watched him with touching anxiety, and was rubbing his legs where the
hot water did not reach them with as much tenderness as if he had been
her husband. Benassis himself, after a close scrutiny of the dull eyes
and corpse-like face, gently took the cretin's hand and felt his
pulse.

"The bath is doing no good," he said, shaking his head; "let us put
him to bed again."

He lifted the inert mass himself, and carried him across to the
truckle-bed, from whence, no doubt, he had just taken him. Carefully
he laid him at full length, and straightened the limbs that were
growing cold already, putting the head and hand in position, with all
the heed that a mother could bestow upon her child.

"It is all over, death is very near," added Benassis, who remained
standing by the bedside.

The old woman gazed at the dying form, with her hands on her hips. A
few tears stole down her cheeks. Genestas remained silent. He was
unable to explain to himself how it was that the death of a being that
concerned him so little should affect him so much. Unconsciously he
shared the feeling of boundless pity that these hapless creatures
excite among the dwellers in the sunless valleys wherein Nature has
placed them. This sentiment has degenerated into a kind of religious
superstition in families to which cretins belong; but does it not
spring from the most beautiful of Christian virtues--from charity, and
from a belief in a reward hereafter, that most effectual support of
our social system, and the one thought that enables us to endure our
miseries? The hope of inheriting eternal bliss helps the relations of