ries.
Nothing was now wanting but M. de La Perriere's visit and his report,
which could not fail to be favorable, to ensure the appearance on the
list of March 16th, the date of an imperial anniversary, of the
glorious name of Jansoulet. The 16th of March, that is to say, within a
month. What would old Hemerlingue say to that signal distinction?--old
Hemerlingue, who had had to be content with the Nisham for so long. And
the bey, who had been made to believe that Jansoulet was under the ban
of Parisian society, and the old mother, down at Saint-Romans, who was
always so happy over her son's successes! Was not all that worth a few
millions judiciously distributed and strewn by that road leading to
renown, along which the Nabob walked like a child, with no fear of
being devoured at the end? And was there not in these external joys,
these honors, this dearly bought consideration, a measure of
compensation for all the chagrins of that Oriental won back to European
life, who longed for a home and had naught but a caravansary, who
sought a wife and found naught but a Levantine?

VIII.

THE WORK OF BETHLEHEM.

Bethlehem! Why did that legendary name, sweet to the ear, warm as the
straw in the miraculous stable, give you such a cold shudder when you
saw it in gilt letters over that iron gateway? The feeling was due
perhaps to the melancholy landscape, the vast, desolate plain that
stretches from Nanterre to Saint-Cloud, broken only by an occasional
clump of trees or the smoke from some factory chimney. Perhaps, too, in
a measure, to the disproportion between the humble hamlet of Judaea and
that grandiose structure, that villa in the style of Louis XIII., built
of small stones and mortar, and showing pink through the leafless
branches of the park, where there were several large ponds with a
coating of green slime. Certain it is that on passing the place one's
heart contracted. When one entered the grounds it was much worse. An
oppressive, inexplicable silence hovered about the house, where the
faces at the windows had a depressing aspect behind the small
old-fashioned, greenish panes. The she-goats, straying along the paths,
languidly cropped the first shoots of grass, with occasional "baas" in
the direction of their keeper, who seemed as bored as they, and
followed visitors with a listless eye. There was an air of mourning,
the deserted, terrified aspect of a plague-stricken spot. Yet that had
once been an attractive