Fruitfulness Part 14

"Alexandre, very well. But you would do better to give the boy a second Christian name, so as to identify him the more readily, if some day you take it into your head to run after him."

It was again necessary to tear a reply from Norine. "Honore," she said.

"Alexandre Honore--all right. That last name is yours, is it not?* And the first is the father's? That is settled; and now I've everything I need. Only it's four o'clock already, and I shall never get back in time for the six o'clock train if I don't take a cab. It's such a long way off--the other side of the Luxembourg. And a cab costs money. How shall we manage?"

* Norine is, of course, a diminutive of Honorine, which is the feminine form of Honore.--Trans.

While she continued whining, to see if she could not extract a few francs from the distressed girl, it suddenly occurred to Mathieu to carry out his mission to the very end by driving with her himself to the Foundling Hospital, so that he might be in a position to inform Beauchene that the child had really been deposited there, in his presence. So he told La Couteau that he would go down with her, take a cab, and bring her back.

"All right; that will suit me. Let us be off! It's a pity to wake the little one, since he's so sound asleep; but all the same, we must pack him off, since it's decided."

With her dry hands, which were used to handling goods of this description, she caught up the child, perhaps, however, a little roughly, forgetting her a.s.sumed wheedling good nature now that she was simply charged with conveying it to hospital. And the child awoke and began to scream loudly.

"Ah! dear me, it won't be amusing if he keeps up this music in the cab.

Quick, let us be off."

But Mathieu stopped her. "Won't you kiss him, Norine?" he asked.

At the very first squeal that sorry mother had dipped yet lower under her sheets, carrying her hands to her ears, distracted as she was by the sound of those cries. "No, no," she gasped, "take him away; take him away at once. Don't begin torturing me again!"

Then she closed her eyes, and with one arm repulsed the child who seemed to be pursuing her. But when she felt that the agent was laying him on the bed, she suddenly shuddered, sat up, and gave a wild hasty kiss, which lighted on the little fellow's cap. She had scarcely opened her tear-dimmed eyes, and could have seen but a vague phantom of that poor feeble creature, wailing and struggling at the decisive moment when he was being cast into the unknown.

"You are killing me! Take him away; take him away!"

Once in the cab the child suddenly became silent. Either the jolting of the vehicle calmed him, or the creaking of the wheels filled him with emotion. La Couteau, who kept him on her knees, at first remained silent, as if interested in the people on the footwalks, where the bright sun was shining. Then, all of a sudden, she began to talk, venting her thoughts aloud.

"That little woman made a great mistake in not trusting the child to me.

I should have put him out to nurse properly, and he would have grown up finely at Rougemont. But there! they all imagine that we simply worry them because we want to do business. But I just ask you, if she had given me five francs for myself and paid my return journey, would that have ruined her? A pretty girl like her oughtn't to be hard up for money. I know very well that in our calling there are some people who are hardly honest, who speculate and ask for commissions, and then put out nurslings at cheap rates and rob both the parents and the nurse.

It's really not right to treat these dear little things as if they were goods--poultry or vegetables. When folks do that I can understand that their hearts get hardened, and that they pa.s.s the little ones on from hand to hand without any more care than if they were stock-in-trade. But then, monsieur, I'm an honest woman; I'm authorized by the mayor of our village; I hold a certificate of morality, which I can show to anybody.

If ever you should come to Rougemont, just ask after Sophie Couteau there. Folks will tell you that I'm a hard-working woman, and don't owe a copper to a soul!"

Mathieu could not help looking at her to see how unblushingly she thus praised herself. And her speech struck him as if it were a premeditated reply to all that Victoire had related of her, for, with the keen scent of a shrewd peasant woman, she must have guessed that charges had been brought against her. When she felt that his piercing glance was diving to her very soul, she doubtless feared that she had not lied with sufficient a.s.surance, and had somehow negligently betrayed herself; for she did not insist, but put on more gentleness of manner, and contented herself with praising Rougemont in a general way, saying what a perfect paradise it was, where the little ones were received, fed, cared for, and coddled as if they were all sons of princes. Then, seeing that the gentleman uttered never a word, she became silent once more. It was evidently useless to try to win him over. And meantime the cab rolled and rolled along; streets followed streets, ever noisy and crowded; and they crossed the Seine and at last drew near to the Luxembourg. It was only after pa.s.sing the palace gardens that La Couteau again began:

"Well, it's that young person's own affair if she imagines that her child will be better off for pa.s.sing through the Foundling. I don't attack the Administration, but you know, monsieur, there's a good deal to be said on the matter. At Rougemont we have a number of nurslings that it sends us, and they don't grow any better or die less frequently than the others. Well, well, people are free to act as they fancy; but all the same I should like you to know, as I do, all that goes on in there."

