Complete Works of Emile Zola (1550 page)

Mathieu then remembered what he had witnessed at Madame Bourdieu’s and the Foundling Hospital. And he imparted his impressions to Boutan, who again made a despairing gesture. There was a great work of social salvation to be accomplished, said he. No doubt a number of philanthropists were trying their best to improve things, but private effort could not cope with such widespread need. There must be general measures; laws must be passed to save the nation. The mother must be protected and helped, even in secrecy, if she asked for it; she must be cared for, succored, from the earliest period, and right through all the long months during which she fed her babe. All sorts of establishments would have to be founded — refuges, convalescent homes, and so forth; and there must be protective enactments, and large sums of money voted to enable help to be extended to all mothers, whatever they might be. It was only by such preventive steps that one could put a stop to the frightful hecatomb of newly-born infants, that incessant loss of life which exhausted the nation and brought it nearer and nearer to death every day.

“And,” continued the doctor, “it may all be summed up in this verity: ‘It is a mother’s duty to nurse her child.’ And, besides, a mother, is she not the symbol of all grandeur, all strength, all beauty? She represents the eternity of life. She deserves a social culture, she should be religiously venerated. When we know how to worship motherhood, our country will be saved. And this is why, my friend, I should like a mother feeding her babe to be adopted as the highest expression of human beauty. Ah! how can one persuade our Parisiennes, all our French women, indeed, that woman’s beauty lies in being a mother with an infant on her knees? Whenever that fashion prevails, we shall be the sovereign nation, the masters of the world!”

He ended by laughing in a distressed way, in his despair at being unable to change manners and customs, aware as he was that the nation could be revolutionized only by a change in its ideal of true beauty.

“To sum up, then, I believe in a child being nursed only by its own mother. Every mother who neglects that duty when she can perform it is a criminal. Of course, there are instances when she is physically incapable of accomplishing her duty, and in that case there is the feeding-bottle, which, if employed with care and extreme cleanliness, only sterilized milk being used, will yield a sufficiently good result. But to send a child away to be nursed means almost certain death; and as for the nurse in the house, that is a shameful transaction, a source of incalculable evil, for both the employer’s child and the nurse’s child frequently die from it.”

Just then the doctor’s brougham drew up outside the nurse-agency in the Rue Roquepine.

“I dare say you have never been in such a place, although you are the father of five children,” said Boutan to Mathieu, gayly.

“No, I haven’t.”

“Well, then, come with me. One ought to know everything.”

The office in the Rue Roquepine was the most important and the one with the best reputation in the district. It was kept by Madame Broquette, a woman of forty, with a dignified if somewhat blotched face, who was always very tightly laced in a faded silk gown of dead-leaf hue. But if she represented the dignity and fair fame of the establishment in its intercourse with clients, the soul of the place, the ever-busy manipulator, was her husband, Monsieur Broquette, a little man with a pointed nose, quick eyes, and the agility of a ferret. Charged with the police duties of the office, the supervision and training of the nurses, he received them, made them clean themselves, taught them to smile and put on pleasant ways, besides penning them in their various rooms and preventing them from eating too much. From morn till night he was ever prowling about, scolding and terrorizing those dirty, ill-behaved, and often lying and thieving women. The building, a dilapidated private house, with a damp ground floor, to which alone clients were admitted, had two upper stories, each comprising six rooms arranged as dormitories, in which the nurses and their infants slept. There was no end to the arrivals and departures there: the peasant women were ever galloping through the place, dragging trunks about, carrying babes in swaddling clothes, and filling the rooms and the passages with wild cries and vile odors. And amid all this the house had another inmate, Mademoiselle Broquette, Herminie as she was called, a long, pale, bloodless girl of fifteen, who mooned about languidly among that swarm of sturdy young women.

