“What can he be doing?  He is mad,” said Jenkins to himself in consternation.

But the director on the contrary knows very well what he is doing and has himself skilfully arranged the scene, selecting two patient and gentle beasts and two exceptional subjects, two little desperate mortals who want to live at any price and open their mouths to swallow, no matter what food, like young birds still in the nest.

“Come nearer, gentlemen, and observe.”

Yes, they are indeed sucking, these little cherubs!  One of them, lying close to the ground, squeezed up under the belly of the goat, is going at it so heartily that you can hear the gurglings of the warm milk descending, it would seem, even into the little limbs that kick with satisfaction at the meal.  The other, calmer, lying down indolently, requires some little encouragement from his Auvergnoise attendant.

“Suck, will you suck then, you little rogue!” And at length, as though he had suddenly come to a decision, he begins to drink with such avidity that the woman leans over to him, surprised by this extraordinary appetite, and exclaims laughing: 

“Ah, the rascal, is he not cunning?—­it is his thumb that he is sucking instead of the goat.”

The angel has hit on that expedient so that he may be left in peace.  The incident does not create a bad impression.  M. de la Perriere is much amused by this notion of the nurse that the child was trying to take them all in.  He leaves the nursery, delighted.  “Positively de-e-elighted,” he repeats, nodding his head as they ascend the great staircase with its echoing walls decorated with the horns of stags, leading to the dormitory.

Very bright, very airy, is this vast room, running the whole length of one side of the house, with numerous windows and cots, separated one from another by a little distance, hung with fleecy white curtains like clouds.  Women go and come through the large arch in the centre, with piles of linen on their arms, or keys in their hands, nurses with the special duty of washing the babies.

Here too much has been attempted and the first impression of the visitors is a bad one.  All this whiteness of muslin, this polished parquet, the brightness of the window-panes reflecting the sky sad at beholding these things, seem to throw into bold relief the thinness, the unhealthy pallor of these dying little ones, already the colour of their shrouds.  Alas! the oldest are only aged some six months, the youngest barely a fortnight, and already there is in all these faces, these faces in embryo, a disappointed expression, a scowling, worn look, a suffering precocity visible in the numerous lines on those little bald foreheads, cramped by linen caps edged with poor, narrow hospital lace.  What are they suffering?  What diseases can they have?  They have everything, everything that one can have:  diseases of children and diseases of men.  The fruit of vice and poverty, they bring