"Not the least in the world," the shameless Pompon replies, and,
advancing to the side of the cot, he tries to make the little one laugh
by tickling him with his finger, straightens the pillow, and says in a
hearty voice, somewhat overcharged with tenderness: "Well, old fellow?"
Shaken out of his torpor, escaping for a moment from the shades which
already are closing on him, the child opens his eyes on those faces
leaning over him, glances at them with a gloomy indifference, then,
returning to his dream which he finds more interesting, clinches his
little wrinkled hands and heaves an elusive sigh. Mystery! Who shall say
for what end that baby had been born into life? To suffer for two months
and to depart without having seen anything, understood anything, without
any one even knowing the sound of his voice.

"How pale he is!" murmurs M. de la Perriere, very pale himself. The
Nabob is livid also. A cold breath seems to have passed over the place.
The director assumes an air of unconcern.

"It is the reflection. We are all of us green here."

"Yes, yes, that is so," remarks Jenkins, "it is the reflection of the
lake. Come and look, Monsieur the Secretary." And he draws him to the
window to point out to him the large sheet of water with its dipping
willows, while Mme. Polge makes haste to draw over the eternal dream of
the little Wallachian the parted curtains of his cradle.

The inspection of the establishment must be continued very quickly in
order to destroy this unfortunate impression.

To begin with, M. de la Perriere is shown a splendid laundry, with
stoves, drying-rooms, thermometers, immense presses of polished walnut,
full of babies' caps and frocks, labelled and tied up in dozens. When
the linen has been warmed, the linen-room maid passes it out through
a little door in exchange for the number left by the nurse. A perfect
order reigns, one can see, and everything, down to its healthy smell of
soap-suds, gives to this apartment a wholesome and rural aspect. There
is clothing here for five hundred children. That is the number which
Bethlehem can accommodate, and everything has been arranged upon a
corresponding scale; the vast pharmacy, glittering with bottles and
Latin inscriptions, pestles and mortars of marble in every corner, the
hydropathic installation, its large rooms built of stone, with gleaming
baths possessing a huge apparatus including pipes of all dimensions for
douches, upward and downward, spra