Chapter VI: Part 6

It was no small sacrifice that Constance had made to the little demon, to leave her retreat at Fontainebleau for Paris, which she held in horror. From the day when the ballet-dancer, once famous for her extravagant caprices, who squandered princely fortunes between her five parted fingers, had descended from the realm of apotheoses with a last remnant of their dazzling glare still lingering in her eyes, and had tried to resume the life of ordinary mortals, to administer her little income and her modest household, she had been subjected to a multitude of unblushing attempts at extortion and schemes which were readily successful in view of the ignorance of that poor butterfly, who was afraid of reality and constantly coming in contact with all its unknown difficulties. In Felicia's house the responsibility became far more serious, because of the extravagant methods long ago inaugurated by the father and continued by the daughter, both artists having the utmost contempt for economy. She had other difficulties, too, to overcome. She could not endure the studio, with its permanent odor of tobacco smoke, with the cloud, impenetrable to her, in which artistic discussions and ideas, expressed in their baldest form, were confounded in vague eddies of glowing vapor which invariably gave her the sick headache. The _blague_ was especially terrifying to her. Being a foreigner, a former divinity of the ballet greenroom, fed upon superannuated compliments, gallantries _à la Dorat_ she was unable to understand it, and was dismayed at the wild exaggerations, the paradoxes of those Parisians whose wits were sharpened by the liberty of the studio.

She whose wit had consisted entirely in the agility of her feet was awed by her new surroundings and relegated to the position of a simple companion; and to see that amiable old creature, silent and smiling, sitting in the bright light of the rounded window, her knitting on her knees, like one of Chardin's bourgeoises, or walking quickly up the long Rue de Chaillot where the nearest market was situated, with her cook at her side, one would never have dreamed that the worthy woman had once held kings, princes, all the susceptible portion of the nobility and the world of finance, subject to the whim of her toes and her gauze skirts.

Paris is full of these extinct stars which have fallen back into the crowd.

Some of these celebrities, these conquerors of a former time, retain a gnawing rage in their hearts; others, on the contrary, dwell blissfully upon the past, ruminate in ineffable content all their glorious, bygone joys, seeking only repose, silence and obscurity, wherein they may remember and meditate, so that, when they die, we are amazed to learn that they were still living.

Constance Crenmitz was one of those happy mortals. But what a strange artists' household was that of those two women, equally childlike, contributing to the common stock inexperience and ambition, the tranquillity of an accomplished destiny and the feverish activity of a life in its prime, all the differences indeed that were indicated by the contrast between that blonde, white as a withered rose, who seemed to be dressed, beneath her fair complexion, in a remnant of Bengal fire, and that brunette, with the regular features, who almost invariably enveloped her beauty in dark stuffs, simply made, as if with a semblance of masculinity.

Unforeseen emergencies, caprice, ignorance of even the most trivial things, led to extreme confusion in the management of the household, from which they were sometimes unable to extricate themselves except by enforced privations, by dismissing servants, by reforms laughable in their exaggeration. During one of those crises Jenkins made delicate, carefully veiled offers of assistance which were repelled with scorn by Felicia.

"It isn't right," said Constance, "to be so rude to that poor doctor. After all, there was nothing insulting in what he said. An old friend of your father's."

"That man, anybody's friend! Oh! what a superb Tartuffe!"

And Felicia, hardly able to contain herself, twisted her wrath into irony, mimicked Jenkins, the affected gestures, the hand on the heart; then, puffing out her cheeks, said in a hoarse, whistling voice, full of false effusiveness:

"We must be kind, we must be humane. To do good without hope of reward!--that is the secret."

Constance laughed, in spite of herself, till the tears ran down her cheeks, the resemblance was so perfect.

"Never mind, you were too harsh--you will end by driving him away."

"Oh! indeed!" said a shake of the girl's head.

In truth, he continued to come to the house, always affable and sweet, dissembling his passion, which was visible only when he became jealous of new-comers, overwhelming with attentions the ex-ballet-dancer, to whom his pleasant manners were gratifying in spite of everything, and who recognized in him a man of her own time, of the time when men paid their respects to women by kissing their hand, with a complimentary remark as to their appearance.

* * *

One morning, Jenkins, having looked in during his round of visits, found Constance alone and unoccupied in the reception room.

"I am mounting guard, Doctor, as you see," she said calmly.

"How does that happen?"

"Why, Felicia's at work. She doesn't want to be disturbed and the servants are so stupid. I am carrying out her orders myself."

Then, as she saw the Irishman walk toward the studio, she added:

"No, no, don't go there. She gave me strict orders not to let any one go in."

"Very good, but I--"

"I beg you not--you will get me a scolding."

Jenkins was about to withdraw, when a peal of laughter from Felicia reached their ears through the portière and made him raise his head.

"So she isn't alone?"

"No. The Nabob is with her. They are having a sitting--for the bust."

"But why this mystery? It's very strange."

He strode back and forth, raging inwardly, but holding himself back.

At last he broke out.

It was improper beyond expression to allow a girl to be closeted in that way with a man.

He was astonished that so serious-minded, so devout a person as Constance--What did it look like?

The old lady gazed at him in stupefaction. As if Felicia were like other girls! And then, what danger could there be with the Nabob, such a serious man and so ugly? Moreover, Jenkins ought to know well enough that Felicia never consulted anybody, that she did only what she chose.

"No, no, it's impossible; I cannot allow this," exclaimed the Irishman.

