After hearing three masses, we went to visit the manger. A kind of tent had been erected in the upper choir. In it was a statue of St. Joseph, the Blessed Virgin, an ox, an ass, and in the centre on the straw lay the new-born Infant with its little arms outstretched. Above hovered the angels. Though rudely cast, their effect was good in the dim light. We knelt around, and the novices sang out joyfully a Christmas carol, the chorus of which was "_Jésus est né!_"--Christ is born! All this gave a certain vividness to the festival which it never had before; and I enjoyed it much. True, our manger is too homely to bear the criticisms of the scoffer. St. Joseph, for a carpenter, is rather gaudily dressed out in a scarlet robe, purple mantle, ruffle-bosomed shirt, with a breast-pin; and the Virgin hardly does credit to her reputation for beauty and grace; but the eye of faith looks beyond and reads only the lesson of child-like simplicity and humility--nowhere so well learned as at Bethlehem. "I adore thee, O Infant Jesus! naked, weeping, and lying in the manger. Thy childhood and poverty are become my delight. Oh! that I could be thus poor, thus a child like thee. O eternal wisdom! reduced to the condition of a little babe, take from me the vanity and presumptuousness of human wisdom! Make me a child with thee. Be silent, ye teachers and sages of the earth! I wish to know nothing but to be resigned, to be willing to suffer, to lose and forsake all, to be all faith! The Word made Flesh! now _is_ silent, now has an imperfect utterance, now weeps as a child! And shall I set up for being wise? Shall I take a complacency in my own schemes and systems? Shall I be afraid lest the world should not have an opinion high enough of my capacity? No, no; all my pleasure shall be to _decrease_--to become little and obscure, to live in silence, to bear the reproach of Jesus crucified, and to add thereto the helplessness and imperfect utterance of Jesus, a child."[22]