The cab had stopped at the top of the Rue Denfert-Rochereau, at a short distance from the former outer Boulevard. A big gray wall stretched out, the frigid facade of a State establishment, and it was through a quiet, simple, un.o.btrusive little doorway at the end of this wall that La Couteau went in with the child. Mathieu followed her, but he did not enter the office where a woman received the children. He felt too much emotion, and feared lest he should be questioned; it was, indeed, as if he considered himself an accomplice in a crime. Though La Couteau told him that the woman would ask him nothing, and the strictest secrecy was always observed, he preferred to wait in an anteroom, which led to several closed compartments, where the persons who came to deposit children were placed to wait their turn. And he watched the woman go off, carrying the little one, who still remained extremely well behaved, with a vacant stare in his big eyes.

Though the interval of waiting could not have lasted more than twenty minutes, it seemed terribly long to Mathieu. Lifeless quietude reigned in that stern, sad-looking anteroom, wainscoted with oak, and pervaded with the smell peculiar to hospitals. All he heard was the occasional faint wail of some infant, above which now and then rose a heavy, restrained sob, coming perhaps from some mother who was waiting in one of the adjoining compartments. And he recalled the "slide" of other days, the box which turned within the wall. The mother crept up, concealing herself much as possible from view, thrust her baby into the cavity as into an oven, gave a tug at the bell-chain, and then precipitately fled. Mathieu was too young to have seen the real thing; he had only seen it represented in a melodrama at the Port St. Martin Theatre.* But how many stories it recalled--hampers of poor little creatures brought up from the provinces and deposited at the hospital by carriers; the stolen babes of d.u.c.h.esses, here cast into oblivion by suspicious-looking men; the hundreds of wretched work-girls too who had here rid themselves of their unfortunate children. Now, however, the children had to be deposited openly, and there was a staff which took down names and dates, while giving a pledge of inviolable secrecy.

Mathieu was aware that some few people imputed to the suppression of the slide system the great increase in criminal offences. But each day public opinion condemns more and more the att.i.tude of society in former times, and discards the idea that one must accept evil, dam it in, and hide it as if it were some necessary sewer; for the only course for a free community to pursue is to foresee evil and grapple with it, and destroy it in the bud. To diminish the number of cast-off children one must seek out the mothers, encourage them, succor them, and give them the means to be mothers in fact as well as in name. At that moment, however, Mathieu did not reason; it was his heart that was affected, filled with growing pity and anguish at the thought of all the crime, all the shame, all the grief and distress that had pa.s.sed through that anteroom in which he stood. What terrible confessions must have been heard, what a procession of suffering, ignominy, and wretchedness must have been witnessed by that woman who received the children in her mysterious little office! To her all the wreckage of the slums, all the woe lying beneath gilded life, all the abominations, all the tortures that remain unknown, were carried. There in her office was the port for the shipwrecked, there the black hole that swallowed up the offspring of frailty and shame. And while Mathieu's spell of waiting continued he saw three poor creatures arrive at the hospital. One was surely a work-girl, delicate and pretty though she looked, so thin, so pale too, and with so wild an air that he remembered a paragraph he had lately read in a newspaper, recounting how another such girl, after forsaking her child, had thrown herself into the river. The second seemed to him to be a married woman, some workman's wife, no doubt, overburdened with children and unable to provide food for another mouth; while the third was tall, strong, and insolent,--one of those who bring three or four children to the hospital one after the other. And all three women plunged in, and he heard them being penned in separate compartments by an attendant, while he, with stricken heart, realizing how heavily fate fell on some, still stood there waiting.

* The "slide" system, which enabled a mother to deposit her child at the hospital without being seen by those within, ceased to be employed officially as far back as 1847; but the apparatus was long preserved intact, and I recollect seeing it in the latter years of the Second Empire, _cir._ 1867-70, when I was often at the artists' studios in the neighborhood. The aperture through which children were deposited in the sliding-box was close to the little door of which M. Zola speaks.--Trans.

When La Couteau at last reappeared with empty arms she said never a word, and Mathieu put no question to her. Still in silence, they took their seats in the cab; and only some ten minutes afterwards, when the vehicle was already rolling through bustling, populous streets, did the woman begin to laugh. Then, as her companion, still silent and distant, did not condescend to ask her the cause of her sudden gayety, she ended by saying aloud:

"Do you know why I am laughing? If I kept you waiting a bit longer, it was because I met a friend of mine, an attendant in the house, just as I left the office. She's one of those who put the babies out to nurse in the provinces.* Well, my friend told me that she was going to Rougemont to-morrow with two other attendants, and that among others they would certainly have with them the little fellow I had just left at the hospital."

