I
THAT morning, in the little pavilion of Chantebled, on the verge of the
woods, where they had now been installed for nearly a month, Mathieu was
making all haste in order that he might catch the seven-o'clock train
which every day conveyed him from Janville to Paris. It was already
half-past six, and there were fully two thousand paces from the pavilion
to Janville. Afterwards came a railway journey of three-quarters of an
hour, and another journey of at least equal duration through Paris, from
the Northern Railway terminus to the Boulevard de Grenelle. He seldom
reached his office at the factory before half-past eight o'clock.
He had just kissed the children. Fortunately they were asleep; otherwise
they would have linked their arms about his neck, laughed and kissed him,
being ever unwilling to let him go. And as he hastily returned to the
principal bedroom, he found his wife, Marianne, in bed there, but awake
and sitting up. She had risen a moment before in order to pull back a
curtain, and all the glow of that radiant May morning swept in, throwing
a flood of gay sunshine over the fresh and healthy beauty of her
four-and-twenty years. He, who was three years the elder, positively
adored her.
"You know, my darling," said he, "I must make haste, for I fear I may
miss the train--and so manage as well as you can. You still have thirty
sous left, haven't you?"
She began to laugh, looking charming with her bare arms and her
loose-flowing dark hair. The ever-recurring pecuniary worries of the
household left her brave and joyous. Yet she had been married at
seventeen, her husband at twenty, and they already had to provide for
four children.
"Oh! we shall be all right," said she. "It's the end of the month to-day,
and you'll receive your money to-night. I'll settle our little debts at
Janville to-morrow. There are only the Lepailleurs, who worry me with
their bill for milk and eggs, for they always look as if they fancied one
meant to rob them. But with thirty sous, my dear! why, we shall have
quite a high time of it!"
She was still laughing as she held out her firm white arms for the
customary morning good-by.
"Run off, since you are in a hurry. I will go to meet you at the little
bridge to-night."
"No, no, I insist on your going to bed! You know very well that even if I
catch the quarter-to-eleven-o'clock train, I cannot reach Janville before
half-past eleven. Ah! what a day I have before me! I had to promise the
Moranges that I would take _déjeuner_ with them; and this evening Beauchêne
is entertaining a customer--a business dinner, which I'm obliged to
attend. So go to bed, and have a good sleep while you are waiting for
me."
She gently nodded, but would give no positive promise. "Don't forget to
call on the landlord," she added, "to tell him that the rain comes into
the children's bedroom. It's not right that we should be soaked here as
if we were on the high-way, even if those millionaires, the Séguins du
Hordel, do let us have this place for merely six hundred francs a year."
"Ah, yes! I should have forgotten that. I will call on them, I promise
you."
Then Mathieu took her in his arms, and there was no ending to their
leave-taking. He still lingered. She had begun to laugh again, while
giving him many a kiss in return for his own. There was all the love of
bounding health between them, the joy that springs from the most perfect
union, as when man and wife are but one both in flesh and in soul.
"Run off, run off, darling! Remember to tell Constance that, before she
goes into the country, she ought to run down here some Sunday with
Maurice."
"Yes, yes, I will tell her--till to-night, darling."
But he came back once more, caught her in a tight embrace, and pressed to
her lips a long, loving kiss, which she returned with her whole heart.
And then he hurried away.
He usually took an omnibus on his arrival at the Northern Railway
terminus. But on the days when only thirty sous remained at home he
bravely went through Paris on foot. It was, too, a very fine walk by way
of the Rue la Fayette, the Opera-house, the Boulevards, the Rue Royale,
and then, after the Place de la Concorde, the Cours la Reine, the Alma
bridge, and the Quai d'Orsay.
Beauchêne's works were at the very end of the Quai d'Orsay, between the
Rue de la Fédération and the Boulevard de Grenelle. There was hereabouts
a large square plot, at one end of which, facing the quay, stood a
handsome private house of brickwork with white stone dressings, that had
been erected by Léon Beauchêne, father of Alexandre, the present master
of the works. From the balconies one could perceive the houses which were
perched aloft in the midst of greenery on the height of Passy, beyond the
Seine; whilst on the right arose the campanile of the Trocadero palace.
