"Make her a pretty frock at once."

Generals in Napoleon’s army apparently didn’t want their sons crying, as little Victor Hugo learned, much to his chagrin. From an article in the August 1, 1897 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“The great French writer, Victor Hugo, tells this story about his own childhood–his father it is remembered, was one of Napoleon’s generals.

‘When I was five or six years old, I was crying. My father, who heard me, did not reprove me, but this is the way he punished me:

‘Why, the poor, dear little girl,’ he said, in a cool, ironical manner. ‘What’s the matter with her? What’s making her cry? She shan’t be found fault with. It’s right for little girls to cry. But how’s this? What have you been dressing her in boys’ clothes for? Make her a pretty frock at once, and to-morrow she shall go and take a walk in the garden of Tulleries.

‘Sure enough, the nurse put the girl’s dress on me the next day, according to order, and took me to walk at the Tulleries. I was well mortified, as you may perhaps imagine. But I never again cried from that day until I had become a man grown.'”