Cabassu was seen in the Bois, in the enormous and sumptuous caleche 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-Andeol 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 College 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 College 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-Elysees, 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'Hery, 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 Gery 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 Gery 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 Perriere'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 Judaea 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 cure 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. Pondevez, 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 Pondevez, 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."

Pondevez 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, Pondevez, 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 Pondevez, "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. Pondevez to make the necessary arrangements.

"Deuce take him and his necessary arrangements! muttered Pondevez 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, Pondevez 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 Pondevez 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 Perriere, 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 chateau. 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:

"On my word, messieurs, this is a lucky chance. Two of our children are having a little lunch. We will see how nurses and nurslings agree."

"What's the matter with the man? He is mad," said Jenkins to himself, in dire dismay.

But the manager was very clear-headed, on the contrary, and had himself shrewdly arranged the scene, selecting two patient, good-natured beasts, and two exceptional subjects, two little idiots who were determined to live at any price, and opened their mouths to nourishment of any sort, like little birds still in the nest.

"Come, messieurs, and see for yourselves."

The cherubs were really nursing. One of them, cuddled under the goat's belly, went at it so heartily that you could hear the glou-glou of the warm milk as it went down, down into his little legs, which quivered with satisfaction. The other, more calm, lay indolently in his Auvergnat nurse's lap, and required some little encouragement from her.

"Come, suck, I tell you, suck, bougri!"

At last, as if he had formed a sudden resolution, he began to drink so greedily that the woman, surprised by his abnormal appetite, leaned over him and exclaimed, with a laugh;

"Ah! the scamp, what a mischievous trick! it's his thumb he's sucking instead of the goat."

He had thought of that expedient, the angel, to induce them to leave him in peace. The incident produced no ill effect; on the contrary, M. de La Perriere was much amused at the nurse's idea that the child had tried to play a trick on them. He left the Nursery highly delighted. "Positively de-de-delighted," he repeated as they ascended the grand echoing staircase, decorated with stags' antlers, which led to the dormitory.

Very light and airy was that great room, occupying the whole of one side of the house, with numerous windows, cradles at equal intervals, with curtains as white and fleecy as clouds. Women were passing to and fro in the broad passage-way in the centre, with piles of linen in their arms, keys in their hands, overseers or "movers." Here they had tried to do too much, and the first impression of the visitors was unfavorable. All that white muslin, that waxed floor, in which the light shone without blending, the clean window-panes reflecting the sky, which wore a gloomy look at sight of such things, brought out more distinctly the thinness, the sickly pallor of those little shroud-colored, moribund creatures. Alas! the oldest were but six months, the youngest barely a fortnight, and already, upon all those faces, those embryotic faces, there was an expression of disgust, an oldish, dogged look, a precocity born of suffering, visible in the numberless wrinkles on those little bald heads, confined in linen caps edged with tawdry hospital lace. From what did they suffer? What disease had they? They had everything, everything that one can have; diseases of children and diseases of adults. Offspring of poverty and vice, they brought into the world when they were born ghastly phenomena of heredity. One had a cleft palate, another great copper-colored blotches on his forehead, and all were covered with humor. And then they were starving to death. Notwithstanding the spoonfuls of milk and sugared water that were forced into their mouths, and the sucking-bottle that was used more or less in spite of the prohibition, they were dying of inanition. Those poor creatures, exhausted before they were born, needed the freshest, the most strengthening food; the goats might perhaps have supplied it, but they had sworn not to suck the goats. And that was what made the dormitory lugubrious and silent, without any of the little outbursts of anger emphasized by clenched fists, without any of the shrieks that show the even red gums, whereby the child makes trial of his strength and of his lungs; only an occasional plaintive groan, as if the soul were tossing and turning restlessly in a little diseased body, unable to find a place to rest.

Jenkins and the manager, noticing the unfavorable impression produced upon their guests by the visit to the dormitory, tried to enliven the situation by talking very loud, with a good-humored, frank, well-satisfied manner. Jenkins shook hands warmly with the overseer.

"Well, Madame Polge, are our little pupils getting on?"

"As you see, Monsieur le Docteur," she replied, pointing to the beds.

Very funereal in her green dress was tall Madame Polge, the ideal of dry nurses; she completed the picture.

But where had the Empress's secretary gone? He was standing by a cradle, which he was scrutinizing sadly, shaking his head.

"Bigre de Bigre!" whispered Pompon to Madame Polge. "It's the Wallachian."

The little blue card, hanging above the cradle as in hospitals, set forth the nationality of the child within: "Moldo-Wallachian." What cursed luck that Monsieur le Secretaire's eye should happen to light upon him! Oh! the poor little head lying on the pillow, with cap all awry, nostrils contracted, lips parted by a short, panting breath, the breath of those who are just born and of those who are about to die.

"Is he ill?" the secretary softly asked the manager, who had drawn near.

"Not in the least," replied the audacious Pompon, and he walked to the cradle, poked the little one playfully with his finger, rearranged the pillow, and said in a hearty, affectionate voice, albeit a little roughly: "Well, old fellow?" Roused from his stupor, emerging from the torpor which already enveloped him, the little fellow opened his eyes and looked at the faces bending over him, with sullen indifference, then, returning to his dream which he deemed more attractive, clenched his little wrinkled hands and heaved an inaudible sigh. Oh! mystery! Who can say for what purpose that child was born? To suffer two months and to go away without seeing or understanding anything, before anyone had heard the sound of his voice!

"How pale he is!" muttered M. de La Perriere, himself as pale as death. The Nabob, too, was as white as a sheet. A cold breath had passed over them. The manager assumed an indifferent air.

"It's the reflection. We all look green."

"To be sure—to be sure," said Jenkins, "it's the reflection of the pond. Just come and look, Monsieur le Secretaire." And he led him to the window to point out the great sheet of water in which the willows dipped their branches, while Madame Polge hastily closed the curtains of his cradle upon the little Wallachian's never-ending dream.

