He did know what it was; but M. de La Perriere proposed to know, too, and before Pondevez could raise his hand, he pushed open the heavy door of the room whence that fearful concert proceeded. In a vile kennel which the grand scouring had passed by, for they had no idea of exhibiting it, some half score little monstrosities lay stretched on mattresses laid side by side on the floor, under the guardianship of a chair unoccupied save by an unfinished piece of knitting, and a little cracked kettle, full of hot wine, boiling over a smoking wood fire. They were the leprous, the scrofulous, the outcasts of Bethlehem, who had been hidden away in that retired corner--with injunctions to their dry nurse to amuse them, to pacify them, to sit on them if necessary, so that they should not cry--but whom that stupid, inquisitive countrywoman had left to themselves while she went to look at the fine carriage standing in the courtyard. When her back was turned the urchins soon wearied of their horizontal position; and all the little, red-faced, blotched _croute-leves_ lifted up their robust voices in concert, for they, by some miracle, were in good health, their very disease saved and nourished them. As wild and squirming as cockchafers thrown on their backs, struggling to rise with the aid of knees and elbows,--some unable to recover their equilibrium after falling on their sides, others sitting erect, bewildered, their little legs wrapped in swaddling-clothes, they spontaneously ceased their writhings and their cries when they saw the door open; but M. de La Perriere's shaking beard reassured them, encouraged them to fresh efforts, and in the renewed uproar the manager's explanation was almost inaudible: "Children that are kept secluded--contagion--skin diseases." Monsieur le Secretaire inquired no farther; less heroic than Bonaparte when he visited the plague-stricken wretches at Jaffa, he rushed to the door, and in his confusion and alarm, anxious to say something and unable to think of anything appropriate, he murmured, with an ineffable smile: "They are cha-arming." The inspection concluded, they all assembled in the salon on the ground floor, where Madame Polge had prepared a little collation. The cellars of Bethlehem were well stocked. The sharp air of the high land, the going upstairs and downstairs had given the old gentleman from the Tuileries such an appetite as he had not had for many a day, so that he talked and laughed with true rustic good-fellowship, and when they were all standing, the visitors being about to depart, he raised his glass, shaking his head the while, to drink this toast: "To Be-Be-Bethlehem!"