the place long before, had he not been afraid of meeting,

at the top of the stairs, the big dog that had been barking all night in front of the neighboring house. But the dog was not there now. And here he suddenly found himself in the street.

My God! How immense this city is! He had never seen anything like it. Back there, where he had come from with his mother, darkness lay over the town at night; a single lantern lit the whole street; people took to their houses in the evening, and you would find no one in the streets and hear nothing but the barking of dogs — but the weather, in return, was warm. And there they used to give him something to eat.

But here! O God, if only he could eat something.

And then, what an uproar and clamor deafening his ears, what lights and crowds and horses and carriages — and this frost that pours down, pours down without cease; and the carriage-horses, coming and going, snorting frozen vapor from their nostrils, the iron of their hooves ringing on the pavement through the scattered snow. And these crowds colliding and jostling and... My God, how fiercely the desire grips him to eat something, a morsel of anything. And how sharply the pain creeps through his little fingers!

One of the policemen passed by and turned his head away, as if he had not noticed him.

Here is another street. Oh! How wide it is! Here one of the carriages will surely crush him. How this whole world clamors and hurries! And people pass him by, on foot and in carriages. And the light! What is this light?

And this! What is this, my God? How big this shop window is! Behind the window he saw a room with a great tree rising to the ceiling — a pine tree adorned with lights and clusters of gilded flowers and apples... and around it dolls and little horses, and children in new clothes, laughing and playing and eating and drinking.

And there — a little girl! She has begun to dance with a little boy. Lord, how sweet she is! Even the strains of the music can be heard through the glass.

And our hungry child gapes in astonishment, then bursts out laughing; he laughs despite the pain in his reddened fingers, which will no longer bend.

And suddenly the little one remembers that his fingers hurt him, and he breaks into sobs and runs off in haste.

He stopped before a second window and a room with