They must proceed quickly to inspect other portions of the establishment in order to do away with that unfortunate impression.

First they show M. de La Perriere the magnificent laundry, with presses, drying machines, thermometers, huge closets of polished walnut full of caps and nightgowns, tied together and labelled by dozens. When the linen was well warmed the laundress passed it out through a little wicket in exchange for the number passed in by the nurse. As you see, the system was perfect, and everything, even to the strong smell of lye, combined to give the room a healthy, country-like aspect. There were garments enough there to clothe five hundred children. That was the capacity of Bethlehem, and everything was provided on that basis: the vast dispensary, gleaming with glass jars and Latin inscriptions, with marble pestles in every corner; the hydropathic arrangements with the great stone tanks, the shining tubs, the immense apparatus traversed by pipes of all lengths for the ascending and descending douches, in showers, in jets, and in whip-like streams; and the kitchens fitted out with superb graduated copper kettles, with economical coal and gas ovens. Jenkins had determined to make it a model establishment; and it was an easy matter for him, for he had worked on a grand scale, as one works when funds are abundant. One could feel everywhere, too, the experience and the iron hand of "our intelligent overseer," to whom the manager could not forbear to do public homage. That was the signal for general congratulations. M. de La Perriere, delighted with the equipment of the establishment, congratulated Dr. Jenkins upon his noble creation, Jenkins congratulated his friend Pondevez, who in his turn thanked the secretary for having condescended to honor Bethlehem with a visit. The good Nabob chimed in with that concert of laudation and had a pleasant word for every one, but was somewhat astonished all the same that no one congratulated him too, while they were about it. To be sure, the best of all congratulations awaited him on the 16th of March at the head of the Journal Officiel, in a decree which gleamed before his eyes in anticipation and made him squint in the direction of his buttonhole.

These pleasant words were exchanged as they walked through a long corridor where their sententious phrases were repeated by the echoes; but suddenly a horrible uproar arrested their conversation and their footsteps. It was like the miaouwing of frantic cats, the bellowing of wild bulls, the howling of savages dancing the war-dance—a frightful tempest of human yells, repeated and increased in volume and prolonged by the high, resonant arches. It rose and fell, stopped suddenly, then began again with extraordinary intensity. The manager was disturbed, and started to make inquiries. Jenkins' eyes were inflamed with rage.

"Let us go on," said the manager, really alarmed this time; "I know what it is."

He did know what it was; but M. de La Perriere proposed to know, too, and before Pondevez could raise his hand, he pushed open the heavy door of the room whence that fearful concert proceeded.

In a vile kennel which the grand scouring had passed by, for they had no idea of exhibiting it, some half score little monstrosities lay stretched on mattresses laid side by side on the floor, under the guardianship of a chair unoccupied save by an unfinished piece of knitting, and a little cracked kettle, full of hot wine, boiling over a smoking wood fire. They were the leprous, the scrofulous, the outcasts of Bethlehem, who had been hidden away in that retired corner—with injunctions to their dry nurse to amuse them, to pacify them, to sit on them if necessary, so that they should not cry—but whom that stupid, inquisitive countrywoman had left to themselves while she went to look at the fine carriage standing in the courtyard. When her back was turned the urchins soon wearied of their horizontal position; and all the little, red-faced, blotched croute-leves lifted up their robust voices in concert, for they, by some miracle, were in good health, their very disease saved and nourished them. As wild and squirming as cockchafers thrown on their backs, struggling to rise with the aid of knees and elbows,—some unable to recover their equilibrium after falling on their sides, others sitting erect, bewildered, their little legs wrapped in swaddling-clothes, they spontaneously ceased their writhings and their cries when they saw the door open; but M. de La Perriere's shaking beard reassured them, encouraged them to fresh efforts, and in the renewed uproar the manager's explanation was almost inaudible: "Children that are kept secluded—contagion—skin diseases." Monsieur le Secretaire inquired no farther; less heroic than Bonaparte when he visited the plague-stricken wretches at Jaffa, he rushed to the door, and in his confusion and alarm, anxious to say something and unable to think of anything appropriate, he murmured, with an ineffable smile: "They are cha-arming."

The inspection concluded, they all assembled in the salon on the ground floor, where Madame Polge had prepared a little collation. The cellars of Bethlehem were well stocked. The sharp air of the high land, the going upstairs and downstairs had given the old gentleman from the Tuileries such an appetite as he had not had for many a day, so that he talked and laughed with true rustic good-fellowship, and when they were all standing, the visitors being about to depart, he raised his glass, shaking his head the while, to drink this toast: "To Be-Be-Bethlehem!"

The others were much affected, there was a clinking of glasses, and then the carriage bore the party swiftly along the avenue of lindens, where a cold, red, rayless sun was setting. Behind them the park relapsed into its gloomy silence. Great dark shadows gathered at the foot of the hedges, invaded the house, crept stealthily along the paths and across their intersections. Soon everything was in darkness save the ironical letters over the entrance gate, and, at a window on the ground-floor, a flickering red glimmer, the flame of a taper burning by the pillow of the dead child.

"By decree of March 12, 1865, promulgated at the recommendation of the Minister of the Interior, Monsieur le Docteur Jenkins, founder and president of the Work of Bethlehem, is appointed chevalier of the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honor. Exemplary devotion to the cause of humanity."

When he read these lines on the first page of the Journal Officiel, on the morning of the 16th, the poor Nabob had an attack of vertigo.

Was it possible?

Jenkins decorated and not he!

He read the announcement twice, thinking that his eyes must have deceived him. There was a buzzing in his ears. The letters, two of each, danced before his eyes with the red circles caused by looking at the sun. He had been so certain of seeing his name in that place; and Jenkins—only the day before—had said to him so confidently: "It is all settled!" that it still seemed to him that he must be mistaken. But no, it was really Jenkins. It was a deep, heart-sickening, prophetic blow, like a first warning from destiny, and was the more keenly felt because, for years past, the man had been unaccustomed to disappointments, had lived above humanity. All the good that there was in him learned at that moment to be distrustful.

