Ever since his name shone in the world of children, a special picture of him had stamped itself on my mind — a picture more like "Papa Noël" than like a man of our own age, living in the capital and excelling in trade until he outdid his like among our clever forebears.

Then I heard from some of the people who preceded us into life — and into despair of ever reforming the people in it — that this Papa Noël was nothing but a former "sergeant" of the gendarmerie, known by a strange nickname: "Half-Our-Lord." Thereupon the features of that beloved picture were transformed, and in my imagination the face of "Papa Noël" turned into the visage of one of those rough men of arms. And at the same time I was bereft of the dearest of boyhood's dreams... at an early age. Yet in spite of that I went on laying in, for every holiday, a stock of his toys and firecrackers, like all the other children of the city. And when I became a father I did not exchange my old friend for any other of the dealers in these toys, though they multiplied after the Second War as the sellers of eyeglasses multiplied. And the picture of the fighting "gendarme" went on occupying, in my imagination, the place of the meek, peaceable "Papa Noël."

I used to tell my children, repeating what I had heard without verifying it myself or seeking to prove it:

— I bought you these toys from the kingdom of "Half-Our-Lord"!

And they would laugh, and find in those childish "marvels" what justified the name. But I would hasten to explain the secret, lest appearances deceive them:

— Half-Our-Lord... is a man who lived as a gendarme... and ended a sergeant! Then he was put out of the corps because... he was proud and would not obey his superiors' orders!

Then the little one, who listens to my talk with interest and attention, says:

— Like the drivers — they obey no one, not even the law!

— Exactly... But the superiors of that "sergeant" were personally annoyed by him... so they dismissed him. If they were personally annoyed by the

drivers... they would discipline them and make them apply the law!

I said this, then turned with my children to lighting the wonder-lights and the rockets that scatter through the air stars and boughs like the stars of heaven and the fronds of palms — so that for moments we fancy the dome of the sky has drawn near the surface of the earth, or that the gardens of this earth have soared up till they hang in the expanses of space! Did not the ancients build the hanging gardens? Did not Adam and Eve come down from Paradise to earth?

And joy reaches its peak among the little ones, each imagining "Papa Noël" after the image whose lines have clung to his mind, after every fresh account at every holiday. All except that little one who is influenced by me more than the rest — as though I were the voice and he the echo — for he said to me in earnest:

— And how can an old "gendarme" make these marvels, even if he was a sergeant?... The gendarmes, all of them together, cannot stop our neighbor the grocer from shouting and disturbing the whole quarter — so how can they make "something" more important than that?

The question was embarrassing and the sarcasm biting, especially as I had in fact appealed to all the competent authorities, and to the conscience of the grocer himself, to stop his constant shouting in adver-tisement of his wares... So I said to the boy, hedging:

— The police... are responsible — not the gendarmerie — for the noise that troubles the residents' peace! And in any case... "Papa Noël" left his former corps and gave himself over to perfecting his new work... and excelled in it!

That was shortly before the end of the Second World War. Our country was swarming with the soldiers of the Allies, who had cooperated in the West to win the military positions and then quarreled in the East over the occupation of the strategic posts. Meanwhile "Papa Noël" had the chance to expand his trade, and to earn sums of money that placed him among the great men of means: here a mansion he builds to live in, there a "skyscraper" he puts up