sine and
Modernus, the holy Bishop was much afflicted and fell a-sighing.

"These children," he said, "were reared in suffering, by unworthy
parents. The excess of their misfortunes has caused the deformity of
their characters. We must redress their wrongs by enduring patience, and
persevering kindness."

"Monseigneur," answered Modernus, who was chattering with fever in his
dressing-gown, and sneezing under his nightcap, for his bath had given
him a cold, "it is possible that their wickedness is derived from the
wickedness of their parents. But how do you explain, father, the fact
that neglect has produced in each of them different and, so to speak,
contrary vices, and that the desertion and destitution into which
they were thrown before they were put in the salting-tub has made one
avaricious, a second violent, and the third a visionary? And in your
place, my Lord, I should feel most uneasy about the last."

"Each of these children," answered the Bishop, "has yielded in his weak
spot. Ill-treatment has deformed their souls in those portions that
offered the least resistance. Let us straighten them out with a thousand
precautions, for fear of increasing the evil instead of diminishing it.
Mildness, clemency, and forbearance are the only means which should ever
be employed for the improvement of men, heretics of course excepted."

"No doubt, Monseigneur, no doubt," said Modernus, sneezing three
times. "But you cannot have a good education without chastisement, nor
discipline without discipline. I know what I am about. If you do not
punish these three little ragamuffins, they will grow up worse than
Herod. I assure you I am right."

"Modernus could not be mistaken," said Madame Basine.

The Bishop did not answer. With the widow and the Deacon, he paced the
length of a hawthorn hedge, which breathed forth an agreeable fragrance
of honey and bitter almonds. In a slight hollow, where the soil received
the water from a neighbouring spring, he stopped before a bush, whose
twisted, close-packed branches were covered with gleaming, clean-cut
leaves and white clusters of flowers.

"Look," he said, "at this leafy, fragrant shrub, this lovely may, this
noble thorn-bush, so strong and vigorous. Observe that it is in more
abundant leaf, and more glorious with bloom, than all the other thorns
in the hedge. But notice also that the pale bark of its branches bears
only a few thorns, which are weak and soft and blunt. What is the