smoking wood fire. They were the leprous, the scrofulous, the outcasts
of Bethlehem, who had been hidden away in that retired corner--with
injunctions to their dry nurse to amuse them, to pacify them, to sit on
them if necessary, so that they should not cry--but whom that stupid,
inquisitive countrywoman had left to themselves while she went to look
at the fine carriage standing in the courtyard. When her back was
turned the urchins soon wearied of their horizontal position; and all
the little, red-faced, blotched _croute-leves_ lifted up their robust
voices in concert, for they, by some miracle, were in good health,
their very disease saved and nourished them. As wild and squirming as
cockchafers thrown on their backs, struggling to rise with the aid of
knees and elbows,--some unable to recover their equilibrium after
falling on their sides, others sitting erect, bewildered, their little
legs wrapped in swaddling-clothes, they spontaneously ceased their
writhings and their cries when they saw the door open; but M. de La
Perriere's shaking beard reassured them, encouraged them to fresh
efforts, and in the renewed uproar the manager's explanation was almost
inaudible: "Children that are kept secluded--contagion--skin diseases."
Monsieur le Secretaire inquired no farther; less heroic than Bonaparte
when he visited the plague-stricken wretches at Jaffa, he rushed to the
door, and in his confusion and alarm, anxious to say something and
unable to think of anything appropriate, he murmured, with an ineffable
smile: "They are cha-arming."

The inspection concluded, they all assembled in the salon on the ground
floor, where Madame Polge had prepared a little collation. The cellars
of Bethlehem were well stocked. The sharp air of the high land, the
going upstairs and downstairs had given the old gentleman from the
Tuileries such an appetite as he had not had for many a day, so that he
talked and laughed with true rustic good-fellowship, and when they were
all standing, the visitors being about to depart, he raised his glass,
shaking his head the while, to drink this toast: "To Be-Be-Bethlehem!"

The others were much affected, there was a clinking of glasses, and
then the carriage bore the party swiftly along the avenue of lindens,
where a cold, red, rayless sun was setting. Behind them the park
relapsed into its gloomy silence. Great dark shadows gathered at the
foot of the hedges, invaded the house, crept stealthily along the