eground we have the
regulation midwife holding the regulation baby (who, by the way, was
an astonishingly fine child for only five minutes old). Then comes
the under-nurse--a good buxom creature, who, as usual, is feeling
the water in the bath to see that it is of the right temperature.
Next to her is the head-nurse, who is arranging the cradle. Behind
the head-nurse is the under-under-nurse's drudge, who is just going
out upon some errands. Lastly--for by this time we have got all
round the chapel--we arrive at the Virgin's grandmother's body-
guard, a stately, responsible-looking lady, standing in waiting upon
her mistress. I put it to the reader--is it conceivable that St.
Joachim should have been allowed in such a room at such a time, or
that he should have had the courage to avail himself of the
permission, even though it had been extended to him? At any rate,
is it conceivable that he should have been allowed to sit on St.
Anne's right hand, laying down the law with a "Marry, come up" here,
and a "Marry, go down" there, and a couple of such unabashed collars
as the old lady has put on for the occasion?

Moreover (for I may as well demolish this mischievous confusion
between St. Joachim and his mother-in-law once and for all), the
merest tyro in hagiology knows that St. Joachim was not at home when
the Virgin was born. He had been hustled out of the temple for
having no children, and had fled desolate and dismayed into the
wilderness. It shows how silly people are, for all the time he was
going, if they had only waited a little, to be the father of the
most remarkable person of purely human origin who had ever been
born, and such a parent as this should surely not be hurried. The
story is told in the frescoes of the chapel of Loreto, only a
quarter of an hour's walk from Varallo, and no one can have known it
better than D'Enrico. The frescoes are explained by written
passages that tell us how, when Joachim was in the desert, an angel
came to him in the guise of a fair, civil young gentleman, and told
him the Virgin was to be born. Then, later on, the same young
gentleman appeared to him again, and bade him "in God's name be
comforted, and turn again to his content," for the Virgin had been
actually born. On which St. Joachim, who seems to have been of
opinion that marriage after all _was_ rather a failure, said that,
as things were going on so nicely without him, he would stay in the
desert just a litt