Twice a month, turn and turn about, the pupils belonging to the little Society of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, established at the college on the model of the great society of that name, went in small detachments, unattended, like grown men, to carry succor and consolation to the farthest corners of the thickly-peopled faubourgs. In that way it was sought to teach them charity by experience, the art of finding out the wretchedness, the necessities of the people and of dressing their sores, always more or less repulsive, with a balsam of kind words and ecclesiastical maxims. To console, to convert the masses by the aid of childhood, to disarm religious incredulity by the youth and innocence of the apostles; such was the purpose of that little society, a purpose that failed absolutely of realization, by the way. The children, well-dressed, well-fed, in excellent health, went only to addresses designated beforehand and found respectable poor people, sometimes a little ailing, but far too clean, already enrolled and relieved by the rich charitable organizations of the Church. They never happened upon one of those loathsome homes, where hunger, mourning, abject poverty, all forms of misery, physical and moral, are written in filth on the walls, in indelible wrinkles on the faces. Their visit was arranged in advance like that of the sovereign to the guard-house to taste the soldier's soup; the guard-house is notified and the soup seasoned for the royal palate. Have you seen those pictures in religious books, where a little communicant, with his bow on his arm and his taper in his hand, all combed and curled, goes to assist a poor old man lying on his wretched pallet with the whites of his eyes turned up to the sky? These charitable visits had the same conventional stage-setting and accent. The machine-like gestures of the little preachers with arms too short for the work, were answered by words learned by rote, so false as to set one's teeth on edge. The comical words of encouragement, the "consolation lavishly poured forth" in prize-book phrases by voices suggestive of young roosters with the influenza, called forth emotional blessings, the whining, sickening mummery of a church porch after vespers. And as soon as the young visitors' backs were turned, what an explosion of laughter and shouting in the garret, what a dancing around the offerings brought, what an overturning of armchairs in which they have been feigning illness, what a pouring of boluses into the fire, a fire of ashes, very artistically arranged! When the little Jansoulets went to visit their parents, they were placed in charge of the man with the red fez, Bompain the indispensable. It was Bompain who took them to the Champs-Elysees, arrayed in English jackets, silk hats of the latest style--at seven years!--and with little canes dangling from the ends of their dogskin gloves. It was Bompain who superintended the victualling of the break on which he went with the children to the races,