On one side, skirting the Rue de la Fédération, one could still see a
garden and a little house, which had been the modest dwelling of Léon
Beauchêne in the heroic days of desperate toil when he had laid the
foundations of his fortune. Then the factory buildings and sheds, quite a
mass of grayish structures, overtopped by two huge chimneys, occupied
both the back part of the ground and that which fringed the Boulevard de
Grenelle, the latter being shut off by long windowless walls. This
important and well-known establishment manufactured chiefly agricultural
appliances, from the most powerful machines to those ingenious and
delicate implements on which particular care must be bestowed if
perfection is to be attained. In addition to the hundreds of men who
worked there daily, there were some fifty women, burnishers and
polishers.
The entry to the workshops and offices was in the Rue de la Fédération,
through a large carriage way, whence one perceived the far-spreading
yard, with its paving stones invariably black and often streaked by
rivulets of steaming water. Dense smoke arose from the high chimneys,
strident jets of steam emerged from the roof, whilst a low rumbling and a
shaking of the ground betokened the activity within, the ceaseless bustle
of labor.
It was thirty-five minutes past eight by the big clock of the central
building when Mathieu crossed the yard towards the office which he
occupied as chief designer. For eight years he had been employed at the
works where, after a brilliant and special course of study, he had made
his beginning as assistant draughtsman when but nineteen years old,
receiving at that time a salary of one hundred francs a month. His
father, Pierre Froment,[4] had four sons by Marie his wife--Jean the
eldest, then Mathieu, Marc, and Luc--and while leaving them free to
choose a particular career he had striven to give each of them some
manual calling. Léon Beauchêne, the founder of the works, had been dead a
year, and his son Alexandre had succeeded him and married Constance
Meunier, daughter of a very wealthy wall-paper manufacturer of the
Marais, at the time when Mathieu entered the establishment, the master of
which was scarcely five years older than himself. It was there that
Mathieu had become acquainted with a poor cousin of Alexandre's,
Marianne, then sixteen years old, whom he had married during the
following year.
[Footnote 4: Of _Lourdes_, _Rome_, and _Paris_.]
Marianne, when only twelve, had become dependent upon her uncle, Léon
Beauchêne. After all sorts of mishaps a brother of the latter, one Félix
Beauchêne, a man of adventurous mind but a blunderhead, had gone to
Algeria with his wife and daughter, there to woo fortune afresh; and the
farm he had established was indeed prospering when, during a sudden
revival of Arab brigandage, both he and his wife were murdered and their
home was destroyed. Thus the only place of refuge for the little girl,
who had escaped miraculously, was the home of her uncle, who showed her
great kindness during the two years of life that remained to him. With
her, however, were Alexandre, whose companionship was rather dull, and
his younger sister, Séraphine, a big, vicious, and flighty girl of
eighteen, who, as it happened, soon left the house amid a frightful
scandal--an elopement with a certain Baron Lowicz, a genuine baron, but
a swindler and forger, to whom it became necessary to marry her. She
then received a dowry of 300,000 francs. Alexandre, after his father's
death, made a money match with Constance, who brought him half a million
francs, and Marianne then found herself still more a stranger, still
more isolated beside her new cousin, a thin, dry, authoritative woman,
who ruled the home with absolute sway. Mathieu was there, however, and a
few months sufficed: fine, powerful, and healthy love sprang up between
the young people; there was no lightning flash such as throws the
passion-swayed into each other's arms, but esteem, tenderness, faith,
and that mutual conviction of happiness in reciprocal bestowal which
tends to indissoluble marriage. And they were delighted at marrying
penniless, at bringing one another but their full hearts forever and
forever. The only change in Mathieu's circumstances was an increase of
salary to two hundred francs a month. True, his new cousin by marriage
just vaguely hinted at a possible partnership, but that would not be
till some very much later date.
