As for the cross, things were going still better.
The Bethlehem Society had assuredly made the devil
of a noise at the Tuileries. They were now only
waiting until after the visit of M.
de la Perriere
and his report, which could not be other than favorable,
before inscribing on the list for the 16th March,
on the date of an imperial anniversary, the glorious
name of Jansoulet. The 16th March; that was to
say, within a month. What would the fat Hemerlingue
find to say of this signal favour, he who for so long
had had to content himself with the Nisham? And
the Bey, who had been misled into believing that Jansoulet
was cut by Parisian society, and the old mother, down
yonder at Saint-Romans, ever so happy in the successes
of her son! Was that not worth a few millions
cleverly squandered along the path of glory which
the Nabob was treading like a child, all unconscious
of the fate that lay waiting to devour him at its
end? And in these external joys, these honours,
this consideration so dearly bought, was there not
a compensation for all the troubles of this Oriental
won back to European life, who desired a home and possessed
only a caravansary, looked for a wife and found only
a Levantine?
THE BETHLEHEM SOCIETY
BETHLEHEM! Why did it give one such a chill to
see written in letters of gold over the iron gate
that historic name, sweet and warm like the straw
of the miraculous stable! Perhaps it was partly
to be accounted for by the melancholy of the landscape,
that immense gloomy plain which stretches from Nanterre
to Saint Cloud, broken only by a few clumps of trees
or the smoke of factory chimneys. Possibly also
by the disproportion that existed between the humble
little straggling village which you expected to find
and the grandiose establishment, this country mansion
in the style of Louis XIII, an agglomeration of mortar
looking pink through the branches of its leafless
park, ornamented with wide pieces of water thick with
green weeds. What is certain is that as you passed
this place your heart was conscious of an oppression.
When you entered it was still worse. A heavy
inexplicable silence weighed on the house, and the
faces you might see at the windows had a mournful air
behind the little, old-fashioned greenish panes.
The goats scattered along the paths nibbled languidly
at the new spring grass, with “baas” at
the woman who was tending them, and looked bored, as
she followed the visitors with a lack-lustre eye.
A mournfulness was over the place, like the terror
of a contagion. Yet it had been a cheerful house,
and one where even recently there had been high junketings.
Replanted with timber for the famous singer who had
sold it to Jenkins, it revealed clearly the kind of
imagination which is characteristic of the opera-house
in a bridge flung over the miniature lake, with its
broken punt half filled with mouldy leaves, and in
its pavilion all of rockery-work, garlanded by ivy.
It had witnessed gay scenes, this pavilion, in the
singer’s time; now it looked on sad ones, for
the infirmary was installed in it.
