A gentleman, a stranger in the locality, entered the church with a young lady, about eighteen years of age, who seemed to be his daughter. The gentleman took off his hat, put on a smoking cap, and began to visit the church with as much carelessness of demeanor as though it were a provincial museum. The young lady dipped the tips of her fingers in the holy water, sped through a short prayer, and hastened to rejoin her father, with whom she began to chat and laugh. When they came in front of the crib, the father adjusted his eye-glasses, the daughter took her opera-glass, and for a few minutes they gazed on this scene, new to them. After gazing a little while, the gentleman shrugged his shoulders and asked: "What are all those dolls?" "Papa," replied the daughter, "that is the Stable of Bethlehem, and a simple representation of the birth of Jesus Christ." "Simple?" exclaimed the father, "you're indulgent to-day, Azemia; you should say grotesque and buffoonish; that it should be possible to push bad taste so far! It is not enough that their mysteries are incomprehensible; here they're trying to make them ridiculous!" "Goodness, papa," said the young lady; "just think! for the common people and peasants"-- "I tell you, Azemia, that it is absurd and shocking, and that the peasants and the natives themselves must laugh at it. Let us go! I feel myself catching cold here, and dinner must be ready." They had hardly left the church, when a lady entered with a charming four-year-old baby. The child ran to the crib where the mother joined him after a prayer which seemed to me less summary and more serious than that which the young lady had said. "Oh! mamma," the child said half aloud; "look at the little Jesus, and the Blessed Virgin, and St. Joseph. See the kings and the shepherds. Oh! mamma, see the star the kings followed and that stopped over the Stable of Bethlehem." And the child stood on tip-toe and looked with wide-open eyes. "Mamma," he went on, "see the ass and the ox that were in the stable when the little Jesus came into the world. Oh! the beautiful gray ass! and that ox that is all red; it looks like an ox for sure, like those in the fields. Say, little mother, could I throw a kiss to little Jesus?" And the child, putting his finger-tips to his lips, made a delightfully naive salute. The mother silently kissed her child, and it seemed to me that she was weeping. "Now, darling," she said, "now that you've seen everything, say to the little Jesus the prayer you say every night before going to bed." The child seemed to hesitate. "You see there is nobody here but the good God and us; then you can say it low." "My God," said the child; "I love you. Keep me during my sleep; keep little father and little mother too, good papa and good mamma, my sister Mary, who is at boarding-school, and all my relatives, living and dead. Jesus, Mary, Joseph, I give you my heart."