Boutan, who knew the house well, went in, followed by Mathieu. The central passage, which was fairly broad, ended in a glass door, which admitted one to a kind of courtyard, where a sickly conifer stood on a round patch of grass, which the dampness rotted. On the right of the passage was the office, whither Madame Broquette, at the request of her customers, summoned the nurses, who waited in a neighboring room, which was simply furnished with a greasy deal table in the centre. The furniture of the office was some old Empire stuff, upholstered in red velvet. There was a little mahogany centre table, and a gilt clock. Then, on the left of the passage, near the kitchen, was the general refectory, with two long tables, covered with oilcloth, and surrounded by straggling chairs, whose straw seats were badly damaged. Just a make-believe sweep with a broom was given there every day: one could divine long-amassed, tenacious dirt in every dim corner; and the place reeked with an odor of bad cookery mingled with that of sour milk.

When Boutan thrust open the office door he saw that Madame Broquette was busy with an old gentleman, who sat there inspecting a party of nurses. She recognized the doctor, and made a gesture of regret. “No matter, no matter,” he exclaimed; “I am not in a hurry: I will wait.”

Through the open door Mathieu had caught sight of Mademoiselle Herminie, the daughter of the house, ensconced in one of the red velvet armchairs near the window, and dreamily perusing a novel there, while her mother, standing up, extolled her goods in her most dignified way to the old gentleman, who gravely contemplated the procession of nurses and seemed unable to make up his mind.

“Let us have a look at the garden,” said the doctor, with a laugh.

One of the boasts of the establishment, indeed, as set forth in its prospectus, was a garden and a tree in it, as if there were plenty of good air there, as in the country. They opened the glass door, and on a bench near the tree they saw a plump girl, who doubtless had just arrived, pretending to clean a squealing infant. She herself looked sordid, and had evidently not washed since her journey. In one corner there was an overflow of kitchen utensils, a pile of cracked pots and greasy and rusty saucepans. Then, at the other end, a French window gave access to the nurses’ waiting-room, and here again there was a nauseous spectacle of dirt and untidiness.

All at once Monsieur Broquette darted forward, though whence he had come it was hard to say. At all events, he had seen Boutan, who was a client that needed attention. “Is my wife busy, then?” said he. “I cannot allow you to remain waiting here, doctor. Come, come, I pray you.”

With his little ferreting eyes he had caught sight of the dirty girl cleaning the child, and he was anxious that his visitors should see nothing further of a character to give them a bad impression of the establishment. “Pray, doctor, follow me,” he repeated, and understanding that an example was necessary, he turned to the girl, exclaiming, “What business have you to be here? Why haven’t you gone upstairs to wash and dress? I shall fling a pailful of water in your face if you don’t hurry off and tidy yourself.”

Then he forced her to rise and drove her off, all scared and terrified, in front of him. When she had gone upstairs he led the two gentlemen to the office entrance and began to complain: “Ah! doctor, if you only knew what trouble I have even to get those girls to wash their hands! We who are so clean! who put all our pride in keeping the house clean. If ever a speck of dust is seen anywhere it is certainly not my fault.”

Since the girl had gone upstairs a fearful tumult had arisen on the upper floors, whence also a vile smell descended. Some dispute, some battle, seemed to be in progress. There were shouts and howls, followed by a furious exchange of vituperation.

“Pray excuse me,” at last exclaimed Monsieur Broquette; “my wife will receive you in a minute.”

Thereupon he slipped off and flew up the stairs with noiseless agility. And directly afterwards there was an explosion. Then the house suddenly sank into death-like silence. All that could be heard was the voice of Madame in the office, as, in a very dignified manner, she kept on praising her goods.

“Well, my friend,” said Boutan to Mathieu, while they walked up and down the passage, “all this, the material side of things, is nothing. What you should see and know is what goes on in the minds of all these people. And note that this is a fair average place. There are others which are real dens, and which the police sometimes have to close. No doubt there is a certain amount of supervision, and there are severe regulations which compel the nurses to bring certificates of morality, books setting forth their names, ages, parentage, the situations they have held, and so on, with other documents on which they have immediately to secure a signature from the Prefecture, where the final authorization is granted them. But these precautions don’t prevent fraud and deceit of various kinds. The women assert that they have only recently begun nursing, when they have been doing it for months; they show you superb children which they have borrowed and which they assert to be their own. And there are many other tricks to which they resort in their eagerness to make money.”