* There are only about 600 beds at the Hopital des Enfants a.s.sistes, and the majority of the children deposited there are perforce placed out to purse in the country.--Trans.

Again did she give vent to a dry laugh which distorted her wheedling face. And she continued: "How comical, eh? The mother wouldn't let me take the child to Rougemont, and now it's going there just the same. Ah!

some things are bound to happen in spite of everything."

Mathieu did not answer, but an icy chill had sped through his heart. It was true, fate pitilessly took its own course. What would become of that poor little fellow? To what early death, what life of suffering or wretchedness, or even crime, had he been thus brutally cast?

But the cab continued rolling on, and for a long while neither Mathieu nor La Couteau spoke again. It was only when the latter alighted in the Rue de Miromesnil that she began to lament, on seeing that it was already half-past five o'clock, for she felt certain that she would miss her train, particularly as she still had some accounts to settle and that other child upstairs to fetch. Mathieu, who had intended to keep the cab and drive to the Northern terminus, then experienced a feeling of curiosity, and thought of witnessing the departure of the nurse-agents. So he calmed La Couteau by telling her that if she would make haste he would wait for her. And as she asked for a quarter of an hour, it occurred to him to speak to Norine again, and so he also went upstairs.

When he entered Norine's room he found her sitting up in bed, eating one of the oranges which her little sisters had brought her. She had all the greedy instincts of a plump, pretty girl; she carefully detached each section of the orange, and, her eyes half closed the while, her flesh quivering under her streaming outspread hair, she sucked one after another with her fresh red lips, like a pet cat lapping a cup of milk.

Mathieu's sudden entry made her start, however, and when she recognized him she smiled faintly in an embarra.s.sed way.

"It's done," he simply said.

She did not immediately reply, but wiped her fingers on her handkerchief. However, it was necessary that she should say something, and so she began: "You did not tell me you would come back--I was not expecting you. Well, it's done, and it's all for the best. I a.s.sure you there was no means of doing otherwise."

Then she spoke of her departure, asked the young man if he thought she might regain admittance to the works, and declared that in any case she should go there to see if the master would have the audacity to turn her away. Thus she continued while the minutes went slowly by. The conversation had dropped, Mathieu scarcely replying to her, when La Couteau, carrying the other child in her arms, at last darted in like a gust of wind. "Let's make haste, let's make haste!" she cried. "They never end with their figures; they try all they can to leave me without a copper for myself!"

But Norine detained her, asking: "Oh! is that Rosine's baby? Pray do show it me." Then she uncovered the infant's face, and exclaimed: "Oh!

how plump and pretty he is!" And she began another sentence: "What a pity! Can one have the heart--" But then she remembered, paused, and changed her words: "Yes, how heartrending it is when one has to forsake such little angels."

"Good-by! Take care of yourself!" cried La Couteau; "you will make me miss my train. And I've got the return tickets, too; the five others are waiting for me at the station! Ah! what a fuss they would make if I got there too late!"

Then, followed by Mathieu, she hurried away, bounding down the stairs, where she almost fell with her little burden. But soon she threw herself back in the cab, which rolled off.

"Ah! that's a good job! And what do you say of that young person, monsieur? She wouldn't lay out fifteen francs a month on her own account, and yet she reproaches that good Mademoiselle Rosine, who has just given me four hundred francs to have her little one taken care of till his first communion. Just look at him--a superb child, isn't he?

What a pity it is that the finest are often those who die the first."

Mathieu looked at the infant on the woman's knees. His garments were very white, of fine texture, trimmed with lace, as if he were some little condemned prince being taken in all luxury to execution. And the young man remembered that Norine had told him that the child was the offspring of crime. Born amid secrecy, he was now, for a fixed sum, to be handed over to a woman who would quietly suppress him by simply leaving some door or window wide open. Young though the boy was, he already had a finely-formed face, that suggested the beauty of a cherub.

And he was very well behaved; he did not raise the faintest wail. But a shudder swept through Mathieu. How abominable!

La Couteau quickly sprang from the cab as soon as they reached the courtyard of the St. Lazare Station. "Thank you, monsieur, you have been very kind," said she. "And if you will kindly recommend me to any ladies you may know, I shall be quite at their disposal."

