chiefly his fault; I should never have remarked her without his observation that she was pretty.

The families having lighted their many-colored lanterns swinging at the ends of slight sticks, prepare to beat a retreat, with many compliments, bows, and courtesies. When it is a question of descending the stairs, no one is willing to go first, and at a given moment, the whole party is again on all fours, motionless, and murmuring polite phrases in undertones.

At length they all melt away, descend the stairs with a last buzzing accompaniment of civilities and polite phrases, finished from one step to another in voices which gradually die away. He and I remain alone in the unfriendly empty apartment, where the mats are still littered with the little cups of tea, the absurd little pipes, and the miniature trays.

EXTRACT FROM CHAPTER IV. OF "JERUSALEM."

It was about three o'clock, after a long ride on the dusty road under a sun which at last had emerged from the morning mists and become very hot, that finally we arrived at Bethlehem.

While they were pitching our camp by the side of the road at the entrance to the town, as is the custom, and in one of those olive-tree inclosures which are abandoned to the passing traveler, we rode on through the streets on horseback.

That was not

No more of the first impression, to be sure. earthly and it has fled from us forever. Yet Bethlehem is still, even to-day, in certain quarters at least, a town of the old Orient and not without interest to the eye.

As at Hebron, stone cubes arched with stones and which seem to have no roof. Narrow dark passages paved with big shining stones on which our horses slip. High dilapidated walls which appear as old as Herod, in which are very few and tiny arched windows. "Ah! the Moghrabis!" say the Syrians seated on their thresholds as they watch us approach. Between the houses the view plunges in long vistas upon the other declivity of the mountain which supports the town and sees gardens and orchards graded in endless terraces.

The special charm of Bethlehem lies in the beauty and the costume of the women. White and pink, with regular features and eyes of black velvet, they wear a high and stiff headdress, spangled with silver or gold, somewhat similar to the hennin of

our western middle ages and which is covered by a veil "à la Vièrge" of white muslin hanging in large religious folds. Their bodices, brilliant in color and covered with embroidery in the old style, have sleeves down to the elbow, intended to show the very long pagoda sleeves, cut in a point after the manner of our fifteenth century, of the dress beneath which falls straight to the heels and which is generally of a somber green. In their clothes of the past ages, they walk slowly, upright with noble air — and, withal a naïve prettiness under the white veils which accentuate a strange resemblance, particularly when they hold on the shoulder a little child. At every turning of the street, one might imagine one sees the Virgin Mary, as the early painters pictured her.

The wagonettes of the Cook's excursionists, carriages filled with tourists, for all of which one must draw aside under the doorways. An odious sign in French, "So-and-so, manufacturer of articles of piety at reduced prices." And, finally, we dismount on the grande place de Bethlehem, closed in yonder by the austere-looking walls of the Church of the Nativity. There are hotels, restaurants, shops with European windows filled with rosaries. There is a cab stand and a quantity of those beings who, with special impudence, make it their trade to fleece the traveler.

One is admitted by small groups and in turn into the Church and the grotto of the Nativity which adjoins a large convent of Franciscan monks, guides of these holy places.

We are received there by Italian monks who have common gestures and speech. They make us sit in a waiting-room and leave us alone. A dining-table occupies the center of the room. It is covered with a coarse oilcloth and has on it empty wine or beer glasses. On the walls there are "chromos " representing certain subjects. Queen Victoria, I think, and the Emperor of Austria. . . Where, in truth, are we? In what public inn, in what low tavern? We had been warned, we expected to witness profanations, but not that! This name Bethlehem, so radiant, has just fallen pitifully at our feet, and all is over, everything crumbles in a mortal chill. We remain there silent and harsh, in a sadness without measure and in haughty disgust. Why did we come? why did not we go away at once, back to

the desert this morning when, from the bottom of the lower valleys, Bethlehem still appeared to us mysterious and gentle?

It is our turn now. They call us, they are about to lead us into the grotto in which Christ was born.

Under the cloisters, as we pass along we meet others coming back-Russian pilgrims whose eyes, it is true, are veiled with tears but principally noisy tourists, "Bædeker" in hand. Great God, is it possible that this can be it? Is this place, prostituted to all, the Church of Bethlehem?

The Church is in three divisions-Latin, Armenian and Greek. These three parts, each distinct and hostile, communicate, but a Turkish officer and soldiers, constantly armed, go from one to the other to maintain order and to prevent battles between Christians of different rites.

The grotto opens underneath, entirely subterranean at the present day. And very probably, as the traditions of the eleventh century bear witness, it was really the place of Christ's birth; for, situated formerly at the entrance to ancient Bethlehem, it served as a shelter to poor travelers who could not find a place at the inn.