And, paying no further heed to the dancer, who threw up her arms to call heaven to witness what was taking place, he walked toward the studio; but, instead of entering at once, he opened the door gently and raised a corner of the hanging, so that a part of the room, just that part where the Nabob was posing, was visible to him, although at a considerable distance.

Jansoulet was seated, without a cravat, with his waistcoat thrown open, talking excitedly, in an undertone. Felicia answered in laughing whispers. The sitting was very animated. Then there was a pause, a rustling of skirts, and the artist, going up to her model, turned his linen collar back all the way around, with a familiar gesture, letting her hand run lightly over the tanned skin.

That Ethiopian face, in which the muscles quivered with the intoxication of supreme content, with its great eyelids lowered like those of a sleeping beast being tickled with a straw, the bold outline of the girl as she leaned over that outlandish face to verify its proportions, and then a violent, irresistible gesture, seizing the slender hand as it passed and pressing it to two thick, trembling lips,--Jenkins saw all this in a red glare.

The noise that he made in entering caused the two to resume their respective positions, and in the bright light which dazzled his prying, catlike eyes, he saw the girl standing before him, indignant, dumfounded: "What is this? Who has dared?" and the Nabob on his platform, with his collar turned back, petrified, monumental.

Jenkins, somewhat abashed, dismayed by his own audacity, stammered some words of apology. He had something very urgent to say to M. Jansoulet, very important information which could not be delayed. He knew from a reliable source that there would be a distribution of crosses on March 16th. The Nabob's face, momentarily contracted, at once relaxed.

"Ah! really?"

He abandoned his pose. The matter was well worth considering, deuce take it! M. de La Perrière, one of the Empress's secretaries, had been directed by her to visit the shelter of Bethlehem. Jenkins had come to take the Nabob to the secretary's office at the Tuileries and make inquiries. That visit to Bethlehem meant a cross for him.

"Come, let us be off; I am with you, my dear doctor."

He bore Jenkins no ill-will for disturbing him, and he feverishly tied his cravat, forgetting under the stress of his new emotion the agitation of a moment before, for with him ambition took precedence of everything.

While the two men talked together in undertones, Felicia, standing before them, with quivering nostrils and lip curling in scorn, watched them as if to say: "Well! I am waiting."

Jansoulet apologized for being obliged to interrupt the sitting; but a visit of the utmost importance--She smiled pityingly.

"Go, go. At the point where we are now, I can work without you."

"Oh! yes," said the doctor, "the bust is almost finished. It's a fine piece of work," he added, with the air of a connoisseur.

And, relying on the compliment to cover his retreat, he was slinking away, crestfallen; but Felicia fiercely called him back:

"Stay, you. I have something to say to you."

He saw by her expression that he must comply, under pain of an outbreak.

"With your permission, my friend? Mademoiselle has a word to say to me. My coupé is at the door. Get in, I will be with you in a moment."

When the studio door closed upon those heavy departing footsteps, they looked each other in the face.

"You must be either drunk or mad to venture to do such a thing. What! you presume to enter my studio when I do not choose to receive? Why this violence? By what right?"

"By the right that desperate, unconquerable passion gives."

"Be quiet, Jenkins; those are words that I do not wish to hear. I let you come here through pity, through habit, because my father was fond of you. But never speak to me again of your--love"--she said the word very low, as if it were a disgrace--"or you will see me no more, even though I should be driven to die in order to escape you for good and all."

A child taken in fault does not bend his head more humbly than Jenkins as he replied:

"True--I was wrong. A moment of madness, of blindness. But why do you take pleasure in tearing my heart as you do?"

"As if I were thinking of you!"

"Whether you are thinking of me or not, I am here, I see what is going on, and your coquetry pains me terribly."

A slight flush rose in her cheeks at that reproach.

"I, a coquette! With whom?"

"With him," said the Irishman, pointing to the superb apelike bust.

She tried to laugh.

"The Nabob. What nonsense!"

"Do not lie. Do you think I am blind, that I don't understand all your manoeuvres? You stay alone with him a long while. I was at the door just now. I saw you." He lowered his voice as if his breath had failed him. "What are you after, in heaven's name, you strange, heartless child? I have seen you repel the handsomest, the noblest, the greatest. That little de Géry devours you with his eyes, but you pay no heed to him. Even the Duc de Mora has not succeeded in reaching your heart. And this man, a shocking, vulgar creature, who isn't thinking of you, who has something very different from love in his head--you saw how he went away just now! What are you aiming at? What do you expect from him?"

"I intend--I intend that he shall marry me. There."

Coolly, in a softer tone, as if the confession had drawn her nearer to the man she despised so bitterly, she set forth her reasons. She had luxurious, extravagant tastes, unmethodical habits which nothing could overcome and which would infallibly lead her to poverty and destitution, and good Crenmitz too, who allowed herself to be ruined without a word. In three years, four years at most, it would be all over. And then would come debts and desperate expedients, the ragged gowns and old shoes of poor artists' households. Or else the lover, the keeper, that is to say slavery and degradation.

"Nonsense," said Jenkins. "What of me, am I not here?"