As the doctor and Mathieu chatted on, they paused for a moment near the door of the refectory, which chanced to be open, and there, among other young peasant women, they espied La Couteau hastily partaking of cold meat. Doubtless she had just arrived from Rougemont, and, after disposing of the batch of nurses she had brought with her, was seeking sustenance for the various visits which she would have to make before returning home. The refectory, with its wine-stained tables and greasy walls, cast a smell like that of a badly-kept sink.

“Ah! so you know La Couteau!” exclaimed Boutan, when Mathieu had told him of his meetings with the woman. “Then you know the depths of crime. La Couteau is an ogress! And yet, think of it, with our fine social organization, she is more or less useful, and perhaps I myself shall be happy to choose one of the nurses that she has brought with her.”

At this moment Madame Broquette very amiably asked the visitors into her office. After long reflection, the old gentleman had gone off without selecting any nurse, but saying that he would return some other time.

“There are folks who don’t know their own minds,” said Madame Broquette sententiously. “It isn’t my fault, and I sincerely beg you to excuse me, doctor. If you want a good nurse you will be satisfied, for I have just received some excellent ones from the provinces. I will show you.”

Herminie, meanwhile, had not condescended to raise her nose from her novel. She remained ensconced in her armchair, still reading, with a weary, bored expression on her anaemic countenance. Mathieu, after sitting down a little on one side, contented himself with looking on, while Boutan stood erect, attentive to every detail, like a commander reviewing his troops. And the procession began.

Having opened a door which communicated with the common room, Madame Broquette, assuming the most noble airs, leisurely introduced the pick of her nurses, in groups of three, each with her infant in her arms. About a dozen were thus inspected: short ones with big heavy limbs, tall ones suggesting maypoles, dark ones with coarse stiff hair, fair ones with the whitest of skins, quick ones and slow ones, ugly ones and others who were pleasant-looking. All, however, wore the same nervous, silly smile, all swayed themselves with embarrassed timidity, the anxious mien of the bondswoman at the slave market, who fears that she may not find a purchaser. They clumsily tried to put on graceful ways, radiant with internal joy directly a customer seemed to nibble, but clouding over and casting black glances at their companions when the latter seemed to have the better chance. Out of the dozen the doctor began by setting three aside, and finally he detained but one, in order that he might study her more fully.

“One can see that Monsieur le Docteur knows his business,” Madame Broquette allowed herself to say, with a flattering smile. “I don’t often have such pearls. But she has only just arrived, otherwise she would probably have been engaged already. I can answer for her as I could for myself, for I have put her out before.”

The nurse was a dark woman of about twenty-six, of average height, built strongly enough, but having a heavy, common face with a hard-looking jaw. Having already been in service, however, she held herself fairly well.

“So that child is not your first one?” asked the doctor.

“No, monsieur, he’s my third.”

Then Boutan inquired into her circumstances, studied her papers, took her into Madame Broquette’s private room for examination, and on his return make a minute inspection of her child, a strong plump boy, some three months old, who in the interval had remained very quiet on an armchair. The doctor seemed satisfied, but he suddenly raised his head to ask, “And that child is really your own?”

“Oh! monsieur, where could I have got him otherwise?”

“Oh! my girl, children are borrowed, you know.”

Then he paused for a moment, still hesitating and looking at the young woman, embarrassed by some feeling of doubt, although she seemed to embody all requirements. “And are you all quite well in your family?” he asked; “have none of your relatives ever died of chest complaints?”

“Never, monsieur.”

“Well, of course you would not tell me if they had. Your books ought to contain a page for information of that kind. And you, are you of sober habits? You don’t drink?”

“Oh! monsieur.”

This time the young woman bristled up, and Boutan had to calm her. Then her face brightened with pleasure as soon as the doctor — with the gesture of a man who is taking his chance, for however careful one may be there is always an element of chance in such matters — said to her: “Well, it is understood, I engage you. If you can send your child away at once, you can go this evening to the address I will give you. Let me see, what is your name?”