one can tell a Valsesian Birth of the Virgin from a Venetian or a Florentine by the presence of the eggs.  I learned this from an eminent Valsesian professor of medicine, who told me that, though not according to received rules, the eggs never seemed to do any harm.  Here they are evidently to be beaten up, for there is neither spoon nor egg-cup, and we cannot suppose that they were hard-boiled.  On the other hand, in the Middle Ages Italians never used egg-cups and spoons for boiled eggs.  The medieval boiled egg was always eaten by dipping bread into the yolk.

Behind the lady who is bringing in the eggs is the under-under-nurse who is at the fire warming a towel.  In the foreground we have the regulation midwife holding the regulation baby (who, by the way, was an astonishingly fine child for only five minutes old).  Then comes the under-nurse—­a good buxom creature, who, as usual, is feeling the water in the bath to see that it is of the right temperature.  Next to her is the head-nurse, who is arranging the cradle.  Behind the head-nurse is the under-under-nurse’s drudge, who is just going out upon some errands.  Lastly—­for by this time we have got all round the chapel—­we arrive at the Virgin’s grandmother’s body-guard, a stately, responsible-looking lady, standing in waiting upon her mistress.  I put it to the reader—­is it conceivable that St. Joachim should have been allowed in such a room at such a time, or that he should have had the courage to avail himself of the permission, even though it had been extended to him?  At any rate, is it conceivable that he should have been allowed to sit on St. Anne’s right hand, laying down the law with a “Marry, come up” here, and a “Marry, go down” there, and a couple of such unabashed collars as the old lady has put on for the occasion?

Moreover (for I may as well demolish this mischievous confusion between St. Joachim and his mother-in-law once and for all), the merest tyro in hagiology knows that St. Joachim was not at home when the Virgin was born.  He had been hustled out of the temple for having no children, and had fled desolate and dismayed into the wilderness.  It shows how silly people are, for all the time he was going, if they had only waited a little, to be the father of the most remarkable person of purely human origin who had ever been born, and such a parent as this should surely not be hurried.  The story is told in the frescoes of the chapel of Loreto, only a quarter of an hour’s walk from Varallo, and no one can have known it better than D’Enrico.  The frescoes are explained by written passages that tell us how, when Joachim was in the desert, an angel came to him in the guise of a fair, civil young gentleman, and told him the Virgin was to be born.  Then, later on, the same young gentleman appeared to him again, and bade him “in God’s name be comforted, and turn again to his content,” for the Virgin had been actually born.  On which St. Joachim, who seems to have been of opinion