"Anything rather than you," she said, drawing herself up. "No, what I must have, what I will have, is a husband to protect me from others and from myself, to keep me from a mass of black things of which I am afraid when life becomes a bore to me, from abysses into which I feel that I may plunge,--some one who will love me while I work, and will relieve my poor old exhausted fairy from doing sentry duty. That man suits me and I have had my eye on him ever since I first saw him. He is ugly to look at, but he seems kind; and then he is absurdly rich, and wealth, in that degree, must be amusing. Oh! I know all about it. There probably is some black spot in his life which has brought him good luck. All that gold can't have been honestly come by. But tell me truly, Jenkins, with your hand on that heart which you invoke so often, do you think that I am a very tempting wife for an honest man? Consider: of all these young men who ask as a favor to be allowed to come here, what one has ever thought of asking for my hand? Never a single one. De Géry no more than the rest. I charm, but I terrify. That is easily understood. What can anyone expect of a girl brought up as I was, with no mother or family, tossed in a heap with my father's models and mistresses? Such mistresses, great God! And Jenkins for my only protector. Oh! when I think of it! When I think of it!"

And, with the memory of that already distant episode, thoughts came to her mind which inflamed her wrath. "Oh! yes, I am a child of chance, and this adventurer is just the husband for me."[2]

[2] Je suis une fille _d'aventure_, et cet _aventurier_ est bien
le mari qu'il me faut.

"At least you will wait until he's a widower," retorted Jenkins tranquilly. "And in that case you may have to wait a long while, for his Levantine looks to be in excellent health."

Felicia Ruys became livid.

"He is married?"

"Married, why, to be sure, and father of a lot of children. The whole outfit landed here two days ago."

She stood for a moment, speechless, her cheeks quivering.

In front of her the Nabob's broad visage, in shining clay, with its flat nose, its sensual good-humored mouth, seemed to cry aloud in its fidelity to life. She gazed at it a moment, then stepped toward it, and with a gesture of disgust overturned the high, wooden stand and the gleaming, greasy block itself, which fell to the floor a shapeless mass of mud.

VII.

JANSOULET AT HOME.

Married he had been for twelve years, but had never mentioned the fact to any one of his Parisian acquaintances, by virtue of an acquired Oriental habit, the habit that Oriental peoples have of maintaining silence concerning their female relations. Suddenly it was learned that Madame was coming, that apartments must be made ready for her, her children and her women. The Nabob hired the whole second floor of the house on Place Vendôme, the previous tenant being sacrificed to Nabob prices. The stables were increased in size, the staff of servants was doubled; and then, one day, coachmen and carriages went to the Lyon station to fetch Madame, who arrived with a retinue of negresses, little negroes and gazelles, completely filling a long train that had been heated expressly for her all the way from Marseille.

She alighted in a terrible state of prostration, exhausted and bewildered by her long railroad journey, the first in her life, for she had been taken to Tunis as a child and had never left it. Two negroes carried her from the carriage to her apartments in an armchair, which was always kept in the vestibule thereafter, ready for that difficult transportation. Madame Jansoulet could not walk upstairs, for it made her dizzy; she would not have an elevator because her weight made it squeak; besides, she never walked. An enormous creature, so bloated that it was impossible to assign her an age, but somewhere between twenty-five and forty, with rather a pretty face, but features all deformed by fat, lifeless eyes beneath drooping lids grooved like shells, trussed up in exported gowns, loaded with diamonds and jewels like a Hindoo idol, she was a most perfect specimen of the transplanted Europeans who are called Levantines. A strange race of obese Creoles, connected with our society by naught save language and dress, but enveloped by the Orient in its stupefying atmosphere, the subtle poisons of its opium-laden air, in which everything becomes limp and nerveless, from the tissues of the skin to the girdle around the waist, ay, even to the mind itself and the thought.

She was the daughter of an enormously wealthy Belgian, a dealer in coral at Tunis, in whose establishment Jansoulet had been employed for several months on his first arrival in the country. Mademoiselle Afchin, at that time a fascinating doll, with dazzling complexion and hair, and perfect health, came often to the counting-room for her father, in the great chariot drawn by mules which conveyed them to their beautiful villa of La Marse in the outskirts of Tunis. The child, always _décolleté_, with gleaming white shoulders seen for a moment in a luxurious frame, dazzled the adventurer; and years after, when he had become rich, the favorite of the bey, and thought of settling down, his mind reverted to her. The child had changed into a stout, heavy, sallow girl. Her intellect, never of a high order, had become still more obtuse in the torpor of such a life as dormice lead, in the neglect of a father whose whole time and thought were given to business, and in the use of tobacco saturated with opium and of sweetmeats,--the torpor of her Flemish blood conjoined with Oriental indolence; and with all the rest, ill-bred, gluttonous, sensual, arrogant, a Levantine trinket brought to perfection.

But Jansoulet saw nothing of all that.

In his eyes she was then, she was always, down to the time of her arrival in Paris, a superior being, a person of the highest refinement, a Demoiselle Afchin; he spoke to her with respect, maintained a slightly humble and timid attitude toward her, gave her money without counting it, indulged her most extravagant caprices, her wildest whims, all the strange conceits of a Levantine's brain distracted by ennui and idleness. A single word justified everything; she was a Demoiselle Afchin. And yet they had nothing in common; he was always at the Kasbah or the Bardo, in attendance on the bey, paying his court to him, or else in his counting-room; she passed her day in bed, on her head a diadem of pearls worth three hundred thousand francs, which she never laid aside, brutalizing herself by smoking, living as in a harem, admiring herself in the mirror, arraying herself in fine clothes, in company with several other Levantines, whose greatest joy consisted in measuring with their necklaces the girth of arms and legs which rivalled one another in corpulency, bringing forth children with whom she never concerned herself, whom she never saw, who had never even caused her suffering, for she was delivered under the influence of chloroform. A "bale" of white flesh perfumed with musk. And Jansoulet would say with pride: "I married a Demoiselle Afchin!"

