“How pale he is!” murmurs M. de la Perriere, very pale himself.  The Nabob is livid also.  A cold breath seems to have passed over the place.  The director assumes an air of unconcern.

“It is the reflection.  We are all of us green here.”

“Yes, yes, that is so,” remarks Jenkins, “it is the reflection of the lake.  Come and look, Monsieur the Secretary.”  And he draws him to the window to point out to him the large sheet of water with its dipping willows, while Mme. Polge makes haste to draw over the eternal dream of the little Wallachian the parted curtains of his cradle.

The inspection of the establishment must be continued very quickly in order to destroy this unfortunate impression.

To begin with, M. de la Perriere is shown a splendid laundry, with stoves, drying-rooms, thermometers, immense presses of polished walnut, full of babies’ caps and frocks, labelled and tied up in dozens.  When the linen has been warmed, the linen-room maid passes it out through a little door in exchange for the number left by the nurse.  A perfect order reigns, one can see, and everything, down to its healthy smell of soap-suds, gives to this apartment a wholesome and rural aspect.  There is clothing here for five hundred children.  That is the number which Bethlehem can accommodate, and everything has been arranged upon a corresponding scale; the vast pharmacy, glittering with bottles and Latin inscriptions, pestles and mortars of marble in every corner, the hydropathic installation, its large rooms built of stone, with gleaming baths possessing a huge apparatus including pipes of all dimensions for douches, upward and downward, spray, jet, or whip-lash, and the kitchens adorned with superb kettles of copper, and with economical coal and gas ovens.  Jenkins wished to institute a model establishment; and he found the thing easy, for the work was done on a large scale, as it can be when funds are not lacking.  You feel also over it all the experience and the iron hand of “our intelligent superintendent,” to whom the director cannot refrain from paying a public tribute.  This is the signal for general congratulations.  M. de la Perriere, delighted with the manner in which the establishment is equipped, congratulates Dr. Jenkins upon his fine creations, Jenkins compliments his friend Pondevez, who, in his turn, thanks the Departmental secretary for having consented to honour Bethlehem with a visit.  The good Nabob makes his voice heard in this chorus of eulogy, finds a kind word for each one, but is a little surprised all the same that he has not been congratulated himself, since they were about it.  It is true that the best of congratulations awaits him on the 16th March on the front page of the Official Journal in a decree which flames in advance before his eyes and makes him glance every now and then at his buttonhole.