ter
of playthings. They were always too pretty, tricked out too finely,
useless--those toys that are for show but which the Parisian does not
buy. But that which above all attracted to the little Jansoulets the
respect both of pupils and masters, were their purses heavy with gold,
ever ready for school subscriptions, for the professors' birthdays,
and the charity visits, those famous visits organized by the College
Bourdaloue, one of the tempting things in the prospectus, the marvel of
sensitive souls.

Twice a month, turn and turn about, the pupils who were members of the
miniature Society of St. Vincent de Paul founded in the college upon the
model of the great one, went in little squads, alone, as though they had
been grown-up, to bear succour and consolation into the deepest recesses
of the more densely populated quarters of the town. This was designed
to teach them a practical charity, the art of knowing the needs, the
miseries of the lower classes, and to heal these heart-rending evils
by a nostrum of kind words and ecclesiastical maxims. To console, to
evangelize the masses by the help of childhood, to disarm religious
incredulity by the youth and _naivete_ of the apostles, such was the aim
of this little society; an aim entirely missed, moreover. The children,
healthy, well-dressed, well-fed, calling only at addresses previously
selected, found poor persons of good appearance, sometimes rather
unwell, but very clean, already on the parish register and in receipt of
aid from the wealthy organization of the Church. Never did they
chance to enter one of those nauseous dwellings wherein hunger, grief,
humiliation, all physical and moral ills are written in leprous mould on
the walls, in indelible lines on the brows. Their visits were prepared
for, like that of the sovereign who enters a guard-room to taste the
soldiers' soup: the guard-room is warmed and the soup seasoned for
the royal palate. Have you seen those pictures in pious books, where a
little communicant, with candle in hand, and perfectly groomed, comes
to minister to a poor old man lying sick on his straw pallet and turning
the whites of his eyes to heaven? These visits of charity had the same
conventionality of setting and of accent. To the measured gestures of
the little preachers were corresponding words learned by heart and
false enough to make one squint. To the comic encouragement, to the
"consolations lavished" in prize-book phrases by the voices