e, boiling on a smoky
wood fire. These are the children with ringworm, with rashes, the
disfavoured of Bethlehem, who had been hidden in this retired corner
with recommendation to their dry-nurse to rock them, to soothe them, to
sit on them, if need were, in order to keep them from crying; but whom
this country-woman, stupid and inquisitive, had left alone there in
order to see the fine carriage standing in the court-yard. Her back
turned, the infants had very quickly grown weary of their horizontal
position; and then all these little scrofulous patients raised their
lusty concert, for they, by a miracle, are strong, their malady saves
and nourishes them. Bewildered and kicking like beetles when they are
turned on their backs, helping themselves with their hips and their
elbows, some fallen on one side and unable to regain their balance,
others raising in the air their little benumbed, swaddled legs,
spontaneously they cease their gesticulations and cries as they see the
door open; but M. de la Perrier's nodding goatee beard reassures them,
encourages them anew, and in the renewed tumult the explanation given
by the director is only heard with difficulty: "Children kept
separate--Contagion--Skin-diseases." This is quite enough for Monsieur
the Departmental Secretary; less heroic than Bonaparte on his visit to
the plague-stricken of Jaffa, he hastens towards the door, and in his
timid anxiety, wishing to say something and yet not finding words,
murmurs with an ineffable smile: "They are char-ar-ming."

Next, the inspection at an end, see them all gathered in the salon on
the ground floor, where Mme. Polge has prepared a little luncheon. The
cellar of Bethlehem is well stocked. The keen air of the table-land,
these climbs up and downstairs have given the old gentleman from the
Tuileries an appetite such as he has not known for a long time, so that
he chats and laughs as if he were at a picnic, and at the moment of
departure, as they are all standing, raises his glass, nodding his head,
to drink, "To Be-Be-Bethlehem!" Those present are moved, glasses are
touched, then, at a quick trot, the carriage bears the party away down
the long avenue of limes, over which a red and cold sun is just setting.
Behind them the park resumes its dismal silence. Great dark masses
gather in the depths of the copses, surround the house, gain little by
little the paths and open spaces. Soon all is lost in gloom save the
ironical letters embosse