"Well," he said to de Gery, entering his room, as he did every morning, and surprising him with the paper in his hand and evidently deeply moved, "I suppose you have seen,—my name is not in the Officiel?"

He tried to smile, his features distorted like those of a child struggling to restrain his tears. Then, suddenly, with the frankness that was so attractive in him, he added: "This makes me feel very badly,—I expected too much."

As he spoke, the door opened and Jenkins rushed into the room, breathless, panting, intensely agitated.

"It's an outrage—a horrible outrage. It cannot, shall not be."

The words rushed tumultuously to his lips, all trying to come out at once; then he seemed to abandon the attempt to express his thoughts and threw upon the table a little shagreen box and a large envelope, both bearing the stamp of the chancellor's office.

"There are my cross and my letters patent," he said. "They are yours, my friend, I cannot keep them."

In reality that did not mean much. Jansoulet arraying himself in Jenkins' ribbon would speedily be punished for unlawfully wearing a decoration. But a coup de theatre is not necessarily logical; this particular one led to an effusion of sentiment, embraces, a generous combat between the two men, the result being that Jenkins restored the objects to his pocket, talking about protests, letters to the newspapers. The Nabob was obliged to stop him again.

"Do nothing of the kind, you rascal. In the first place, it would stand in my way another time. Who knows? perhaps on the 15th of next August—"

"Oh! I never thought of that," cried Jenkins, jumping at the idea. He put forth his arm, as in David's Serment: "I swear it by my sacred honor!"

The subject dropped there. At breakfast the Nabob did not refer to it and was as cheerful as usual. His good humor lasted through the day; and de Gery, to whom that scene had been a revelation of the real Jenkins, an explanation of the satirical remarks and restrained wrath of Felicia Ruys when she spoke of the doctor, asked himself to no purpose how he could open his dear master's eyes concerning that scheming hypocrite. He should have known, however, that the men of the South, all effusiveness on the surface, are never so utterly blind, so deluded as to resist the wise results of reflection. That evening the Nabob opened a shabby little portfolio, badly worn at the corners, in which for ten years past he had manoeuvred his millions, minuting his profits and his expenses in hieroglyphics comprehensible to himself alone. He calculated for a moment, then turned to de Gery.

"Do you know what I am doing, my dear Paul?" he asked.

"No, monsieur."

"I have just been reckoning"—and his mocking glance, eloquent of his Southern origin, belied his good-humored smile—"I have just been reckoning that I have spent four hundred and thirty thousand francs to obtain that decoration for Jenkins."

Four hundred and thirty thousand francs! And the end was not yet.



IX.

GRANDMAMMA.

Three times a week, in the evening, Paul de Gery appeared to take his lesson in bookkeeping in the Joyeuse dining-room, not far from the small salon where the little family had burst upon him at his first visit; so that, while he was being initiated into all the mysteries of "debit and credit," with his eyes fixed on his white-cravated instructor, he listened in spite of himself to the faint sounds of the toilsome evening on the other side of the door, longing for the vision of all those pretty heads bending over around the lamp. M. Joyeuse never mentioned his daughters. As jealous of their charms as a dragon standing guard over lovely princesses in a tower, aroused to vigilance by the fanciful imaginings of his doting affection, he replied dryly enough to his pupil's questions concerning "the young ladies," so that the young man ceased to mention them to him. He was surprised, however, that he never happened to see this "Grandmamma" whose name recurred constantly in M. Joyeuse's conversation upon every subject, in the most trivial details of his existence, hovering over the house like the symbol of its perfect orderliness and tranquillity.

Such extreme reserve, on the part of a venerable lady, who in all probability had passed the age at which the adventurous spirit of a young man is to be feared, seemed to him exaggerated. But the lessons were very practical, given in very clear language, and the professor had an excellent method of demonstration, marred by a single fault, a habit of relapsing into fits of silence, broken by starts and interjections that went off like bombs. Outside of that he was the best of masters, intelligent, patient and faithful. Paul learned to find his way through the complicated labyrinth of books of account and resigned himself to the necessity of asking nothing further.

One evening, about nine o'clock, as the young man rose to go, M. Joyeuse asked him if he would do him the honor to take a cup of tea en famille, a custom of the time of Madame Joyeuse, born Saint-Amand, who used to receive her friends on Thursdays. Since her death, and the change in their financial position, their friends had scattered; but they had retained that little "weekly extra." Paul having accepted, the good man opened the door and called:

"Grandmamma."

A light step in the hall and a face of twenty years, surrounded by a nimbus of abundant, fluffy brown hair, abruptly made its appearance. De Gery looked at M. Joyeuse with an air of stupefaction:

"Grandmamma?"

"Yes, it's a name we gave her when she was a little girl. With her frilled cap, and her authoritative older-sister expression, she had a funny little face, so wise-looking. We thought that she looked like her grandmother. The name has clung to her."

From the worthy man's tone, it was evident that to him it was the most natural thing in the world, that grandmotherly title bestowed upon such attractive youth. Every one in the household thought as he did, and the other Joyeuse girls, who ran to their father and grouped themselves about him somewhat as in the show-case on the ground-floor, and the old servant, who brought and placed upon the table in the salon, whither they had adjourned, a magnificent tea-service, a relic of the former splendor of the establishment, all called the girl "Grandmamma," nor did she once seem to be annoyed by it, for the influence of that blessed name imparted to the affection of them all a touch of deference that flattered her and gave to her imaginary authority a singular attractiveness, as of a protecting hand.