Under Parisian skies and in the cold light of the capital, his disillusionment began. Having determined to set up a regular establishment, to receive, to give entertainments, the Nabob had sent for his wife, in order to place her at the head of his house. But when he saw that mass of stiff, crackling dry-goods, of Palais-Royal finery, alight at his door, and all the extraordinary outfit that followed her, he had a vague impression of a Queen Pomare in exile. The difficulty was that he had seen some genuine women of fashion and he made comparisons. He had planned a grand ball to celebrate her arrival, but he prudently abstained. Indeed Madame Jansoulet refused to receive any one. Her natural indolence was augmented by the homesickness which the cold yellow fog and the pouring rain had brought upon her as soon as she landed. She passed several days in bed, crying aloud like a child, declaring that they had brought her to Paris to kill her, and even rejecting the slightest attentions from her women. She lay there roaring among her lace pillows, her hair in a tangled mass around her diadem, the windows closed and curtains tightly drawn, lamps lighted day and night, crying out that she wanted to go away--ay, to go away--ay; and it was a pitiful thing to see, in that tomb-like darkness, the half-filled trunks scattered over the carpet, the frightened gazelles, the negresses crouching around their hysterical mistress, groaning in unison, with haggard eyes, like the dogs of travellers in polar countries which go mad when they cannot see the sun.

The Irish doctor, upon being admitted to that distressing scene, had no success with his fatherly ways, his fine superficial phrases. Not at any price would the Levantine take the pearls with arsenical base, to give tone to her system. The Nabob was horrified. What was he to do? Send her back to Tunis with the children? That was hardly possible. He was definitively in disgrace there. The Hemerlingues had triumphed. A last insult had filled the measure to overflowing: on Jansoulet's departure the bey had commissioned him to have several millions of gold coined after a new pattern at the Paris Mint; then the commission had been abruptly withdrawn and given to Hemerlingue. Jansoulet, being publicly insulted, retorted with a public manifesto, offering all his property for sale, his palace on the Bardo presented to him by the former bey, his villas at La Marse, all of white marble, surrounded by magnificent gardens, his counting rooms, the most commodious and most sumptuously furnished in the city, and instructing the intelligent Bompain to bring his wife and children to Paris in order to put the seal of finality to his departure. After such a display, it would be hard to return; that is what he tried to make Mademoiselle Afchin understand, but she replied only by prolonged groans. He strove to comfort her, to amuse her, but what form of distraction could be made to appeal to that abnormally apathetic nature? And then, could he change the skies of Paris, give back to the wretched Levantine her marble-tiled _patio_, where she used to pass long hours in a cool, delicious state of drowsiness, listening to the plashing of the water in the great alabaster fountain with three basins one above the other, and her gilded boat, covered with a purple awning and rowed by eight supple, muscular Tripolitan oarsmen over the lovely lake of El-Baheira, when the sun was setting? Sumptuous as were the apartments on Place Vendôme, they could not supply the place of those lost treasures. And she plunged deeper than ever in her despair. One habitué of the house succeeded, however, in drawing her out of it, Cabassu, who styled himself on his cards "professor of massage;" a stout dark thick-set man, redolent of garlic and hair-oil, square-shouldered, covered with hair to his eyes, who knew stories of Parisian seraglios, trivial anecdotes within the limited range of Madame's intellect. He came once to rub her, and she wished to see him again, detained him. He was obliged to abandon all his other customers and to become the _masseur_ of that able-bodied creature, at a salary equal to that of a senator, her page, her reader, her body-guard. Jansoulet, overjoyed to see that his wife was contented, was not conscious of the disgusting absurdity of the intimacy.

Cabassu was seen in the Bois, in the enormous and sumptuous calèche beside the favorite gazelle, at the back of the theatre boxes which the Levantine hired, for she went abroad now, revivified by her masseur's treatment and determined to be amused. She liked the theatre, especially farces or melodramas. The apathy of her unwieldy body was minimized in the false glare of the footlights. But she enjoyed Cardailhac's theatre most of all. There the Nabob was at home. From the first manager down to the last box-opener, the whole staff belonged to him. He had a key to the door leading from the corridor to the stage; and the salon attached to his box, decorated in Oriental fashion, with the ceiling hollowed out like a bee-hive, divans upholstered in camel's hair, the gas-jet enclosed in a little Moorish lantern, was admirably adapted for a nap during the tedious _entr'actes_: a delicate compliment from the manager to his partner's wife. Nor had that monkey of a Cardailhac stopped at that: detecting Mademoiselle Afchin's liking for the stage, he had succeeded in persuading her that she possessed an intuitive knowledge of all things pertaining to it, and had ended by asking her to cast a glance in her leisure moments, the glance of an expert, upon such pieces as he sent to her. An excellent way of binding the partnership more firmly.

