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 Judæa 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 curé 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. Pondevèz, 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 Pondevèz, 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."