e really too neglected. Even the Creoles
in the institution had correspondents and visitors; but they were never
called to the parlor, nor was any relative of theirs known to the
school authorities; from time to time they received baskets of
sweetmeats or windfalls of cake, and that was all. The Nabob, as he
drove through Paris, would strip a confectioner's shop-window for their
benefit and send the contents to the college with that affectionate
impulsiveness blended with negro-like ostentation which characterized
all his acts. It was the same with their toys, always too fine, too
elaborate, of no earthly use, the toys which are made only for show and
which the Parisian never buys. But the thing to which above all others
the little Jansoulets owed the respectful consideration of pupils and
masters was their well-filled purse, always ready for collections, for
professorial entertainments, and for the charitable visits, the famous
visits inaugurated by the College Bourdaloue, one of the tempting items
on the programme of the institution, the admiration of impressionable
minds.

Twice a month, turn and turn about, the pupils belonging to the little
Society of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, established at the college on the
model of the great society of that name, went in small detachments,
unattended, like grown men, to carry succor and consolation to the
farthest corners of the thickly-peopled faubourgs. In that way it was
sought to teach them charity by experience, the art of finding out the
wretchedness, the necessities of the people and of dressing their
sores, always more or less repulsive, with a balsam of kind words and
ecclesiastical maxims. To console, to convert the masses by the aid of
childhood, to disarm religious incredulity by the youth and innocence
of the apostles; such was the purpose of that little society, a purpose
that failed absolutely of realization, by the way. The children,
well-dressed, well-fed, in excellent health, went only to addresses
designated beforehand and found respectable poor people, sometimes a
little ailing, but far too clean, already enrolled and relieved by the
rich charitable organizations of the Church. They never happened upon
one of those loathsome homes, where hunger, mourning, abject poverty,
all forms of misery, physical and moral, are written in filth on the
walls, in indelible wrinkles on the faces. Their visit was arranged in
advance like that of the sovereign to the guard-house