Poor manuscripts in blue or yellow covers, which hope has tied with slender ribbons, ye who take flight swelling with ambition and with dreams, who knows what hands will open you, turn your leaves, what prying fingers will deflower your unknown charm, that shining dust stored up by every new idea? Who passes judgment on you, and who condemns you? Sometimes, before going out to dinner, Jansoulet, on going up to his wife's room, would find her smoking in her easy-chair, with her head thrown back and piles of manuscript by her side, and Cabassu, armed with a blue pencil, reading in his hoarse voice and with his Bourg-Saint-Andéol intonation some dramatic lucubration which he cut and slashed remorselessly at the slightest word of criticism from the lady. "Don't disturb yourselves," the good Nabob's wave of the hand would say, as he entered the room on tiptoe. He would listen and nod his head admiringly as he looked at his wife. "She's an astonishing creature," he would say to himself, for he knew nothing of literature, and in that direction at all events he recognized Mademoiselle Afchin's superiority.

"She had the theatrical instinct," as Cardailhac said; but as an offset, the maternal instinct was entirely lacking. She never gave a thought to her children, abandoning them to the hands of strangers, and, when they were brought to her once a month, contenting herself with giving them the flabby, lifeless flesh of her cheeks to kiss, between two puffs of a cigarette, and never making inquiries concerning the details of care and health which perpetuate the physical bond of motherhood, and make the true mother's heart bleed in sympathy with her child's slightest suffering.

They were three stout, heavy, apathetic boys, of eleven, nine, and seven years, with the Levantine's sallow complexion and premature bloated appearance, and their father's velvety, kindly eyes. They were as ignorant as young noblemen of the Middle Ages; in Tunis M. Bompain had charge of their studies, but in Paris the Nabob, intent upon giving them the benefit of a Parisian education, had placed them in the most stylish and most expensive boarding school, the Collège Bourdaloue, conducted by excellent Fathers, who aimed less at teaching their pupils than at moulding them into well-bred, reflecting men of the world, and who succeeded in producing little monstrosities, affected and ridiculous, scornful of play, absolutely ignorant, with no trace of spontaneity or childishness, and despairingly pert and forward. The little Jansoulets did not enjoy themselves overmuch in that hothouse for early fruits, notwithstanding the special privileges accorded to their immense wealth; they were really too neglected. Even the Creoles in the institution had correspondents and visitors; but they were never called to the parlor, nor was any relative of theirs known to the school authorities; from time to time they received baskets of sweetmeats or windfalls of cake, and that was all. The Nabob, as he drove through Paris, would strip a confectioner's shop-window for their benefit and send the contents to the college with that affectionate impulsiveness blended with negro-like ostentation which characterized all his acts. It was the same with their toys, always too fine, too elaborate, of no earthly use, the toys which are made only for show and which the Parisian never buys. But the thing to which above all others the little Jansoulets owed the respectful consideration of pupils and masters was their well-filled purse, always ready for collections, for professorial entertainments, and for the charitable visits, the famous visits inaugurated by the Collège Bourdaloue, one of the tempting items on the programme of the institution, the admiration of impressionable minds.

Twice a month, turn and turn about, the pupils belonging to the little Society of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, established at the college on the model of the great society of that name, went in small detachments, unattended, like grown men, to carry succor and consolation to the farthest corners of the thickly-peopled faubourgs. In that way it was sought to teach them charity by experience, the art of finding out the wretchedness, the necessities of the people and of dressing their sores, always more or less repulsive, with a balsam of kind words and ecclesiastical maxims. To console, to convert the masses by the aid of childhood, to disarm religious incredulity by the youth and innocence of the apostles; such was the purpose of that little society, a purpose that failed absolutely of realization, by the way. The children, well-dressed, well-fed, in excellent health, went only to addresses designated beforehand and found respectable poor people, sometimes a little ailing, but far too clean, already enrolled and relieved by the rich charitable organizations of the Church. They never happened upon one of those loathsome homes, where hunger, mourning, abject poverty, all forms of misery, physical and moral, are written in filth on the walls, in indelible wrinkles on the faces. Their visit was arranged in advance like that of the sovereign to the guard-house to taste the soldier's soup; the guard-house is notified and the soup seasoned for the royal palate. Have you seen those pictures in religious books, where a little communicant, with his bow on his arm and his taper in his hand, all combed and curled, goes to assist a poor old man lying on his wretched pallet with the whites of his eyes turned up to the sky? These charitable visits had the same conventional stage-setting and accent. The machine-like gestures of the little preachers with arms too short for the work, were answered by words learned by rote, so false as to set one's teeth on edge. The comical words of encouragement, the "consolation lavishly poured forth" in prize-book phrases by voices suggestive of young roosters with the influenza, called forth emotional blessings, the whining, sickening mummery of a church porch after vespers. And as soon as the young visitors' backs were turned, what an explosion of laughter and shouting in the garret, what a dancing around the offerings brought, what an overturning of armchairs in which they have been feigning illness, what a pouring of boluses into the fire, a fire of ashes, very artistically arranged! When the little Jansoulets went to visit their parents, they were placed in charge of the man with the red fez, Bompain the indispensable. It was Bompain who took them to the Champs-Élysées, arrayed in English jackets, silk hats of the latest style--at seven years!--and with little canes dangling from the ends of their dogskin gloves. It was Bompain who superintended the victualling of the break on which he went with the children to the races, race-cards stuck in their hats around which green veils were twisted, wonderfully like the characters in lilliputian pantomimes whose comicality consists solely in the size of their heads compared with their short legs and dwarfish movements. They smoked and drank outrageously. Sometimes the man in the fez, himself hardly able to stand, brought them home horribly ill. And yet Jansoulet loved his little ones, especially the youngest, who, with his long hair and his doll-like aspect, reminded him of little Afchin in her carriage. But they were still at the age when children belong to the mother, when neither a stylish tailor nor accomplished masters nor a fashionable boarding-school nor the ponies saddled for the little men in the stable, when nothing in short takes the place of the watchful and attentive hand, the warmth and gayety of the nest. The father was unable to give them that in any event; and then he was so busy!