It may have been because of that title, which he had learned to cherish in his infancy, but de Gery found an indescribable fascination in the girl. It did not resemble the sudden blow he had received from another, full in the heart, the perturbation mingled with a longing to fly, to escape an obsession, and the persistent melancholy peculiar to the day after a fete, extinguished candles, refrains that have died away, perfumes vanished in the darkness. No, in the presence of that young girl, as she stood looking over the family table, making sure that nothing was lacking, letting her loving, sparkling eyes rest upon her children, her little children, he was assailed by a temptation to know her, to be to her as an old friend, to confide to her things that he confessed to none but himself; and when she offered him his cup, with no worldly airs, no society affectations, he would have liked to say like the others a "Thanks, Grandmamma," in which he might put his whole heart.

Suddenly a cheery, vigorous knock made everybody jump.

"Ah! there's Monsieur Andre. Quick, Elise, a cup. Yaia, the little cakes." Meanwhile, Mademoiselle Henriette, the third of the Joyeuse girls,—who had inherited from her mother, born Saint-Amand, a certain worldly side,—in view of the crowded condition of the salons that evening, rushed to light the two candles on the piano.

"My fifth act is done," cried the newcomer, as he entered the room; then he stopped short. "Ah! excuse me," and his face took on a discomfited expression at sight of the stranger. M. Joyeuse introduced them to each other: "Monsieur Paul de Gery—Monsieur Andre Maranne,"—not without a certain solemnity of manner. He remembered his wife's receptions long ago; and the vases on the mantel, the two great lamps, the work-table, the armchairs arranged in a circle, seemed to share the illusion, to shine brighter as if rejuvenated by that unusual throng.

"So your play is finished?"

"Finished, Monsieur Joyeuse, and I mean to read it to you one of these days."

"Oh! yes, Monsieur Andre. Oh! yes," said all the girls in chorus.

Their neighbor wrote for the stage and no one of them entertained a doubt of his success. Photography held out less promise of profit, you know. Customers were very rare, the passers-by disinclined to patronize him. To keep his hand in and get his new apparatus into working order, Monsieur Andre was taking his friends again every Sunday, the family lending themselves for his experiments with unequalled good-humor, for the prosperity of that inchoate, suburban industry was a matter of pride to them all, arousing, even in the girls, that touching sentiment of fraternity which presses the humblest destinies together as closely as sparrows on the edge of a roof. But Andre Maranne, with the inexhaustible resources of his high forehead, stored with illusions, explained without bitterness the indifference of the public. Either the weather was unfavorable or else every one complained of the wretched condition of business, and he ended always with the same consoling refrain: "Wait until Revolte has been acted!" Revolte was the title of his play.

"It's a surprising thing," said the fourth of the Joyeuse girls, a child of twelve with her hair in a pigtail, "it's a surprising thing that you do so little business with such a splendid balcony!"

"And then there's a great deal of passing through the quarter," added Elise confidently. Grandmamma smilingly reminded her that there was even more on Boulevard des Italiens.

"Ah! if it were Boulevard des Italiens—" said M. Joyeuse dreamily, and away he went on his chimera, which was suddenly brought to a stand-still by a gesture and these words, uttered in a piteous tone: "closed because of failure." In an instant the terrible Imaginaire had installed his friend in a splendid apartment on the boulevard, where he earned an enormous amount of money, increasing his expenses at the same time so disproportionately, that a loud "pouf" swallowed up photographer and photography in a few months. They laughed heartily when he gave that explanation; but they all agreed that Rue Saint-Ferdinand, although less showy, was much more reliable than Boulevard des Italiens. Moreover, it was very near the Bois de Boulogne, and if the fashionable world should once begin to pass that way—That fashionable society which her mother so affected was Mademoiselle Henriette's fixed idea; and she was amazed that the thought of receiving high-life in his little fifth-floor studio, about as large as a diving-bell, should make their neighbor laugh. Why, only a week or two before, a carriage came there with servants in livery. Sometimes, too, he had had a "very swell" visitor.

"Oh! a real great lady," Grandmamma chimed in. "We were at the window waiting for father. We saw her leave the carriage and look at the frame; we thought surely she came to see you."

"She did come to see me," said Andre, a little embarrassed.

"For a moment we were afraid she would go on as so many others do, on account of your five flights. So we all four did our best to stop her, to magnetize her with our four pairs of wide-open eyes. We pulled her very gently by the feathers in her hat and the lace on her cape. 'Come upstairs, pray, madame, pray come upstairs,' and finally she came. There is so much magnetism in eyes that want a thing very much!"

Surely she had magnetism enough, the dear creature, not only in her eyes, which were of uncertain hue, veiled or laughing like the sky of her Paris, but in her voice, in the folds of her dress, in everything, even to the long curl that shaded her straight, graceful statue-like neck and attracted you by its tapering shaded point, deftly curled over a supple finger.

The tea being duly served, while the gentlemen continued their talking and drinking—Pere Joyeuse was always very slow in everything that he did, because of his abrupt excursions into the moon—the girls resumed their work, the table was covered with wicker baskets, embroidery, pretty wools whose brilliant coloring brightened the faded flowers in the old carpet, and the group of the other evening was formed anew in the luminous circle of the lamp shade, to the great satisfaction of Paul de Gery. It was the first evening of that sort he had passed in Paris; it reminded him of other far-away evenings, cradled by the same innocent mirth, the pleasant sound of scissors laid upon the table, of the needle piercing the cotton, or the rustling of the leaves of a book as they are turned, and dear faces, vanished forever, clustered in the same way around the family lamp, alas! so suddenly extinguished.

Once admitted into that charming domestic circle, he was not excluded from it again, but took his lessons among the girls, and made bold to talk with them when the good man closed his ledger. There everything tended to give him grateful repose from the seething life in which the Nabob's luxurious worldliness involved him; he bathed in that atmosphere of honesty and simplicity, and strove to cure there the wounds with which a hand more indifferent than cruel was mercilessly riddling his heart.

