Little Poems in Prose

II THE DESPAIR OF THE OLD WOMAN THE little shrivelled-up old woman felt her- self happy again in looking on the pretty child, to whom everyone was paying court, whom everyone was trying to please; a pretty crea- ture, as fragile as the little old woman herself, and like her, too, without teeth or hair. And she approached it, wooing it with baby-talk and pleasing faces. But the frightened baby struggled in the arms of the hag, and filled the house with its screams. Then the good old woman withdrew herself again into her eternal solitude, and wept in a corner, saying to her- self, “Ah, for us unfortunate old women the age is past when we can please even the inno- cent, and we frighten the little children that we wish to love.”