A thousand matters, the _Caisse Territoriale_, the arrangement of the picture gallery, races at Tattersall's with Bois-l'Héry, some gimcrack to go and see, here or there, at the houses of collectors to whom Schwalbach recommended him, hours passed with trainers, jockeys, dealers in curiosities, the occupied, varied existence of a bourgeois gentleman in modern Paris. In all this going and coming he succeeded in Parisianizing himself a little more each day, was admitted to Monpavon's club, made welcome in the green-room at the ballet, behind the scenes at the theatre, and continued to preside at his famous bachelor breakfasts, the only entertainments possible in his establishment. His existence was really very full, and yet de Géry relieved him from the most difficult part of it, the complicated department of solicitations and contributions.

The young man was now a witness, as he sat at his desk, of all the audacious and burlesque inventions, all the heroi-comic schemes of that mendicancy of a great city, organized like a ministerial department and in numbers like an army, which subscribes to the newspapers and knows its _Bottin_ by heart. It was his business to receive the fair-haired lady, young, brazen-faced and already faded, who asks for only a hundred louis, threatening to throw herself into the water immediately upon leaving the house if they are not forthcoming, and the stout matron, with affable, unceremonious manners, who says on entering the room: "Monsieur, you do not know me. Nor have I the honor of knowing you; but we shall soon know each other. Be kind enough to sit down and let us talk." The tradesman in difficulties, on the brink of insolvency--it is sometimes true--who comes to entreat you to save his honor, with a pistol all ready for suicide bulging out the pocket of his coat--sometimes it is only the bowl of his pipe. And oftentimes cases of genuine distress, prolix and tiresome, of people who do not even know how to tell how unfitted they are to earn their living. Besides such instances of avowed mendicancy, there were others in disguise: charity, philanthropy, good works, encouragement of artists, house-to-house collections for children's hospitals, parish churches, penitentiaries, benevolent societies or district libraries. And lastly those that array themselves in a worldly mask: tickets to concerts, benefit performances, tickets of all colors, "platform, front row, reserved sections." The Nabob's orders were that no one should be refused, and it was a decided gain that he no longer attended to such matters in person. For a long time he had deluged all this hypocritical scheming with gold, with lordly indifference, paying five hundred francs for a ticket to a concert by some Wurtemberg zither-player, or Languedocian flutist, which would have been quoted at ten francs at the Tuileries or the Due de Mora's. On some days young de Géry went out from these sessions actually nauseated. All his youthful honesty rose in revolt; he attempted to induce the Nabob to institute some reforms; but he, at the first word, assumed the bored expression characteristic of weak natures when called upon to give an opinion, or else replied with a shrug of his great shoulders: "Why this is Paris, my dear child. Don't you be alarmed, but just let me alone. I know where I'm going and what I want."

He wanted two things at that time,--a seat in the Chamber of Deputies and the cross of the Legion of Honor. In his view those were the first two stages of the long ascent which his ambition impelled him to undertake. He certainly would be chosen a deputy through the _Caisse Territoriale_, at the head of which he was. Paganetti from Porto-Vecchio often said to him:

"When the day comes, the island will rise as one man and vote for you."

But electors were not the only thing it was necessary to have; there must be a vacant seat in the Chamber, and the delegation from Corsica was full. One member, however, old Popolasca, being infirm and in no condition to perform his duties, might be willing to resign on certain conditions. It was a delicate matter to negotiate, but quite practicable, for the good man had a large family, estates which produced almost nothing, a ruined palace at Bastia, where his children lived on _polenta_, and an apartment at Paris, in a furnished lodging-house of the eighteenth order. By not haggling over one or two hundred thousand francs, they might come to terms with that famished legislator who, when sounded by Paganetti, did not say yes or no, being allured by the magnitude of the sum but held back by the vainglory of his office. The affair was in that condition and might be decided any day.

With regard to the Cross, the prospect was even brighter. The Work of Bethlehem had certainly created a great sensation at the Tuileries. Nothing was now wanting but M. de La Perrière's visit and his report, which could not fail to be favorable, to ensure the appearance on the list of March 16th, the date of an imperial anniversary, of the glorious name of Jansoulet. The 16th of March, that is to say, within a month. What would old Hemerlingue say to that signal distinction?--old Hemerlingue, who had had to be content with the Nisham for so long. And the bey, who had been made to believe that Jansoulet was under the ban of Parisian society, and the old mother, down at Saint-Romans, who was always so happy over her son's successes! Was not all that worth a few millions judiciously distributed and strewn by that road leading to renown, along which the Nabob walked like a child, with no fear of being devoured at the end? And was there not in these external joys, these honors, this dearly bought consideration, a measure of compensation for all the chagrins of that Oriental won back to European life, who longed for a home and had naught but a caravansary, who sought a wife and found naught but a Levantine?

VIII.

THE WORK OF BETHLEHEM.