As it happened Mathieu Froment gradually became indispensable at the
works. The young master, Alexandre Beauchêne, passed through an anxious
crisis. The dowry which his father had been forced to draw from his
coffers in order to get Séraphine married, and other large expenses which
had been occasioned by the girl's rebellious and perverse conduct, had
left but little working capital in the business. Then, too, on the morrow
of Léon Beauchêne's death it was found that, with the carelessness often
evinced in such matters, he had neglected to leave a will; so that
Séraphine eagerly opposed her brother's interests, demanding her personal
share of the inheritance, and even suggesting the sale of the works. The
property had narrowly escaped being cut up, annihilated. And Alexandre
Beauchêne still shivered with terror and anger at the recollection of
that time, amidst all his delight at having at last rid himself of his
sister by paying her in money the liberally estimated value of her share.
It was in order to fill up the void thus created in his finances that he
had espoused the half-million represented by Constance--an ugly creature,
as he himself bitterly acknowledged, coarse male as he was. Truth to
tell, she was so thin, so scraggy, that before consenting to make her his
wife he had often called her "that bag of bones." But, on the other hand,
thanks to his marriage with her, all his losses were made good in five or
six years' time; the business of the works even doubled, and great
prosperity set in. And Mathieu, having become a most active and necessary
coadjutor, ended by taking the post of chief designer, at a salary of
four thousand two hundred francs per annum.
Morange, the chief accountant, whose office was near Mathieu's, thrust
his head through the doorway as soon as he heard the young man installing
himself at his drawing-table. "I say, my dear Froment," he exclaimed,
"don't forget that you are to take _déjeuner_ with us."
"Yes, yes, my good Morange, it's understood. I will look in for you at
twelve o'clock."
Then Mathieu very carefully scrutinized a wash drawing of a very simple
but powerful steam thresher, an invention of his own, on which he had
been working for some time past, and which a big landowner of Beauce, M.
Firon-Badinier, was to examine during the afternoon.
The door of the master's private room was suddenly thrown wide open and
Beauchêne appeared--tall, with a ruddy face, a narrow brow, and big
brown, protruding eyes. He had a rather large nose, thick lips, and a
full black beard, on which he bestowed great care, as he likewise did on
his hair, which was carefully combed over his head in order to conceal
the serious baldness that was already coming upon him, although he was
scarcely two-and-thirty. Frock-coated the first thing in the morning, he
was already smoking a big cigar; and his loud voice, his peals of gayety,
his bustling ways, all betokened an egotist and good liver still in his
prime, a man for whom money--capital increased and increased by the labor
of others--was the one only sovereign power.
"Ah! ah! it's ready, is it not?" said he; "Monsieur Firon-Badinier has
again written me that he will be here at three o'clock. And you know that
I'm going to take you to the restaurant with him this evening; for one
can never induce those fellows to give orders unless one plies them with
good wine. It annoys Constance to have it done here; and, besides, I
prefer to entertain those people in town. You warned Marianne, eh?"
"Certainly. She knows that I shall return by the
quarter-to-eleven-o'clock train."
Beauchêne had sunk upon a chair: "Ah! my dear fellow, I'm worn out," he
continued; "I dined in town last night; I got to bed only at one o'clock.
And there was a terrible lot of work waiting for me this morning. One
positively needs to be made of iron."
Until a short time before he had shown himself a prodigious worker,
endowed with really marvellous energy and strength. Moreover, he had
given proof of unfailing business instinct with regard to many profitable
undertakings. Invariably the first to appear at the works, he looked
after everything, foresaw everything, filling the place with his bustling
zeal, and doubling his output year by year. Recently, however, fatigue
had been gaining ground on him. He had always sought plenty of amusement,
even amid the hard-working life he led. But nowadays certain "sprees," as
he called them, left him fairly exhausted.
He gazed at Mathieu: "You seem fit enough, you do!" he said. "How is it
that you manage never to look tired?"
As a matter of fact, the young man who stood there erect before his
drawing-table seemed possessed of the sturdy health of a young oak tree.
Tall and slender, he had the broad, lofty, tower-like brow of the
Froments. He wore his thick hair cut quite short, and his beard, which
curled slightly, in a point. But the chief expression of his face rested
in his eyes, which were at once deep and bright, keen and thoughtful, and
almost invariably illumined by a smile. They showed him to be at once a
man of thought and of action, very simple, very gay, and of a kindly
disposition.
