Lempicka Sketch of Madame Allan Bott painting

Lempicka Sketch of Madame Allan Bott painting
flower 22007 painting
Rossetti A Vision of Fiammetta painting
David Male Nude known as Patroclus painting
I doubt if there be anything in the world more enchanting to a mother’s heart than the thoughts awakened by the sight of her child’s little shoe— more especially when it is the holiday shoe, the Sunday, the christening shoe— the shoe embroidered to the very sole, a shoe in which the child has not yet taken a step. The shoe is so tiny, has such a charm in it, it is so impossible for it to walk, that it is to the mother as if she saw her child. She smiles as it, kisses it, babbles to it; she asks herself if it can be that there is a foot so small, and should the child be absent, the little shoe suffices to bring back to her vision the sweet and fragile creature. She imagines she sees it— she does see it— living, laughing, with its tender hands, its little round head, its dewy lips, its clear bright eyes. If it be winter, there it is creeping about the carpet, laboriously clambering over a stool, and the mother trembles lest it come too near the fire. If it be summer, it creeps about the garden, plucks up the grass between the stones, gazes with the artless courage of childhood at the great dogs, the great horses, plays with the shell borders, with the flowers, and makes the gardener scold when he finds sand in the flower-beds and earth on all the paths. The whole world smiles, and shines, and plays round it like itself, even to the breeze and the sunbeams that wanton in its curls. The shoe brings up all this before the mother’s eye, and her heart melts thereat like wax before the fire.