The Nabob, Alphonse Daudet [new books to read .txt] 📗

as one man."
It is not enough, however, to control electors; it is necessary also that there be a seat vacant in the Chamber, and the representation of Corsica was complete. One of its members, however, the old Popolusca, infirm and in no condition to do his work, might perhaps, upon certain conditions, be willing to resign his seat. It was a difficult matter to negotiate, but quite feasible, the old fellow having a numerous family, estates which produced little or nothing, a palace in ruins at Bastia, where his children lived on _polenta_, and a furnished apartment at Paris in an eighteenth-rate lodging-house. If a hundred or two hundred thousand francs were not a consideration, one ought to be able to obtain a favourable decision from this honourable pauper who, sounded by Paganetti, would say neither yes nor no, tempted by the large sum of money, held back by the vainglory of his position. The matter had reached that point, it might be decided from one day to another.
As for the cross, things were going still better. The Bethlehem Society had assuredly made the devil of a noise at the Tuileries. They were now only waiting until after the visit of M. de la Perriere and his report, which could not be other than favorable, before inscribing on the list for the 16th March, on the date of an imperial anniversary, the glorious name of Jansoulet. The 16th March; that was to say, within a month. What would the fat Hemerlingue find to say of this signal favour, he who for so long had had to content himself with the Nisham? And the Bey, who had been misled into believing that Jansoulet was cut by Parisian society, and the old mother, down yonder at Saint-Romans, ever so happy in the successes of her son! Was that not worth a few millions cleverly squandered along the path of glory which the Nabob was treading like a child, all unconscious of the fate that lay waiting to devour him at its end? And in these external joys, these honours, this consideration so dearly bought, was there not a compensation for all the troubles of this Oriental won back to European life, who desired a home and possessed only a caravansary, looked for a wife and found only a Levantine?


THE BETHLEHEM SOCIETY
BETHLEHEM! Why did it give one such a chill to see written in letters of gold over the iron gate that historic name, sweet and warm like the straw of the miraculous stable! Perhaps it was partly to be accounted for by the melancholy of the landscape, that immense gloomy plain which stretches from Nanterre to Saint Cloud, broken only by a few clumps of trees or the smoke of factory chimneys. Possibly also by the disproportion that existed between the humble little straggling village which you expected to find and the grandiose establishment, this country mansion in the style of Louis XIII, an agglomeration of mortar looking pink through the branches of its leafless park, ornamented with wide pieces of water thick with green weeds. What is certain is that as you passed this place your heart was conscious of an oppression. When you entered it was still worse. A heavy inexplicable silence weighed on the house, and the faces you might see at the windows had a mournful air behind the little, old-fashioned greenish panes. The goats scattered along the paths nibbled languidly at the new spring grass, with "baas" at the woman who was tending them, and looked bored, as she followed the visitors with a lack-lustre eye. A mournfulness was over the place, like the terror of a contagion. Yet it had been a cheerful house, and one where even recently there had been high junketings. Replanted with timber for the famous singer who had sold it to Jenkins, it revealed clearly the kind of imagination which is characteristic of the opera-house in a bridge flung over the miniature lake, with its broken punt half filled with mouldy leaves, and in its pavilion all of rockery-work, garlanded by ivy. It had witnessed gay scenes, this pavilion, in the singer's time; now it looked on sad ones, for the infirmary was installed in it.
To tell the truth, the whole establishment was one vast infirmary. The children had hardly arrived when they fell ill, languished, and ended by dying, if their parents did not quickly take them away and put them again under the protection of home. The cure of Nanterre had to go so often to Bethlehem with his black vestments and his silver cross, the undertaker had so many orders from the house, that it became known in the district, and indignant mothers shook their fists at the model nurse; from a long way off, it is true, for they might chance to have in their arms pink-and-white babies to be preserved from all the contagions of the place. It was these things that gave to the poor place so heart-rending an aspect. A house in which children die cannot be gay; you cannot see trees break into flower there, birds building, streams flowing like rippling laughter.
