st taken him. Carefully he
laid him at full length, and straightened the limbs that were growing
cold already, putting the head and hand in position, with all the heed
that a mother could bestow upon her child.

"It is all over, death is very near," added Benassis, who remained
standing by the bedside.

The old woman gazed at the dying form, with her hands on her hips. A few
tears stole down her cheeks. Genestas remained silent. He was unable to
explain to himself how it was that the death of a being that concerned
him so little should affect him so much. Unconsciously he shared the
feeling of boundless pity that these hapless creatures excite among the
dwellers in the sunless valleys wherein Nature has placed them. This
sentiment has degenerated into a kind of religious superstition in
families to which cretins belong; but does it not spring from the most
beautiful of Christian virtues--from charity, and from a belief in a
reward hereafter, that most effectual support of our social system,
and the one thought that enables us to endure our miseries? The hope of
inheriting eternal bliss helps the relations of these unhappy creatures
and all others round about them to exert on a large scale, and with
sublime devotion, a mother's ceaseless protecting care over an apathetic
creature who does not understand it in the first instance, and who in
a little while forgets it all. Wonderful power of religion! that has
brought a blind beneficence to the aid of an equally blind misery.
Wherever cretins exist, there is a popular belief that the presence
of one of these creatures brings luck to a family--a superstition that
serves to sweeten lives which, in the midst of a town population,
would be condemned by a mistaken philanthropy to submit to the harsh
discipline of an asylum. In the higher end of the valley of Isere, where
cretins are very numerous, they lead an out-of-door life with the cattle
which they are taught to herd. There, at any rate, they are at large,
and receive the reverence due to misfortune.

A moment later the village bell clinked at slow regular intervals, to
acquaint the flock with the death of one of their number. In the sound
that reached the cottage but faintly across the intervening space, there
was a thought of religion which seemed to fill it with a melancholy
peace. The tread of many feet echoed up the road, giving notice of
an approaching crowd of people--a crowd that uttered not a word. Then
suddenly