all the place Bethlehem?

The director had been moved at first by the spectacle of so many
victims. This Pondevez, a waif of the life of the "Quarter," mere
student still after twenty years, and well known in all the resorts of
the Boulevard St. Michel under the name of Pompon, was not an unkind
man. When he perceived the small success of the artificial feeding, he
simply brought in four or five vigorous nurses from the district around
and the children's appetites soon returned. This humane impulse went
near costing him his place.

"Nurses at Bethlehem!" said Jenkins, furious, when he came to pay his
weekly visit. "Are you out of your mind? Well! why then have we goats
at all, and meadows to pasture them; what becomes of my idea, and the
pamphlets upon my idea? What happens to all that? But you are going
against my system. You are stealing the founder's money."

"All the same, _mon cher maitre_," the student tried to reply, passing
his hands through his long red beard, "all the same, they will not take
this nourishment."

"Well, then, let them go without, but let the principle of artificial
lactation be respected. That is the whole point. I do not wish to have
to repeat it to you again. Send off these wretched nurses. For the
rearing of our children we have goats' milk, cows' milk in case of
absolute necessity. I can make no further concession in the matter."

He added, with an assumption of his apostle's air: "We are here for the
demonstration of a philanthropic idea. It must be made to triumph, even
at the price of some sacrifices."

Pondevez insisted no further. After all the place was a good one, near
enough to Paris to allow of descents upon Nanterre of a Sunday from
the Quarter, or to allow the director to pay a visit to his old
_brasseries_. Mme. Polge, to whom Jenkins always referred as "our
intelligent superintendent," and whom he had placed there to superintend
everything, and chiefly the director himself, was not so austere, as her
prerogatives might have led one to suppose, and submitted willingly to a
few liqueur-glasses of cognac or to a game of bezique. He dismissed
the nurses, therefore, and endeavoured to harden himself in advance to
everything that could happen. What did happen? A veritable Massacre
of the Innocents. Consequently the few parents in fairly easy
circumstances, workpeople or suburban tradesfolk, who, tempted by the
advertisements, had severed themselves from their children, very soo