"Oh! I," he answered with a laugh, "I behave reasonably."
But Beauchêne protested: "No, you don't! The man who already has four
children when he is only twenty-seven can't claim to be reasonable. And
twins too--your Blaise and your Denis to begin with! And then your boy
Ambroise and your little girl Rose. Without counting the other little
girl that you lost at her birth. Including her, you would now have had
five youngsters, you wretched fellow! No, no, I'm the one who behaves
reasonably--I, who have but one child, and, like a prudent, sensible man,
desire no others!"
He often made such jesting remarks as these, through which filtered his
genuine indignation; for he deemed the young couple to be over-careless
of their interests, and declared that the prolificness of his cousin
Marianne was quite scandalous.
Accustomed as Mathieu was to these attacks, which left him perfectly
serene, he went on laughing, without even giving a reply, when a workman
abruptly entered the room--one who was currently called "old Moineaud,"
though he was scarcely three-and-forty years of age. Short and thick-set,
he had a bullet head, a bull's neck, and face and hands scarred and
dented by more than a quarter of a century of toil. By calling he was a
fitter, and he had come to submit a difficulty which had just arisen in
the piecing together of a reaping machine. But, his employer, who was
still angrily thinking of over-numerous families, did not give him time
to explain his purpose.
"And you, old Moineaud, how many children have you?" he inquired.
"Seven, Monsieur Beauchêne," the workman replied, somewhat taken aback.
"I've lost three."
"So, including them, you would now have ten? Well, that's a nice state of
things! How can you do otherwise than starve?"
Moineaud began to laugh like the gay thriftless Paris workman that he
was. The little ones? Well, they grew up without his even noticing it,
and, indeed, he was really fond of them, so long as they remained at
home. And, besides, they worked as they grew older, and brought a little
money in. However, he preferred to answer his employer with a jest which
set them all laughing.
After he had explained the difficulty with the reaper, the others
followed him to examine the work for themselves. They were already
turning into a passage, when Beauchêne, seeing the door of the women's
workshop open, determined to pass that way, so that he might give his
customary look around. It was a long, spacious place, where the
polishers, in smocks of black serge, sat in double rows polishing and
grinding their pieces at little work-boards. Nearly all of them were
young, a few were pretty, but most had low and common faces. An animal
odor and a stench of rancid oil pervaded the place.
The regulations required perfect silence there during work. Yet all the
girls were gossiping. As soon, however, as the master's approach was
signalled the chatter abruptly ceased. There was but one girl who, having
her head turned, and thus seeing nothing of Beauchêne, went on furiously
abusing a companion, with whom she had previously started a dispute. She
and the other were sisters, and, as it happened, daughters of old
Moineaud. Euphrasie, the younger one, she who was shouting, was a skinny
creature of seventeen, light-haired, with a long, lean, pointed face,
uncomely and malignant; whereas the elder, Norine, barely nineteen, was a
pretty girl, a blonde like her sister, but having a milky skin, and
withal plump and sturdy, showing real shoulders, arms, and hips, and one
of those bright sunshiny faces, with wild hair and black eyes, all the
freshness of the Parisian hussy, aglow with the fleeting charm of youth.
Norine was ever quarrelling with Euphrasie, and was pleased to have her
caught in a misdeed; so she allowed her to rattle on. And it thereupon
became necessary for Beauchêne to intervene. He habitually evinced great
severity in the women's workshop, for he had hitherto held the view that
an employer who jested with his workgirls was a lost man. Thus, in spite
of the low character of which he was said to give proof in his walks
abroad, there had as yet never been the faintest suggestion of scandal in
connection with him and the women in his employ.
"Well, now, Mademoiselle Euphrasie!" he exclaimed; "do you intend to be
quiet? This is quite improper. You are fined twenty sous, and if I hear
you again you will be locked out for a week."
The girl had turned round in consternation. Then, stifling her rage, she
cast a terrible glance at her sister, thinking that she might at least
have warned her. But the other, with the discreet air of a pretty wench
conscious of her attractiveness, continued smiling, looking her employer
full in the face, as if certain that she had nothing to fear from him.
Their eyes met, and for a couple of seconds their glances mingled. Then
he, with flushed cheeks and an angry air, resumed, addressing one and
all: "As soon as the superintendent turns her back you chatter away like
so many magpies. Just be careful, or you will have to deal with me!"
Moineaud, the father, had witnessed the scene unmoved, as if the two
girls--she whom the master had scolded, and she who slyly gazed at
him--were not his own daughters. And now the round was resumed and the
three men quitted the women's workshop amidst profound silence, which
only the whir of the little grinders disturbed.
When the fitting difficulty had been overcome downstairs and Moineaud had
received his orders, Beauchêne returned to his residence accompanied by
Mathieu, who wished to convey Marianne's invitation to Constance. A
gallery connected the black factory buildings with the luxurious private
house on the quay. And they found Constance in a little drawing-room hung
with yellow satin, a room to which she was very partial. She was seated
near a sofa, on which lay little Maurice, her fondly prized and only
child, who had just completed his seventh year.
"Is he ill?" inquired Mathieu.
The child seemed sturdily built, and he greatly resembled his father,
though he had a more massive jaw. But he was pale and there was a faint
ring round his heavy eyelids. His mother, that "bag of bones," a little
dark woman, yellow and withered at six-and-twenty, looked at him with an
expression of egotistical pride.
"Oh, no! he's never ill," she answered. "Only he has been complaining of
his legs. And so I made him lie down, and I wrote last night to ask Dr.
Boutan to call this morning."
"Pooh!" exclaimed Beauchêne with a hearty laugh, "women are all the same!
A child who is as strong as a Turk! I should just like anybody to tell me
that he isn't strong."
Precisely at that moment in walked Dr. Boutan, a short, stout man of
forty, with very keen eyes set in a clean-shaven, heavy, but extremely
good-natured face. He at once examined the child, felt and sounded him;
then with his kindly yet serious air he said: "No, no, there's nothing.
It is the mere effect of growth. The lad has become rather pale through
spending the winter in Paris, but a few months in the open air, in the
country, will set him right again."
"I told you so!" cried Beauchêne.
Constance had kept her son's little hand in her own. He had again
stretched himself out and closed his eyes in a weary way, whilst she, in
her happiness, continued smiling. Whenever she chose she could appear
quite pleasant-looking, however unprepossessing might be her features.
The doctor had seated himself, for he was fond of lingering and chatting
in the houses of friends. A general practitioner, and one who more
particularly tended the ailments of women and children, he was naturally
a confessor, knew all sorts of secrets, and was quite at home in family
circles. It was he who had attended Constance at the birth of that
much-spoiled only son, and Marianne at the advent of the four children
she already had.
Mathieu had remained standing, awaiting an opportunity to deliver his
invitation. "Well," said he, "if you are soon leaving for the country,
you must come one Sunday to Janville. My wife would be so delighted to
see you there, to show you our encampment."
Then he jested respecting the bareness of the lonely pavilion which they
occupied, recounting that as yet they possessed only a dozen plates and
five egg-cups. But Beauchêne knew the pavilion, for he went shooting in
the neighborhood every winter, having a share in the tenancy of some
extensive woods, the shooting-rights over which had been parcelled out by
the owner.
"Séguin," said he, "is a friend of mine. I have lunched at your pavilion.
It's a perfect hovel!"
Then Constance, contemptuous at the idea of such poverty, recalled what
Madame Séguin--to whom she referred as Valentine--had told her of the
dilapidated condition of the old shooting-box. But the doctor, after
listening with a smile, broke in:
"Mme. Séguin is a patient of mine. At the time when her last child was
born I advised her to stay at that pavilion. The atmosphere is wholesome,
and children ought to spring up there like couch-grass."
Thereupon, with a sonorous laugh, Beauchêne began to jest in his habitual
way, remarking that if the doctor were correct there would probably be no
end to Mathieu's progeny, numerous as it already was. But this elicited
an angry protest from Constance, who on the subject of children held the
same views as her husband himself professed in his more serious moments.
Mathieu thoroughly understood what they both meant. They regarded him and
his wife with derisive pity, tinged with anger.
The advent of the young couple's last child, little Rose, had already
increased their expenses to such a point that they had been obliged to
seek refuge in the country, in a mere pauper's hovel. And yet, in spite
of Beauchêne's sneers and Constance's angry remarks, Mathieu outwardly
remained very calm. Constance and Marianne had never been able to agree;
they differed too much in all respects; and for his part he laughed off
every attack, unwilling as he was to let anger master him, lest a rupture
should ensue.
But Beauchêne waxed passionate on the subject. That question of the
birth-rate and the present-day falling off in population was one which he
thought he had completely mastered, and on which he held forth at length
authoritatively. He began by challenging the impartiality of Boutan, whom
he knew to be a fervent partisan of large families. He made merry with
him, declaring that no medical man could possibly have a disinterested
opinion on the subject. Then he brought out all that he vaguely knew of
Malthusianism, the geometrical increase of births, and the arithmetical
increase of food-substances, the earth becoming so populous as to be
reduced to a state of famine within two centuries. It was the poor's own
fault, said he, if they led a life of starvation; they had only to limit
themselves to as many children as they could provide for. The rich were
falsely accused of social wrong-doing; they were by no means responsible
for poverty. Indeed, they were the only reasonable people; they alone, by
limiting their families, acted as good citizens should act. And he became
quite triumphant, repeating that he knew of no cause for self-reproach,
and that his ever-growing fortune left him with an easy conscience. It
was so much the worse for the poor, if they were bent on remaining poor.
In vain did the doctor urge that the Malthusian theories were shattered,
that the calculations had been based on a possible, not a real, increase
of population; in vain too did he prove that the present-day economic
crisis, the evil distribution of wealth under the capitalist system, was
the one hateful cause of poverty, and that whenever labor should be
justly apportioned among one and all the fruitful earth would easily
provide sustenance for happy men ten times more numerous than they are
now. The other refused to listen to anything, took refuge in his egotism,
declared that all those matters were no concern of his, that he felt no
remorse at being rich, and that those who wished to become rich had, in
the main, simply to do as he had done.
"Then, logically, this is the end of France, eh?" Boutan remarked
maliciously. "The number of births ever increases in Germany, Russia, and
elsewhere, while it decreases in a terrible way among us. Numerically the
rank we occupy in Europe is already very inferior to what it formerly
was; and yet number means power more than ever nowadays. It has been
calculated that an average of four children per family is necessary in
order that population may increase and the strength of a nation be
maintained. You have but one child; you are a bad patriot."
At this Beauchêne flew into a tantrum, quite beside himself, and gasped:
"I a bad patriot! I, who kill myself with hard work! I, who even export
French machinery!... Yes, certainly I see families, acquaintances
around me who may well allow themselves four children; and I grant that
they deserve censure when they have no families. But as for me, my dear
doctor, it is impossible. You know very well that in my position I
absolutely can't."
Then, for the hundredth time, he gave his reasons, relating how the works
had narrowly escaped being cut into pieces, annihilated, simply because
he had unfortunately been burdened with a sister. Séraphine had behaved
abominably. There had been first her dowry; next her demands for the
division of the property on their father's death; and the works had been
saved only by means of a large pecuniary sacrifice which had long
crippled their prosperity. And people imagined that he would be as
imprudent as his father! Why, if Maurice should have a brother or a
sister, he might hereafter find himself in the same dire embarrassment,
in which the family property might already have been destroyed. No, no!
He would not expose the boy to the necessity of dividing the inheritance
in accordance with badly framed laws. He was resolved that Maurice should
be the sole master of the fortune which he himself had derived from his
father, and which he would transmit to his heir increased tenfold. For
his son he dreamt of supreme wealth, a colossal fortune, such as nowadays
alone ensures power.
Mathieu, refraining from any intervention, listened and remained grave;
for this question of the birth-rate seemed to him a frightful one, the
foremost of all questions, deciding the destiny of mankind and the world.
There has never been any progress but such as has been determined by
increase of births. If nations have accomplished evolutions, if
civilization has advanced, it is because the nations have multiplied and
subsequently spread through all the countries of the earth. And will not
to-morrow's evolution, the advent of truth and justice, be brought about
by the constant onslaught of the greater number, the revolutionary
fruitfulness of the toilers and the poor?
It is quite true that Mathieu did not plainly say all these things to
himself; indeed, he felt slightly ashamed of the four children that he
already had, and was disturbed by the counsels of prudence addressed to
him by the Beauchênes. But within him there struggled his faith in life,
his belief that the greatest possible sum of life must bring about the
greatest sum of happiness.
At last, wishing to change the subject, he bethought himself of
Marianne's commission, and at the first favorable opportunity exclaimed:
"Well, we shall rely on you, Marianne and I, for Sunday after next, at
Janville."
But there was still no answer, for just then a servant came to say that a
woman with an infant in her arms desired to see Madame. And Beauchêne,
having recognized the wife of Moineaud, the fitter, bade her come in.
Boutan, who had now risen, was prompted by curiosity to remain a little
longer.
La Moineaude, short and fat like her husband, was a woman of about forty,
worn out before her time, with ashen face, pale eyes, thin faded hair,
and a weak mouth which already lacked many teeth. A large family had been
too much for her; and, moreover, she took no care of herself.
"Well, my good woman," Constance inquired, "what do you wish with me?"
But La Moineaude remained quite scared by the sight of all those people
whom she had not expected to find there. She said nothing. She had hoped
to speak to the lady privately.
"Is this your last-born?" Beauchêne asked her as he looked at the pale,
puny child on her arm.
"Yes, monsieur, it's my little Alfred; he's ten months old and I've had
to wean him, for I couldn't feed him any longer. I had nine others before
this one, but three are dead. My eldest son, Eugène, is a soldier in
Tonquin. You have my two big girls, Euphrasie and Norine, at the works.
And I have three left at home--Victor, who is now fifteen, then Cécile
and Irma, who are ten and seven. After Irma I thought I had done with
children for good, and I was well pleased. But, you see, this urchin
came! And I, forty too--it's not just! The good Lord must surely have
abandoned us."
Then Dr. Boutan began to question her. He avoided looking at the
Beauchênes, but there was a malicious twinkle in his little eyes, and it
was evident that he took pleasure in recapitulating the employer's
arguments against excessive prolificness. He pretended to get angry and
to reproach the Moineauds for their ten wretched children--the boys fated
to become food for powder, the girls always liable to misfortune. And he
gave the woman to understand that it was her own fault if she was in
distress; for people with a tribe of children about them could never
become rich. And the poor creature sadly answered that he was quite
right, but that no idea of becoming rich could ever have entered their
heads. Moineaud knew well enough that he would never be a cabinet
minister, and so it was all the same to them how many children they might
have on their hands. Indeed, a number proved a help when the youngsters
grew old enough to go out to work.
Beauchêne had become silent and slowly paced the room. A slight chill, a
feeling of uneasiness was springing up, and so Constance made haste to
inquire: "Well, my good woman, what is it I can do for you?"
"_Mon Dieu_, madame, it worries me; it's something which Moineaud didn't
dare to ask of Monsieur Beauchêne. For my part I hoped to find you alone
and beg you to intercede for us. The fact is we should be very, very
grateful if our little Victor could only be taken on at the works."
"But he is only fifteen," exclaimed Beauchêne. "You must wait till he's
sixteen. The law is strict."
"No doubt. Only one might perhaps just tell a little fib. It would be
rendering us such a service--"
"No, it is impossible."
Big tears welled into La Moineaude's eyes. And Mathieu, who had listened
with passionate interest, felt quite upset. Ah! that wretched toil-doomed
flesh that hastened to offer itself without waiting until it was even
ripe for work! Ah! the laborer who is prepared to lie, whom hunger sets
against the very law designed for his own protection!
When La Moineaude had gone off in despair the doctor continued speaking
of juvenile and female labor. As soon as a woman first finds herself a
mother she can no longer continue toiling at a factory. Her lying-in and
the nursing of her babe force her to remain at home, or else grievous
infirmities may ensue for her and her offspring. As for the child, it
becomes anemic, sometimes crippled; besides, it helps to keep wages down
by being taken to work at a low scale of remuneration. Then the doctor
went on to speak of the prolificness of wretchedness, the swarming of the
lower classes. Was not the most hateful natality of all that which meant
the endless increase of starvelings and social rebels?