Bethlehem! Why did that legendary name, sweet to the ear, warm as the straw in the miraculous stable, give you such a cold shudder when you saw it in gilt letters over that iron gateway? The feeling was due perhaps to the melancholy landscape, the vast, desolate plain that stretches from Nanterre to Saint-Cloud, broken only by an occasional clump of trees or the smoke from some factory chimney. Perhaps, too, in a measure, to the disproportion between the humble hamlet of Judæa and that grandiose structure, that villa in the style of Louis XIII., built of small stones and mortar, and showing pink through the leafless branches of the park, where there were several large ponds with a coating of green slime. Certain it is that on passing the place one's heart contracted. When one entered the grounds it was much worse. An oppressive, inexplicable silence hovered about the house, where the faces at the windows had a depressing aspect behind the small old-fashioned, greenish panes. The she-goats, straying along the paths, languidly cropped the first shoots of grass, with occasional "baas" in the direction of their keeper, who seemed as bored as they, and followed visitors with a listless eye. There was an air of mourning, the deserted, terrified aspect of a plague-stricken spot. Yet that had once been an attractive, cheerful property, and there had been much feasting and revelry there not long before. It had been laid out for the famous singer who had sold it to Jenkins, and it exhibited traces of the imaginative genius peculiar to the operatic stage, in the bridge across the pond, where there was a sunken wherry filled with water-soaked leaves, and in its summer-house, all of rockwork, covered with climbing ivy. It had seen some droll sights, had that summer-house, in the singer's time, and now it saw some sad ones, for the infirmary was located there.

To tell the truth, the whole establishment was simply one huge infirmary. The children fell sick as soon as they arrived, languished and finally died unless their parents speedily removed them to the safe shelter of their homes. The curé of Nanterre went so often to Bethlehem with his black vestments and his silver crucifix, the undertaker had so many orders for coffins for the house, that it was talked about in the neighborhood, and indignant mothers shook their fists at the model nursery, but only at a safe distance if they happened to have in their arms a little pink and white morsel of humanity to shelter from all the contagions of that spot. That was what gave the miserable place such a heart-rending look. A house where children die cannot be cheerful; it is impossible for the trees to bloom there, or the birds to nest, or the water to flow in laughing ripples of foam.

The institution seemed to be fairly inaugurated. Jenkins' idea, excellent in theory, was extremely difficult, almost impracticable, in practice. And yet God knows that the affair had been carried through with an excess of zeal as to every detail, even the most trifling, and that all the money and attendants necessary were forthcoming. At the head of the establishment was one of the most skilful men in the profession, M. Pondevèz, a graduate of the Paris hospitals; and associated with him, to take more direct charge of the children, a trustworthy woman, Madame Polge. Then there were maids and seamstresses and nurses. And how perfectly everything was arranged and systematized, from the distribution of the water through fifty faucets, to the omnibus with its driver in the Bethlehem livery, going to the station at Rueil to meet every train, with a great jingling of bells. And the magnificent goats, goats from Thibet, with long silky coats and bursting udders. Everything was beyond praise in the organization of the establishment; but there was one point at which everything went to pieces. This artificial nursing, so belauded in the prospectus, did not agree with the children. It was a strange obstinacy, as if they conspired together with a glance, the poor little creatures, for they were too young to speak--most of them were destined never to speak--"If you say so, we won't suck the goats." And they did not, they preferred to die one after another rather than to suck them. Was Jesus of Bethlehem nursed by a goat in his stable? Did he not, on the contrary, nestle against a woman's breast, soft and full, on which he fell asleep when his thirst was satisfied? Who ever saw a goat among the legendary oxen and asses on that night when the beasts spoke? In that case, why lie, why call it Bethlehem?

The manager was touched at first by so many deaths. This Pondevèz, a waif and estray of the life of the Quarter, a twentieth year student well known in all the fruit-shops of Boulevard Saint-Michel under the name of Pompon, was not a bad man. When he realized the failure of artificial nursing, he simply hired four or five buxom nurses in the neighborhood, and nothing more was needed to revive the children's appetites. That humane impulse was near costing him his place.

"Nurses at Bethlehem," said Jenkins in a rage, when he came to pay his weekly visit. "Are you mad? Upon my word! why the goats then, and the lawns to feed them, and my idea, and the pamphlets about my idea? What becomes of all these? Why, you're going against my system, you're stealing the founder's money."

"But, my dear master," the student tried to reply, passing his hands through his long red beard, "but--as they don't like that food--"

"Very well! let them go hungry, but let the principle of artificial nursing be respected. Everything depends on that. I don't wish to have to tell you so again. Send away those horrible nurses. For bringing up our children we have goat's milk and cow's milk in a great emergency; but I can't concede anything beyond that."

He added, with his apostolic air:

"We are here to demonstrate a grand philanthropic idea. It must triumph, even at the cost of some sacrifices. Look to it."

Pondevèz did not insist. After all, it was a good place, near enough to Paris to permit descents upon Nanterre from the Quarter on Sunday, or a visit by the manager to his favorite breweries. Madame Polge--whom Jenkins always called "our intelligent overseer," and whom he had in fact placed there to oversee everything, the manager first of all--was not so austere as her duties would lead one to believe, and readily yielded to the charm of a _petit verre_ or two of "right cognac," or to a game of bezique for fifteen hundred points. So he dismissed the nurses and tried to harden himself against whatever might happen. What did happen? A genuine Massacre of the Innocents. So that the few parents who were possessed of any means at all, mechanics or tradesmen of the faubourgs, who had been tempted by the advertisements to part with their children, speedily took them away, and there remained in the establishment only the wretched little creatures picked up under porches or in the fields, or sent by the hospitals, and doomed from their birth to all manner of ills. As the mortality constantly increased, even that source of supply failed, and the omnibus that had departed at full speed for the railway station returned as light and springy as an empty hearse. How could that state of affairs last? How long would it take to kill off the twenty-five or thirty little ones who were left? That is what the manager, or, as he had christened himself, the register of deaths, Pondevèz, was wondering one morning after breakfast, as he sat opposite Madame Polge's venerable curls, taking a hand at that lady's favorite game.

