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

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.
These pleasant words are exchanged as the party passes along a big corridor in which the voices ring out in all their honest accents; but suddenly a frightful noise interrupts the conversation and the advance of the visitors. It seems to be made up of the mewing of cats in delirium, of bellowings, of the howlings of savages performing a war-dance, an appalling tempest of human cries, reverberated, swelled, and prolonged by the echoing vaults. It rises and falls, ceases suddenly, then goes on again with an extraordinary effect of unanimity.
Monsieur the Director begins to be uneasy, makes an inquiry. Jenkins rolls furious eyes.
"Let us go on," says the director, rather anxious this time. "I know what it is."
He knows what it is; but M. de la Perriere wishes to know also what it is, and, before Pondevez has had the time to unfasten it, he pushes open the massive door whence this horrible concert proceeds.
In a sordid kennel which the great cleansing has passed over, for, in fact, it was not intended to be exhibited, on mattresses ranged on the floor, a dozen little wretches are laid, watched over by an empty chair on which the beginning of a knitted vest lies with an air of dignity, and by a little broken saucepan, full of hot wine, boiling on a smoky wood fire. These are the children with ringworm, with rashes, the disfavoured of Bethlehem, who had been hidden in this retired corner with recommendation to their dry-nurse to rock them, to soothe them, to sit on them, if need were, in order to keep them from crying; but whom this country-woman, stupid and inquisitive, had left alone there in order to see the fine carriage standing in the court-yard. Her back turned, the infants had very quickly grown weary of their horizontal position; and then all these little scrofulous patients raised their lusty concert, for they, by a miracle, are strong, their malady saves and nourishes them. Bewildered and kicking like beetles when they are turned on their backs, helping themselves with their hips and their elbows, some fallen on one side and unable to regain their balance, others raising in the air their little benumbed, swaddled legs, spontaneously they cease their gesticulations and cries as they see the door open; but M. de la Perrier's nodding goatee beard reassures them, encourages them anew, and in the renewed tumult the explanation given by the director is only heard with difficulty: "Children kept separate--Contagion--Skin-diseases." This is quite enough for Monsieur the Departmental Secretary; less heroic than Bonaparte on his visit to the plague-stricken of Jaffa, he hastens towards the door, and in his timid anxiety, wishing to say something and yet not finding words, murmurs with an ineffable smile: "They are char-ar-ming."
Next, the inspection at an end, see them all gathered in the salon on the ground floor, where Mme. Polge has prepared a little luncheon. The cellar of Bethlehem is well stocked. The keen air of the table-land, these climbs up and downstairs have given the old gentleman from the Tuileries an appetite such as he has not known for a long time, so that he chats and laughs as if he were at a picnic, and at the moment of departure, as they are all standing, raises his glass, nodding his head, to drink, "To Be-Be-Bethlehem!" Those present are moved, glasses are touched, then, at a quick trot, the carriage bears the party away down the long avenue of limes, over which a red and cold sun is just setting. Behind them the park resumes its dismal silence. Great dark masses gather in the depths of the copses, surround the house, gain little by little the paths and open spaces. Soon all is lost in gloom save the ironical letters embossed above the entrance-gate, and, away over yonder, at a first-floor window, one red and wavering spot, the light of a candle burning by the pillow of the dead child.
"By a decree dated the 12th March, 1865, issued upon the proposal
of the Minister of the Interior, Monsieur the Doctor Jenkins,
President and Founder of the Bethlehem Society is named a
Chevalier of the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour. Great
devotion to the cause of humanity."
As he read these words on the front page of the _Official Journal_, on the morning of the 16th, the poor Nabob felt dazed.
Was it possible?
Jenkins decorated, and not he!
He read the paragraph twice over, distrusting his own eyes. His ears buzzed. The letters danced double before his eyes with those great red rings round them which they have in strong sunlight. He had been so confident of seeing his name in this place; Jenkins, only the evening before, had repeated to him with so much assurance, "It is already done!" that he still thought his eyes must have deceived him. But no, it was indeed Jenkins. The blow was heavy, deep, prophetic, as it were a first warning from destiny, and one that was felt all the more intensely because for years this man had been unaccustomed to failure. Everything good in him learned mistrust at the same time.
"Well," said he to de Gery as he came as usual every morning into his room, and found him visibly affected, holding the newspaper in his hand, "have you seen? I am not in the _Official_."
He tried to smile, his features puckered like those of a child restraining his tears. Then, suddenly, with that frankness which was such a pleasing quality in him: "It is a great disappointment to me. I was looking forward to it too confidently."
The door opened upon these words, and Jenkins rushed in, out of breath, stammering, extraordinarily agitated.
"It is an infamy, a frightful infamy! The thing cannot be, it shall not be!"
The words stumbled over each other in disorder on his lips, all trying to get out at once; then he seemed to despair of finding expression for his thoughts and in disgust threw on the table a small box and a large envelope, both bearing the stamp of the chancellor's office.
"There are my cross and my brevet. They are yours, friend. I could not keep them."
At bottom the words did not signify much. Jansoulet adorning himself with Jenkins's ribbon might very well have been guilty of illegality. But a piece of theatrical business is not necessarily logical; this one brought about between the two men an effusion of feeling, embraces, a generous battle, at the end of which Jenkins replaced the objects in his pocket, speaking of protests, letters to the newspapers. The Nabob was again obliged to check him.
"Be very careful you do no such thing. To begin with, it would be to injure my chances for another time--who knows, perhaps on the 15th of August, which will soon be here."
"Oh, as to that," said Jenkins, jumping at this idea, and stretching out his arm as in the _Oath_ of David, "I solemnly swear it."
The matter was dropped at this point. At luncheon the Nabob was as gay as usual. This good humour was maintained all day, and de Gery, for whom the scene had been a revelation of the true Jenkins, the explanation of the ironies and the restrained wrath of Felicia Ruys whenever she spoke of the doctor, asked himself in vain how he could enlighten his dear patron about such hypocrisy. He should have been aware, however, that in southerners, with all their superficiality and effusion, there is no blindness, no enthusiasm, so complete as to remain insensible before the wisdom of reflection. In the evening the Nabob had opened a shabby little letter-case, worn at the corners, in which for ten years he had been accustomed to work out the calculations of his millions, writing down in hieroglyphics understood only by himself his receipts and expenditures. He buried himself in his accounts for a moment, then turning to de Gery:
"Do you know what I am doing, my dear Paul?" he asked.
"No, sir."
"I am just calculating"--and his mocking glance thoroughly characteristic of his race, rallied the good nature of his smile--"I am just calculating that I have spend four hundred and thirty thousand francs to get a decoration for Jenkins."
Four hundred and thirty thousand francs! And that was not the end.


BONNE MAMAN
Paul de Gery went three times a week in the evening to take his lesson in bookkeeping in the Joyeuses' dining-room, not far from that little parlour in which he had seen the family the first day, and while with his eyes fixed on his teacher he was being initiated into all the mysteries of "debtor and creditor," he used to listen, in spite of himself, for the light sounds coming from the industrious group behind the door, with thoughts dwelling regretfully on the vision of all those pretty brows bent in the lamplight. M. Joyeuse never said a word of his daughters; jealous of their charms as a dragon watching over beautiful princesses in a tower, and excited by the fantastic imaginings of his excessive affection for them, he would answer with marked brevity the inquiries of his pupil regarding the health of "the young ladies," so that at last the young man ceased to mention them.
He was surprised, however, at not once seeing that Bonne Maman whose name was constantly recurring in the conversation of M. Joyeuse, entering into the least details of his existence, hovering over the household like the emblem of its perfect ordering and of its peace.
So great a reserve on the part of a venerable lady who must assuredly have passed the age at which the interest of young men is to be feared, seemed to him exaggerated. The lessons, however, were good ones, given