He lifted the heavy, leathern curtain over the church door and entered. Within the air struck cool, though heavy with stale incense; gradually the gleam of gilding, then separate colours and degrees of dusk and pallor detached themselves from the darkness, and he saw he was in the typical little church of the neighbourhood--a rococo affair decked with rows of plaster saints on painted brackets, each with its little bunch of flowers in a china mug in front of it. Beneath all the superfluous decoration there was a pleasing austerity and sturdiness of line; solid pillars and a low-groined roof made a square-set, beetle-browed little building, at once tawdry and stark. To Bernardy's receptive mind there was something peculiarly charming about these churches where everything spoke of religion being taken in the right way--as a mere matter of course. A lighted wick, floating in a jam-jar of oil, caught his eye and, moving forward, he saw it burned before a crèche. For a few minutes he stood before it in silence, then he laughed aloud in sheer enjoyment. All the other crèches he had seen boasted figures of plaster or china; here, apparently, the expense had been too great, and the characters were represented by dolls, ordinary wooden dolls with shiny, painted, black hair and stuff clothes. The Mother herself was dressed in stiff, spangled muslin, with a veil like a _première communiante_, and a wreath of orange blossom--a confusion of ideas that had its humour. St. Joseph, in good broadcloth coat and the tightest of trousers, held the other post of honour, and nearer the spectators, though facing away from them to the little Christ-Child, were ranged the shepherds, with--surely an innovation--their wives. The shepherds themselves supplied the crowning touch, for they wore real knitted stockings of worsted, and shoes with stitched leather soles, a fact admirably displayed by the kneeling position of their wearers. The wives held little baskets full of beads, meant to represent eggs; and woolly lambs with red-cotton tongues stood about at regular intervals. All the dolls looked old, and as though they had seen a less gentle service, and Bernardy wondered what child in that remote place was of sufficient wealth to own dolls. He was charmed into mirth, and as he thought how tenderly and kindly the real personages represented must laugh as they looked down at the little set-piece, he tried to trace, in some trick of light and shadow, a fleeting smile on the doll-faces. Without warning, his horror closed on him again, and turning he went heavily down the church. As he neared the door the two old women of the market square came in; still laughing and chattering, they went past him, slowly and stiffly, with the uneven clumping of old feet. Some curious premonition--a feeling that something was about to happen--made Bernardy watch them.