The thing seemed altogether false. Excellent in itself, Jenkins's scheme was difficult, almost impracticable in its application. Yet, God knows, the affair had been started and carried out with the greatest enthusiasm to the last details, with as much money and as large a staff as were requisite. At its head, one of the most skilful of practitioners, M. Pondevez, who had studied in the Paris hospitals; and by his side, to attend to the more intimate needs of the children, a trusty matron, Mme. Polge. Then there were nursemaids, seamstresses, infirmary-nurses. And how many the arrangements and how thorough was the maintenance of the establishment, from the water distributed by a regular system from fifty taps to the omnibus trotting off with jingling of its posting bells to meet every train of the day at Rueil station! Finally, magnificent goats, Thibetan goats, silky, swollen with milk. In regard to organization, everything was admirable; but there was a point where it all failed. This artificial feeding, so greatly extolled by the advertisements, did not agree with the children. It was a singular piece of obstinacy, a word which seemed to have been passed between them by a signal, poor little things! for they couldn't yet speak, most of them indeed were never to speak at all: "Please, we will not suck the goats." And they did not suck them, they preferred to die one after another rather than suck them. Was Jesus of Bethlehem in his stable suckled by a goat? On the contrary, did he not press a woman's soft breast, on which he could go to sleep when he was satisfied? Who ever saw a goat between the ox and the ass of the story on that night when the beasts spoke to each other? Then why lie about it, why call the place Bethlehem?
The director had been moved at first by the spectacle of so many victims. This Pondevez, a waif of the life of the "Quarter," mere student still after twenty years, and well known in all the resorts of the Boulevard St. Michel under the name of Pompon, was not an unkind man. When he perceived the small success of the artificial feeding, he simply brought in four or five vigorous nurses from the district around and the children's appetites soon returned. This humane impulse went near costing him his place.
"Nurses at Bethlehem!" said Jenkins, furious, when he came to pay his weekly visit. "Are you out of your mind? Well! why then have we goats at all, and meadows to pasture them; what becomes of my idea, and the pamphlets upon my idea? What happens to all that? But you are going against my system. You are stealing the founder's money."
"All the same, _mon cher maitre_," the student tried to reply, passing his hands through his long red beard, "all the same, they will not take this nourishment."
"Well, then, let them go without, but let the principle of artificial lactation be respected. That is the whole point. I do not wish to have to repeat it to you again. Send off these wretched nurses. For the rearing of our children we have goats' milk, cows' milk in case of absolute necessity. I can make no further concession in the matter."
He added, with an assumption of his apostle's air: "We are here for the demonstration of a philanthropic idea. It must be made to triumph, even at the price of some sacrifices."
Pondevez insisted no further. After all the place was a good one, near enough to Paris to allow of descents upon Nanterre of a Sunday from the Quarter, or to allow the director to pay a visit to his old _brasseries_. Mme. Polge, to whom Jenkins always referred as "our intelligent superintendent," and whom he had placed there to superintend everything, and chiefly the director himself, was not so austere, as her prerogatives might have led one to suppose, and submitted willingly to a few liqueur-glasses of cognac or to a game of bezique. He dismissed the nurses, therefore, and endeavoured to harden himself in advance to everything that could happen. What did happen? A veritable Massacre of the Innocents. Consequently the few parents in fairly easy circumstances, workpeople or suburban tradesfolk, who, tempted by the advertisements, had severed themselves from their children, very soon took them home again, and there only remained in the establishment some little unfortunates picked up on doorsteps or in out-of-the-way places, sent from the foundling hospitals, doomed to all evil things from their birth. As the mortality continued to increase, even these came to be scarce, and the omnibus which had posted to the railway station would return bouncing and light as an empty hearse. How long would the thing last? How long would the twenty-five or thirty little ones who remained take to die? This was what Monsieur the Director, or rather, to give him the nickname which he had himself invented, Monsieur the Grantor-of-Certificates-of-death Pondevez, was asking himself one morning as he sat opposite Mme. Polge's venerable ringlets, taking a hand in this lady's favourite game.
"Yes, my good Mme. Polge, what is to become of us? Things cannot go on much longer as they are. Jenkins will not give way; the children are as obstinate as mules. There is no denying it, they will all slip through our fingers. There is the little Wallachian--I mark the king, Mme. Polge--who may die from one moment to another. Just think, the poor little chap for the last three days has had nothing in his stomach. It is useless for Jenkins to talk. You cannot improve children like snails by making them go hungry. It is disheartening all the same not to be able to save one of them. The infirmary is full. It is really a wretched outlook. Forty and bezique."
A double ring at the entrance gate interrupted his monologue. The omnibus was returning from the railway station and its wheels were grinding on the sand in an unusual manner.
"What an astonishing thing," remarked Pondevez, "the conveyance is not empty."
Indeed it did draw up at the foot of the steps with a certain pride, and the man who got out of it sprang up the staircase at a bound. He was a courier from Jenkins bearing a great piece of news. The doctor would arrive in two hours to visit the Home, accompanied by the Nabob and a gentleman from the Tuileries. He urgently enjoined that everything should be ready for their reception. The thing had been decided at such short notice that he had not had the time to write; but he counted on M. Pondevez to do all that was necessary.
"That is good!--necessary!" murmured Pondevez in complete dismay. The