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 Perrière, 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 Secrétaire." 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 Perrière 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 Perrière, delighted with the equipment of the establishment,
congratulated Dr. Jenkins upon his noble creation, Jenkins
congratulated his friend Pondevèz, 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 Perrière proposed to know, too,
and before Pondevèz 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 _croûte-levés_ 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
Perrière'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 Secrétaire 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 Géry, 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 théâtre_ 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 Géry, 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 Géry.
"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 Géry 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
Géry 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 Géry 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 fête, 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 André. Quick, Élise, 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 Géry--Monsieur André 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 André. 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 André 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 André 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 _Révolte_ has been acted!" _Révolte_ 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
Élise 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 André, 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--Père 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 Géry. 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 _blasé_ 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."