Two staircases lead below, one for the Latins and the Armenians, the other for the Greeks. The narrow door is of white marble. All the partitions have become dirty and worn from the thousands of beings who have come in groups or in processions ever since the first Christian centuries. The grotto consists of a quantity of small compartments, little lobbies, in which are altars with lamps burning. The irregular roof of rock, damp and oozing, is seen here and there, through the hangings of faded damask; on all sides are cheap gildings, little pictures, vulgar "chromos." We expected at least some archaic luxury, some splendor, some golden treasure as in the crypt of Sinai. But no, nothing. Bethlehem has been pillaged so often that all there now is poor, unsightly, barely ancient. "Here the child was born," explains the monk. "Here he was laid in his couch, here the magi kings sat down, here were the ass and the ox." Distractedly, the mind closed and the heart chilled, we listened without hearing, impatient to leave the place.

Above the grotto, the three churches, in which they officiate and sing psalms at the same time, according to the rites and

with the hatred of the neighbor, are plain and commonplace. In the Greek church, on seeing the antique tabernacle all of gold, a furtive religious impression, half heathen, stays our steps for a moment. A very old pope was singing quickly in a high nasal tone amid a cloud of incense and at each verse the crowd prostrates itself and rises - Bethlehem women each bearing on the bespangled hennin the long virginal veil, converted Arabs with naïve faith in their eyes bending their turban to the earth.

We escape through a fourth church, this a splendid monument, and more venerable than the others, but empty and abandoned, serving merely as a vestibule to the other churches. The basilica was commenced by St. Helen, finished about the year 330 by the Emperor Constantine, and in which eight centuries later, Christmas day 1101, Baudoin I. was consecrated King of Jerusalem. It is one of the oldest Christian sanctuaries in the world; it is two centuries older than the basilica of Sinai, and was spared by Saladin and by all the Arab conquerors. Miraculously preserved from destruction in former times, it only met with real damage at the beginning of our century at the hands of the contemporary Greeks, who walled up the choir in order to make their paltry little church of to-day. It is of a simple and elegant grandeur, retaining something of ancient Greece with its quadruple rows of Corinthian columns. Above the chapiter of acanthus the walls of the naves have preserved in part the gold mosaics placed there at the end of the twelfth century by the Lord Amaury, grand King of Jerusalem. The incense of the neighboring sanctuaries embalms it discreetly, and through its walls comes the muffled sound of the chanting of the pilgrims.

Now we have nothing more to see that interests us in this profaned Bethlehem, and we cannot leave the place soon enough. On the square we remount to return to our tents, escaping from the cross and rosary venders who pull at our bridle, from the professional guides who pursue us offering their cards. And we depart carrying away bitter regret for having come, feeling at the bottom of our hearts the chill of irreparable deceptions.

But towards evening, under the limpid twilight, as we meditate before our tents, our elbows resting as on a terrace on

the little wall separating the road from our olive-tree inclosure the significance of the spot in which we are, comes slowly back to us strongly and once more almost soothes us.

A little behind, yonder on our right, the first houses of Bethlehem, square and roofless, and alone characteristic of Judea. At our feet a great panorama which first descends to a vast depth, then in the distance runs up again to the lofty heights of the blue mountains. A peaceful and melancholy landscape, filled with olive-trees and stones, particularly gray stones whose pale shades become like vapor as the daylight fades. And dominating everything at inappreciable distances the immense blue chain of the Moab mountains which are on the other shore of the Dead Sea.

One hears on all sides the bells of the flocks returning from the fields and, in the distance, the chimes of the monasteries.

The flocks arrive. They begin to defile before us with their shepherds, and it is almost a biblical procession which passes before our eyes in the dim twilight which grows fainter and fainter.

Unexpectedly, there pass also a band of fifty children dancing, and singing that old French song "Au clair de la lune prête moi ta plume." It is the Christian school returning from a picnic; fifty converted little Arabs, dressed in European style. The fathers conducting them sing the same air and dance, too. It is strange, but innocent and joyous.

Then the more archaic and graver cortège passes, the beasts and the shepherds.

The details of these immense plains stretching out before us, melt away before the invading darkness; soon the great lines of the horizon alone remain the same unchangeably, the same as in the days of the Crusades and in the time of Christ. And it is in this, in this eternal aspect, that the Great Souvenir still finds life.

Bethlehem! Bethlehem! This name begins once more to sing at the bottom of our less chilled souls. And, in the penumbra, the ages seem to roll silently on in their course, dragging us with them.

On the road the laborers and the shepherds still pass, in antique shadows against the vast backgrounds of the valleys and mountains, wending their weary way towards the town. Holding their children at their neck or else carrying them in the