* * *

"Women have hated me, other women have loved me. She who did me the most harm never had either love or hate for me." Paul had fallen in, with the woman of whom Heinrich Heine speaks. Felicia was very hospitable and cordial to him. There was no one whom she welcomed more graciously. She reserved for him a special smile, in which there was the pleased expression of an artist's eye resting upon a type which attracts it, and the satisfaction of a blase mind which is amused by anything new, however simple it may seem to be. She liked that reserve, most alluring in a Southerner, the straightforwardness of that judgment, entirely free from artistic or worldly formulas and enlivened by a touch of local accent. It was a change for her from the zigzag movement of the thumb, drawing flattery in outline with the gestures of a studio fag, from the congratulations of comrades on the way in which she silenced some poor fellow, and from the affected admiration, the "chawming—veay pretty," with which the young dandies honored her as they sucked the handles of their canes. He, at all events, said nothing of that sort to her. She had nicknamed him Minerva, because of his apparent tranquillity and the regularity of his profile; and as soon as he appeared, she would say: "Ah! there's Minerva. Hail, lovely Minerva. Take off your helmet and let us have a talk."

But that familiar, almost fraternal, tone convinced the young man of the hopelessness of his love. He realized that he could not hope to make any further progress in that feminine good-fellowship in which affection was lacking, and that he should lose something every day of his charm as an unfamiliar type in the eyes of that creature who was born bored, and who seemed to have lived her life already and to find the insipidity of repetition in everything that she heard or saw. Felicia was suffering from ennui. Only her art had the power to divert her, to take her out of herself, to transport her to a fairyland of dazzling beauty from which she returned all bruised and sore, always surprised at the awakening, which resembled a fall. She compared herself to the jelly-fish, whose transparent brilliancy in the coolness and constant movement of the waves, vanishes on the shore in little gelatinous pools. During those intervals of idleness, when the absence of thought leaves the hand inert upon the modelling tool, Felicia, deprived of the sole moral nerve of her intellect, became savage, unapproachable, sullen beyond endurance,—the revenge of paltry human qualities upon great tired brains. After she had brought tears to the eyes of all those whom she loved, had striven to evoke painful memories or paralyzing anxieties, and had reached the brutal, murderous climax of her fatigue,—as it was always necessary, where she was concerned, that something ridiculous should be mingled even with the saddest things, she would blow away the remains of her ennui with a cry like that of a dazed wild beast, a sort of yawning roar which she called "the cry of the jackal in the desert," and which would drive the blood from the excellent Crenmitz's cheeks, taking her by surprise in her torpid placidity.

Poor Felicia! Her life was in very truth a ghastly desert when her art did not enliven it with its visions, a dismal, unrelieved desert, where everything was crushed and flattened beneath the same monotonous immensity, the ingenuous love of a boy of twenty and the caprice of an amorous duke, where everything was covered with dry sand blown about by the scorching winds of destiny. Paul was conscious of that void, he tried to escape from it; but something detained him, like a weight which unwinds a chain, and, notwithstanding the evil things he heard, notwithstanding the strange creature's peculiarities, he hovered about her with a delicious sense of enjoyment, under pain of carrying naught away from that long amorous contemplation save the despair of a believer reduced to the adoration of images.

The place of refuge was in yonder out-of-the-way quarter, where the wind blew so hard without preventing the flame from burning white and straight,—it was in the domestic circle presided over by Grandmamma. Oh! she did not suffer from ennui, she never uttered "the cry of the jackal in the desert." Her life was too well filled: the father to comfort and encourage, the children to teach, all the material cares of a household in which the mother was lacking, the engrossing thoughts which wake with the dawn and which the night puts to sleep, unless it renews them in dreams—one of those instances of indefatigable but apparently effortless devotion, very convenient for poor human selfishness, because it dispenses with all gratitude and hardly makes itself felt, its touch is so light. She was not one of the courageous girls who work to support their parents, give lessons from morning to night and forget the annoyances of the household in the excitement of an engrossing occupation. No, she had formed a different conception of her duty, she was a sedentary bee confining her labors to the hive, with no buzzing around outside in the fresh air and among the flowers. A thousand and one functions to perform: tailor, milliner, mender, keeper of accounts as well,—for M. Joyeuse, being incapable of any sort of responsibility, left the disposition of the family funds absolutely in her hands,—teacher and music mistress.

As is often the case in families which were originally in comfortable circumstances, Aline, being the eldest, had been educated in one of the best boarding-schools in Paris, Elise had remained there two years with her; but the two younger ones, having come too late, had been sent to little day-schools in the quarter and had all their studies to complete; and it was no easy matter, for the youngest laughed on every pretext, an exuberant, healthy, youthful laugh, like the warbling of a lark drunken on green wheat, and flew away out of sight of desk and symbols, while Mademoiselle Henriette, always haunted by her ideas of grandeur, her love of "the substantial," was none too eager for study. That young person of fifteen, to whom her father had bequeathed something of his imaginative faculty, was already arranging her life in anticipation, and declared formally that she should marry some one of birth and should never have more than three children: "A boy for the name, and two little girls—so that I can dress them alike."

"Yes, that's right," Grandmamma would say, "you shall dress them alike. Meanwhile, let us see about our participles."

But the most troublesome of all was Elise with her thrice unsuccessful examination in history, always rejected and preparing herself anew, subject to attacks of profound terror and self-distrust which led her to carry that unfortunate handbook of French history with her wherever she went, and to open it at every instant, in the omnibus, in the street, even at the breakfast table; but, being already a young woman and very pretty, she no longer had the mechanical memory of childhood in which dates and events are incrusted forever. Amid her other preoccupations the lesson would fly away in a moment, despite the pupil's apparent application, her long lashes concealing her eyes, her curls sweeping the page, and her rosy mouth twitching slightly at the corners as she repeated again and again: "Louis le Hutin, 1314-1316. Philippe V, le Long, 1316-1322—1322.—Oh! Grandmamma, I am lost. I shall never learn them." Thereupon Grandmamma would take a hand, help her to fix her attention, to store away some of those barbarous dates in the Middle Ages, as sharp-pointed as the helmets of the warriors of those days. And in the intervals of those manifold tasks, of that general and constant superintendence, she found time to make pretty things, to take from her work-basket some piece of knitting or embroidery, which clung to her as steadfastly as young Elise to her history of France. Even when she was talking, her fingers were never unemployed for one moment.