"Yes, my dear Madame Polge, what is to become of us? Things cannot go on long like this. Jenkins won't give in, the children are as obstinate as mules. There's no gainsaying it, they'll all pass out of our hands. There's that little Wallachian--I mark the king, Madame Polge--who may die any minute. Poor little brat, just think, it's three days since anything went into his stomach. I don't care what Jenkins says; you can't improve children, like snails, by starving them. It's a distressing thing not to be able to save a single one. The infirmary hasn't unlimited capacity. In all earnestness this is a pitiful business. Bezique, forty."

Two strokes of the bell at the main entrance interrupted his monologue. The omnibus was returning from the station and its wheels ground into the gravel in unaccustomed fashion.

"What an astonishing thing!" said Pondevèz, "the carriage isn't empty."

In truth the vehicle drew up at the steps with a certain pride, and the man who alighted crossed the threshold at a bound. It was an express from Jenkins with important news; the doctor would be there in two hours to inspect the asylum, with the Nabob and a gentleman from the Tuileries. He gave strict injunctions that everything should be ready for their reception. The plan was formed so suddenly that he had not had time to write; but he relied on M. Pondevèz to make the necessary arrangements.

"Deuce take him and his necessary arrangements! muttered Pondevèz in dismay. It was a critical situation. That momentous visit came at the worst possible moment, when the system was rapidly going to pieces. Poor Pompon, in dire perplexity, tugged at his beard and gnawed the ends of it.

"Come, come," he said abruptly to Madame Polge, whose long face had grown still longer between her false curls. "There is only one thing for us to do. We must clear out the infirmary, carry all the sick ones into the dormitory. They'll be no better nor worse for spending half a day there. As for the scrofulous ones, we'll just put them out of sight. They're too ugly, we won't show them. Come, off we go! all hands on deck!"

The dinner-bell rang the alarm and everybody hurried to the spot. Seamstresses, nurses, maid-servants, came running from every side, jostling one another in the corridors, hurrying across the yards. Orders flew hither and thither, and there was a great calling and shouting; but above all the other noises soared the noise of a grand scrubbing, of rushing water, as if Bethlehem had been surprised by a conflagration. And the wailing of sick children torn from their warm beds, all the whimpering little bundles carried through the damp park, with a fluttering of bedclothes among the branches, strengthened the impression of a fire. In two hours, thanks to the prodigious activity displayed, the whole house from top to bottom was ready for the impending visit, all the members of the staff at their posts, the fire lighted in the stove, the goats scattered picturesquely through the park. Madame Polge had put on her green dress, the manager's attire was a little less slovenly than usual, but so simple as to exclude any idea of premeditation. Let the Empress's secretary come!

And here he is.

He alights with Jenkins and Jansoulet from a magnificent carriage with the Nabob's red and gold livery. Feigning the utmost astonishment, Pondevèz rushes forward to meet his visitors.

"Ah! Monsieur Jenkins, what an honor! What a surprise!"

Salutations are exchanged on the stoop, reverences, handshakings, introductions. Jenkins, his coat thrown back from his loyal breast, indulges in his heartiest, most engaging smile; but a meaning furrow lies across his brow. He is anxious concerning the surprises that the establishment may have in store, for he knows its demoralized condition. If only Pondevèz has taken proper precautions! It begins well, however. The somewhat theatrical aspect of the approach to the house, the white fleeces gambolling among the shrubbery, have enchanted M. de La Perrière, who, with his innocent eyes, his straggling white beard and the constant nodding of his head, is not himself unlike a goat escaped from its tether.

"First of all, messieurs, the most important room in the house, the Nursery," says the manager, opening a massive door at the end of the reception-room. The gentlemen follow him, descend a few steps and find themselves in an enormous basement room, with tiled floor, formerly the kitchen of the château. The thing that impresses one on entering is a huge, high fireplace of the old pattern, in red brick, with two stone benches facing each other under the mantel, and the singer's crest--an immense lyre with a roll of music--carved on the monumental pediment. The effect was striking; but there came from it a terrible blast of air, which, added to the cold of the floor, to the pale light falling through the windows on a level with the ground, made one shudder for the well-being of the children. What would you have? They were obliged to use that unhealthy apartment for the Nursery because of the capricious, country-bred nurses who were accustomed to the unconstrained manners of the stable; one had only to see the pools of milk, the great reddish spots drying on the floor, to inhale the acrid odor that assailed your nostrils as you entered, mingled with whey and moist hair and many other things, to be convinced of that absolute necessity.

The dark walls of the room were so high that at first the visitors thought that the Nursery was deserted. They distinguished, however, at the farther end, a bleating, whining, restless group. Two countrywomen, with surly, brutish, dirty faces, two "dry-nurses," who well deserved their name, were sitting on mats with their nurslings in their arms, each having a large goat before her, with legs apart and distended udders. The manager seemed to be agreeably surprised: