The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2)

A >> Alphonse Daudet >> The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2)

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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!

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