Then Mathieu, having alighted on the pavement in his turn, saw a scene which detained him there a few moments longer. Amid all the scramble of pa.s.sengers and luggage, five women of peasant aspect, each carrying an infant, were darting in a scared, uneasy way hither and thither, like crows in trouble, with big yellow beaks quivering and black wings flapping with anxiety. Then, on perceiving La Couteau, there was one general caw, and all five swooped down upon her with angry, voracious mien. And, after a furious exchange of cries and explanations, the six banded themselves together, and, with cap-strings waving and skirts flying, rushed towards the train, carrying the little ones, like birds of prey who feared delay in returning to the charnel-house.

And Mathieu remained alone in the great crowd. Thus every year did these crows of ill omen carry off from Paris no fewer than 20,000 children, who were never, never seen again! Ah! that great question of the depopulation of France! Not merely were there those who were resolved to have no children, not only were infanticide and crime of other kinds rife upon all sides, but one-half of the babes saved from those dangers were killed. Thieves and murderesses, eager for lucre, flocked to the great city from the four points of the compa.s.s, and bore away all the budding Life that their arms could carry in order that they might turn it to Death! They beat down the game, they watched in the doorways, they sniffed from afar the innocent flesh on which they preyed. And the babes were carted to the railway stations; the cradles, the wards of hospitals and refuges, the wretched garrets of poor mothers, without fires and without bread--all, all were emptied! And the packages were heaped up, moved carelessly hither and thither, sent off, distributed to be murdered either by foul deed or by neglect. The raids swept on like tempest blasts; Death's scythe never knew dead season, at every hour it mowed down budding life. Children who might well have lived were taken from their mothers, the only nurses whose milk would have nourished them, to be carted away and to die for lack of proper nutriment.

A rush of blood warmed Mathieu's heart when, all at once, he thought of Marianne, so strong and healthy, who would be waiting for him on the bridge over the Yeuse, in the open country, with their little Gervais at her breast. Figures that he had seen in print came back to his mind. In certain regions which devoted themselves to baby-farming the mortality among the nurslings was fifty per cent; in the best of them it was forty, and seventy in the worst. It was calculated that in one century seventeen millions of nurslings had died. Over a long period the mortality had remained at from one hundred to one hundred and twenty thousand per annum. The most deadly reigns, the greatest butcheries of the most terrible conquerors, had never resulted in such ma.s.sacre. It was a giant battle that France lost every year, the abyss into which her whole strength sank, the charnel-place into which every hope was cast.

At the end of it is the imbecile death of the nation. And Mathieu, seized with terror at the thought, rushed away, eager to seek consolation by the side of Marianne, amid the peacefulness, the wisdom, and the health which were their happy lot.

IX

ONE Thursday morning Mathieu went to lunch with Dr. Boutan in the rooms where the latter had resided for more than ten years, in the Rue de l'Universite, behind the Palais-Bourbon. By a contradiction, at which he himself often laughed, this impa.s.sioned apostle of fruitfulness had remained a bachelor. His extensive practice kept him in a perpetual hurry, and he had little time free beyond his dejeuner hour.

Accordingly, whenever a friend wished to have any serious conversation with him, he preferred to invite him to his modest table, to partake more or less hastily of an egg, a cutlet, and a cup of coffee.

Mathieu wished to ask the doctor's advice on a grave subject. After a couple of weeks' reflection, his idea of experimenting in agriculture, of extricating that unappreciated estate of Chantebled from chaos, preoccupied him to such a degree that he positively suffered at not daring to come to a decision. The imperious desire to create, to produce life, health, strength, and wealth grew within him day by day. Yet what fine courage and what a fund of hope he needed to venture upon an enterprise which outwardly seemed so wild and rash, and the wisdom of which was apparent to himself alone. With whom could he discuss such a matter, to whom could he confide his doubts and hesitation? When the idea of consulting Boutan occurred to him, he at once asked the doctor for an appointment. Here was such a confidant as he desired, a man of broad, brave mind, one who worshipped life, who was endowed with far-seeing intelligence, and who would therefore at once look beyond the first difficulties of execution.

As soon as they were face to face on either side of the table, Mathieu began to pour forth his confession, recounting his dream--his poem, as he called it. And the doctor listened without interrupting, evidently won over by the young man's growing, creative emotion. When at last Boutan had to express an opinion he replied: "_Mon Dieu_, my friend, I can tell you nothing from a practical point of view, for I have never even planted a lettuce. I will even add that your project seems to me so hazardous that any one versed in these matters whom you might consult would a.s.suredly bring forward substantial and convincing arguments to dissuade you. But you speak of this affair with such superb confidence and ardor and affection, that I feel convinced you would succeed.

Moreover, you flatter my own views, for I have long endeavored to show that, if numerous families are ever to flourish again in France, people must again love and worship the soil, and desert the towns, and lead a fruitful fortifying country life. So how can I disapprove your plans?