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