"Do you never rest?" de Gery asked her while she counted in a whisper the stitches of her embroidery, "three, four, five," in order to vary the shades.

"Why, this work is rest," she replied. "You men have no idea how useful needlework is to a woman's mind. It regularizes the thought, fixes with a stitch the passing moment and what it carries with it. And think of the sorrows that are soothed, the anxieties forgotten by the help of this purely physical attention, this constant repetition of the same movement, in which you find—and find very quickly, whether you will or no—that your equilibrium is entirely restored. It does not prevent me from hearing all that is said in my neighborhood, from listening to you even more attentively than I should if I were idle—three, four, five."

Oh! yes, she listened. That was plain from the animation of her face, from the way in which she would suddenly straighten herself up, with her needle in the air and the thread stretched over her raised little finger. Then she would suddenly resume her work, sometimes interjecting a shrewd, thoughtful word, which as a general rule agreed with what friend Paul thought. A similarity in their natures and in their responsibilities and duties brought those two young people together, made them mutually interested each in those things that the other had most at heart. She knew the names of his two brothers, Pierre and Louis, and his plans for their future when they should leave school. Pierre wanted to be a sailor. "Oh! no, not a sailor," said Grandmamma, "it would be much better for him to come to Paris with you." And when he admitted that he was afraid of Paris for them, she laughed at his fears, called him a provincial, for she was full of affection for the city where she was born, where she had grown chastely to womanhood, and which gave her in return the vivacity, the natural refinement, the sprightly good-humor which make one think that Paris, with its rains, its fogs, its sky which is no sky, is the true fatherland of woman, whose nerves it spares and whose patient and intelligent qualities it develops.

Each day Paul de Gery appreciated Mademoiselle Aline more thoroughly—he was the only one in the house who called her by that name—and, strangely enough, it was Felicia who finally cemented their intimacy. What connection could there be between that artist's daughter, fairly launched in the most exalted spheres, and that bourgeois maiden lost to sight in the depths of a suburb? Connections of childhood and friendship, common memories, the great courtyard of the Belin establishment, where they had played together for three years. Such meetings are very common in Paris. A name mentioned at random in conversation suddenly calls forth the amazed question:

"What! do you know her?"

"Do I know Felicia? Why we sat at adjoining desks in the first class. We had the same garden. Such a dear, lovely, clever girl!"

And, noticing how pleased he was to listen to her, Aline recalled the days, still so near, which already formed part of the past to her, fascinating and melancholy like all pasts. She was quite alone in life, was little Felicia. On Thursday, when they called out the names in the parlor, there was never any one for her; except now and then an old woman, a nice old woman, if she was a little ridiculous, a former ballet-dancer it was said, whom Felicia called the Fairy. She had pet names like that for everybody of whom she was fond, and she transformed them all in her imagination. They used to see each other during the vacations. Madame Joyeuse, although she refused to send Aline to M. Ruys's studio, invited Felicia for whole days,—very short days, made up of work and music, of joint dreams and unrestrained youthful chatter. "Oh! when she talked to me about her art, with the ardor which she put into everything, how delighted I was to hear her! How many things she enabled me to understand of which I never should have had the slightest idea! Even now, when we go to the Louvre with papa, or to the Exhibition of the first of May, the peculiar emotion that one feels at the sight of a beautiful bit of sculpture or a fine painting, makes me think instantly of Felicia. In my young days she represented art, and it went well with her beauty, her somewhat reckless but so kindly nature, in which I was conscious of something superior to myself, which carried me away to a great height without frightening me. Suddenly we ceased to see each other. I wrote to her—no reply. Then fame came to her, great sorrow and engrossing duties to me. And of all that friendship, and very deep-rooted it must have been, for I cannot speak of it without—three, four, five—nothing is left but old memories to be poked over like dead ashes."

Leaning over her work, the brave girl hastily counted her stitches, concealing her grief in the fanciful designs of her embroidery, while de Gery, deeply moved to hear the testimony of those pure lips in contradiction of the calumnies of a few disappointed dandies or jealous rivals, felt relieved of a weight and once more proud of his love. The sensation was so sweet to him that he came very often to seek to renew it, not only on lesson evenings, but on other evenings as well, and almost forgot to go and see Felicia for the pleasure of hearing Aline speak of her.

One evening, when he left the Joyeuse apartment, he found waiting for him on the landing M. Andre, the neighbor, who took his arm feverishly.

"Monsieur de Gery," he said, in a trembling voice, his eyes flashing fire behind their spectacles, the only part of his face one could see at night, "I have an explanation to demand at your hands. Will you come up to my room a moment?"

Between that young man and himself there had been only the usual relations of two frequent visitors at the same house, who are attached by no bond, who seem indeed to be separated by a certain antipathy between their natures and their modes of life. What could there be for them to explain? Sorely puzzled, he followed Andre.

The sight of the little studio, cold and cheerless under its glass ceiling, the empty fireplace, the wind blowing as it blows outside, and making the candle flicker, the only light that shone upon that vigil of a penniless recluse, reflected upon scattered sheets all covered with writing,—in a word, that atmosphere of inhabited cells wherein the very soul of the inhabitants exhales,—enabled de Gery to comprehend at once the impassioned Andre Maranne, his long hair thrown back and flying in the wind, his somewhat eccentric appearance, very excusable when one pays for it with a life of suffering and privations; and his sympathy instantly went out to the courageous youth, whose militant pride he fully divined at a single glance. But the other was too excited to notice this transition. As soon as the door was closed, he said, with the accent of a stage hero addressing the perjured seducer:

"Monsieur de Gery, I am not a Cassandra yet." And, as he observed his interlocutor's unbounded amazement, he added: "Yes, yes, we understand each other. I see perfectly clearly what attracts you to M. Joyeuse's, nor has the warm welcome you receive there escaped me. You are rich, you are of noble birth, no one can hesitate between you and the poor poet who carries on an absurd trade in order to gain time to attain success, which will never come perhaps. But I won't allow my happiness to be stolen from me. We will fight, monsieur, we will fight," he repeated, excited by his rival's unruffled tranquillity. "I have loved Mademoiselle Joyeuse a long while. That love is the aim, the joy, and the strength of a very hard life, painful in many respects. I have nothing but that in the world, and I should prefer to die rather than to renounce it."

