ABSTRACT
There is a nucleus of freshness and childhood which one may find, at last, if one follows the right path of many, under the husk of cynical, hardened and misanthropic characters. One forces oneself to play an inhuman part, and under this cuirass a whole real and suffering humanity complains and bewails its hard lot. The New Year gifts recall those, infinitely precious, which the Three Kings, the Three Wise Men, brought from their distant Orient to the divine Child. But these presents offered, to the new-born child by powerful and mysterious personages remind strangely, in their turn, of the gifts which, fairies, in the folk-tales, or magicians, benevolent or malicious, brought to the child in its cradle. These sifts were good or bad qualities of mind and body. They were presented under the form of a magic word, a charm.