"I perfectly understand you," Beauchêne ended by saying, without any show
of anger, as he abruptly brought his perambulations to an end. "You want
to place me in contradiction with myself, and make me confess that I
accept Moineaud's seven children and need them, whereas I, with my fixed
determination to rest content with an only son, suppress, as it were, a
family in order that I may not have to subdivide my estate. France, 'the
country of only sons,' as folks say nowadays--that's it, eh? But, my dear
fellow, the question is so intricate, and at bottom I am altogether in
the right!"
Then he wished to explain things, and clapped his hand to his breast,
exclaiming that he was a liberal, a democrat, ready to demand all really
progressive measures. He willingly recognized that children were
necessary, that the army required soldiers, and the factories workmen.
Only he also invoked the prudential duties of the higher classes, and
reasoned after the fashion of a man of wealth, a conservative clinging to
the fortune he has acquired.
Mathieu meanwhile ended by understanding the brutal truth: Capital is
compelled to favor the multiplication of lives foredoomed to
wretchedness; in spite of everything it must stimulate the prolificness
of the wage-earning classes, in order that its profits may continue. The
law is that there must always be an excess of children in order that
there may be enough cheap workers. Then also speculation on the wages'
ratio wrests all nobility from labor, which is regarded as the worst
misfortune a man can be condemned to, when in reality it is the most
precious of boons. Such, then, is the cancer preying upon mankind. In
countries of political equality and economical inequality the capitalist
_régime_, the faulty distribution of wealth, at once restrains and
precipitates the birth-rate by perpetually increasing the wrongful
apportionment of means. On one side are the rich folk with "only" sons,
who continually increase their fortunes; on the other, the poor folk,
who, by reason of their unrestrained prolificness, see the little they
possess crumble yet more and more. If labor be honored to-morrow, if a
just apportionment of wealth be arrived at, equilibrium will be restored.
Otherwise social revolution lies at the end of the road.
But Beauchêne, in his triumphant manner, tried to show that he possessed
great breadth of mind; he admitted the disquieting strides of a decrease
of population, and denounced the causes of it--alcoholism, militarism,
excessive mortality among infants, and other numerous matters. Then he
indicated remedies; first, reductions in taxation, fiscal means in which
he had little faith; then freedom to will one's estate as one pleased,
which seemed to him more efficacious; a change, too, in the marriage
laws, without forgetting the granting of affiliation rights.
However, Boutan ended by interrupting him. "All the legislative measures
in the world will do nothing," said the doctor. "Manners and customs, our
notions of what is moral and what is not, our very conceptions of the
beautiful in life--all must be changed. If France is becoming
depopulated, it is because she so chooses. It is simply necessary then
for her to choose so no longer. But what a task--a whole world to create
anew!"
At this Mathieu raised a superb cry: "Well! we'll create it. I've begun
well enough, surely!"
But Constance, after laughing in a constrained way, in her turn thought
it as well to change the subject. And so she at last replied to his
invitation, saying that she would do her best to go to Janville, though
she feared she might not be able to dispose of a Sunday to do so.
Dr. Boutan then took his leave, and was escorted to the door by
Beauchêne, who still went on jesting, like a man well pleased with life,
one who was satisfied with himself and others, and who felt certain of
being able to arrange things as might best suit his pleasure and his
interests.
An hour later, a few minutes after midday, as Mathieu, who had been
delayed in the works, went up to the offices to fetch Morange as he had
promised to do, it occurred to him to take a short cut through the
women's workshop. And there, in that spacious gallery, already deserted
and silent, he came upon an unexpected scene which utterly amazed him. On
some pretext or other Norine had lingered there the last, and Beauchêne
was with her, clasping her around the waist whilst he eagerly pressed his
lips to hers. But all at once they caught sight of Mathieu and remained
thunderstruck. And he, for his part, fled precipitately, deeply annoyed
at having been a surprised witness to such a secret.