What a strange combination is the human heart! Paul was not in love with the charming Aline. His whole heart belonged to another. He thought of her simply as a friend, the most adorable of friends. And yet the idea that Maranne was thinking of her, that she undoubtedly responded to his lover-like attentions, caused him a thrill of jealous anger, and his tone was very sharp when he asked if Mademoiselle Joyeuse were aware of this feeling of Andre's and had in any way authorized him to proclaim his rights.

"Yes, monsieur, Mademoiselle Elise knows that I love her, and before your frequent visits—"

"Elise—is it Elise you're talking about?"

"Why, who should it be, pray? The other two are too young."

He entered thoroughly into the traditions of the family. In his eyes Grandmamma's twenty years, her triumphant charm, were concealed by a respectful sobriquet and by her providential qualities.

A very brief explanation having allayed Andre Maranne's excitement, he offered his apologies to de Gery, invited him to take a seat in the carved wooden armchair in which his customers posed, and their conversation speedily assumed an intimate and confidential character, attributable to the earnest avowal with which it began. Paul confessed that he too was in love, and that his only purpose in coming so often to M. Joyeuse's was to talk about his beloved with Grandmamma, who had known her long before.

"It's the same with me," said Andre. "Grandmamma knows all my secrets; but we have not dared say anything to her father yet. My position is too uncertain. Ah! when Revolte has been brought out!"

Thereupon they talked about Revolte! the famous drama on which he had been at work day and night for six months, which had kept him warm all through the winter, a very hard winter, whose rigor was tempered, however, by the magic power of composition in the little garret, which it completely transformed. There, in that confined space, all the heroes of his play had appeared to the poet, like familiar sprites falling through the roof or riding on the moonbeams, and with them the high-warp tapestries, the gleaming chandeliers, the vast parks with gateways flooded with light, all the usual magnificence of stage-setting, as well as the glorious uproar of the first performance, the applause being represented by the rain beating on the windows and the signs flapping against the door, while the wind, whistling through the melancholy lumber-yard below with a vague murmur of voices brought from afar and carried far, resembled the murmur from the boxes opening into the lobby, allowing his triumph to circulate amid the chattering and confusion of the audience. It was not simply the renown and the money that that blessed play were to bring to him, but something far more precious. How carefully, therefore, did he turn the pages of the manuscript contained in five great books in blue covers, such books as the Levantine spread out upon the divan on which she took her siestas, and marked with her managerial pencil.

Paul having drawn near the table in his turn, in order to examine the masterpiece, his eyes were attracted by a portrait of a woman in a handsome frame, which seemed, being so near the artist's work, to have been stationed there to stand guard over it. Elise, of course? Oh! no, Andre had no right as yet to take his young friend's photograph away from its protecting environment. It was a woman of about forty, fair, with a sweet expression, and dressed in the height of fashion. When he saw the face, de Gery could not restrain an exclamation.

"Do you know her?" said Andre Maranne.

"Why, yes—Madame Jenkins, the Irish doctor's wife. I took supper with them last winter."

"She is my mother." And the young man added in a lower tone:

"Madame Maranne married Dr. Jenkins for her second husband. You are surprised, are you not, to find me in such destitution when my parents are living in luxury? But, as you know, chance sometimes brings very antipathetic natures together in the same family. My father-in-law and I could not agree. He wanted to make a doctor of me, whereas I had no taste for anything but writing. At last, in order to avoid the constant disputes, which were a source of pain to my mother, I preferred to leave the house and dig my furrow all alone, without assistance from any one. It was a hard task! money was lacking. All the property is in the hands of that—of M. Jenkins. It was a question of earning my living, and you know what a difficult matter that is for persons like ourselves, well brought up as it is termed. To think that, with all the knowledge included in what it is fashionable to call a thorough education, I could find nothing but this child's play which gave me any hope of being able to earn my bread! Some little savings from my allowance as a young man sufficed to buy my first outfit, and I opened a studio far away, at the very end of Paris, in order not to annoy my parents. Between ourselves, I fancy that I shall never make my fortune in photography. The first weeks especially were very hard. No one came, or if by any chance some poor devil did toil up the stairs, I missed him, I spread him out on my plate in a faint, blurred mixture like a ghost. One day, very early in my experience, there came a wedding party, the bride all in white, the husband with a waistcoat—oh! such a waistcoat! And all the guests in white gloves which they insisted upon having included in the photograph, because of the rarity of the sensation. Really, I thought I should go mad. Those black faces, the great white daubs for the dress, the gloves and the orange flowers, the unfortunate bride in the guise of a Zulu queen, under her wreath which melted into her hair! And all so overflowing with good-nature, with encouragement for the artist. I tried them at least twenty times, kept them until five o'clock at night. They left me only when it was dark, to go and dine! Fancy that wedding-day passed in a photograph gallery!"

While Andre thus jocosely narrated the melancholy incidents of his life, Paul recalled Felicia's outburst on the subject of Bohemians, and all that she said to Jenkins concerning their exalted courage, their thirst for privations and trials. He thought also of Aline's passionate fondness for her dear Paris, of which he knew nothing but the unhealthy eccentricities, whereas the great city concealed so much unknown heroism, so many noble illusions in its folds. The sensation he had previously felt in the circle of the Joyeuses' great lamp, he was even more keenly conscious of in that less warm, less peaceful spot, whither art brought its desperate or glorious uncertainty; and it was with a melting heart that he listened while Andre Maranne talked to him of Elise, of the examination she was so long in passing, of the difficult trade of photography, of all the unforeseen hardships of his life, which would surely come to an end "when Revolte should have been brought out," a fascinating smile playing about the poet's lips as they gave utterance to that hope, so often expressed, which he made haste to ridicule himself, as if to deprive others of the right to ridicule it.



