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st, an oldish, dogged look, a precocity born of suffering, visible in the numberless wrinkles on those little bald heads, confined in linen caps edged with tawdry hospital lace. From what did they suffer? What disease had they? They had everything, everything that one can have; diseases of children and diseases of adults. Offspring of poverty and vice, they brought into the world when they were born ghastly phenomena of heredity. One had a cleft palate, another great copper-colored blotches on his forehead, and all were covered with humor. And then they were starving to death. Notwithstanding the spoonfuls of milk and sugared water that were forced into their mouths, and the sucking-bottle that was used more or less in spite of the prohibition, they were dying of inanition. Those poor creatures, exhausted before they were born, needed the freshest, the most strengthening food; the goats might perhaps have supplied it, but they had sworn not to suck the goats. And that was what made the dormitory lugubrious and silent, without any of the little outbursts of anger emphasized by clenched fists, without any of the shrieks that show the even red gums, whereby the child makes trial of his strength and of his lungs; only an occasional plaintive groan, as if the soul were tossing and turning restlessly in a little diseased body, unable to find a place to rest. Jenkins and the manager, noticing the unfavorable impression produced upon their guests by the visit to the dormitory, tried to enliven the situation by talking very loud, with a good-humored, frank, well-satisfied manner. Jenkins shook hands warmly with the overseer. "Well, Madame Polge, are our little pupils getting on?" "As you see, Monsieur le Docteur," she replied, pointing to the beds. Very funereal in her green dress was tall Madame Polge, the ideal of dry nurses; she completed the picture. But where had the Empress's secretary gone? He was standing by a cradle, which he was scrutinizing sadly, shaking his head. "_Bigre de Bigre!_" whispered Pompon to Madame Polge. "It's the Wallachian." The little blue card, hanging above the cradle as in hospitals, set forth the nationality of the child within: "Moldo-Wallachian." What cursed luck that Monsieur le Secretaire's eye should happen to light upon him! Oh! the poor little head lying on the pillow, with cap all awry, nostrils contracted, lips parted by a short, panting breath, the breath of those who are
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