X.

MEMOIRS OF A CLERK.—THE SERVANTS.

Really the wheel of fortune in Paris revolves in a way to make one's head swim!

To have seen the Caisse Territoriale as I have seen it, fireless rooms, never swept, covered with the dust of the desert, notices of protest piled high on the desks, a notice of sale on execution at the door every week, and my ragout diffusing the odor of a poor man's kitchen over it all; and to witness now the rehabilitation of our Society in its newly-furnished salons, where it is my duty to light ministerial fires, in the midst of a busy throng, with whistles, electric bells, piles of gold pieces so high that they topple over—it borders on the miraculous. To convince myself that it is all true, I have to look at myself in the glass, to gaze at my iron-gray coat trimmed with silver, my white cravat, my usher's chain such as I used to wear at the Faculty on council days. And to think that, to effect this transformation, to bring back to our brows the gayety that is the mother of concord, to restore to our paper its value ten times over and to our dear Governor the esteem and confidence of which he was so unjustly deprived, it only needed one man, that supernatural Croesus whom the hundred voices of fame designate by the name of the Nabob.

Oh! the first time that he came into the offices, with his fine presence, his face, a little wrinkled perhaps but so distinguished, the manners of an habitue of courts, on familiar terms with all the princes of the Orient, in a word with the indescribable touch of self-confidence and grandeur that great fortune gives, I felt my heart swell in my waistcoat with its double row of buttons. They may say all they choose about their equality and fraternity, there are some men who are so much above others, that you feel like falling on your face before them and inventing new formulae of adoration to compel them to pay some attention to you. Let me hasten to add that I had no need of anything of the sort to attract the attention of the Nabob. When I rose as he passed—deeply moved but dignified: you can always trust Passajon—he looked at me with a smile and said in an undertone to the young man who accompanied him: "What a fine head, like—" then a word that I did not hear, a word ending in ard, like leopard. But no, it could not be that, for I am not conscious of having a head like a leopard. Perhaps he said like Jean-Bart, although I do not see the connection. However, he said: "What a fine head, like—" and his condescension made me proud. By the way, all the gentlemen are very kind, very polite to me. It seems that there has been a discussion in regard to me, whether they should keep me or send me away like our cashier, that crabbed creature who was always talking about sending everybody to the galleys, and whom they requested to go and make his economical shirt-fronts somewhere else. Well done! That will teach him to use vulgar language to people.

When it came to me, the Governor was kind enough to forget my rather hasty words in consideration of my certificates of service at the Territoriale and elsewhere; and after the council meeting he said to me with his musical accent: "Passajon, you are to stay on with us." You can imagine whether I was happy, whether I lost myself in expressions of gratitude. Just consider! I should have gone away with my few sous, with no hope of ever earning any more, obliged to go and cultivate my little vineyard at Montbars, a very narrow field for a man who has lived among all the financial aristocracy of Paris and the bold strokes of financiering that make fortunes. Instead of that, here I am established all anew in a superb position, my wardrobe replenished, and my savings, which I actually held in my hand for a whole day, intrusted to the fostering care of the Governor, who has undertaken to make them yield a handsome return. I rather think that he is the man who knows how to do it. And not the slightest occasion for anxiety. All apprehensions vanish before the word that is all the fashion at this moment in all administrative councils, at all meetings of the shareholders, on the Bourse, on the boulevards, everywhere: "The Nabob is in the thing." That is to say, we are running over with cash, the worst combinazioni are in excellent shape.

That man is so rich!

Rich to such a degree that one cannot believe it. Why, he has just loaned fifteen millions off-hand to the Bey of Tunis. Fifteen millions, I say! That was rather a neat trick on Hemerlingue, who tried to make trouble between him and that monarch and to cut the grass from under his feet in those lovely Oriental countries, where it grows tall and thick and golden-colored. It was an old Turk of my acquaintance, Colonel Brahim, one of our council at the Territoriale, who arranged the loan. Naturally the bey, who was very short of pocket money, it seems, was greatly touched by the Nabob's zeal to accommodate him, and he sent him by Brahim a letter of acknowledgment in which he told him that on his next trip to Vichy he would pass two days with him at the magnificent Chateau de Saint-Romans, which the former bey, this one's brother, once honored with a visit. Just think what an honor! To receive a reigning prince! The Hemerlingues are in a frenzy. They had manoeuvred so skilfully, the son in Tunis, the father in Paris, to bring the Nabob into disfavor. To be sure, fifteen millions is a large sum of money. But do not say: "Passajon is gulling us." The person who told me the story had in his hands the paper sent by the bey in a green silk envelope stamped with the royal seal. His only reason for not reading it was that it was written in Arabic; otherwise he would have taken cognizance of it as he does of all the Nabob's correspondence. That person is his valet de chambre, M. Noel, to whom I had the honor to be presented last Friday at a small party of persons in service, which he gave to some of his friends. I insert a description of that festivity in my memoirs, as one of the most interesting things I have seen during my four years' residence in Paris.

I supposed at first, when M. Francis, Monpavon's valet de chambre, mentioned the affair to me, that it was to be one of the little clandestine junkets such as they sometimes have in the attic rooms on our boulevard, with the leavings sent up by Mademoiselle Seraphine and the other cooks in the house, where they drink stolen wine and stuff themselves, sitting on trunks, trembling with fear, by the light of two candles which they put out at the slightest noise in the corridors. Such underhand performances are repugnant to my character. But when I received an invitation on pink paper, written in a very fine hand, as if for a ball given by the people of the house: