Title: The Nabob
Author: Daudet, Alphonse
Language: English
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THE NABOB

by Alphonse Daudet


Translated By W. Blaydes



INTRODUCTION

Daudet once remarked that England was the last of foreign countries to
welcome his novels, and that he was surprised at the fact, since for
him, as for the typical Englishman, the intimacy of home life had great
significance. However long he may have taken to win Anglo-Saxon hearts,
there is no question that he finally won them more completely than any
other contemporary French novelist was able to do, and that when but
a few years since the news came that death had released him from his
sufferings, thousands of men and women, both in England and in America,
felt that they had lost a real friend. Just at the present moment one
does not hear or read a great deal about him, but a similar lull in
criticism follows the deaths of most celebrities of whatever kind, and
it can scarcely be doubted that Daudet is every day making new friends,
while it is as sure as anything of the sort can be that it is death, not
estrangement, that has lessened the number of his former admirers.

“Admirers”? The word is much too cold. “Lovers” would serve better, but
is perhaps too expansive to be used of a self-contained race. “Friends”
 is more appropriate because heartier, for hearty the relations between
Daudet and his Anglo-Saxon readers certainly were. Whether it was that
some of us saw in him that hitherto unguessed-at phenomenon, a French
Dickens--not an imitator, indeed, but a kindred spirit--or that others
found in him a refined, a volatilized “Mark Twain,” with a flavour of
Cervantes, or that still others welcomed him as a writer of naturalistic
fiction that did not revolt, or finally that most of us enjoyed him
because whatever he wrote was as steeped in the radiance of his own
exquisitely charming personality as a picture of Corot’s is in the light
of the sun itself--whatever may have been the reason, Alphonse Daudet
could count before he died thousands of genuine friends in England and
America who were loyal to him in spite of the declining power shown in
his latest books, in spite even of the strain which _Sapho_ laid upon
their Puritan consciences.

It is likely that a majority of these friends were won by the two great
Tartarin books and by the chief novels, _Fromont_, _Jack_, _The Nabob_,
_Kings in Exile_, and _Numa_, aided by the artistic sketches and short
stories contained in _Letters from my Mill_ and _Monday Tales (Contes
du Lundi)_. The strong but overwrought _Evangelist_, _Sapho_--which of
course belongs with the chief novels from the Continental but not from
the insular point of view--and the books of Daudet’s decadence, _The
Immortal_, and the rest, cost him few friendships, but scarcely gained
him many. His delightful essays in autobiography, whether in fiction,
_Le Petit Chose (Little What’s-his-Name)_, or in _Thirty Years of Paris_
and _Souvenirs of a Man of Letters_, doubtless sealed more friendships
than they made; but they can be almost as safely recommended as the more
notable novels to readers who have yet to make Daudet’s acquaintance.

For the man and his career are as unaffectedly charming as his style,
and more of a piece than his elaborate works of fiction. A sunny
Provencal childhood is clouded by family misfortunes; then comes a year
of wretched slavery as usher in a provincial school; then the inevitable
journey to Paris with a brain full of verses and dreams, and the
beginning of a life of Bohemian nonchalance, to which we Anglo-Saxons
have little that is comparable outside the career of Oliver Goldsmith.
But poor Goldsmith had his pride wounded by the editorial tyranny of a
Mrs. Griffiths. Daudet, by a merely pretty poem about a youth and
maiden making love under a plum-tree, won the protection of the Empress
Eugenie, and through her of the Duke de Morny, the prop of the Second
Empire. His life now reads like a fairy-tale inserted by some jocular
elf into that book of dolors entitled _The Lives of Men of Genius_.
A _protege_ of a potentate not usually lavish of his favours, and a
valetudinarian, he is allowed to flit to Algiers and Corsica, to enjoy
his beloved Provence in company with Mistral, to write for the theatres,
and to continue to play the Bohemian. Then the death of Morny seems to
turn the idyl into a tragedy, but only for a moment. Daudet’s delicate,
nervous beauty made his friend Zola think of an Arabian horse, but
the poet had also the spirit of such a high-bred steed. Years of
conscientious literary labour followed, cheered by marriage with a woman
of genius capable of supplementing him in his weakest points, and then
the war with Prussia and its attendant horrors gave him the larger and
deeper view of life and the intensified patriotism--in short, the final
stimulus he needed. From the date of his first great success--_Fromont,
Jr., and Risler, Sr._--glory and wealth flowed in upon him, while
envy scarcely touched him, so unspoiled was he and so continuously and
eminently lovable. One seemed to see in his career a reflection of his
luminous nature, a revised myth of the golden touch, a new version of
the fairy-tale of the fair mouth dropping pearls. Then, as though grown
weary of the idyllic romance she was composing, Fortune donned the
tragic robes of Nemesis. Years of pain followed, which could not abate
the spirits or disturb the geniality of the sufferer, but did somewhat
abate the power and disturb the serenity of his work. Then came the
inevitable end of all life dramas, whether comic or romantic or tragic,
and friends who had known him stood round his grave and listened sadly
to the touching words in which Emile Zola expressed not merely his own
grief but that of many thousands throughout the civilized world. Here
was a life more winsome, more appealing, more complete than any creation
of the genius of the man that lived it--a life which, whether we know it
in detail or not, explains in part the fascination Daudet exerts upon us
and the conviction we cherish that, whatever ravages time may make among
his books, the memory of their writer will not fade from the hearts of
men. Many Frenchmen have conquered the world’s mind by the power or
the subtlety of their genius; few have won its heart through the
catholicity, the broad sympathy of their genius. Daudet is one of these
few; indeed, he is almost if not quite the only European writer who has
of late achieved such a triumph, for Tolstoi has stern critics as well
as steadfast devotees, and has won most of his disciples as moralist and
reformer. But we must turn from Daudet the man to Daudet the author of
_The Nabob_ and other memorable novels.

If this were a general essay and not an introduction, it would be proper
to say something of Daudet’s early attempts as poet and dramatist. Here
it need only be remarked that it is almost a commonplace to insist that
even in his later novels he never entirely ceased to see the outer world
with the eyes of a poet, to delight in colour and movement, to seize
every opportunity to indulge in vivid description couched in a style
more swift and brilliant than normal prose aspires to. This bent
for description, together with the tendency to episodic rather than
sustained composition and the comparative weakness of his character
drawing--features of his work shortly to be discussed--partly explains
his failure, save in one or two instances, to score a real triumph
with his plays, but does not explain his singular lack of sympathy with
actors. Nor was he able to win great success with his first book
of importance, _Le Petit Chose_, delightful as that mixture of
autobiography and romance must prove to any sympathetic reader. He was
essentially a romanticist and a poet cast upon an age of naturalism
and prose, and he needed years of training and such experience as the
Prussian invasion gave him to adjust himself to his life-work. Such
adjustment was not needed for _Tartarin de Tarascon_, begun shortly
after _Le Petit Chose_, because subtle humour of the kind lavished in
that inimitable creation and in its sequels, while implying observation,
does not necessarily imply any marked departure from the romantic and
poetic points of view.

The training Daudet required for his novels he got from the sketches
and short stories that occupied him during the late sixties and early
seventies. Here again little in the way of comment need be given, and
that little can express the general verdict that the art displayed
in these miniature productions is not far short of perfect. The two
principal collections, _Lettres de mon Moulin_ and _Contes du Lundi_,
together with _Artists’ Wives (Les Femmes d’Artistes)_ and parts at
least of _Robert Helmont_, would almost of themselves suffice to put
Daudet high in the ranks of the writers who charm without leaving upon
one’s mind the slightest suspicion that they are weak. It is true
that Daudet’s stories do not attain the tremendous impressiveness that
Balzac’s occasionally do, as, for example, in _La Grande Breteche_,
nor has his clear-cut art the almost disconcerting firmness, the
surgeon-like quality of Maupassant’s; but the author of the ironical
_Elixir of Father Gaucher_ and of the pathetic _Last Class_, to name no
others, could certainly claim with Musset that his glass was his own,
and had no reason to concede its smallness.

As we have seen, the production of _Fromont jeune et Risler aine_
marked the beginning of Daudet’s more than twenty years of successful
novel-writing. His first elaborate study of Parisian life, while it
indicated no advance of the art of fiction, deserved its popularity
because, in spite of the many criticisms to which it was open, it was a
thoroughly readable and often a moving book. One character, Delobelle,
the played-out actor who is still a hero to his pathetic wife and
daughter, was constructed on effective lines--was a personage worthy of
Dickens. The vile heroine, Sidonie, was bad enough to excite disgusted
interest, but, as Mr. Henry James pointed out later, she was not
effective to the extent her creator doubtless hoped. She paled beside
Valerie Marneffe, though, to be sure, Daudet knew better than to attempt
to depict any such queen of vice. Yet, after all, it is mainly the
compelling power of vile heroines that makes them tolerable, and neither
Sidonie nor the web of intrigue she wove can fairly be said to be
characterized by extraordinary strength. But the public was and is
interested greatly by the novel, and Daudet deserved the fame and money
it brought him. His next book, _Jack_, was not so popular. Still, it
showed artistic improvement, although, as in its predecessor, that bias
towards the sentimental, which was to be Daudet’s besetting weakness,
was too plainly visible. Its author took to his heart a book which the
general reader found too long and perhaps overpathetic. Some of us,
while recognising its faults, will share in part Daudet’s predilection
for it--not so much because of the strong and early study made of the
artisan class, or of the mordantly satirical exposure of D’Argenton
and his literary “dead-beats” (_rates_), or of any other of the special
features of a story that is crowded with them, as because the ill-fated
hero, the product of genuine emotions on Daudet’s part, excites cognate
and equally genuine emotions in us. We cannot watch the throbbing
engines of a great steamship without seeing Jack at work among them. But
the fine, pathetic _Jack_ brings us to the finer, more pathetic _Nabob_.

Whether _The Nabob_ is Daudet’s greatest novel is a question that may be
postponed, but it may be safely asserted that there are good reasons why
it should have been chosen to represent Daudet in the present series.
It has been immensely popular, and thus does not illustrate merely the
taste of an inner circle of its author’s admirers. It is not so subtle
a study of character as _Numa Roumestan_, nor is it a drama the scene of
which is set somewhat in a corner removed from the world’s scrutiny and
full comprehension, as is more or less the case with _Kings in Exile_.
It is comparatively unamenable to the moral, or, if one will, the
puritanical, objections so naturally brought against _Sapho_. It
obviously represents Daudet’s powers better than any novel written after
his health was permanently wrecked, and as obviously represents fiction
more adequately than either of the Tartarin masterpieces, which belong
rather to the literature of humour. Besides, it is probably the most
broadly effective of all Daudet’s novels; it is fuller of striking
scenes; and as a picture of life in the picturesque Second Empire it is
of unique importance.

Perhaps to many readers this last reason will seem the best of all.
However much we may moralize about its baseness and hollowness, whether
with the Hugo of _Les Chatiments_ we scorn and vituperate its charlatan
head or pity him profoundly as we see him ill and helpless in Zola’s
_Debacle_, most of us, if we are candid, will confess that the Second
Empire, especially the Paris of Morny and Hausmann, of cynicism and
splendour, of frivolity and chicane, of servile obsequiousness and
haughty pretension, the France and the Paris that drew to themselves the
eyes of all Europe and particularly the eyes of the watchful Bismarck,
have for us a fascination almost as great as they had for the gay and
audacious men and women who in them courted fortune and chased pleasure
from the morrow of the _Coup d’Etat_ to the eve of Sedan. A nearly
equal fascination is exerted upon us by a book which is the best sort of
historical novel, since it is the product of its author’s observation,
not of his reading--a story that sets vividly before us the political
corruption, the financial recklessness, the social turmoil, the public
ostentation, the private squalor, that led to the downfall of an empire
and almost to that of a people.

Daudet drew on his experiences, and on the notes he was always
accumulating, more strenuously than he should have done. He assures
us that he laboured over _The Nabob_ for eight months, mainly in his
bed-room, sometimes working eighteen consecutive hours, often waking
from restless sleep with a sentence on his lips. Yet, such is the irony
of literary history, the novel is loosely enough put together to have
been written, one might suppose, in bursts of inspiration or else more
or less methodically--almost with the intention, as Mr. James has noted,
of including every striking phase of Parisian life. For it is a series
of brilliant, effective episodes and scenes, not a closely knit drama.
Jenkins’s visit to Monpavon at his toilet, the _dejeuner_ at the
Nabob’s, the inspection of the OEuvre de Bethleem--which would have
delighted Dickens--the collapse of the fetes of the Bey, the Nabob’s
thrashing Moessard, the death of Mora, Felicia’s attempt to escape the
funeral of the duke, the interview between the Nabob and Hemerlingue,
the baiting in the Chamber, the suicide of that supreme man of tone,
Monpavon, the Nabob’s apoplectic seizure in the theatre--these and many
other scenes and episodes, together with descriptions and touches, stand
out in our memories more distinctly and impressively than the characters
do--perhaps more so than does the central motive, the outrageous
exploitation of the naive hero. For from the beginning of his career to
the end Daudet’s eye, like that of a genuine but not supereminent poet,
was chiefly attracted by colour, movement, effective pose--in other
words, by the surfaces of things. One may almost say that he was more of
a landscape engineer than of an architect and builder, although one must
at once add that he could and did erect solid structures. But the
reader at least helps greatly to lay the foundations, for, to drop the
metaphor, Daudet relied largely on suggestion, contenting himself with
the belief that a capable imagination could fill up the gaps he left
in plot and character analysis. Thus, for example, he indicated and
suggested rather than detailed the way in which Hemerlingue finally
triumphed over the Nabob, Jansoulet. To use another figure, he drew the
spider, the fly, and a few strands of the web. The Balzac whose bust
looked satirically down upon the two adventurers in Pere la Chaise would
probably have given us the whole web. This is not quite to say that
Daudet is plausible, Balzac inevitable; but rather that we stroll
with the former master and follow submissively in the footsteps of the
latter. Yet a caveat is needed, for the intense interest we take in the
characters of a novel like _The Nabob_ scarcely suggests strolling.

For although Daudet, in spite of his abounding sympathy, which is one
reason of his great attractiveness, cannot fairly be said to be a great
character creator, he had sufficient flexibility and force of genius to
set in action interesting personages. Part of the early success of _The
Nabob_ was due to this fact, although the brilliant description of the
Second Empire and the introduction of exotic elements, the Tunisian and
Corsican episodes and characters, counted, probably, for not a little.
Readers insisted upon seeing in the book this person and that more or
less thinly disguised. The Irish adventurer-physician, Jenkins, was
supposed to be modelled upon a popular Dr. Olliffe; the arsenic pills
were derived from another source, as was also the goat’s-milk hospital
for infants. Felicia Ruys was thought by some to be Sarah Bernhardt,
and originals were easily provided for Monpavon and the other leading
figures. But Daudet confessed to only two important originals, and if
one does not take an author’s word in such matters one soon finds one’s
self in a maze of conjectures and contradictions.

The two characters drawn from life in a special sense--for Daudet, like
most other writers of fiction, had human life in general constantly
before him--are Jansoulet and Mora, precisely the most effective
personages in the book, and scarcely surpassed in the whole range of
Daudet’s fiction. The Nabob was Francois Bravay, who rose from poverty
to wealth by devious transactions in the Orient, and came to grief in
Paris, much as Jansoulet did. He survived the Empire, and his relatives
are said to have been incensed at the treatment given him in the novel,
an attitude on their part which is explicable but scarcely justifiable,
since Daudet’s sympathy for his hero could not well have been greater,
and since the adventurer had already attained a notoriety that was not
likely to be completely forgotten. Whether Daudet was as much at liberty
to make free with the character of his benefactor Morny is another
matter. He himself thought that he was, and he was a man of delicate
sensitiveness. Probably he was right in claiming that the natural son
of Queen Hortense, the intrepid soldier, the author of the _Coup
d’Etat_ that set his weaker half-brother on the throne, the dandy, the
libertine, the leader of fashion, the cynical statesman--in short, the
“Richelieu-Brummel” who drew the eyes of all Europe upon himself,
would not have been in the least disconcerted could he have known that
thirteen years after his death the public would be discussing him as the
prototype of the Mora of his young _protege’s_ masterpiece. In fact,
it is easy to agree with those critics who think that Daudet’s kindly
nature caused him to soften many features of Morny’s unlovely character.
Mora does not, indeed, win our love or our esteem, but we confess him to
have been in every respect an exceptional man, and there is not a page
in which he appears that is not intensely interesting. He must be an
unimpressionable reader who soon forgets the death-room scenes, the
destruction of the compromising letters, the spectacular funeral.

Of the other characters there is little space to speak here. Nearly all
have their good points, as might be expected of the creator of his two
fellow Provencals, Numa and Tartarin, the latter being probably the
only really cosmopolitan figure in recent literature; but some, like the
Hemerlingues, verge upon mere sketches; others, like Jansoulet’s obese
wife, upon caricatures. The old mother is excellently done, however, and
Monpavon, especially in his suicide, is nothing short of a triumph of
art. It is the more or less romantic or sentimental personages that give
the critic most qualms. Daudet seems to have introduced them--De Gery,
the Joyeuse family, and the rest--as a concession to popular taste, and
on this score was probably justified. A fair case may also be made
out for the use of idyllic scenes as a foil to the tragical, for
the Shakespearian critics have no monopoly of the overworked plea,
“justification by contrast.” Nor could a French analogue of Dickens
easily resist the temptation to give us a fatuous Passajon, an
ebullient Pere Joyeuse--who seems to have been partly modelled on a
real person--an exemplary “Bonne Maman,” a struggling but eventually
triumphant Andre Maranne. The home-lover Daudet also felt the necessity
of showing that Paris could set the Joyeuse household, sunny in its
poverty, over against the stately elegance of the Mora palace, the walls
of which listened at one and the same moment to the music of a ball and
the death-rattle of its haughty owner. But when all is said, it remains
clear that _The Nabob_ is open to the charge that applies to all the
greater novels save _Sapho_--the charge that it exhibits a somewhat
inharmonious mixture of sentimentalism and naturalism. Against this
charge, which perhaps applies most forcibly to that otherwise almost
perfect work of art, _Numa Roumestan_, Daudet defended himself,
but rather weakly. Nor does Mr. Henry James, who in the case of the
last-named novel comes to his help against Zola, much mend matters. But
the fault, if fault it be, is venial, especially in a friend, though not
strictly a coworker, of Zola’s.

Naturally an elaborate novel like _The Nabob_ lends itself indefinitely
to minute comment, but we must be sparing of it. Still it is worth while
to call attention to the skill with which, from the opening page, the
interest of the reader is controlled; indeed, to the remarkable art
displayed in the whole first chapter devoted to the morning rounds of
Dr. Jenkins. The note of romantic extravagance is on the whole avoided
until the Nabob brings out his check-book, when the money flies with
a speed for which, one fancies, Daudet could have found little
justification this side of Timon of Athens. In the description of the
_Caisse Territoriale_ given by Passajon this note is relieved by a
delicate irony, but seems still somewhat incongruous. One turns more
willingly to the description of Jansoulet’s sitting down to play
_ecarte_ with Mora, to the story of how he gorged himself with the
duke’s putative mushrooms, and to similar episodes and touches. In the
matter of effective and ironically turned situations few novels
can compare with this; indeed, it almost seems as if Daudet made an
inordinate use of them. Think of the poor Nabob reading the announcement
of the cross bestowed on Jenkins, and of the absurd populace mistaking
him for the ungrateful Bey! As for great dramatic moments, there is at
least one that no reader can forget--the moment when Jansoulet, in the
midst of the speech on which his fate depends, catches sight of his old
mother’s face and forbears to clear himself of calumny at the expense of
his wretched elder brother. The situation may not bear close analysis,
but who wishes to analyze? Or who, indeed, wishes to indulge in further
comment after the scene has risen to his mind?

_The Nabob_ was followed by _Kings in Exile_; then came _Numa Roumestan_
and _The Evangelist_; then, on the eve of Daudet’s breakdown, _Sapho_;
and the greatest of his humorous masterpieces, _Tartarin in the Alps_.
It is not yet certain what rank is to be given to these books. Perhaps
the adventures of the mountain-climbing hero of the Midi, combined
with his previous exploits as a slayer of lions--his experiences as a
colonist in _Port-Tarascon_ need scarcely be considered--will prove, in
the lapse of years, to be the most solid foundation of that fame which
even envious Time will hardly begrudge Daudet. As for _Kings in Exile_,
it is difficult to see how even the art with which the tragedy of Queen
Frederique’s life is unfolded or the growing power of characterization
displayed in her, in the loyal Merault, in the facile, decadent
Christian, can make up for the lack of broadly human appeal in the
general subject-matter of a book which was so sympathetically written
as to appeal alike to Legitimists and to Republicans. Good as _Kings
in Exile_ is, it is not so effective a book as _The Nabob_, nor such
a unique and marvellous work of art as _Numa Roumestan_, due allowance
being made for the intrusion of sentimentality into the latter. Daudet
thought _Numa_ the “least incomplete” of his works; it is certainly
inclusive enough, since some critics are struck by the tragic relations
subsisting between the virtuous discreet Northern wife and the peccable,
expansive Southern husband, while others see in the latter the hero of
a comedy of manners almost worthy of Moliere. If _Numa_ represents the
highest achievement of Daudet in dramatic fiction or else in the art
of characterization, _The Evangelist_ proved that his genius was not
at home in those fields. Instead of marking an ordered advance, this
overwrought study of Protestant bigotry marked not so much a halt, or a
retreat, as a violent swerving to one side. Yet in a way this swerving
into the devious orbit of the novel of intense purpose helped Daudet in
his progress towards naturalism, and imparted something of stability to
his methods of work. _Sapho_, which appeared next, was the first of his
novels that left little to be desired in the way of artistic unity and
cumulative power. If such a study of the _femme collante_, the mistress
who cannot be shaken off--or rather of the man whom she ruins, for it
is Gaussin, not Sapho, that is the main subject of Daudet’s acute
analysis--was to be written at all, it had to be written with a resolute
art such as Daudet applied to it. It is not then surprising that
Continental critics rank _Sapho_ as its author’s greatest production; it
is more in order to wonder what Daudet might not have done in this line
of work had his health remained unimpaired. The later novels, in which
he came near to joining forces with the naturalists and hence to losing
some of the vogue his eclecticism gave him, need not detain us.

And now, in conclusion, how can we best characterize briefly this
fascinating, versatile genius, the most delightful humorist of his time,
one of the most artistic story-tellers, one of the greatest novelists?
It is impossible to classify him, for he was more than a humorist, he
nearly outgrew romance, he never accepted unreservedly the canons of
naturalism. He obviously does not belong to the small class of the
supreme writers of fiction, for he has no consistent or at least
profound philosophy of life. He is a true poet, yet for the main he has
expressed himself not in verse, but in prose, and in a form of prose
that is being so extensively cultivated that its permanence is daily
brought more and more into question. What is Daudet, and what will he
be to posterity? Some admirers have already answered the first question,
perhaps as satisfactorily as it can be answered, by saying, “Daudet is
simply Daudet.” As for the second question, a whole school of critics is
inclined to answer it and all similar queries with the curt statement,
“That concerns posterity, not us.” If, however, less evasive answers are
insisted upon, let the following utterance, which might conceivably be
more indefinite and oracular, suffice: Alphonse Daudet is one of
those rare writers who combine greatness with a charm so intimate and
appealing that some of us would not, if we could, have their greatness
increased.

W. P. TRENT.



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Alphonse Daudet was born at Nimes on the 13th of May, 1840. He was the
younger son of a rich and enthusiastically Royalist silk-manufacturer
of that town, the novelist, Ernest Daudet (born 1837), being his elder
brother. In their childhood, the father, Vincent Daudet, suffered
reverses, and had to settle with his family, in reduced circumstances,
at Lyons. Alphonse, in 1856, obtained a post as usher in a school at
Alais, in the Gard, where he was extremely unhappy. All these painful
early experiences are told very pathetically in “Le Petit Chose.” On
the 1st of November, 1857, Alphonse fled from the horrors of his life at
Alais, and joined his brother Ernest, who had just secured a post in the
service of the Duc de Morny in Paris. Alphonse determined to live by
his pen, and presently obtained introductions to the “Figaro.” His early
volumes of verse, “Les Amoureuses” of 1858 and “La Double Conversion”
 of 1861, attracted some favourable notice. In this latter year his
difficulties ceased, for he had the good fortune to become one of the
secretaries of the Duc de Morny, a post which he held for four years,
until the popularity of his writings rendered him independent. To the
generosity of his patron, moreover, he owed the opportunity of visiting
Italy and the East. His first novel, “Le Chaperon Rouge,” 1863, was not
very remarkable, and Daudet turned to the stage. His principal dramatic
efforts of this period were “Le Dernier Idole,” 1862, and “L’OEillet
Blanc,” 1865. Alphonse Daudet’s earliest important work, however, was
“Le Petit Chose,” 1868, a very pathetic autobiography of the first
eighteen years of his life, over which he cast a thin veil of romance.
After the death of the Duc de Morny, Daudet retired to Provence, leasing
a ruined mill at Fortvielle, in the valley of the Rhone; from this
romantic solitude, among the pines and green oaks, he sent forth those
exquisite studies of Provencal life, the “Lettres de mon Moulin.” After
the war, Daudet reappeared in Paris, greatly strengthened and ripened
by his hermit-existence in the heart of Provence. He produced one
masterpiece after another. He had studied with laughter and joy the
mirthful side of southern exaggeration, and he created a figure in which
its peculiar qualities should be displayed, as it were, in excelsis.
This study resulted, in 1872, in “The Prodigious Feats of Tartarin of
Tarascon,” one of the most purely delightful works of humour in the
French language. Alphonse Daudet now, armed with his cahiers, his little
green-backed books of notes, set out to be a great historian of
French manners in the second half of the nineteenth century. His first
important novel, “Fromont Jeune et Risler Aine,” 1874, enjoyed a notable
success; it was followed in 1876 by “Jack,” in 1878 by “Le Nabob,” in
1879 by “Les Rois en Exil,” in 1881 by “Numa Roumestan,” in 1883 by
“L’Evangeliste,” and in 1884 by “Sapho.” These are the seven great
romances of modern French life on which the reputation of Alphonse
Daudet as a novelist is mainly built. They placed him, for the moment at
all events, near the head of contemporary European literature. By this
time, however, a physical malady, which Charcot was the first to locate
in the spinal cord, had begun to exhaust the novelist’s powers. This
disease, which took the form of what was supposed to be neuralgia in
1881, racked him with pain during the sixteen remaining years of his
life, and gradually destroyed his powers of locomotion. It spared
the functions of the brain, but it cannot be denied that after 1884
something of force and spontaneous charm was lacking in Daudet’s books.
He continued, however, the adventures of Tartarin, first with unabated
gusto in the Alps, then less happily as a colonist in the South Seas. He
wrote, in the form of a novel, a bitter satire on the French Academy,
of which he was never a member; this was “L’Immortel” of 1888. He wrote
romances, of little power, the best being “Rose et Ninette” of 1892, but
his imaginative work steadily declined in value. He published in 1887
his reminiscences, “Trente Ans de Paris,” and later on his “Souvenirs
d’un Homme de Lettres.” He suffered more and more from his complaint,
from the insomnia it caused, and from the abuse of chloral. He was
able, however, to the last, to enjoy the summer at his country-house, at
Champrosay, and even to travel in an invalid’s chair; in 1896 he visited
for the first time London and Oxford, and saw Mr. George Meredith. In
Paris he had long occupied rooms in the Rue de Bellechasse, where Madame
Alphonse Daudet was accustomed to entertain a brilliant company. But in
1897 it became impossible for him to mount five flights of stairs any
longer, and he moved to the first floor of No. 41 Rue de l’Universite.
Here on the 16th of December, 1897, as he was chatting gaily at the
dinner-table, he uttered a cry, fell back in his chair, and was dead.
The personal appearance of Alphonse Daudet, in his prime, was very
striking; he had clearly cut features, large brilliant eyes, and an
amazing exuberance of curled hair and forked beard.

EDMUND GOSSE, LL.D.



CONTENTS

     Introduction, William Peterfield Trent

     Life of Alphonse Daudet, Edmund Gosse


     THE NABOB:

     Dr. Jenkins’s patients
     A luncheon in the Place Vendome
     Memoirs of an office porter--A mere glance at the Territorial Bank
     A debut in society
     The Joyeuse family
     Felicia Ruys
     Jansoulet at home
     The Bethlehem Society
     Bonne Maman
     Memoirs of an office porter--Servants
     The festivities in honour of the Bey
     A Corsican election
     A day of spleen
     The Exhibition
     Memoirs of an office porter--In the antechamber
     A public man
     The apparition
     The Jenkins pearls
     The funeral
     La Baronne Hemerlingue
     The sitting
     Dramas of Paris
     Memoirs of an office porter--The last leaves
     At Bordighera
     The first night of “Revolt”



THE NABOB

by Alphonse Daudet



DOCTOR JENKIN’S PATIENTS

Standing on the steps of his little town-house in the Rue de Lisbonne,
freshly shaven, with sparkling eyes, and lips parted in easy enjoyment,
his long hair slightly gray flowing over a huge coat collar, square
shouldered, strong as an oak, the famous Irish doctor, Robert Jenkins,
Knight of the Medjidjieh and of the distinguished order of Charles III
of Spain, President and Founder of the Bethlehem Society. Jenkins in a
word, the Jenkins of the Jenkins Pills with an arsenical base--that
is to say, the fashionable doctor of the year 1864, the busiest man in
Paris, was preparing to step into his carriage when a casement opened
on the first floor looking over the inner court-yard of the house, and a
woman’s voice asked timidly:

“Shall you be home for luncheon, Robert?”

Oh, how good and loyal was the smile that suddenly illumined the
fine apostle-like head with its air of learning, and in the tender
“good-morning” which his eyes threw up towards the warm, white
dressing-gown visible behind the raised curtains; how easy it was to
divine one of those conjugal passions, tranquil and sure, which habit
re-enforces and with supple and stable bonds binds closer.

“No, Mrs. Jenkins.” He was fond of thus bestowing upon her publicly
her title as his lawful wife, as if he found in it an intimate
gratification, a sort of acquittal of conscience towards the woman who
made life so bright for him. “No, do not expect me this morning. I lunch
in the Place Vendome.”

“Ah! yes, the Nabob,” said the handsome Mrs. Jenkins with a very marked
note of respect for this personage out of the _Thousand and One Nights_
of whom all Paris had been talking for the last month; then, after a
little hesitation, very tenderly, in a quite low voice, from between the
heavy tapestries, she whispered for the ears of the doctor only:

“Be sure you do not forget what you promised me.”

Apparently it was something very difficult to fulfil, for at the
reminder of this promise the eyebrows of the apostle contracted into
a frown, his smile became petrified, his whole visage assumed an
expression of incredible hardness; but it was only for an instant. At
the bedside of their patients the physiognomies of these fashionable
doctors become expert in lying. In his most tender, most cordial manner,
he replied, disclosing a row of dazzling white teeth:

“What I promised shall be done, Mrs. Jenkins. And now, go in quickly and
shut your window. The fog is cold this morning.”

Yes, the fog was cold, but white as snow mist; and, filling the air
outside the glasses of the large brougham, it brightened with soft
gleams the unfolded newspaper in the doctor’s hands. Over yonder, in the
populous quarters, confined and gloomy, in the Paris of tradesman
and mechanic, that charming morning haze which lingers in the great
thoroughfares is not known. The bustle of awakening, the going and
coming of the market-carts, of the omnibuses, of the heavy trucks
rattling their old iron, have early and quickly cut it up, unravelled
and scattered it. Every passer-by carries away a little of it in a
threadbare overcoat, a muffler which shows the woof, and coarse gloves
rubbed one against the other. It soaks through the thin blouses, and
the mackintoshes thrown over the working skirts; it melts away at every
breath that is drawn, warm from sleeplessness or alcohol; it is engulfed
in the depths of empty stomachs, dispersed in the shops as they are
opened, and the dark courts, or even to the fireless attics. That is
the reason why there remains so little of it out of doors. But in that
spacious and grandiose region of Paris, which was inhabited by Jenkins’s
clients, on those wide boulevards planted with trees, and those deserted
quays, the fog hovered without a stain, like so many sheets, with
waverings and cotton wool-like flakes. The effect was of a place
inclosed, secret, almost sumptuous, as the sun after his slothful
rising began to diffuse softly crimsoned tints, which gave to the mist
enshrouding the rows of houses to their summits the appearance of white
muslin thrown over some scarlet material. One might have fancied it a
great curtain beneath which nothing could be heard save the cautious
closing of some court-yard gate, the tin measuring-cans of the milkmen,
the little bells of a herd of she-asses passing at a quick trot followed
by the short and panting breath of their shepherd, and the dull rumble
of Jenkins’s brougham commencing its daily round.

First, to Mora House. This was a magnificent palace on the Quai d’Orsay,
next door to the Spanish embassy, whose long terraces succeeded its own,
having its principal entrance in the Rue de Lille, and a door upon the
side next the river. Between two lofty walls overgrown with ivy, and
united by imposing vaulted arches, the brougham shot in, announced by
two strokes of a sonorous bell which roused Jenkins from the reverie
into which the reading of his newspaper seemed to have plunged him.
Then the noise of the wheels became deadened on the sand of a vast
court-yard, and they drew up, after describing an elegant curve, before
the steps of the mansion, which were surrounded by a large circular
awning. In the obscurity of the fog, a dozen carriages could be seen
ranged in line, and along an avenue of acacias, quite withered at
that season and leafless in their bark, the profiles of English grooms
leading out the saddle-horses of the duke for their exercise. Everything
revealed a luxury thought-out, settled, grandiose, and assured.

“It is quite useless for me to come early; others always arrive before
me,” said Jenkins to himself as he saw the file in which his brougham
took its place; but, certain of not having to wait, with head carried
high, and an air of tranquil authority, he ascended that official flight
of steps which is mounted every day by so many trembling ambitions, so
many anxieties on hesitating feet.

From the very antechamber, lofty and resonant like a church, which,
although calorifers burned night and day, possessed two great wood-fires
that filled it with a radiant life, the luxury of this interior reached
you by warm and heady puffs. It suggested at once a hot-house and
a Turkish bath. A great deal of heat and yet brightness; white
wainscoting, white marbles, immense windows, nothing stifling or shut
in, and yet a uniform atmosphere meet for the surrounding of some
rare existence, refined and nervous. Jenkins always expanded in this
factitious sun of wealth; he greeted with a “good-morning, my lads,”
 the powdered porter, with his wide golden scarf, the footmen in
knee-breeches and livery of gold and blue, all standing to do him
honour; lightly drew his finger across the bars of the large cages of
monkeys full of sharp cries and capers, and, whistling under his breath,
stepped quickly up the staircase of shining marble laid with a carpet
as thick as the turf of a lawn, which led to the apartments of the duke.
Although six months had passed since his first visit to Mora House,
the good doctor was not yet become insensible to the quite physical
impression of gaiety, of frivolity, which he received from this
dwelling.

Although you were in the abode of the first official of the Empire there
was nothing here suggestive of the work of government or its boxes
of dusty old papers. The duke had only consented to accept his high
dignitaries as Minister of State and President of the Council upon the
condition that he should not quit his private mansion; he only went
to his office for an hour or two daily, the time necessary to give the
indispensable signatures, and held his receptions in his bed-chamber.
At this moment, notwithstanding the earliness of the hour, the hall was
crowded. You saw there grave, anxious faces, provincial prefects with
shaven lips, and administrative whiskers, slightly less arrogant in this
antechamber than yonder in their prefectures, magistrates of austere
air, sober in gesture, deputies important of manner, big-wigs of the
financial world, rich and boorish manufacturers, among whom stood out
here and there the slender, ambitious figure of some substitute of a
prefectorial councillor, in the garb of one seeking a favour, dress-coat
and white tie; and all, standing, sitting in groups or solitary, sought
silently to penetrate with their gaze that high door closed upon their
destiny, by which they would issue forth directly triumphant or with
cast-down head. Jenkins passed through the crowd rapidly, and every one
followed with an envious eye this newcomer whom the doorkeeper, with
his official chain, correct and icy in his demeanour, seated at a table
beside the door, greeted with a little smile at once respectful and
familiar.

“Who is with him?” asked the doctor, indicating the chamber of the duke.

Hardly moving his lips, and not without a slightly ironical glance of
the eye, the doorkeeper whispered a name which, if they had heard it,
would have roused the indignation of all these high personages who had
been waiting for an hour past until the costumier of the opera should
have ended his audience.

A sound of voices, a ray of light. Jenkins had just entered the duke’s
presence; he never waited, he.

Standing with his back to the fireplace, closely wrapped in a
dressing-jacket of blue fur, the soft reflections from which gave an
air of refinement to an energetic and haughty head, the President of the
Council was causing to be designed under his eyes a Pierrette costume
for the duchess to wear at her next ball, and was giving his directions
with the same gravity with which he would have dictated the draft of a
new law.

“Let the frill be very fine on the ruff, and put no frills on the
sleeves.--Good-morning, Jenkins. I am with you directly.”

Jenkins bowed, and took a few steps in the immense room, of which the
windows, opening on a garden that extended as far as the Seine, framed
one of the finest views of Paris, the bridges, the Tuileries, the
Louvre, in a network of black trees traced as it were in Indian ink upon
the floating background of fog. A large and very low bed, raised by
a few steps above the floor, two or three little lacquer screens with
vague and capricious gilding, indicating, like the double doors and the
carpets of thick wool, a fear of cold pushed even to excess, various
seats, lounges, warmers, scattered about rather indiscriminately, all
low, rounded, indolent, or voluptuous in shape, composed the furniture
of this celebrated chamber in which the gravest questions and the most
frivolous were wont to be treated alike with the same seriousness. On
the wall was a handsome portrait of the duchess; on the chimneypiece a
bust of the duke, the work of Felicia Ruys, which at the recent Salon
had received the honours of a first medal.

“Well, Jenkins, how are we this morning?” said his excellency,
approaching, while the costumier was picking up his fashion-plates,
scattered over all the easy chairs.

“And you, my dear duke? I thought you a little pale last evening at the
Varietes.”

“Come, come! I have never felt so well. Your pills have a most
marvellous effect upon me. I am conscious of a vivacity, a freshness,
when I remember how run down I was six months ago.”

Jenkins, without saying anything, had laid his great head against the
fur-coat of the minister of state, at the place where, in common men,
the heart beats. He listened a moment while his excellency continued to
speak in the indolent, bored tone which was one of the characteristics
of his distinction.

“And who was your companion, doctor, last night? That huge, bronzed
Tartar who was laughing so loudly in the front of your box.”

“It was the Nabob, _Monsieur le Duc_. The famous Jansoulet, about whom
people are talking so much just now.”

“I ought to have guessed it. The whole house was watching him. The
actresses played for him alone. You know him? What sort of man is he?”

“I know him. That is to say, I attend him professionally.--Thank you,
my dear duke, I have finished. All is right in that region.--When
he arrived in Paris a month ago, he had found the change of climate
somewhat trying. He sent for me, and since then has received me upon
the most friendly footing. What I know of him is that he possesses a
colossal fortune, made in Tunis, in the service of the Bey, that he has
a loyal heart, a generous soul, in which the ideas of humanity--”

“In Tunis?” interrupted the duke, who was by nature very little
sentimental and humanitarian. “In that case, why this name of Nabob?”

“Bah! the Parisians do not look at things so closely. For them, every
rich foreigner is a nabob, no matter whence he comes. Furthermore, this
nabob has all the physical qualities for the part--a copper-coloured
skin, eyes like burning coals, and, what is more, gigantic wealth, of
which he makes, I do not fear to say it, the most noble and the most
intelligent use. It is to him that I owe”--here the doctor assumed a
modest air--“that I owe it that I have at last been able to found the
Bethlehem Society for the suckling of infants, which a morning paper,
that I was looking over just now--the _Messenger_, I think--calls ‘the
great philanthropic idea of the century.’”

The duke threw a listless glance over the sheet which Jenkins held out
to him. He was not the man to be caught by the turn of an advertisement.

“He must be very rich, this M. Jansoulet,” said he, coldly. “He finances
Cardailhac’s theatre; Monpavon gets him to pay his debts; Bois l’Hery
starts a stable for him; old Schwalbach a picture gallery. It means
money, all that.”

Jenkins laughed.

“What will you have, my dear duke, this poor Nabob, you are his great
occupation. Arriving here with the firm resolution to become a Parisian,
a man of the world, he has taken you for his model in everything, and I
do not conceal from you that he would very much like to study his model
from a nearer standpoint.”

“I know, I know. Monpavon has already asked my permission to bring
him to see me. But I prefer to wait; I wish to see. With these great
fortunes that come from so far away one has to be careful. _Mon Dieu_! I
do not say that if I should meet him elsewhere than in my own house, at
the theatre, in a drawing-room----”

“As it just happens, Mrs. Jenkins is proposing to give a small party
next month. If you would do us the honour----”

“I shall be glad to come, my dear doctor, and if your Nabob should
chance to be there I should make no objection to his being presented to
me.”

At this moment the usher on duty opened the door.

“Monsieur the Minister of the Interior is in the blue salon. He has only
one word to say to his excellency. Monsieur the Prefect of Police is
still waiting downstairs, in the gallery.”

“Very well,” said the duke, “I am coming. But I should like first to
finish the matter of this costume. Let us see--friend, what’s your
name--what are we deciding upon for these ruffs? Au revoir, doctor.
There is nothing to be done, is there, except to continue the pills?”

“Continue the pills,” said Jenkins, bowing; and he left the room beaming
with delight at the two pieces of good fortune which were befalling him
at the same time--the honour of entertaining the duke and the pleasure
of obliging his dear Nabob. In the antechamber, the crowd of petitioners
through which he passed was still more numerous than at his entry;
newcomers had joined those who had been patiently waiting from the
first, others were mounting the staircase, with busy look and very pale,
and in the courtyard the carriages continued to arrive, and to range
themselves on ranks in a circle, gravely, solemnly, while the question
of the sleeve ruffs was being discussed upstairs with not less
solemnity.

“To the club,” said Jenkins to his coachman.

The brougham bowled along the quays, recrossed the bridges, reached the
Place de la Concorde, which already no longer wore the same aspect as an
hour earlier. The fog was lifting in the direction of the Garde-Meuble
and the Greek temple of the Madeleine, allowing to be dimly
distinguished here and there the white plume of a jet of water, the
arcade of a palace, the upper portion of a statue, the tree-clumps of
the Tuileries, grouped in chilly fashion near the gates. The veil, not
raised, but broken in places, disclosed fragments of horizon; and on the
avenue which leads to the Arc de Triomphe could be seen brakes passing
at full trot laden with coachmen and jobmasters, dragoons of the
Empress, fuglemen bedizened with lace and covered with furs, going two
by two in long files with a jangling of bits and spurs, and the snorting
of fresh horses, the whole lighted by a sun still invisible, the light
issuing from the misty atmosphere, and here and there withdrawing into
it again as if offering a fleeting vision of the morning luxury of that
quarter of the town.

Jenkins alighted at the corner of the Rue Royale. From top to bottom of
the great gambling house the servants were passing to and fro, shaking
the carpets, airing the rooms where the fume of cigars still hung about
and heaps of fine glowing ashes were crumbling away at the back of the
hearths, while on the green tables, still vibrant with the night’s play,
there stood burning a few silver candlesticks whose flames rose straight
in the wan light of day. The noise, the coming and going, ceased at
the third floor, where sundry members of the club had their apartments.
Among them was the Marquis de Monpavon, whose abode Jenkins was now on
his way to visit.

“What! It is you, doctor? The devil take it! What is the time then? I’m
not visible.”

“Not even for the doctor?”

“Oh, for nobody. Question of etiquette, _mon cher_. No matter, come in
all the same. You’ll warm your feet for a moment while Francis finishes
doing my hair.”

Jenkins entered the bed-chamber, a banal place like all furnished
apartments, and moved towards the fire on which there were set to
heat curling-tongs of all sizes, while in the contiguous laboratory,
separated from the room by a curtain of Algerian tapestry, the Marquis
de Monpavon gave himself up to the manipulations of his valet. Odours of
patchouli, of cold-cream, of hartshorn, and of singed hair escaped from
the part of the room which was shut off, and from time to time, when
Francis came to fetch a curling-iron, Jenkins caught sight of a huge
dressing-table laden with a thousand little instruments of ivory, and
mother-of-pearl, with steel files, scissors, puffs, and brushes, with
bottles, with little trays, with cosmetics, labelled and arranged
methodically in groups and lines; and amid all this display, awkward and
already shaky, an old man’s hand, shrunken and long, delicately trimmed
and polished about the nails like that of a Japanese painter, which
faltered about among this fine hardware and doll’s china.

While continuing the process of making up his face, the longest, the
most complicated of his morning occupations, Monpavon chatted with the
doctor, told of his little ailments, and the good effect of the _pills_.
They made him young again, he said. And at a distance, thus, without
seeing him, one would have taken him for the Duc de Mora, to such
a degree had he usurped his manner of speech. There were the same
unfinished phrases, ended by “ps, ps, ps,” muttered between the teeth,
expressions like “What’s its name?” “Who was it?” constantly thrown into
what he was saying, a kind of aristocratic stutter, fatigued, listless,
wherein you might perceive a profound contempt for the vulgar art of
speech. In the society of which the duke was the centre, every one
sought to imitate that accent, those disdainful intonations with an
affectation of simplicity.

Jenkins, finding the sitting rather long, had risen to take his
departure.

“Adieu, I must be off. We shall see you at the Nabob’s?”

“Yes, I intend to be there for luncheon. Promised to bring him--what’s
his name. Who was it? What? You know, for our big affair--ps, ps, ps.
Were it not for that, should gladly stay away. Real menagerie, that
house.”

The Irishman, despite his benevolence, agreed that the society was
rather mixed at his friend’s. But then! One could hardly blame him for
it. The poor fellow, he knew no better.

“Neither knows nor is willing to learn,” remarked Monpavon with
bitterness. “Instead of consulting people of experience--ps, ps,
ps--first sponger that comes along. Have you seen the horses that Bois
l’Hery has persuaded him to buy? Absolute rubbish those animals. And he
paid twenty thousand francs for them. We may wager that Bois l’Hery got
them for six thousand.”

“Oh, for shame--a nobleman!” said Jenkins, with the indignation of a
lofty soul refusing to believe in baseness.

Monpavon continued, without seeming to hear:

“All that because the horses came from Mora’s stable.”

“It is true that the dear Nabob’s heart is very full of the duke. I am
about to make him very happy, therefore, when I inform him----”

The doctor paused, embarrassed.

“When you inform him of what, Jenkins?”

Somewhat abashed, Jenkins had to confess that he had obtained permission
from his excellency to present to him his friend Jansoulet. Scarcely
had he finished his sentence before a tall spectre, with flabby face
and hair and whiskers diversely coloured, bounded from the dressing-room
into the chamber, with his two hands folding round a fleshless but very
erect neck a dressing-gown of flimsy silk with violet spots, in which he
was wrapped like a sweetmeat in its paper. The most striking thing about
this mock-heroic physiognomy was a large curved nose all shiny with cold
cream, and an eye alive, keen, too young, too bright, for the heavy and
wrinkled eyelid which covered it. Jenkins’s patients all had that eye.

Monpavon must indeed have been deeply moved to show himself thus devoid
of all prestige. In point of fact, with white lips and a changed voice
he addressed the doctor quickly, without the lisp this time, and in a
single outburst:

“Come now, _mon cher_, no tomfoolery between us, eh? We are both met
before the same dish, but I leave you your share. I intend that you
shall leave me mine.”

And Jenkins’s air of astonishment did not make him pause. “Let this be
said once for all. I have promised the Nabob to present him to the duke,
just as, formerly, I presented you. Do not mix yourself up, therefore,
with what concerns me alone.”

Jenkins laid his hand on his heart, protested his innocence. He had
never had any intention. Certainly Monpavon was too intimate a friend of
the duke, for any other--How could he have supposed?

“I suppose nothing,” said the old nobleman, calmer but still cold.
“I merely desired to have a very clear explanation with you on this
subject.”

The Irishman extended a widely opened hand.

“My dear marquis, explanations are always clear between men of honour.”

“Honour is a big word, Jenkins. Let us say people of deportment--that
suffices.”

And that deportment, which he invoked as the supreme guide of conduct,
recalling him suddenly to the sense of his ludicrous situation, the
marquis offered one finger to his friend’s demonstrative shake of the
hand, and passed back with dignity behind his curtain, while the other
left, in haste to resume his round.

What a magnificent clientele he had, this Jenkins! Nothing but princely
mansions, heated staircases, laden with flowers at every landing,
upholstered and silky alcoves, where disease was transformed into
something discreet, elegant, where nothing suggested that brutal hand
which throws on a bed of pain those who only cease to work in order to
die. They were not in any true speech, sick people, these clients of
the Irish doctor. They would have been refused admission to a hospital.
Their organs not possessing even strength to give them a shock, the seat
of their malady was to be discovered nowhere, and the doctor, as he bent
over them, might have sought in vain the throb of any suffering in those
bodies which the inertia, the silence of death already inhabited. They
were worn-out, debilitated people, anaemics, exhausted by an absurd
life, but who found it so good still that they fought to have it
prolonged. And the Jenkins pills became famous precisely by reason of
that lash of the whip which they gave to jaded existences.

“Doctor, I beseech you, let me be fit to go to the ball this evening!”
 the young woman would say, prostrate on her lounge, and whose voice was
reduced to a breath.

“You shall go, my dear child.”

And she went; and never had she looked more beautiful.

“Doctor, at all costs, though it should kill me, to-morrow morning I
must be at the Cabinet Council.”

He was there, and carried away from it in a triumph of eloquence and of
ambitious diplomacy.

Afterward--oh, afterward, if you please! But no matter! To their
last day Jenkins’s clients went about, showed themselves, cheated the
devouring egotism of the crowd. They died on their feet, as became men
and women of the world.

After a thousand peregrinations in the Chaussee d’Antin and the
Champs-Elysees, after having visited every millionaire or titled
personage in the Faubourg Saint Honore, the fashionable doctor arrived
at the corner of the Cours-la-Reine and the Rue Francois I., before a
house with a rounded front, which occupied the angle on the quay, and
entered an apartment on the ground floor which resembled in nowise those
through which he had been passing since morning. From the threshold,
tapestries covering the wall, windows of old stained glass with strips
of lead cutting across a discrete and composite light, a gigantic saint
in carved wood which fronted a Japanese monster with protruding eyes
and a back covered with delicate scales like tiles, indicated the
imaginative and curious taste of an artist. The little page who answered
the door held in leash an Arab greyhound larger than himself.

“Mme. Constance is at mass,” he said, “and Mademoiselle is in the studio
quite alone. We have been at work since six o’clock this morning,” added
the child with a rueful yawn which the dog caught on the wing, making
him open wide his pink mouth with its sharp teeth.

Jenkins, whom we have seen enter with so much self-possession the
chamber of the Minister of State, trembled a little as he raised the
curtain masking the door of the studio which had been left open. It was
a splendid sculptor’s studio, the front of which, on the street corner,
semi-circular in shape, gave the room one whole wall of glass, with
pilasters at the sides, a large, well-lighted bay, opal-coloured just
then by reason of the fog. More ornate than are usually such work-rooms,
which the stains of the plaster, the boasting-tools, the clay, the
puddles of water generally cause to resemble a stone-mason’s shed, this
one added a touch of coquetry to its artistic purpose. Green plants in
every corner, a few good pictures suspended against the bare wall
and, here and there, resting upon oak brackets, two or three works
of Sebastien Ruys, of which the last, exhibited after his death, was
covered with a piece of black gauze.

The mistress of the house, Felicia Ruys, the daughter of the famous
sculptor and herself already known by two masterpieces, the bust of her
father and that of the Duc de Mora, was standing in the middle of the
studio, occupied in the modelling of a figure. Wearing a tightly fitting
riding-habit of blue cloth with long folds, a fichu of China silk
twisted about her neck like a man’s tie, her black, fine hair caught up
carelessly above the antique modelling of her small head, Felicia was
at work with an extreme earnestness which added to her beauty the
concentration, the intensity which are given to the features by an
attentive and satisfied expression. But that changed immediately upon
the arrival of the doctor.

“Ah, it is you,” said she brusquely, as though awaked from a dream. “The
bell was rung, then? I did not hear it.”

And in the ennui, the lassitude that suddenly took possession of that
adorable face, the only thing that remained expressive and brilliant was
the eyes, eyes in which the factitious gleam of the Jenkins pills was
heightened by the constitutional wildness.

Oh, how the doctor’s voice became humble and condescending as he
answered her:

“So you are quite absorbed in your work, my dear Felicia. Is it
something new that you are at work on there? It seems to me very
pretty.”

He moved towards the rough and still formless model out of which there
was beginning to issue vaguely a group of two animals, one a greyhound
which was scampering at full speed with a rush that was truly
extraordinary.

“The idea of it came to me last night. I began to work it out by
lamplight. My poor Kadour, he sees no fun in it,” said the girl,
glancing with a look of caressing kindness at the greyhound whose paws
the little page was endeavouring to place apart in order to get the pose
again.

Jenkins remarked in a fatherly way that she did wrong to tire herself
thus, and taking her wrist with ecclesiastical precautions:

“Come, I am sure you are feverish.”

At the contact of his hand with her own, Felicia made a movement almost
of repulsion.

“No, no, leave me alone. Your pills can do nothing for me. When I do not
work I am bored. I am bored to death, to extinction; my thoughts are the
colour of that water which flows over yonder, brackish and heavy. To be
commencing life, and to be disgusted with it! It is hard. I am reduced
to the point of envying my poor Constance, who passes her days in
her chair, without opening her mouth, but smiling to herself over her
memories of the past. I have not even that, I, happy remembrances to
muse upon. I have only work--work!”

As she talked she went on modelling furiously, now with the
boasting-tool, now with her fingers, which she wiped from time to time
on a little sponge placed on the wooden platform which supported the
group; so that her complaints, her melancholies, inexplicable in the
mouth of a girl of twenty which, in repose, had the purity of a Greek
smile, seemed uttered at random and addressed to no one in particular.

Jenkins, however, appeared disturbed by them, troubled, despite the
evident attention which he gave to the work of the artist, or rather to
the artist herself, to the triumphant grace of this girl whom her beauty
seemed to have predestined to the study of the plastic arts.

Embarrassed by the admiring gaze which she felt fixed upon her, Felicia
resumed:

“Apropos, I have seen him, you know, your Nabob. Some one pointed him
out to me last Friday at the opera.”

“You were at the opera on Friday?”

“Yes. The duke had sent me his box.”

Jenkins changed colour.

“I persuaded Constance to go with me. It was the first time for
twenty-five years since her farewell performance, that she had been
inside the Opera-House. It made a great impression on her. During the
ballet, especially, she trembled, she beamed, all her old triumphs
sparkled in her eyes. Happy who has emotions like that. A real type,
that Nabob. You will have to bring him to see me. He has a head that it
would amuse me to do.”

“He! Why, he is hideous! You cannot have looked at him carefully.”

“On the contrary, I had a perfect view. He was opposite us. That mask,
as of a white Ethiopian, would be superb in marble. And not vulgar,
in any case. Besides, since he is so ugly as that, you will not be
so unhappy as you were last year when I was doing Mora’s bust. What a
disagreeable face you had, Jenkins, in those days!”

“For ten years of life,” muttered Jenkins in a gloomy voice, “I would
not have that time over again. But you it amuses to behold suffering.”

“You know quite well that nothing amuses me,” said she, shrugging her
shoulders with a supreme impertinence.

Then, without looking at him, without adding another word, she plunged
into one of those dumb activities by which true artists escape from
themselves and from everything that surrounds them.

Jenkins paced a few steps in the studio, much moved, with avowals on
the tip of his tongue which yet dared not put themselves into words. At
length, feeling himself dismissed, he took his hat and walked towards
the door.

“So it is understood. I must bring him to see you.”

“Who?”

“Why, the Nabob. It was you who this very moment----”

“Ah, yes,” remarked the strange person whose caprices were short-lived.
“Bring him if you like. I don’t care, otherwise.”

And her beautiful dejected voice, in which something seemed broken, the
listlessness of her whole personality, said distinctly enough that it
was true, that she cared really for nothing in the world.

Jenkins left the room, extremely troubled, and with a gloomy brow. But,
the moment he was outside, he assumed once more his laughing and cordial
expression, being of those who, in the streets, go masked. The morning
was advancing. The mist, still perceptible in the vicinity of the Seine,
floated now only in shreds and gave a vaporous unsubstantiality to
the houses on the quay, to the river steamers whose paddles remained
invisible, to the distant horizon in which the dome of the Invalides
hung poised like a gilded balloon with a rope that darted sunbeams. A
diffused warmth, the movement in the streets, told that noon was not far
distant, that it would be there directly with the striking of all the
bells.

Before going on to the Nabob’s, Jenkins had, however, one other visit to
make. But he appeared to find it a great nuisance. However, since he had
made the promise! And, resolutely:

“68 Rue Saint-Ferdinand, at the Ternes,” he said, as he sprang into his
carriage.

The address required to be repeated twice to the coachman, Joey, who
was scandalized; the very horse showed a momentary hesitation, as if the
valuable beast and the impeccably clad servant had felt revolt at the
idea of driving out to such a distant suburb, beyond the limited but
so brilliant circle wherein their master’s clients were scattered.
The carriage arrived, all the same, without accident, at the end of a
provincial-looking, unfinished street, and at the last of its buildings,
a house of unfurnished apartments with five stories, which the street
seemed to have despatched forward as a reconnoitring party to discover
whether it might continue on that side isolated as it stood between
vaguely marked-out sites waiting to be built upon or heaped with the
debris of houses broken down, with blocks of freestone, old shutters
lying amid the desolation, mouldy butchers’ blocks with broken hinges
hanging, an immense ossuary of a whole demolished region of the town.

Innumerable placards were stuck above the door, the latter being
decorated by a great frame of photographs white with dust before which
Jenkins paused for a moment as he passed. Had the famous doctor come so
far, then, simply for the purpose of having a photograph taken? It might
have been thought so, judging by the attention with which he stayed
to examine this display, the fifteen or twenty photographs which
represented the same family in different poses and actions and with
varying expressions; an old gentleman, with chin supported by a high
white neckcloth, and a leathern portfolio under his arm, surrounded by
a bevy of young girls with their hair in plait or in curls, and with
modest ornaments on their black frocks. Sometimes the old gentleman had
posed with but two of his daughters; or perhaps one of those young and
pretty profile figures stood out alone, the elbow resting upon a broken
column, the head bowed over a book in a natural and easy pose. But, in
short, it was always the same air with variations, and within the glass
frame there was no gentleman save the old gentleman with the white
neckcloth, nor other feminine figures that those of his numerous
daughters.

“Studios upstairs, on the fifth floor,” said a line above the frame.
Jenkins sighed, measured with his eye the distance that separated the
ground from the little balcony up there in the clouds, then he decided
to enter. In the corridor he passed a white neckcloth and a majestic
leathern portfolio, evidently the old gentleman of the photographic
exhibition. Questioned, this individual replied that M. Maranne did
indeed live on the fifth floor. “But,” he added, with an engaging smile,
“the stories are not lofty.” Upon this encouragement the Irishman began
to ascend a narrow and quite new staircase with landings no larger than
a step, only one door on each floor, and badly lighted windows through
which could be seen a gloomy, ill-paved court-yard and other cage-like
staircases, all empty; one of those frightful modern houses, built
by the dozen by penniless speculators, and having as their worst
disadvantage thin partition walls which oblige all the inhabitants to
live in a phalansterian community.

At this particular time the inconvenience was not great, the fourth and
fifth floors alone happening to be occupied, as though the tenants had
dropped into them from the sky.

On the fourth floor, behind a door with a copper plate bearing the
announcement “M. Joyeuse, Expert in Bookkeeping,” the doctor heard
a sound of fresh laughter, of young people’s chatter, and of romping
steps, which accompanied him to the floor above, to the photographic
establishment.

These little businesses perched away in corners with the air of having
no communication with any outside world are one of the surprises of
Paris. One asks one’s self how the people live who go into these
trades, what fastidious Providence can, for example, send clients to
a photographer lodged on a fifth floor in a nondescript region, well
beyond the Rue Saint-Ferdinand, or books to keep to the accountant
below. Jenkins, as he made this reflection, smiled in pity, then went
straight in as he was invited by the following inscription, “Enter
without knocking.” Alas! the permission was scarcely abused. A tall
young man wearing spectacles, and writing at a small table, with his
legs wrapped in a travelling-rug, rose precipitately to greet the
visitor whom his short sight had prevented him from recognising.

“Good-morning, Andre,” said the doctor, stretching out his loyal hand.

“M. Jenkins!”

“You see, I am good-natured as I have always been. Your conduct towards
us, your obstinacy in persisting in living far away from your parents,
imposed a great reserve on me, for my own dignity’s sake; but your
mother has wept. And here I am.”

While he spoke, he examined the poor little studio, with its bare walls,
its scanty furniture, the brand-new photographic apparatus, the little
Prussian fireplace, new also and never yet used for a fire, all forced
into painfully clear evidence beneath the direct light falling from the
glass roof. The drawn face, the scanty beard of the young man, to whom
the bright colour of his eyes, the narrow height of his forehead,
his long and fair hair thrown backward gave the air of a visionary,
everything was accentuated in the crude light; and also the resolute
will in that clear glance which settled upon Jenkins coldly, and in
advance to all his reasonings, to all his protestations, opposed an
invincible resistance.

But the good Jenkins feigned not to perceive anything of this.

“You know, my dear Andre, since the day when I married your mother I
have regarded you as my son. I looked forward to leaving you my practice
and my patients, to putting your foot in a golden stirrup, happy to see
you following a career consecrated to the welfare of humanity. All at
once, without giving any reason, without taking into any consideration
the effect which such a rupture might well have in the eyes of the
world, you have separated yourself from us, you have abandoned your
studies, renounced your future, in order to launch out into I know not
what eccentric life, engaging in a ridiculous trade, the refuge and the
excuse of all unclassed people.”

“I follow this occupation in order to earn a living. It is bread and
butter in the meantime.”

“In what meantime? While you are waiting for literary glory?”

He glanced disdainfully at the scribbling scattered over the table.

“All that is not serious, you know, and here is what I am come to tell
you. An opportunity presents itself to you, a double-swing door opening
into the future. The Bethlehem Society is founded. The most splendid of
my philanthropic dreams has taken body. We have just purchased a superb
villa at Nanterre for the housing of our first establishment. It is the
care, the management of this house that I have thought of intrusting
to you as to an _alter ego_. A princely dwelling, the salary of the
commander of a division, and the satisfaction of a service rendered to
the great human family. Say one word, and I take you to see the Nabob,
the great-hearted man who defrays the expense of our undertaking. Do you
accept?”

“No,” said the other so curtly that Jenkins was somewhat put out of
countenance.

“Just so. I was prepared for this refusal when I came here. But I am
come nevertheless. I have taken for motto, ‘To do good without hope,’
and I remain faithful to my motto. So then, it is understood you prefer
to the honourable, worthy, and profitable existence which I have just
proposed to you, a life of hazard without aim and without dignity?”

Andre answered nothing, but his silence spoke for him.

“Take care. You know what that decision will involve, a definitive
estrangement, but you have always wanted that. I need not tell you,”
 continued Jenkins, “that to break with me is to break off relations also
with your mother. She and I are one.”

The young man turned pale, hesitated a moment, then said with effort:

“If it please my mother to come to see me here, I shall be delighted,
certainly. But my determination to quit your house, to have no longer
anything in common with you, is irrevocable.”

“And will you at least say why?”

He made a negative sign; he would not say.

For once the Irishman felt a genuine impulse of anger. His whole
face assumed a cunning, savage expression which would have very much
astonished those that only knew the good and loyal Jenkins; but he took
good care not to push further an explanation which he feared perhaps as
much as he desired it.

“Adieu,” said he, half turning his head on the threshold. “And never
apply to us.”

“Never,” replied his stepson in a firm voice.

This time, when the doctor had said to Joey, “Place Vendome,” the horse,
as though he had understood that they were going to the Nabob’s, gave a
proud shake to his glittering curb-chains, and the brougham set off at
full speed, transforming each axle of its wheels into sunshine. “To
come so far to get a reception like that! A celebrity of the time to be
treated thus by that Bohemian! One may try indeed to do good!” Jenkins
gave vent to his anger in a long monologue of this character, then
suddenly rousing himself, exclaimed, “Ah, bah!” and what anxiety there
was remaining on his brow quickly vanished on the pavement of the Place
Vendome. Noon was striking everywhere in the sunshine. Issued forth from
behind its curtain of mist, luxurious Paris, awake and on its feet,
was commencing its whirling day. The shop-windows of the Rue de la
Paix shone brightly. The mansions of the square seemed to be ranging
themselves haughtily for the receptions of the afternoon; and, right at
the end of the Rue Castiglione with its white arcades, the Tuileries,
beneath a fine burst of winter sunshine, raised shivering statues, pink
with cold, amid the stripped trees.



A LUNCHEON IN THE PLACE VENDOME

There were scarcely more than a score of persons that morning in the
Nabob’s dining-room, a dining-room in carved oak, supplied the previous
evening as it were by some great upholsterer, who at the same stroke had
furnished these suites of four drawing-rooms of which you caught sight
through an open doorway, the hangings on the ceiling, the objects of
art, the chandeliers, even the very plate on the sideboards and the
servants who were in attendance. It was obviously the kind of interior
improvised the moment he was out of the railway-train by a gigantic
_parvenu_ in haste to enjoy. Although around the table there was no
trace of any feminine presence, no bright frock to enliven it, its
aspect was yet not monotonous, thanks to the dissimilarity, the oddness
of the guests, people belonging to every section of society, specimens
of humanity detached from all races, in France, in Europe, in the entire
globe, from the top to the bottom of the social ladder. To begin with,
the master of the house--a kind of giant, tanned, burned by the sun,
saffron-coloured, with head in his shoulders. His nose, which was short
and lost in the puffiness of his face, his woolly hair massed like a
cap of astrakhan above a low and obstinate forehead, and his bristly
eyebrows with eyes like those of an ambushed chapard gave him the
ferocious aspect of a Kalmuck, of some frontier savage living by war and
rapine. Fortunately the lower part of the face, the fleshy and strong
lip which was lightened now and then by a smile adorable in its
kindness, quite redeemed, by an expression like that of a St. Vincent de
Paul, this fierce ugliness, this physiognomy so original that it was
no longer vulgar. An inferior extraction, however, betrayed itself yet
again by the voice, the voice of a Rhone waterman, raucous and thick,
in which the southern accent became rather uncouth than hard, and by two
broad and short hands, hairy at the back, square and nailless fingers
which, laid on the whiteness of the table-cloth, spoke of their past
with an embarrassing eloquence. Opposite him, on the other side of the
table at which he was one of the habitual guests, was seated the Marquis
de Monpavon, but a Monpavon presenting no resemblance to the painted
spectre of whom we had a glimpse in the last chapter. He was now a
haughty man of no particular age, fine majestic nose, a lordly bearing,
displaying a large shirt-front of immaculate linen crackling beneath
the continual effort of the chest to throw itself forward, and bulging
itself out each time with a noise like that made by a white turkey when
it struts in anger, or by a peacock when he spreads his tail. His name
of Monpavon suited him well.

Of great family and of a wealthy stock, but ruined by gambling and
speculation, the friendship of the Duc de Mora had secured him an
appointment as receiver-general in the first class. Unfortunately
his health had not permitted him to retain this handsome
position--well-informed people said his health had nothing to do with
it--and for the last year he had been living in Paris, awaiting his
restoration to health, according to his own account of the matter,
before resuming his post. The same people were confident that he
would never regain it, and that even were it not for certain exalted
influences--However, he was the important personage of the luncheon;
that was clear from the manner in which the servants waited upon him,
and the Nabob consulted him, calling him “Monsieur le Marquis,” as at
the Comedie-Francaise, less almost out of deference than from pride, by
reason of the honour which it reflected upon himself. Full of disdain
for the people around him, M. le Marquis spoke little, in a very
high voice, and as though he were stooping towards those whom he was
honouring with his conversation. From time to time he would throw to the
Nabob across the table a few words enigmatical for all.

“I saw the duke yesterday. He was talking a great deal about you in
connection with that matter. You know, that thing--that business. What
was the name of it?”

“You really mean it? He spoke of me to you?” And the good Nabob, quite
proud, would look around him with movements of the head that were
supremely laughable, or perhaps assume the contemplative air of a
devotee who should hear the name of Our Lord pronounced.

“His excellency would have pleasure in seeing you take up the--ps, ps,
ps--the thing.”

“He told you so?”

“Ask the governor if he did not--heard it like myself.”

The person who was called the governor--Paganetti, to give him his
real name--was a little, expressive man, constantly gesticulating and
fatiguing to behold, so many were the different expressions which his
face would assume in the course of a single minute. He was managing
director of the Territorial Bank of Corsica, a vast financial
enterprise, and had now come to the house for the first time, introduced
by Monpavon; he occupied accordingly a place of honour. On the other
side of the Nabob was an old gentleman, buttoned up to the chin in a
frock-coat having a straight collar without lapels, like an Oriental
tunic, his face slashed by a thousand little bloodshot veins and wearing
a white moustache of military cut. It was Brahim Bey, the most valiant
colonel of the Regency of Tunis, aide-de-camp of the former Bey who had
made the fortune of Jansoulet. The glorious exploits of this warrior
showed themselves written in wrinkles, in blemishes wrought by
debauchery upon the nerveless under-lip that hung as it were relaxed,
and upon his eyes without lashes, inflamed and red. It was a head such
as one may see in the dock at certain criminal trials that are held with
closed doors. The other guests were seated pell-mell, just as they had
happened to arrive or to find themselves, for the house was open to
everybody, and the table was laid every morning for thirty persons.

There were present the manager of the theatre financed by the Nabob,
Cardailhac, renowned for his wit almost as much as for his insolvencies,
a marvellous carver who, while he was engaged in severing the limbs of
a partridge, would prepare one of his witticisms and deposit it with
a wing upon the plate which was presented to him. He worked up his
witticisms instead of improvising them, and the new fashion of serving
meats, _a la Russe_ and carved beforehand, had been fatal to him by its
removal of all excuse for a preparatory silence. Consequently it was the
general remark that his vogue was on the decline. Parisian, moreover,
a dandy to the finger tips, and, as he himself was wont to boast, “with
not one particle of superstition in his whole body,” a characteristic
which permitted him to give very piquant details concerning the ladies
of his theatre to Brahim Bey--who listened to him as one turns over the
pages of a naughty book--and to talk theology to the young priest who
was his nearest neighbour, a curate of some little southern village,
lean and with a complexion sunburnt till it matched the cloth of his
cassock in colour, with fiery patches above the cheek-bones, and the
pointed, forward-pushing nose of the ambitious man, who would remark
to Cardailhac very loudly, in a tone of protection and sacerdotal
authority:

“We are quite pleased with M. Guizot. He is doing very well--very well.
It is a conquest for the Church.”

Seated next this pontiff, with a black neck-band, old Schwalbach, the
famous picture-dealer, displayed his prophet’s beard, tawny in places
like a dirty fleece, his three overcoats tinged by mildew, all that
loose and negligent attire for which he was excused in the name of art,
and because, in a time when the mania for picture galleries had already
begun to cause millions to change hands, it was the proper thing to
entertain the man who was the best placed for the conduct of these
absurdly vain transactions. Schwalbach did not speak, contenting himself
with gazing around him through his enormous monocle, shaped like a
hand magnifying-glass, and with smiling in his beard over the singular
neighbours made by this unique assembly. Thus it happened that M. de
Monpavon had quite close to him--and it was a sight to watch how the
disdainful curve of his nose was accentuated at each glance in that
direction--the singer Garrigou, a fellow-countryman of Jansoulet, a
distinguished ventriloquist who sang Figaro in the dialect of the south,
and had no equal in his imitations of animals. Just beyond, Cabassu,
another compatriot, a little short and dumpy man, with the neck of a
bull and the biceps of a statue by Michel Angelo, who suggested at
once a Marseilles hairdresser and the strong man at a fair, a masseur,
pedicure, manicure, and something of a dentist, sat with elbows on the
table with the coolness of a charlatan whom one receives in the morning
and knows the little infirmities, the intimate distresses of the abode
in which he chances to find himself. M. Bompain completed this array
of subordinates, all alike in one respect at any rate, Bompain, the
secretary, the steward, the confidential agent, through whose hands the
entire business of the house passed; and it sufficed to observe that
solemnly stupid attitude, that indefinite manner, the Turkish fez placed
awkwardly on a head suggestive of a village school-master, in order to
understand to what manner of people interests like those of the Nabob
had been abandoned.

Finally, to fill the gaps among these figures I have sketched, the
Turkish crowd--Tunisians, Moors, Egyptians, Levantines; and, mingled
with this exotic element, a whole variegated Parisian Bohemia of ruined
nobleman, doubtful traders, penniless journalists, inventors of strange
products, people arrived from the south without a farthing, all the lost
ships needing revictualling, or flocks of birds wandering aimlessly in
the night, which were drawn by this great fortune as by the light of a
beacon. The Nabob admitted this miscellaneous collection of individuals
to his table out of kindness, out of generosity, out of weakness, by
reason of his easy-going manners, joined to an absolute ignorance and
a survival of that loneliness of the exile, of that need for expansion
which, down yonder in Tunis, in his splendid palace of the Bardo, had
caused him to welcome everybody who hailed from France, from the small
tradesman exporting Parisian wares to the famous pianist on tour and the
consul-general himself.

As one listened to those various accents, those foreign intonations,
gruff or faltering, as one gazed upon those widely different
physiognomies, some violent, barbarous, vulgar, others hyper-civilized,
worn, suggestive only of the Boulevard and as it were flaccid, one noted
that the same diversity was evident also among the servants who, some
apparently lads just out of an office, insolent in manner, with heads
of hair like a dentist’s or a bath-attendant’s, busied themselves among
Ethiopians standing motionless and shining like candelabra of black
marble, and it was impossible to say exactly where one was; in any case,
you would never have imagined yourself to be in the Place Vendome, right
in the beating heart and very centre of the life of our modern Paris.
Upon the table there was a like importation of exotic dishes, saffron or
anchovy sauces, spices mixed up with Turkish delicacies, chickens with
fried almonds, and all this taken together with the banality of the
interior, the gilding of the panels, the shrill ringing of the new
bells, gave the impression of a _table d’hote_ in some big hotel
in Smyrna or Calcutta, or of a luxurious dining-saloon on board a
transatlantic liner, the “Pereire” or the “Sinai.”

It might seem that this diversity among the guests--I was about to say
among the passengers--ought to have caused the meal to be animated and
noisy. Far otherwise. They all ate nervously, watching each other out
of eye-corners, and even those most accustomed to society, those who
appeared the most at their ease, had in their glance the wandering look
and the distraction of a fixed idea, a feverish anxiety which caused
them to speak without relevance and to listen without understanding a
word of what was being said to them.

Suddenly the door of the dining-room opened.

“Ah, here comes Jenkins!” exclaimed the Nabob delightedly. “Welcome,
welcome, doctor. How are you, my friend?”

A smile to those around, a hearty shake of his host’s hand, and Jenkins
sat down opposite him, next to Monpavon, before a place at the table
which a servant had just prepared in all haste and without having
received any order, exactly as at a _table d’hote_. Among those
preoccupied and feverish faces, this one at any rate stood out in
contrast by its good humour, its cheerfulness, and that loquacious and
flattering benevolence which makes the Irish in a way the Gascons of
England. And what a splendid appetite! With what heartiness, what ease
of conscience he used his white teeth as he talked!

“Well, Jansoulet, you have read it?”

“What?”

“How, then! you do not know? You have not read what the _Messenger_ says
about you this morning?”

Beneath the dark tan of his cheeks the Nabob blushed like a child, and,
his eyes shining with pleasure:

“Is it possible--the _Messenger_ has spoken of me?”

“Through two columns. How is it that Moessard has not shown it to you?”

“Oh,” put in Moessard modestly, “it was not worth the trouble.”

He was a little journalist, with a fair complexion and smart in his
dress, sufficiently good-looking, but with a face which presented
that worn appearance noticeable as the special mark of waiters in
night-restaurants, actors, and light women, and produced by conventional
grimacing and the wan reflection of gaslight. He was reputed to be the
paid lover of an exiled and profligate queen. The rumour was whispered
around him, and, in his own world, secured him an envied and despicable
position.

Jansoulet insisted on reading the article, impatient to know what had
been said of him. Unfortunately Jenkins had left his copy at the duke’s.

“Let some one go fetch me a _Messenger_ quickly,” said the Nabob to the
servant behind him.

Moessard intervened.

“It is needless. I must have the thing on me somewhere.”

And with the absence of ceremony of the tavern _habitue_, of the
reporter who scribbles his paragraph with his glass beside him, the
journalist drew out a pocket-book, crammed full of notes, stamped
papers, newspaper cuttings, notes written on glazed paper with crests,
which he proceeded to litter over the table, pushing away his plate in
order to search for the proof of his article.

“There you are.” He passed it over to Jansoulet; but Jenkins besought
him:

“No, no; read it aloud.”

The company having echoed the request in chorus, Moessard took back his
proof and commenced to read in a loud voice, “The Bethlehem Society
and Mr. Bernard Jansoulet,” a long dithyramb in favour of artificial
lactation, written from notes made by Jenkins, which were recognisable
through certain fine phrases much affected by the Irishman, such as “the
long martyrology of childhood,” “the sordid traffic in the breast,” “the
beneficent nanny-goat as foster-mother,” and finishing, after a pompous
description of the splendid establishment at Nanterre, with a eulogy
of Jenkins and a glorification of Jansoulet: “O Bernard Jansoulet,
benefactor of childhood!” It was a sight to see the vexed, scandalized
faces of the guests. What an intriguer was this Moessard! What an
impudent piece of sycophantry! And the same envious, disdainful smile
quivered on every mouth. And the deuce of it was that a man had to
applaud, to appear charmed, the master of the house not being weary as
yet of incense, and taking everything very seriously, both the article
and the applause it provoked. His big face shone during the reading.
Often, down yonder, far away, had he dreamed a dream of having his
praises sung like this in the newspapers of Paris, of being somebody
in that society, the first among all, on which the entire world has its
eyes fixed as on the bearer of a torch. Now, that dream was becoming
a reality. He gazed upon all these people seated at his board, the
sumptuous dessert, this panelled dining-room as high, certainly, as the
church of his native village; he listened to the dull murmur of Paris
rolling along in its carriages and treading the pavements beneath his
windows, with the intimate conviction that he was about to become
an important piece in that active and complicated machine. And then,
through the atmosphere of physical well-being produced by the meal,
between the lines of that triumphant vindication, by an effect of
contrast, he beheld unfold itself his own existence, his youth,
adventurous as it was sad, the days without bread, the nights without
shelter. Then suddenly, the reading having come to an end, his joy
overflowing in one of those southern effusions which force thought
into speech, he cried, beaming upon his guests with that frank and
thick-lipped smile of his:

“Ah, my friends, my dear friends, if you could know how happy I am! What
pride I feel!”

Scarce six weeks had passed since he had landed in France. Excepting two
or three compatriots, those whom he thus addressed as his friends were
but the acquaintances of a day, and that through his having lent
them money. This sudden expansion, therefore, appeared sufficiently
extraordinary; but Jansoulet, too much under the sway of emotion to
notice anything, continued:

“After what I have just heard, when I behold myself here in this
great Paris, surrounded by all its wealth of illustrious names, of
distinguished intellects, and then call up the remembrance of my
father’s booth! For I was born in a booth. My father used to sell old
nails at the corner of a boundary stone in the Bourg-Saint-Andeol. If we
had bread in the house every day and stew every Sunday it was the most
we had to expect. Ask Cabassu whether it was not so. He knew me in those
days. He can tell you whether I am not speaking the truth. Oh, yes, I
have known what poverty is.” He threw back his head with an impulse
of pride as he savoured the odour of truffles diffused through the
suffocating atmosphere. “I have known it, and the real thing too, and
for a long time. I have been cold. I have known hunger--genuine hunger,
remember--the hunger that intoxicates, that wrings the stomach, sets
circles dancing in your head, deprives you of sight as if the inside of
your eyes was being gouged out with an oyster-knife. I have passed days
in bed for want of an overcoat to go out in; fortunate at that when
I had a bed, which was not always. I have sought my bread from every
trade, and that bread cost me such bitter toil, it was so black, so
tough, that in my mouth I keep still the flavour of its acrid and mouldy
taste. And thus until I was thirty. Yes, my friends, at thirty years
of age--and I am not yet fifty--I was still a beggar, without a sou,
without a future, with the remorseful thought of the poor old mother,
become a widow, who was half-dying of hunger away yonder in her booth,
and to whom I had nothing to give.”

Around this Amphitryon recounting the story of his evil days the faces
of his hearers expressed curiosity. Some appeared shocked, Monpavon
especially. For him, this exposure of rags was in execrable taste, an
absolute breach of good manners. Cardailhac, sceptical and dainty, an
enemy to scenes of emotion, with face set as if it were hypnotized,
sliced a fruit on the end of his fork into wafers as thin as cigarette
papers.

The governor exhibited, on the contrary, a flatly admiring demeanour,
uttering exclamations of amazement and compassion; while, not far away,
in singular contrast, Brahmin Bey, the thunderbolt of war, upon whom
this reading followed by a lecture after a heavy meal had had the effect
of inducing a restorative slumber, slept with his mouth open beneath his
white moustache, his face congested by his collar, which had slipped
up. But the most general expression was one of indifference and boredom.
What could it matter to them, I ask you; what had they to do with
Jansoulet’s childhood in the Bourg-Saint-Andeol, the trials he had
endured, the way in which he had trudged his path? They had not come to
listen to idle nonsense of that kind. Airs of interest falsely affected,
glances that counted the ovals of the ceiling or the bread-crumbs on the
table-cloth, mouths compressed to stifle a yawn, betrayed, accordingly,
the general impatience provoked by this untimely story. Yet he himself
seemed not to weary of it. He found pleasure in the recital of his
sufferings past, even as the mariner safe in port, remembering his
voyagings over distant seas, and the perils and the great shipwrecks.
There followed the story of his good luck, the prodigious chance that
had placed him suddenly upon the road to fortune. “I was wandering about
the quays of Marseilles with a comrade as poverty-stricken as myself,
who is become rich, he also, in the service of the Bey, and, after
having been my chum, my partner, is now my most cruel enemy. I may
mention his name, _pardi_! It is sufficiently well known--Hemerlingue.
Yes, gentlemen, the head of the great banking house. ‘Hemerlingue &
Co.’ had not in those days even the wherewithal to buy a pennyworth of
_clauvisses_ on the quay. Intoxicated by the atmosphere of travel that
one breathes down there, the idea came into our minds of starting out,
of going to seek our livelihood in some country where the sun shines,
since the lands of mist were so inhospitable to us. But where to go? We
did what sailors sometimes do in order to decide in what low hole they
will squander their pay. You fix a scrap of paper on the brim of your
hat. You make the hat spin on a walking-stick; when it stops spinning
you follow the pointer. In our case the paper needle pointed towards
Tunis. A week later I landed at Tunis with half a louis in my pocket,
and I came back to-day with twenty-five millions!”

An electric shock passed round the table; there was a gleam in every
eye, even in those of the servants. Cardailhac said, “Phew!” Monpavon’s
nose descended to common humanity.

“Yes, my boys, twenty-five millions in liquidated cash, without speaking
of all that I have left in Tunis, of my two palaces at the Bardo, of my
vessels in the harbour of La Goulette, of my diamonds, of my precious
stones, which are worth certainly more than the double. And you know,”
 he added, with his kindly smile and in his hoarse, plebeian voice, “when
that is done there will still be more.”

The whole company rose to its feet, galvanized.

“Bravo! Ah, bravo!”

“Splendid!”

“Deuced clever--deuced clever!”

“Now, that is something worth talking about.”

“A man like him ought to be in the Chamber.”

“He will be, _per Bacco_! I answer for it,” said the governor in a
piercing voice; and in the transport of admiration, not knowing how to
express his enthusiasm, he seized the fat, hairy hand of the Nabob and
on an unreflective impulse raised it to his lips. They are demonstrative
in his country. Everybody was standing up; no one sat down again.

Jansoulet, beaming, had risen in his turn, and, throwing down his
serviette: “Let us go and have some coffee,” he said.

A glad tumult immediately spread through the salons, vast apartments in
which light, decoration, sumptuousness, were represented by gold alone.
It seemed to fall from the ceiling in blinding rays, it oozed from
the walls in mouldings, sashes, framings of every kind. A little of it
remained on your hands if you moved a piece of furniture or opened a
window; and the very hangings, dipped in this Pactolus, kept on their
straight folds the rigidity, the sparkle of a metal. But nothing bearing
the least personal stamp, nothing intimate, nothing thought out. The
monotonous luxury of the furnished flat. And there was a re-enforcement
of this impression of a moving camp, of a merely provisory home, in the
suggestion of travel which hovered like an uncertainty or a menace over
this fortune derived from far-off sources.

Coffee having been served, in the Eastern manner, with all its grounds,
in little cups filigreed with silver, the guests grouped themselves
round, making haste to drink, scalding themselves, keeping watchful eyes
on each other and especially on the Nabob as they looked out for the
favourable moment to spring upon him, draw him into some corner of those
immense rooms, and at length negotiate their loan. For this it was that
they had been awaiting for two hours; this was the object of their visit
and the fixed idea which gave them during the meal that absent, falsely
attentive manner. But here no more constraint, no more pretence. In that
peculiar social world of theirs it is of common knowledge that in the
Nabob’s busy life the hour of coffee remains the only time free for
private audiences, and each desiring to profit by it, all having come
there in order to snatch a handful of wool from the golden fleece
offered them with so much good nature, people no longer talk, they no
longer listen, every man is absorbed in his own errand of business.

It is the good Jenkins who begins. Having drawn his friend Jansoulet
aside into a recess, he submits to him the estimates for the house at
Nanterre. A big purchase, indeed! A cash price of a hundred and fifty
thousand francs, then considerable expenses in connection with getting
the place into proper order, the personal staff, the bedding, the
nanny-goats for milking purposes, the manager’s carriage, the omnibuses
going to meet the children coming by every train. A great deal of money.
But how well off and comfortable they will be there, those dear little
things! what a service rendered to Paris, to humanity! The Government
cannot fail to reward with a bit of red ribbon so disinterested, so
philanthropic a devotion. “The Cross, on the 15th of August.” With these
magic words Jenkins will obtain everything he desires. In his merry,
guttural voice, which seems always as though it were hailing a boat in a
fog, the Nabob calls, “Bompain!”

The man in the fez, quickly leaving the liqueur-stand, walks
majestically across the room, whispers, moves away, and returns with
an inkstand and a counterfoil check-book from which the slips detach
themselves and fly away of their own accord. A fine thing, wealth!
To sign a check on his knee for two hundred thousand francs troubles
Jansoulet no more than to draw a louis from his pocket.

Furious, with noses in their cups, the others watch this little scene
from a distance. Then, as Jenkins takes his departure, bright, smiling,
with a nod to the various groups, Monpavon seizes the governor: “Now is
our chance.” And both, springing on the Nabob, drag him off towards a
couch, oblige him almost forcibly to sit down, press upon each side of
him with a ferocious little laugh that seems to signify, “What shall we
do with him now?” Get the money out of him, the largest amount possible.
It is needed, to set afloat once more the Territorial Bank, for years
lain aground on a sand-bank, buried to the very top of its masts. A
superb operation, this re-flotation, if these two gentlemen are to be
believed, for the submerged bank is full of ingots, of precious things,
of the thousand various forms of wealth of a new country discussed by
everybody and known by none.

In founding this unique establishment, Paganetti of Porto-Vecchio had
as his aim to monopolize the commercial development of the whole of
Corsica: iron mines, sulphur mines, copper mines, marble quarries,
coral fisheries, oyster beds, water ferruginous and sulphurous, immense
forests of thuya, of cork-oak, and to establish for the facilitation of
this development a network of railways over the island, with a service
of packet-boats in addition. Such is the gigantic undertaking to which
he has devoted himself. He has sunk considerable capital in it, and it
is the new-comer, the workman of the last hour, who will gain the whole
profit.

While with his Italian accent and violent gestures the Corsican
enumerates the “splendours” of the affair, Monpavon, haughty, and with
an air calculated to command confidence, nods his head approvingly with
conviction, and from time to time, when he judges the moment propitious,
throws into the conversation the name of the Duc de Mora, which never
fails in its effect on the Nabob.

“Well, in short, how much would be required?”

“Millions,” says Monpavon boldly, in the tone of a man who would have
no difficulty in addressing himself elsewhere. “Yes, millions; but the
enterprise is magnificent. And, as his excellency was saying, it would
provide even a political position. Just think! In that district without
a metallic currency, you might become counsellor-general, deputy.” The
Nabob gives a start. And the little Paganetti, who feels the bait quiver
on his hook: “Yes, deputy. You will be that whenever I choose. At a sign
from me all Corsica is at your disposal.” Then he launches out into an
astonishing improvisation, counting the votes which he controls, the
cantons which will obey his call. “You bring me your capital. I--I give
you an entire people.” The cause is gained.

“Bompain, Bompain!” calls the Nabob, roused to enthusiasm. He has now
but one fear, that is lest the thing escape him; and in order to bind
Paganetti, who has not concealed his need of money, he hastens to
effect the payment of a first instalment to the Territorial bank. New
appearance of the man in red breeches with the check-book which he
carries clasped gravely to his chest, like a choir-boy moving the Gospel
from one side to the other. New inscription of Jansoulet’s signature
upon a slip, which the governor pockets with a negligent air and which
operates on his person a sudden transformation. The Paganetti who was
so humble and spiritless just now, goes away with the assurance of a
man worth four hundred thousand francs, while Monpavon, carrying it even
higher than usual, follows after him in his steps, and watches over him
with a more than paternal solicitude.

“That’s a good piece of business done,” says the Nabob to himself. “I
can drink my coffee now.”

But the borrowers are waiting for him to pass. The most prompt, the most
adroit, is Cardailhac, the manager, who lays hold of him and bears him
off into a side-room.

“Let us have a little talk, old friend. I must explain to you the
situation of affairs in connection with our theatre.” Very complicated,
doubtless, the situation; for here is M. Bompain who advances once more,
and there are the slips of blue paper flying away from the check-book.
Whose turn now? There is the journalist Moessard coming to draw his
pay for the article in the _Messenger_; the Nabob will find out what it
costs to have one’s self called “benefactor of childhood” in the morning
papers. There is the parish priest from the country who demands funds
for the restoration of his church, and takes checks by assault with the
brutality of a Peter the Hermit. There is old Schwalbach coming up with
nose in his beard and winking mysteriously.

“Sh! He had found a pearl for monsieur’s gallery, an Hobbema from the
collection of the Duc de Mora. But several people are after it. It will
be difficult--”

“I must have it at any price,” says the Nabob, hooked by the name of
Mora. “You understand, Schwalbach. I must have this Hobbema. Twenty
thousand francs for you if you secure it.”

“I shall do my utmost, M. Jansoulet.”

And the old rascal calculates, as he goes away, that the twenty thousand
of the Nabob added to the ten thousand promised him by the duke if he
gets rid of his picture for him, will make a nice little profit for
himself.

While these fortunate ones follow each other, others look on around,
wild with impatience, biting their nails to the quick, for all are come
on the same errand. From the good Jenkins, who opened the advance, to
the masseur Cabassu, who closes it, all draw the Nabob away to some
room apart. But, however far they lead him down this gallery of
reception-rooms, there is always some indiscreet mirror to reflect the
profile of the host and the gestures of his broad back. That back has
eloquence. Now and then it straightens itself up in indignation.
“Oh, no; that is too much.” Or again it sinks forward with a comical
resignation. “Well, since it must be so.” And always Bompain’s fez in
some corner of the view.

When those are finished, others arrive. They are the small fry who
follow in the wake of the big eaters in the ferocious hunts of the
rivers. There is a continual coming and going through these handsome
white-and-gold drawing rooms, a noise of doors, an established current
of bare-faced and vulgar exploitation attracted from the four corners of
Paris and the suburbs by this gigantic fortune and incredible facility.

For these small sums, these regular distributions, recourse was not had
to the check-book. For such purposes the Nabob kept in one of his
rooms a mahogany chest of drawers, a horrible little piece of furniture
representing the savings of a house porter, the first that Jansoulet had
bought when he had been able to give up living in furnished apartments;
which he had preserved since, like a gambler’s fetish; and the three
drawers of which contained always two hundred thousand francs in cash.
It was to this constant supply that he had recourse on the days of his
large receptions, displaying a certain ostentation in the way in which
he would handle the gold and silver, by great handfuls, thrusting it to
the bottom of his pockets to draw it out thence with the gesture of
a cattle dealer; a certain vulgar way of raising the skirts of his
frock-coat and of sending his hand “to the bottom and into the pile.”
 To-day there must be a terrible void in the drawers of the little chest.

After so many mysterious whispered confabulations, demands more or less
clearly formulated, chance entries and triumphant departures, the last
client having been dismissed, the chest of drawers closed and locked,
the flat in the Place Vendome began to empty in the uncertain light of
the afternoon towards four o’clock, that close of the November days so
exceedingly prolonged afterward by artificial light. The servants were
clearing away the coffee and the raki, and bearing off the open and
half-emptied cigar-boxes. The Nabob, thinking himself alone, gave a sigh
of relief. “Ouf! that’s over.” But no. Opposite him, some one comes out
from a corner that is already dark, and approaches with a letter in his
hand.

Another!

And at once, mechanically, the poor man made that eloquent,
horse-dealer’s gesture of his. Instinctively, also, the visitor showed a
movement of recoil so prompt, so hurt, that the Nabob understood that he
was making a mistake, and took the trouble to examine the young man who
stood before him, simply but correctly dressed, of a dull complexion,
without the least sign of a beard, with regular features, perhaps a
little too serious and fixed for his age, which, aided by his hair of
pale blond colour, curled in little ringlets like a powdered wig, gave
him the appearance of a young deputy of the Commons under Louis XVI, the
head of a Barnave at twenty! This face, although the Nabob beheld it for
the first time, was not absolutely unknown to him.

“What do you desire, monsieur?”

Taking the letter which the young man held out to him, he went to a
window in order to see to read it.

“Te! It is from mamma.”

He said it with so happy an air; that word “mamma” lit up all his face
with so young, so kind a smile, that the visitor, who had been at first
repulsed by the vulgar aspect of this _parvenu_, felt himself filled
with sympathy for him.

In an undertone the Nabob read these few lines written in an awkward
hand, incorrect and shaky, which contrasted with the large glazed
note-paper, with its heading “Chateau de Saint-Romans.”

“My dear son, this letter will be delivered to you by the eldest son of
M. de Gery, the former justice of the peace for Bourg-Saint-Andeol, who
has shown us so much kindness.”

The Nabob broke off his reading.

“I ought to have recognised you, M. de Gery. You resemble your father.
Sit down, I beg of you.”

Then he finished running through the letter. His mother asked him
nothing precise, but, in the name of the services which the de Gery
family had rendered them in former years, she recommended M. Paul to
him. An orphan, burdened with the care of his two young brothers, he had
been called to the bar in the south, and was now coming to Paris to seek
his fortune. She implored Jansoulet to aid him, “for he needed it badly,
poor fellow,” and she signed herself, “Thy mother who pines for thee,
Francoise.”

This letter from his mother, whom he had not seen for six years, those
expressions of the south country of which he could hear the intonations
that he knew so well, that coarse handwriting which sketched for him an
adored face, all wrinkled, scored, and cracked, but smiling beneath its
peasant’s head-dress, had affected the Nabob. During the six weeks
that he had been in France, lost in the whirl of Paris, the business of
getting settled in his new habitation, he had not yet given a thought
to his dear old lady at home; and now he saw all of her again in these
lines. He remained a moment looking at the letter, which trembled in his
heavy fingers.

Then, this emotion having passed:

“M. de Gery,” said he, “I am glad of the opportunity which is about to
permit me to repay to you a little of the kindness which your family has
shown to mine. From to-day, if you consent, I take you into my house.
You are educated, you seem intelligent, you can be of great service
to me. I have a thousand plans, a thousand affairs in hand. I am being
drawn into a crowd of large industrial enterprises. I want some one who
will aid me; represent me at need. I have indeed a secretary, a steward,
that excellent Bompain, but the unfortunate fellow knows nothing of
Paris; he has been, as it were, bewildered ever since his arrival. You
will tell me that you also come straight from the country, but that
does not matter. Well brought up as you are, a southerner, alert and
adaptable, you will quickly pick up the routine of the Boulevard. For
the rest, I myself undertake your education from that point of view. In
a few weeks you will find yourself, I answer for it, as much at home in
Paris as I am.”

Poor man! It was touching to hear him speak of his Parisian habits, and
of his experience; he whose destiny it was to be always a beginner.

“Now, that is understood, is it not? I engage you as secretary. You will
have a fixed salary which we will settle directly, and I shall provide
you with the opportunity to make your fortune rapidly.”

And while de Gery, raised suddenly above all the anxieties of a
newcomer, of one who solicits a favour, of a neophyte, did not move for
fear of awaking from a dream:

“Now,” said the Nabob to him in a gentle voice, “sit down there, next
me, and let us talk a little about mamma.”



MEMOIRS OF AN OFFICE PORTER A MERE GLANCE AT THE TERRITORIAL BANK

I had just finished my frugal morning repast and, as my habit was,
placed the remains of my modest provisions in the board-room safe with a
secret lock, which has served me as a store-cupboard during four years,
almost, that I have been at the Territorial. Suddenly the governor walks
into the offices, with his face all red and eyes inflamed, as though
after a night’s feasting, draws in his breath noisily, and in rude terms
says to me, with his Italian accent:

“But this place stinks, _Moussiou_ Passajon.”

The place did not stink, if you like the word. Only--shall I say
it?--I had ordered a few onions to garnish a knuckle of veal which Mme.
Seraphine had sent down to me, she being the cook on the second floor,
whose accounts I write out for her every evening. I tried to explain the
matter to the governor, but he had flown into a temper, saying that to
his mind there was no sense in poisoning the atmosphere of an office in
that way, and that it was not worth while to maintain premises at a
rent of twelve thousand francs, with eight windows fronting full on the
Boulevard Malesherbes, in order to roast onions in them. I don’t know
what he did not say to me in his passion. For my own part, naturally
I got angry at hearing myself addressed in that insolent manner. It is
surely the least a man can do to be polite with people in his service
whom he does not pay. What the deuce! So I answered him that it was
annoying, in truth, but that if the Territorial Bank paid me what it
owed me, namely, four years’ arrears of salary, _plus_ seven thousand
francs personal advances made by me to the governor for expenses of
cabs, newspapers, cigars, and American grogs on board days, I would go
and eat decently at the nearest cookshop, and should not be reduced to
cooking, in the room where our board was accustomed to sit, a wretched
stew, for which I had to thank the public compassion of female cooks.
Take that!

In speaking thus I had yielded to an impulse of indignation very
excusable in the eyes of any person whatever acquainted with my position
here. Even so, I had said nothing improper and had confined myself
within the limits of language conformable to my age and education. (I
must have mentioned somewhere in the course of these memoirs that of the
sixty-five years I have lived I passed more than thirty as beadle to the
Faculty of Letters in Dijon. Hence my taste for reports and memoirs, and
those ideas of academical style of which traces will be found in many
passages of this lucubration.) I had, then, expressed myself in the
governor’s presence with the most complete reserve, without employing
any one of those terms of abuse to which he is treated by everybody
here, from our two censors--M. de Monpavon, who, every time he comes,
calls him laughingly “Fleur-de-Mazas,” and M. de Bois l’Hery, of the
Trumpet Club, coarse as a groom, who, for adieu, always greets him with,
“To your bedstead, bug!”--to our cashier, whom I have heard repeat a
hundred times, tapping on his big book, “That he has in there enough
to send him to the galleys when he pleases.” Ah, well! All the same,
my simple observation produced an extraordinary effect upon him. The
circles round his eyes became quite yellow, and, trembling with
rage, one of those evil rages of his country, he uttered these words:
“Passajon, you are a blackguard. One word more, and I discharge you!”
 Stupor nailed me to the floor when I heard them. Discharge me--_me!_ and
my four years’ arrears, and my seven thousand francs of money lent!

As though he could read my thought before it was put into words, the
governor replied that all accounts were going to be settled, mine
included. “And as to that,” he added, “summon these gentlemen to my
private room. I have important news to announce to them.”

Upon that, he went into his office, banging the doors.

That devil of a man! In vain you may know him to the core--know him a
liar, a comedian--he manages always to get the better of you with his
stories. My account, mine!--mine! I was so affected by the thought that
my legs seemed to give way beneath me as I went to inform the staff.

According to the regulations, there are twelve of us employed at the
Territorial Bank, including the governor and the handsome Moessard,
manager of _Financial Truth_; but more than half of that number were
wanting. To begin with, since _Truth_ ceased to be issued--it is two
years since its last appearance--M. Moessard has not once set foot in
the place. It seems he moves amid honours and riches, has a queen for
his mistress--a real queen--who gives him all the money he desires. Oh,
what a Babylon, this Paris! The others come from time to time to learn
whether by chance anything new has happened at the bank; and, as nothing
ever has, we remain weeks without seeing them. Four or five faithful
ones, all poor old men like myself, persist in putting in an appearance
regularly every morning at the same hour, from habit, from want of
occupation, not knowing what else to do. Every one, however, busies
himself about things quite foreign to the work of the office. A man must
live, you know. And then, too, one cannot pass the day dragging one’s
self from easy chair to easy chair, from window to window, to look out
of doors (eight windows fronting on the Boulevard). So one tries to do
some work as best one can. I myself, as I have said, keep the accounts
of Mme. Seraphine, and of another cook in the building. Also, I write
my memoirs, which, again, takes a good deal of my time. Our receipt
clerk--one who has not very hard work with us--makes line for a firm
that deals in fishing requisites. Of our two copying-clerks, one,
who writes a good hand, copies plays for a dramatic agency; the other
invents little halfpenny toys which the hawkers sell at street corners
about the time of the New Year, and manages by this means to keep
himself from dying of hunger during all the rest of the year. Our
cashier is the only one who does no outside work. He would believe
his honour lost if he did. He is a very proud man, who never utters a
complaint, and whose one dread is to have the appearance of being in
want of linen. Locked in his office, he is occupied from morning till
evening in the manufacture of shirt-fronts, collars, and cuffs of paper.
In this, he has attained very great skill, and his ever-dazzling linen
would deceive, if it were not that at the least movement, when he
walks, when he sits down, the stuff crackles upon him as though he had a
cardboard box under his waistcoat. Unfortunately all this paper does not
feed him; and he is so thin, has such a mien, that you ask yourself
on what he lives. Between ourselves, I suspect him of paying a visit
sometimes to my store-cupboard. He can do so with ease; for, as cashier,
he has the “word” which opens the safe with the secret lock, and I fancy
that when my back is turned he forages a little among my provisions.

These are certainly very extraordinary, very incredible internal
arrangements for a banking house. It is, however, the mere truth that
I am telling, and Paris is full of financial institutions after the
pattern of ours. Oh, if ever I publish my memoirs! But to take up the
interrupted thread of my story.

When he saw us all collected in his private room, the manager said to us
with solemnity:

“Gentlemen and dear comrades, the time of trials is ended. The
Territorial Bank inaugurates a new phase.”

Upon this he commenced to speak to us of a superb _combinazione_--it is
his favourite word and he pronounces it in such an insinuating manner--a
_combinazione_ into which there was entering this famous Nabob, of whom
all the newspapers are talking. The Territorial Bank was therefore about
to find itself in a position which would enable it to acquit itself of
its obligations to its faithful servants, recognise acts of devotion,
rid itself of useless parasites. This for me, I imagine. And in
conclusion: “Prepare your statements. All accounts will be settled not
later than to-morrow.” Unhappily he has so often soothed us with lying
words, that the effect of his speech was lost. Formerly these
fine promises were always swallowed. At the announcement of a new
_combinazione_, there used to be dancing, weeping for joy in the
offices, and men would embrace each other like shipwrecked sailors
discovering a sail.

Each one would prepare his account for the morrow, as he had said. But
on the morrow, no manager. The day following, still nobody. He had left
town on a little journey.

At length, one day when all would be there, exasperated, putting out our
tongues, maddened by the water which he had brought to our mouths, the
governor would arrive, let himself drop into an easy chair, his head in
his hands, and before one could speak to him: “Kill me,” he would say,
“kill me. I am a wretched impostor. The _combinazione_ has failed. It
has failed, _Pechero!_ the _combinazione_.” And he would cry, sob,
throw himself on his knees, pluck out his hair by handfuls, roll on the
carpet. He would call us by our Christian names, implore us to put an
end to his existence, speak of his wife and children whose ruin he had
consummated. And none of us would have the courage to protest in face of
a despair so formidable. What do I say? One always ended by sympathizing
with him. No, since theatres have existed, never has there been a
comedian of his ability. But to-day, that is all over, confidence is
gone. When he had left, every one shrugged his shoulders. I must admit,
however, that for a moment I had been shaken. That assurance about the
settling of my account, and then the name of the Nabob, that man so
rich----

“You actually believe it, you?” the cashier said to me. “You will be
always innocent, then, my poor Passajon. Don’t disturb yourself. It
will be the same with the Nabob as it was with Moessard’s Queen.” And he
returned to the manufacture of his shirt-fronts.

What he had just said referred to the time when Moessard was making love
to his Queen, and had promised the governor that in case of success he
would induce her Majesty to put capital into our undertaking. At the
office, we were all aware of this new adventure, and very anxious,
as you may imagine, that it should succeed quickly, since our money
depended upon it. For two months this story held all of us breathless.
We felt some disquiet, we kept a watch on Moessard’s face, considered
that the lady was inclined to insist upon a great deal of ceremony;
and our old cashier, with his dignified and serious air, when he was
questioned on the matter, would answer gravely, behind his wire screen:
“Nothing fresh,” or “The thing is in a good way.” Whereupon everybody
was contented. One would say to another, “It is making progress,” as
though merely an ordinary enterprise was in question. No, in good truth,
there is only one Paris, where one can see such things. Positively it
makes your head turn sometimes. In a word, Moessard, one fine morning,
ceased coming to the office. He had succeeded, it appears, but the
Territorial Bank had not seemed to him a sufficiently advantageous
investment for the money of his mistress. Now, I ask you, was that
honest?

For that matter, the notion of honesty is lost so easily as hardly to
be believed. When I reflect that I, Passajon, with my white hair, my
venerable appearance, my so blameless past--thirty years of academical
services--am grown accustomed to living like a fish in the water, in the
midst of these infamies, this swindling! One might well ask what I am
doing here, why I remain, how I am come to this.

How I am come to it? Oh, _mon Dieu!_ very simply. Four years ago, my
wife being dead, my children married, I had just retired from my post
as hall-porter at the college, when an advertisement in the newspaper
chanced to meet my eye: “Wanted, an office-porter, middle-aged, at the
Territorial Bank, 56, Boulevard Malesherbes. Good references.” Let me
confess it at the outset. The modern Babylon had always attracted me.
Then, too, I felt myself still a young man. I saw before me ten good
years during which I might earn a little money, a great deal, perhaps,
by means of investing my savings in the banking-house which I should
enter. So I wrote, inclosing my photograph, the one taken at Crespon’s,
in the Market Place, which represents me with chin closely shaven, a
keen eye beneath my thick white eyebrows, my steel chain about my neck,
my ribbon as an academy official, “the air of a conscript father upon
his curule-chair,” as M. Chalmette, our dean used to say. (He insisted
also that I much resembled the late King Louis XVIII; less strongly,
however.) I supplied, further, the best of references; the most
flattering recommendations from the gentlemen of the college. By return
of post, the governor replied that my appearance pleased him--I believe
it, _parbleu!_ an antechamber in the charge of a person with a striking
face like mine is a bait for the shareholder--and that I might come
when I liked. I ought, you may say to me, myself also to have made my
inquiries. Eh! no doubt. But I had to give so much information about
myself that it never occurred to me to ask for any about them. Besides,
how could a man be suspicious, seeing this admirable installation,
these lofty ceilings, these great safes, as big as cupboards, and these
mirrors, in which you can see yourself from head to knee? And then
those sonorous prospectuses, those millions that I seemed to hear flying
through the air, those colossal enterprises with their fabulous profits.
I was dazzled, fascinated. It must be mentioned, too, that at the time
the house did not bear quite the aspect which it has to-day. Certainly,
business was already going badly--our business always has gone
badly--the paper appeared only at irregular intervals. But a little
_combinazione_ of the governor’s enabled him to save appearances.

He had conceived the idea, just imagine, of opening a patriotic
subscription for the purpose of erecting a statue to General Paolo
Paoli, or some such name; in any case, to a great countryman of his own.
Money flowed accordingly into the Territorial. Unfortunately, that state
of things did not last. By the end of a couple of months the statue was
eaten up before it had been made, and the series of protests and writs
recommenced. Nowadays I am accustomed to them. But in the days when I
had just come from the country, the Auvergnats at the door, caused me a
painful impression. In the house, nobody paid attention to such things
any longer. It was known that at the last moment there would always
arrive a Monpavon, a Bois l’Hery, to pacify the bailiffs; for all those
gentlemen, being deeply implicated in the concern, have an interest in
avoiding a bankruptcy. That is the very circumstance which saves him,
our wily governor. The others run after their money--we know the meaning
which that expression has in gaming--and they would not like all the
stock on their hands to become worthless save to sell for waste paper.

Small and great, that is the case of all of us who are connected with
the firm. From the landlord, to whom two years’ rent is owing and who,
for fear of losing it all, allows us to stay for nothing, to us poor
employees, even to me, who am involved to the extent of my seven
thousand francs of savings and my four years of arrears, we are running
after our money. That is the reason why I remain obstinately here.

Doubtless, in spite of my advanced age, thanks to my good appearance,
to my education, to the care which I have always taken of my clothes,
I might have obtained some post under other management. There is one
person of excellent repute known to me, M. Joyeuse, a bookkeeper in the
firm of Hemerlingue & Son, the great bankers of the Rue Saint-Honore,
who, every time he meets me, never fails to remark:

“Passajon, my friend, don’t stop in that den of brigands. You are wrong
to persist in remaining. You will never get a halfpenny out of them. So
come to Hemerlingue’s. I undertake to find some little corner for you
there. You will earn less, but you will be paid much more.”

I feel that he is quite right, that worthy fellow. But the thing is
stronger than I. I cannot make up my mind to leave. And yet it is by no
means gay, the life I lead here in these great, cold rooms, where no
one ever comes, where each man stows himself away in a corner without
speaking. What will you have? Each knows the other too well. Everything
has been said already.

Again, until last year, we used to have sittings of the board of
inspection, meetings of shareholders, stormy and noisy assemblies,
veritable battles of savages, from which the cries could be heard to
the Madeleine. Several times a week also there would call subscribers
indignant at no longer ever receiving any news of their money. It was
on such occasions that our governor shone. I have seen these people,
monsieur, go into his office furious as wolves thirsting for blood,
and, after a quarter of an hour, come out milder than sheep, satisfied,
reassured, and their pockets relieved of a few bank-notes. For, there
lay the acme of his cleverness; in the extraction of money from the
unlucky people who came to demand it. Nowadays the shareholders of the
Territorial Bank no longer give any sign of existence. I think they are
all dead or else resigned to the situation. The board never meets.
The sittings only take place on paper; it is I who am charged with the
preparation of a so-called report--always the same--which I copy out
afresh each quarter. We should never see a living soul, if, at
long intervals, there did not rise from the depths of Corsica some
subscribers to the statue of Paoli, curious to know how the monument
is progressing; or, it may be, some worthy reader of _Financial Truth_,
which died over two years ago, who calls to renew his subscription with
a timid air, and begs a little more regularity, if possible, in the
forwarding of the paper. There is a faith that nothing shakes. So, when
one of these innocents falls among our hungry band, it is something
terrible. He is surrounded, hemmed in, an attempt is made to secure his
name for one of our lists, and, in case of resistance, if he wishes to
subscribe neither to the Paoli monument nor to Corsican railways, these
gentlemen deal him what they call--my pen blushes to write it--what they
call, I say, “the drayman thrust.”

Here is what it is: We always keep at the office a parcel prepared in
advance, a well-corded case which arrives nominally from the railway
station while the visitor is present. “There are twenty francs carriage
to pay,” says the one among us who brings the thing in. (Twenty francs,
sometimes thirty, according to the appearance of the patient.) Every
one then begins to ransack his pockets: “Twenty francs carriage! but I
haven’t got it.” “Nor I either. What a nuisance!” Some one runs to the
cash-till. Closed. The cashier is summoned. He is out. And the gruff
voice of the drayman, growing impatient in the antechamber: “Come, come,
make haste.” (It is generally I who play the drayman, because of the
strength of my vocal organs.) What is to be done now? Return the parcel?
That will vex the governor. “Gentlemen, I beg, will you permit me,”
 ventures the innocent victim, opening his purse. “Ah, monsieur,
indeed--” He hands over his twenty francs, he is ushered to the door,
and, as soon as his heel is turned, we all divide the fruit of the
crime, laughing like highway robbers.

Fie! M. Passajon. At your age, such a trade! Eh! _mon Dieu!_ I well know
it. I know that I should do myself more honour in quitting this evil
place. But what! You would have me then renounce the hope of getting
back anything of all I have put in here. No, it is not possible. There
is urgent need on the contrary that I should remain, that I should be
on the watch, always at hand, ready to profit by any windfall, if one
should come. Oh, for example, I swear it upon my ribbon, upon my thirty
years of academical service, if ever an affair like this of the Nabob
allow me to recover my disbursements, I shall not wait another single
minute. I shall quickly be off to look after my pretty vineyard down
yonder, near Monbars, cured forever of my thoughts of speculation. But,
alas! that is a very chimerical hope. Exhausted, used up, known as we
are upon the Paris market, with our stocks which are no longer quoted on
the Bourse, our bonds which are near being waste paper, so many lies, so
many debts, and the hole that grows ever deeper and deeper. (We owe
at this moment three million five hundred thousand francs. It is not,
however, those three millions that worry us. On the contrary, it is they
that keep us going; but we have with the _concierge_ a little bill of a
hundred and twenty-five francs for postage-stamps, a month’s gas bill,
and other little things. That is the really terrible part of it.) and we
are expected to believe that a man, a great financier like this Nabob,
even though he were just arrived from the Congo, or dropped from the
moon the same day, would be fool enough to put his money into a concern
like this. Come! Is the thing possible? You may tell that story to the
marines, my dear governor.



A DEBUT IN SOCIETY


“M. BERNARD JANSOULET!”

The plebeian name, accentuated proudly by the liveried servants, and
announced in a resounding voice, sounded in Jenkins’s drawing-rooms like
the clash of a cymbal, one of those gongs which, in fairy pieces at
the theatre, are the prelude to fantastic apparitions. The light of the
chandeliers paled, every eye sparkled at the dazzling perspective of
the treasures of the Orient, of the showers of the sequins and of pearls
evoked by the magic syllables of that name, yesterday unknown.

He, it was he himself, the Nabob, the rich among the rich, the great
Parisian curiosity, spiced by that relish of adventure which is so
pleasing to the surfeited crowd. All heads turned, all conversations
were interrupted; near the door there was a pushing among the guests,
a crush as upon the quay of a seaport to witness the entry of a felucca
laden with gold.

Jenkins himself, so hospitable, so self-possessed, who was standing in
the first drawing-room receiving his guests, abruptly quitted the
group of men about him and hurried to place himself at the head of the
galleons bearing down upon the guest.

“You are a thousand times, a thousand times kind. Mme. Jenkins will be
so glad, so proud.--Come, let me conduct you!”

And in his haste, in his vainglorious delight, he bore Jansoulet off so
quickly that the latter had no time to present his companion, Paul de
Gery, to whom he was giving his first entry into society. The young man
welcomed this forgetfulness. He slipped away among the crowd of black
dress-coats constantly pressed back at each new arrival, buried himself
in it, seized by that wild terror which is experienced by every young
man from the country at his first introduction to a Paris drawing-room,
especially when he is intelligent and refined, and beneath his
breastplate of linen does not wear like a coat of mail the imperturbable
assurance of a boor.

All you, Parisians of Paris, who from the age of sixteen, in your first
dress-coat and with opera-hat against your thigh, have been wont to air
your adolescence at receptions of all kinds, you know nothing of that
anguish, compounded of vanity, of timidity, of recollections of romantic
readings, which keeps a young man from opening his mouth and so makes
him awkward and for a whole night pins him down to one spot in a
doorway, and converts him into a piece of furniture in a recess, a poor,
wandering and wretched being, incapable of manifesting his existence
save by an occasional change of place, dying of thirst rather than
approach the buffet, and going away without having uttered a word,
unless perhaps to stammer out one of those incoherent pieces of
foolishness which he remembers for months, and which make him, at night,
as he thinks of them, heave an “Ah!” of raging shame, with head buried
in the pillow.

Paul de Gery was that martyr. Away yonder in his country home he had
always lived a very retired existence with an old, pious, and gloomy
aunt, up to the time when the law-student, destined in the first
instance to the career in which his father had left an excellent
reputation, had found himself introduced to a few judges’ drawing-rooms,
ancient, melancholy dwellings with faded pier-glasses, where he used to
go to make a fourth at whist with venerable shadows. Jenkins’s evening
party was therefore a _debut_ for this provincial, of whom his very
ignorance and his southern adaptability made immediately an observer.

From the place where he stood, he watched the curious defile of
Jenkins’s guests which had not yet come to an end at midnight; all the
clients of the fashionable physician; the fine flower of society;
a strong political and financial element, bankers, deputies, a few
artists, all the jaded people of Parisian “high life,” wan-faced, with
glittering eyes, saturated with arsenic like greedy mice, but with
appetite insatiable for poison and for life. The drawing-room being
thrown open, the vast antechamber of which the doors had been removed to
be seen, laden with flowers at the sides, the principal staircase of the
mansion, over which swept, now shaken out to their full extent, the
long trains, whose silky weight seemed to give a backward pull to the
undraped busts of the women in the course of that pretty ascending
movement which brought them into view, little by little, till the
complete flower of their splendour was reached. The couples as they
gained the top seemed to be making an entry on the stage of a theatre;
and that was twice true, since each person left on the last step the
contracted eyebrows, the lines that marked preoccupation, the wearied
air, his vexations, his sorrows, to display instead a contented face, a
gay smile over the reposeful harmony of the features. The men exchanged
honest shakes of the hand, exhibitions of fraternal good-feeling;
the women, preoccupied with themselves, as they stood making little
caracoling movements, with trembling graces, play of eyes and shoulders,
murmured, without meaning anything, a few words of greeting:

“Thank you--oh, thank you! How kind you are!”

Then the couples would separate, for evening parties are no longer the
gatherings of charming wits, in which feminine delicacy was wont to
compel the character, the lofty knowledge, the genius, even, of men
to bow graciously before it; but these overcrowded routs, in which the
women, who alone are seated, chattering together like slaves in a harem,
have no longer aught save the pleasure of being beautiful or appearing
so. De Gery, after having wandered through the doctor’s library, the
conservatory, the billiard-room, where men were smoking, weary of
serious and dry conversation which seemed to him out of place amid
surroundings so decorated and in the brief hour of pleasure--some one
had asked him carelessly, without looking at him, what the Bourse
was doing that day--made his way again towards the door of the large
drawing-room, which was barricaded by a wedged crowd of dress-coats, a
sea of heads bent sideways and peering past each other, watching.

This salon was a spacious apartment richly furnished with the artistic
taste which distinguished the host and hostess. There were a few
old pictures on the light background of the hangings. A monumental
chimneypiece, adorned by a handsome group in marble--“The Seasons,” by
Sebastien Ruys--around which long green stems cut in lacework or of a
goffered bronze-like rigidity curved back towards the mirror as towards
the limpidity of a clear lake. On the low seats, women in close groups,
so close as almost to blend the delicate colours of their toilettes,
forming an immense basket of living flowers, above which there floated
the gleam of bare shoulders, of hair sown with diamonds that looked like
drops of water on the dark women, glittering reflections on the fair,
and the same heady perfume, the same confused and gentle hum, compact
of vibrant warmth and intangible wings, which, in summer, caresses a
garden-bed through all its flowering time. Now and then a little laugh,
rising into this luminous atmosphere, a quicker inspiration in the air,
which would cause aigrettes and curls to tremble, a handsome profile to
stand out suddenly. Such was the aspect of the drawing-room.

A few men were present, a very small number, however, and all of them
personages of note, laden with years and decorations. They were standing
about near couches, leaning over the backs of chairs, with that air of
condescension which men assume when speaking to children. But in the
peaceful buzz of these conversations, one voice rang out piercing and
brazen, that of the Nabob, who was tranquilly performing his evolutions
across this social hothouse with the assurance bestowed upon him by his
immense wealth, and a certain contempt for women which he had brought
back from the East.

At that moment, comfortably installed on a settee, his big hands in
yellow gloves crossed carelessly one over the other, he was talking with
a very handsome woman, whose original physiognomy--much vitality coupled
with severe features--stood out pale among the pretty faces about her,
just as her dress, all white, classic in its folds and following closely
the lines of her supple figure, contrasted with toilettes that were
richer, but among which none had that air of daring simplicity. From his
corner, de Gery admired the low and smooth forehead beneath its fringe
of downward combed hair, the well-opened eyes, deep blue in colour, an
abysmal blue, the mouth which ceased to smile only to relax its pure
curve into an expression that was weary and drooping. In sum, the rather
haughty mien of an exceptional being.

Somebody near him mentioned her name--Felicia Ruys. At once he
understood the rare attraction of this young girl, the continuer of
her father’s genius, whose budding celebrity had penetrated even to the
remote country district where he had lived, with the aureole of reputed
beauty. While he stood gazing at her, admiring her least gestures, a
little perplexed by the enigma of her handsome countenance, he heard
whispers behind him.

“But see how pleasant she is with the Nabob! If the duke were to come
in!”

“The Duc de Mora is coming?”

“Certainly. It is for him that the party is given; to bring about a
meeting between him and Jansoulet.”

“And you think that the duke and Mlle. Ruys----”

“Where have you come from? It is an intrigue known to all Paris. The
affair dates from the last exhibition, for which she did a bust of him.”

“And the duchess?”

“Bah! it is not her first experience of that sort. Ah! there is Mme.
Jenkins going to sing.”

There was a movement in the drawing-room, a more violent swaying of the
crowd near the door, and conversation ceased for a moment. Paul de
Gery breathed. What he had just heard had oppressed his heart. He felt
himself reached, soiled, by this mud flung in handfuls over the ideal
which in his own mind he had formed of that splendid adolescence,
matured by the sun of Art to so penetrating a charm. He moved away
a little, changed his place. He feared to hear again some whispered
infamy. Mme. Jenkins’s voice did him good, a voice that was famous in
the drawing-rooms of Paris and that in spite of all its magnificence had
nothing theatrical about it, but seemed an emotional utterance vibrating
over unstudied sonorities. The singer, a woman of forty or forty-five,
had splendid ash-blond hair, delicate, rather nerveless features, a
striking expression of kindness. Still good-looking, she was dressed
in the costly taste of a woman who has not given up the thought of
pleasing. Indeed, she was far from having given it up. Married a dozen
years ago, for a second time, to the doctor, they seemed still to be
at the first months of their dual happiness. While she sang a popular
Russian melody, savage and sweet like the smile of a Slav, Jenkins was
ingenuously proud, without seeking to dissimulate the fact, his broad
face all beaming; and she, each time that she bent her head as she
regained her breath, glanced in his direction a timid, affectionate
smile that flew to seek him over the unfolded music. And then, when she
had finished amid an admiring and delighted murmur, it was touching to
notice how discreetly she gave her husband’s hand a secret squeeze, as
though to secure to themselves a corner of private bliss in the midst of
her great triumph. Young de Gery was feeling cheered by the spectacle of
this happy couple, when quite close to him a voice murmured--it was not,
however, the same voice that he had heard just before:

“You know what they say--that the Jenkinses are not married.”

“How absurd!”

“I assure you. It would seem that there is a veritable Mme. Jenkins
somewhere, but not the lady we know. Besides, have you noticed----”

The dialogue continued in an undertone. Mme. Jenkins advanced, bowing,
smiling, while the doctor, stopping a tray that was being borne
round, brought her a glass of claret with the alacrity of a mother, an
impresario, a lover. Calumny, calumny, ineffaceable defilement! To the
provincial young man, Jenkins’s attentions now seemed exaggerated.
He fancied that there was something affected about them, something
deliberate, and, too, in the words of thanks which she addressed in
a low voice to her husband he thought he could detect a timidity, a
submissiveness, not consonant with the dignity of the legitimate spouse,
glad and proud in an assured happiness. “But Society is a hideous
affair!” said de Gery to himself, dismayed and with cold hands. The
smiles around him had upon him the effect of hypocritical grimaces.
He felt shame and disgust. Then suddenly revolting: “Come, it is not
possible.” And, as though in reply to this exclamation, behind him
the scandalous tongue resumed in an easy tone: “After all, you know, I
cannot vouch for its truth. I am only repeating what I have heard. But
look! Baroness Hemerlingue. He gets all Paris, this Jenkins.”

The baroness moved forward on the arm of the doctor, who had rushed to
meet her, and appeared, despite all his control of his facial muscles, a
little ill at ease and discomfited. He had thought, the good Jenkins, to
profit by the opportunity afforded by this evening party to bring
about a reconciliation between his friend Hemerlingue and his friend
Jansoulet, who were his two most wealthy clients and embarrassed him
greatly with their intestine feud. The Nabob was perfectly willing.
He bore his old chum no grudge. Their quarrel had arisen out of
Hemerlingue’s marriage with one of the favourites of the last Bey. “A
story with a woman at the bottom of it, in short,” said Jansoulet, and
a story which he would have been glad to see come to an end, since his
exuberant nature found every antipathy oppressive. But it seemed that
the baron was not anxious for any settlement of their differences; for,
notwithstanding his word passed to Jenkins, his wife arrived alone, to
the Irishman’s great chagrin.

She was a tall, slender, frail person, with eyebrows that suggested a
bird’s plumes, and a youthful intimidated manner. She was aged about
thirty but looked twenty, and wore a head-dress of grasses and ears of
corn drooping over very black hair peppered with diamonds. With her long
lashes against cheeks white with that transparency of complexion which
characterizes women who have long led a cloistered existence, and a
little ill at ease in her Parisian clothes, she resembled less one who
had formerly been a woman of the harem than a nun who, having renounced
her vows, was returning into the world.

An air of piety, of extreme devoutness, in her bearing, a certain
ecclesiastical trick of walking with downcast eyes, elbows close to
the body, hands crossed, mannerisms which she had acquired in the very
religious atmosphere in which she had lived since her conversion and
her recent baptism, completed this resemblance. And you can imagine
with what ardent curiosity that worldly assembly regarded this quondam
odalisk turned fervent Catholic, as she advanced escorted by a man with
a livid countenance like that of some spectacled sacristan, Maitre
le Merquier, deputy of Lyons, Hemerlingue’s man of business, who
accompanied the baroness whenever the baron “was somewhat indisposed,”
 as on this evening.

At their entry into the second drawing-room, the Nabob came straight up
to her, expecting to see appear in her wake the puffy face of his old
comrade to whom it was agreed that he should go and offer his hand. The
baroness perceived him and became still whiter. A flash as of steel shot
from beneath her long lashes. Her nostrils dilated, quivered, and, as
Jansoulet bowed, she quickened her step, carrying her head high and
erect, and letting fall from her thin lips an Arab word which no one
else could understand but of which the Nabob himself well appreciated
the insult; for, as he raised his head again, his tanned face was of the
colour of baked earthenware as it leaves the furnace. He stood for an
instant without moving, his huge fists clinched, his mouth swollen with
anger. Jenkins came up and rejoined him, and de Gery, who had followed
the whole scene from a distance, saw them talking together with
preoccupied air.

The thing was a failure. The reconciliation, so cunningly planned, would
not take place. Hemerlingue did not desire it. If only the duke, now,
did not fail to keep his engagement with them. This reflection was
prompted by the lateness of the hour. The Wauters who was to sing the
music of the Night from the _Enchanted Flute_, on her way home from her
theatre, had just entered, completely muffled in her hoods of lace.

And there was still no sign of the Minister.

It was, however, a clearly understood, definitely promised arrangement.
Monpavon was to call for him at the club. From time to time the good
Jenkins glanced at his watch, while applauding absently the bouquet of
brilliant notes which the Wauters was pouring forth from her fairy
lips, a bouquet costing three thousand francs, useless, like the other
expenses of the evening, if the duke did not come.

Suddenly the double doors were flung wide open:

“His excellency M. le Duc de Mora!”

A long quiver of excitement welcomed him, a respectful curiosity that
ranged itself in two rows instead of the mobbing crowd that flocked on
the heels of the Nabob.

None better than he knew how to bear himself in society, to walk across
a drawing-room with gravity, to endow futile things with an air of
seriousness, and to treat serious things lightly; that was the epitome
of his attitude in life, a paradoxical distinction. Still handsome,
despite his fifty-six years, with a comeliness compounded of elegance
and proportion, wherein the grace of the dandy was fortified by
something military about the figure and the haughtiness of the face; he
wore with striking effect his black dress-coat, on which, to do honour
to Jenkins, he had pinned a few of his decorations, which he was in the
habit of never wearing except upon official occasions. The reflection
from the linen, from the white cravat, the dull silver of the
decorations, the smoothness of the thin hair now turning gray, enhanced
the pallor of the features, more bloodless than all the bloodless faces
that were to be seen that evening in the Irishman’s house.

He had led such a terrible life! Politics, play under all its forms,
from the Stock Exchange to the baccarat-table, and that reputation of a
man successful with women which had to be maintained at all costs. Oh,
this man was a true client of Jenkins; and this princely visit, he owed
it in good sooth to the inventor of those mysterious pills which gave
that fire to his glance, to his whole being that energy so vibrating and
extraordinary.

“My dear duke, permit me to----”

Monpavon, with solemn air and a great sense of his own importance,
endeavoured to effect the presentation so long looked forward to; but
his excellency, preoccupied, seemed not to hear, continued his progress
towards the large drawing-room, borne along by one of those electric
currents that break the social monotony. On his passage, and while he
greeted the handsome Mme. Jenkins, the ladies bent forward a little with
seductive airs, a soft laugh, concerned to please. But he noticed only
one among them, Felicia, on her feet in the centre of a group of men,
discussing some question as though she were in her studio, and watching
the duke come towards her, while tranquilly taking her sherbet. She
greeted him with perfect naturalness. Those near had discreetly retired
to a little distance. There seemed to exist between them, however,
notwithstanding what de Gery had overheard with regard to their presumed
relations, nothing more than a quite intellectual intimacy, a playful
familiarity.

“I called at your house, mademoiselle, on my way to the Bois.”

“I was informed of it. You even went into the studio.”

“And I saw the famous group--my group.”

“Well?”

“It is very fine. The hound runs as though he were mad. The fox scampers
away admirably. Only I did not quite understand. You had told me that it
was our own story, yours and mine.”

“Ah, there! Try. It is an apologue that I read in--You do not read
Rabelais, M. le Duc?”

“My faith, no. He is too coarse.”

“Ah, well, his works were the text-book of my first reading lessons.
Very badly brought up, you know. Oh, exceedingly badly. My apologue,
then, is taken from Rabelais. Here it is: Bacchus created a wonderful
fox, impossible to capture. Vulcan, on the other hand, gave a dog of
his own creation the power to catch every animal that he should pursue.
‘Now,’ as my author has it, ‘it happened that the two met.’ You see
what a wild and interminable chase. It seems to me, my dear duke,
that destiny has in the same way brought us together, endowed with
conflicting attributes; you who have received from the gods the gift of
reaching all hearts, I whose heart will never be made prisoner.”

She spoke these words, looking him full in the face, almost laughing,
but sheathed and erect in the white tunic which seemed to defend her
person against the liberties of his thought. He, the conqueror, the
irresistible, had never before met one of this audacious and headstrong
breed. He brought to bear upon her, therefore, all the magnetic currents
of his seductiveness, while around them the rising murmur of the _fete_,
the soft laughter, the rustle of satins and the rattling of pearls
formed the accompaniment to this duet of mundane passion and juvenile
irony. He resumed after a minute’s pause:

“But how did the gods escape from that awkward situation?”

“By turning the two runners into stone.”

“Upon my word,” said he, “that is a solution which I do not at all
accept. I defy the gods ever to petrify my heart.”

A fiery gleam shot for a moment from his eyes, extinguished immediately
by the thought that people were observing them.

In effect, people were observing them intently, but no one with so
much curiosity as Jenkins, who wandered round them a little way off,
impatient and fidgety, as though he were annoyed with Felicia for taking
private possession of the important personage of the assembly. The young
girl laughingly called the duke’s attention to it.

“People will say that I am monopolizing you.”

She pointed out to him Monpavon waiting, standing near the Nabob who,
from afar, was gazing at his excellency with the beseeching, submissive
eyes of a big, good-tempered mastiff. The Minister of State then
remembered the object which had brought him. He bowed to the young girl
and returned to Monpavon, who was able at last to present to him “his
honourable friend, M. Bernard Jansoulet.” His excellency bowed slightly,
the _parvenu_ humbled himself lower than the earth, then they chatted
for a moment.

A group curious to observe. Jansoulet, tall, strong, with an air of the
people about him, a sunburned skin, his broad back arched as though made
round for ever by the low bowings of Oriental courtiery, his big, short
hands splitting his light gloves, his excessive gestures, his southern
exuberance chopping up his words like a puncher. The other, a high-bred
gentleman, a man of the world, elegance itself, easy in his least
gestures, though these, however, were extremely rare, carelessly letting
fall unfinished sentences, relieving by a half smile the gravity of his
face, concealing beneath an imperturbable politeness the deep contempt
which he had for man and woman; and it was in that contempt that his
strength lay. In an American drawing-room the antithesis would have been
less violent. The Nabob’s millions would have re-established the balance
and even made the scale lean to his side. But Paris does not yet place
money above every other force, and to realize this, it was sufficient
to observe the great contractor wriggling amiably before the great
gentleman and casting under his feet, like the courtier’s cloak of
ermine, the dense vanity of a newly rich man.

From the corner in which he had ensconced himself, de Gery was watching
the scene with interest, knowing what importance his friend attached to
this introduction, when the same chance which all through the evening
had so cruelly been giving the lie to the native simplicity of his
inexperience, caused him to distinguish a short dialogue near him, amid
that buzz of many conversations through which each hears just the word
that interests him.

“It is indeed the least that Monpavon can do, to enable him to make a
few good acquaintances. He has introduced him to so many bad ones. You
know that he has just put Paganetti and all his gang on his shoulders.”

“Poor fellow! But they will devour him.”

“Bah! It is only fair that he should be made to disgorge a little. He
has been such a thief himself away yonder among the Turks.”

“Really, do you believe that is so?”

“Do I believe it? I am in possession of very precise details on the
point which I have from Baron Hemerlingue, the banker, who effected the
last Tunisian loan. He knows some stories about the Nabob, he does. Just
imagine.”

And the infamous gossip commenced. For fifteen years Jansoulet had
exploited the former Bey in a scandalous fashion. Names of purveyors
were cited and tricks wonderful in their assurance, their effrontery;
for instance, the story of a musical frigate, yes, a veritable musical
box, like a dining-room picture, which he had bought for two hundred
thousand francs and sold again for ten millions; the cost price of a
throne sold at three millions for which the account could be seen in the
books of an upholsterer of the Faubourg Saint-Honore did not exceed a
hundred thousand francs; and the funniest part of it was that, the Bey
having changed his mind, the royal seat, fallen into disgrace before it
had even been unpacked, remained still nailed in its packing-case at the
custom-house in Tripoli.

Next, beyond these wildly extravagant commissions on the provision of
the least toy, they laid stress upon accusations more grave but no less
certain, since they also sprang from the same source. It seemed there
was, adjoining the seraglio, a harem of European women admirably
equipped for his Highness by the Nabob, who must have been a good
judge in such matters, having practised formerly, in Paris--before
his departure for the East--the most singular trades: vendor of
theatre-tickets, manager of a low dancing-hall, and of an establishment
more ill-famed still. And the whispering ended in a smothered laugh, the
coarse laugh of men chatting among themselves.

The first impulse of the young man from the country, as he heard these
infamous calumnies, was to turn round and exclaim:

“You lie!”

A few hours earlier he would have done it without hesitating; but, since
he had been there, he had learned distrust, scepticism. He contained
himself, therefore, and listened to the end, motionless in the same
place, having deep down within himself an unavowed desire to become
further acquainted with the man whose service he had entered. As for
the Nabob, the completely unconscious subject of this hideous recital,
tranquilly installed in a small room to which its blue hangings and two
shaded lamps gave a reposeful air, he was playing his game of _ecarte_
with the Duc de Mora.

O magic of Fortune’s argosy! The son of the dealer in old iron seated
alone at a card-table opposite the first personage of the Empire!
Jansoulet could scarcely believe the Venetian mirror in which were
reflected his own bright countenance and the august head with its
parting down the middle. Accordingly, in order to show his appreciation
of this great honour, he sought to lose decently as many thousand-franc
notes as possible, feeling himself even so the winner of the game, and
quite proud to see his money pass into those aristocratic hands, whose
least gesture he studied as they dealt, cut, or held the cards.

A circle had formed around them, always keeping a distance, however,
the ten paces exacted for the salutation of a prince; it was the public
there to witness this triumph in which the Nabob was bearing his part
as in a dream, intoxicated by those fairy harmonies rather faint in the
distance, whose songs that reached him in snatches as over the resonant
obstacle of a pool, the perfume of flowers that seem to become full
blown in so singular fashion towards the end of Parisian balls, when
the late hour that confuses all notions of time and the weariness of
the sleepless nights communicate to brains soothed in a more nervous
atmosphere, as it were, a dizzy sense of enjoyment. The robust nature of
Jansoulet, civilized savage that he was, was more sensitive than another
to these unknown subtleties, and he had need of all his strength to
refrain from manifesting by some glad hurrah, by some untimely effusion
of gestures and speech, the impulse of physical gaiety which pervaded
his whole being, as happens to those great mountain dogs that are
thrown into epileptic fits of madness by the inhaling of a drop of some
essence.

“The sky is clear, the pavement dry. If you like, my dear boy, we
will send the carriage away and return on foot,” said Jansoulet to his
companion as they left Jenkins’s house.

De Gery accepted with eagerness. He felt that he required to walk, to
shake off in the open air the infamies and the lies of that comedy
of society which had left his heart cold and oppressed, with all his
life-blood driven to his temples where he could hear the swollen veins
beating. He staggered as he walked, like those unfortunate persons who,
having been operated upon for cataract, in the terror of sight regained,
do not dare put one foot before the other. But with what a brutal hand
the operation had been performed! So that great artist with the glorious
name, that pure and untamed beauty the sight alone of whom had troubled
him like an apparition, was only a courtesan. Mme. Jenkins, that stately
woman, of bearing at once so proud and so gentle, had no real title to
the name. That illustrious man of science with the open countenance, and
a manner so pleasant in his welcome, had the impudence thus to parade
a disgraceful concubinage. And Paris suspected it, but that did not
prevent it from running to their parties. And, finally, Jansoulet, so
kind, so generous, for whom he felt in his heart so much gratitude, he
knew him to be fallen into the hands of a gang of brigands, a brigand
himself and well worthy of the conspiracy organized to cause him to
disgorge his millions.

Was it possible, and how much of it was he to be obliged to believe?

A glance which he threw sideways at the Nabob, whose immense person
almost blocked the pavement, revealed to him suddenly in that walk
oppressed by the weight of his wealth, a something low and vulgar which
he had not previously remarked. Yes, he was indeed the adventurer
from the south, moulded of the slimy clay that covers the quays of
Marseilles, trodden down by all the nomads and wanderers of a seaport.
Kind, generous, forsooth! as harlots are, or thieves. And the gold,
flowing in torrents through that tainted and luxurious world, splashing
the very walls, seemed to him now to be loaded with all the dross, all
the filth of its impure and muddy source. There remained, then, for
him, de Gery, but one thing to do, to go away, to quit with all possible
speed this situation in which he risked the compromising of his good
name, the one heritage from his father. Doubtless. But the two little
brothers down yonder in the country. Who would pay for their board and
lodging? Who would keep up the modest home miraculously brought into
being once more by the handsome salary of the eldest son, the head of
the family? Those words, “head of the family,” plunged him immediately
into one of those internal combats in which interest and conscience
struggled for the mastery--the one brutal, substantial, attacking
vigorously with straight thrusts, the other elusive, breaking away by
subtle disengagements--while the worthy Jansoulet, unconscious cause
of the conflict, walked with long strides close by his young friend,
inhaling the fresh air with delight at the end of his lighted cigar.

Never had he felt it such a happiness to be alive; and this evening
party at Jenkins’s, which had been his own first real entry into society
as well as de Gery’s, had left with him an impression of porticoes
erected as for a triumph, of an eagerly assembled crowd, of flowers
thrown on his path. So true is it that things only exist through the
eyes that observe them. What a success! the duke, as he took leave of
him inviting him to come to see his picture gallery, which meant the
doors of Mora House opened to him within a week. Felicia Ruys
consenting to do his bust, so that at the next exhibition the son of the
nail-dealer would have his portrait in marble by the same great
artist who had signed that of the Minister of State. Was it not the
satisfaction of all his childish vanities?

And each pondering his own thoughts, sombre or glad, they continued to
walk shoulder to shoulder, absorbed and so absent in mind that the Place
Vendome, silent and bathed in a blue and chilly light, rang under their
steps before a word had been uttered between them.

“Already?” said the Nabob. “I should not at all have minded walking a
little longer. What do you say?” And while they strolled two or three
times around the square, he gave vent in spasmodic bursts to the immense
joy which filled him.

“How pleasant the air is! How one can breathe! Thunder of God! I would
not have missed this evening’s party for a hundred thousand francs.
What a worthy soul that Jenkins is! Do you like Felicia Ruys’s style of
beauty? For my part, I dote on it. And the duke, what a great gentleman!
so simple, so kind. A fine place, Paris, is it not, my son?”

“It is too complicated for me. It frightens me,” answered Paul de Gery
in a hollow voice.

“Yes, yes, I understand,” replied the other with an adorable fatuity.
“You are not yet accustomed to it; but, never mind, one quickly becomes
so. See how after a single month I find myself at my ease.”

“That is because it is not your first visit to Paris. You have lived
here.”

“I? Never in my life. Who told you that?”

“Indeed! I thought--” answered the young man; and immediately, a host of
reflections crowding into his mind:

“What, then, have you done to this Baron Hemerlingue? It is a hatred to
the death between you.”

For a moment the Nabob was taken aback. That name of Hemerlingue, thrown
suddenly into his glee, recalled to him the one annoying episode of the
evening.

“To him as to the others,” said he in a saddened voice, “I have never
done anything save good. We began together in poverty. We made progress
and prospered side by side. Whenever he wished to try a flight on his
own wings, I always aided and supported him to the best of my ability.
It was I who during ten consecutive years secured for him the contracts
for the fleet and the army; almost his whole fortune came from that
source. Then one fine morning this slow-blooded imbecile of a Bernese
goes crazy over an odalisk whom the mother of the Bey had caused to be
expelled from the harem. The hussy was beautiful and ambitious, she made
him marry her, and naturally, after this brilliant match, Hemerlingue
was obliged to leave Tunis. Somebody had persuaded him to believe that I
was urging the Bey to close the principality to him. It was not true. On
the contrary, I obtained from his Highness permission for Hemerlingue’s
son--a child by his first wife--to remain in Tunis in order to look
after their suspended interests, while the father came to Paris to found
his banking-house. Moreover, I have been well rewarded for my kindness.
When, at the death of my poor Ahmed, the Mouchir, his brother, ascended
the throne, the Hemerlingues, restored to favour, never ceased to work
for my undoing with the new master. The Bey still keeps on good terms
with me; but my credit is shaken. Well, in spite of that, in spite of
all the shabby tricks that Hemerlingue has played me, that he plays me
still, I was ready this evening to hold out my hand to him. Not only
does the blackguard refuse it, but he causes me to be insulted by his
wife, a savage and evil-disposed creature, who does not pardon me for
always having declined to receive her in Tunis. Do you know what she
called me just now as she passed me? ‘Thief and son of a dog.’ As free
in her language as that, the odalisk--That is to say, that if I did not
know my Hemerlingue to be as cowardly as he is fat--After all, bah! let
them say what they like. I snap my fingers at them. What can they do
against me? Ruin me with the Bey? That is a matter of indifference
to me. There is nothing any longer for me to do in Tunis, and I shall
withdraw myself from the place altogether as soon as possible. There
is only one town, one country in the world, and that is Paris--Paris
welcoming, hospitable, not prudish, where every intelligent man may find
space to do great things. And I, now, do you see, de Gery, I want to do
great things. I have had enough of mercantile life. For twenty years I
have worked for money; to-day I am greedy of glory, of consideration, of
fame. I want to be somebody in the history of my country, and that will
be easy for me. With my immense fortune, my knowledge of men and of
affairs, the things I know I have here in my head, nothing is beyond my
reach and I aspire to everything. Believe me, therefore, my dear boy,
never leave me”--one would have said that he was replying to the secret
thought of his young companion--“remain faithfully on board my ship. The
masts are firm; I have my bunkers full of coal. I swear to you that we
shall go far, and quickly, _nom d’un sort_!”

The ingenuous southerner thus poured out his projects into the night
with many expressive gestures, and from time to time, as they walked
rapidly to and fro in the vast and deserted square, majestically
surrounded by its silent and closed palaces, he raised his head towards
the man of bronze on the column, as though taking to witness that great
upstart whose presence in the midst of Paris authorizes all ambitions,
endows every chimera with probability.

There is in young people a warmth of heart, a need of enthusiasm which
is awakened by the least touch. As the Nabob talked, de Gery felt his
suspicion take wing and all his sympathy return, together with a shade
of pity. No, very certainly this man was not a rascal, but a poor,
illuded being whose fortune had gone to his head like a wine too heavy
for a stomach long accustomed to water. Alone in the midst of Paris,
surrounded by enemies and people ready to take advantage of him,
Jansoulet made upon him the impression of a man on foot laden with gold
passing through some evil-haunted wood, in the dark and unarmed. And
he reflected that it would be well for the _protege_ to watch,
without seeming to do so, over the protector, to become the discerning
Telemachus of the blind Mentor, to point out to him the quagmires, to
defend him against the highwaymen, to aid him, in a word, in his combats
amid all that swarm of nocturnal ambuscades which he felt were prowling
ferociously around the Nabob and his millions.



THE JOYEUSE FAMILY

Every morning of the year, at exactly eight o’clock, a new and almost
tenantless house in a remote quarter of Paris, echoed to cries, calls,
merry laughter, ringing clear in the desert of the staircase:

“Father, don’t forget my music.”

“Father, my crochet wool.”

“Father, bring us some rolls.”

And the voice of the father calling from below:

“Yaia, bring me down my portfolio, please.”

“There you are, you see! He has forgotten his portfolio.”

And there would be a glad scurry from top to bottom of the house, a
running of all those pretty faces confused by sleep, of all those heads
with disordered hair which the owners made tidy as they ran, until the
moment when, leaning over the baluster, half a dozen girls bade loud
good-bye to a little, old gentleman, neat and well-groomed, whose
reddish face and short profile disappeared at length in the spiral
perspective of the stairs. M. Joyeuse had departed for his office.
At once the whole band, escaped from their cage, would rush quickly
upstairs again to the fourth floor, and, the door having been opened,
group themselves at an open casement to gain one last glimpse of their
father. The little man used to turn round, kisses were exchanged across
the distance, then the windows were closed, the new and tenantless house
became quiet again, except for the posters dancing their wild saraband
in the wind of the unfinished street, as if made gay, they also, by all
these proceedings. A moment later the photographer on the fifth floor
would descend to hang at the door his showcase, always the same, in
which was to be seen the old gentleman in a white tie surrounded by his
daughters in various groups; he went upstairs again in his turn, and the
calm which succeeded immediately upon this little morning uproar left
one to imagine that the “father” and his young ladies had re-entered the
case of photographs, where they remained smiling and motionless until
evening.

From the Rue Saint-Ferdinand to the establishment of Hemerlingue &
Son, his employers, M. Joyeuse had a good three-quarters of an hour’s
journey. He walked with head erect and straight, as though he had feared
to disarrange the smart knot of the cravat tied by his daughters, or his
hat put on by them, and when the eldest, ever anxious and prudent, just
as he went out raised his coat-collar to protect him against the
harsh gusts of the wind that blew round the street corner, even if the
temperature were that of a hothouse M. Joyeuse would not lower it again
until he reached the office, like the lover who, quitting his mistress’s
arms, dares not to move for fear of losing the intoxicating perfume.

A widower for some years, this worthy man lived only for his children,
thought only of them, went through life surrounded by those fair little
heads that fluttered around him confusedly as in a picture of the
Assumption. All his desires, all his projects, bore reference to “those
young ladies,” returned to them without ceasing, sometimes after long
circuits, for M. Joyeuse--this was connected no doubt with the fact that
he possessed a short neck and a small figure whereof his turbulent
blood made the circuit in a moment--was a man of fecund and astonishing
imagination. In his brain the ideas performed their evolutions with the
rapidity of hollow straws around a sieve. At the office, figures kept
his steady attention by reason of their positive quality; but, outside,
his mind took its revenge upon that inexorable occupation. The activity
of the walk, the habit that led him by a route where he was familiar
with the least incidents, allowed full liberty to his imaginative
faculties. He invented at these times extraordinary adventures, enough
of them to crank out a score of the serial stories that appear in the
newspapers.

If, for example, M. Joyeuse, as he went up the Faubourg Saint-Honore,
on the right-hand footwalk--he always took that one--noticed a heavy
laundry-cart going along at a quick pace, driven by a woman from the
country with a child perched on a bundle of linen and leaning over
somewhat:

“The child!” the terrified old fellow would cry. “Have a care of the
child!”

His voice would be lost in the noise of the wheels and his warning among
the secrets of Providence. The cart passed. He would follow it for a
moment with his eye, then resume his walk; but the drama begun in
his mind would continue to unfold itself there, with a thousand
catastrophes. The child had fallen. The wheels were about to pass over
him. M. Joyeuse dashed forward, saved the little creature on the very
brink of destruction; the pole of the cart, however, struck himself
full in the chest and he fell bathed in blood. Then he would see himself
borne to some chemists’ shop through the crowd that had collected. He
was placed in an ambulance, carried to his own house, and then suddenly
he would hear the piercing cry of his daughters, his well-beloved
daughters, when they beheld him in this condition. And that agonized
cry touched his heart so deeply, he would hear it so distinctly, so
realistically: “Papa, my dear papa,” that he would himself utter it
aloud in the street, to the great astonishment of the passers-by, in a
hoarse voice which would wake him from his fictitious nightmare.

Will you have another sample of this prodigious imagination? It is
raining, freezing; wretched weather. M. Joyeuse has taken the omnibus
to go to his office. Finding himself seated opposite a sort of colossus,
with the head of a brute and formidable biceps, M. Joyeuse, himself very
small, very puny, with his portfolio on his knees, draws in his legs in
order to make room for the enormous columns which support the monumental
body of his neighbour. As the vehicle moves on and as the rain beats on
the windows, M. Joyeuse falls into reverie. And suddenly the colossus
opposite, whose face is kind after all, is very much surprised to see
the little man change colour, look at him and grind his teeth, look at
him with ferocious eyes, an assassin’s eyes. Yes, with the eyes of a
veritable assassin, for at that moment M. Joyeuse is dreaming a terrible
dream. He sees one of his daughters sitting there opposite him, by the
side of this giant brute, and the wretch has put his arm round her waist
under her cape.

“Remove your hand, sir!” M. Joyeuse has already said twice over. The
other has only sneered. Now he wishes to kiss Elise.

“Ah, rascal!”

Too feeble to defend his daughter, M. Joyeuse, foaming with rage, draws
his knife from his pocket, stabs the insolent fellow full in the breast,
and with head high goes off, strong in the right of an outraged father,
to make his declaration at the nearest police-station.

“I have just killed a man in an omnibus!” At the sound of his own voice
actually uttering these sinister words, but not in the police-station,
the poor fellow wakes us, guesses from the bewildered manner
of the passengers that he must have spoken the words aloud,
and very quickly takes advantage of the conductor’s call,
“Saint-Philippe--Pantheon--Bastille--” to alight, feeling greatly
confused, amid general stupefaction.

This imagination constantly on the stretch, gave to M. Joyeuse a
singular physiognomy, feverish and worn, in strong contrast with the
general correct appearance of a subordinate clerk which he presented.
In one day he lived so many passionate existences. The race is more
numerous than one thinks of these waking dreamers, in whom a too
restricted fate compresses forces unemployed and heroic faculties.
Dreaming is the safety-valve through which all those expend themselves
with terrible ebullitions, as of the vapour of a furnace and floating
images that are forthwith dissipated into air. From these visions
some return radiant, others exhausted and discouraged, as they find
themselves once more on the every-day level. M. Joyeuse was of these
latter, rising without ceasing to heights whence a man cannot but
re-descend, somewhat bruised by the velocity of the transit.

Now, one morning that our “visionary” had left his house at his habitual
hour, and under the usual circumstances, he began at the turning of the
Rue Saint-Ferdinand one of his little private romances. As the end of
the year was at hand, perhaps it was the hammer-strokes on a wooden hut
which was being erected in the neighbouring timber-yard that caused his
thoughts to turn to “presents--New Year’s Day.” And immediately the word
bounty implanted itself in his mind as the first landmark of a marvelous
story. In the month of December all persons in Hemerlingue’s service
received double pay, and you know that in small households there are
founded on windfalls of this kind a thousand projects, ambitious or
kind, presents to be made, a piece of furniture to be replaced, a little
sum of money to be saved in a drawer against the unforeseen.

In simple fact, M. Joyeuse was not rich. His wife, a Mlle. de
Saint-Armand, tormented with ideas of greatness and society, had set
this little clerk’s household on a ruinous footing, and though since her
death three years had passed during which Bonne Maman had managed the
housekeeping with so much wisdom, they had not yet been able to save
anything, so heavy had proved the burden of the past. Suddenly it
occurred to the good fellow that this year the bounty would be larger
by reason of the increase of work which had been caused by the Tunisian
loan. The loan constituted a very fine stroke of business for the firm,
too fine even, for M. Joyeuse had permitted himself to remark in the
office that this time “Hemerlingue & Son had shaved the Turk a little
too close.”

“Certainly, yes, the bounty will be doubled,” reflected the visionary,
as he walked; and already he saw himself, a month thence, mounting with
his comrades, for the New Year’s visit, the little staircase that led
to Hemerlingue’s apartment. He announced the good news to them; then he
detained M. Joyeuse for a few words in private. And, behold, that master
habitually so cold in his manner, sheathed in his yellow fat as in
a bale of raw silk, became affectionate, paternal, communicative. He
desired to know how many daughters Joyeuse had.

“I have three; no, I should say, four, M. le Baron. I always confuse
them. The eldest is such a sensible girl.”

Further he wished to know their ages.

“Aline is twenty, M. le Baron. She is the eldest. Then we have Elise,
who is preparing for the examination which she must pass when she is
eighteen. Henriette, who is fourteen, and Zara or Yaia who is only
twelve.”

That pet name of Yaia intensely amused M. le Baron, who inquired next
what were the resources of this interesting family.

“My salary, M. le Baron; nothing else. I had a little money put aside,
but my poor wife’s illness, the education of the girls--”

“What you are earning is not sufficient, my dear Joyeuse. I raise your
salary to a thousand francs a month.”

“Oh, M. le Baron, it is too much.”

But although he had uttered this last sentence aloud, in the ear of
a policeman who watched with a mistrustful eye the little man pass,
gesticulating and nodding his head, the poor visionary awoke not. With
admiration he saw himself returning home, announcing the news to his
daughters, taking them to the theatre in the evening in celebration of
the happy day. _Dieu!_ how pretty they looked in the front of their box,
the Demoiselles Joyeuse, what a bouquet of rosy faces! And then, the
next day, the two eldest asked in marriage by--Impossible to determine
by whom, for M. Joyeuse had just suddenly found himself once more
beneath the arch of the Hemerlingue establishment, before the swing-door
surmounted by a “counting-house” in letters of gold.

“I shall always be the same, it seems,” said he to himself, laughing a
little and passing his hand over his forehead, on which the perspiration
stood in drops.

In a good humour as the result of this pleasant fancy and at the sight
of the fire crackling in the suite of parquet-floored offices, with
their screens of iron trellis-work and their air of secrecy in the cold
light of the ground floor, where one could count the pieces of gold
without dazzling his eyes, M. Joyeuse gave a gay greeting to the
other clerks and slipped on his working coat and his black velvet cap.
Suddenly, some one whistled from upstairs, and the cashier, applying his
ear to the tube, heard the oily and gelatinous voice of Hemerlingue,
the sole and veritable Hemerlingue--the other, the son, was always
absent--asking for M. Joyeuse.

What! Could the dream be continuing?

He was conscious of a great agitation; took the little inside staircase
which he had seen himself ascending just before so bravely, and found
himself in the banker’s private room, a narrow apartment, with a very
high ceiling, furnished only with green curtains and enormous leather
easy chairs of a size proportioned to the terrific bulk of the head of
the house. He was there, seated at his desk which his belly prevented
him from approaching very closely, obese, ill-shaped, and so yellow that
his round face with its hooked nose, the head of a fat and sick owl,
suggested as it were a light at the end of the solemn and gloomy room. A
rich Moorish merchant grown mouldy in the damp of his little court-yard.
Beneath his heavy eyelids, raised with an effort, his glance glittered
for a second when the accountant entered; he signed to him to approach,
and slowly, coldly, pausing to take breath between his sentences,
instead of “M. Joyeuse, how many daughters have you?” he said this:

“Joyeuse, you have allowed yourself to criticise in the office our last
operations in the Tunis market. Useless to defend yourself. Your remarks
have been reported to me word for word. And as I am unable to admit them
from the mouth of one in my service, I give you notice that dating from
the end of this month you cease to be a member of my establishment.”

A wave of blood mounted to the accountant’s face, fell back, returned
again, bringing each time a confused whizzing into his ears, into his
brain a tumult of thoughts and images.

His daughters!

What was to become of them?

Employment is so hard to find at that period of the year.

Poverty appeared before his eyes and also the vision of an unfortunate
man falling at Hemerlingue’s feet, supplicating him, threatening him,
springing at his throat in an access of despairing rage. All this
agitation passed over his features like a gust of wind which throws the
surface of a lake into ripples, fashioning there all manner of mobile
whirlpools; but he remained mute, standing in the same place, and upon
the master’s intimation that he could withdraw, went down with tottering
step to resume his work in the counting-house.

In the evening when he went home to the Rue Saint-Ferdinand, M. Joyeuse
told his daughters nothing. He did not dare. The idea of darkening that
radiant gaiety which was the life of the house, of making dull with
heavy tears those pretty bright eyes, was insupportable to him.
Timorous, too, and weak, he was of those who always say, “Let us wait
till to-morrow.” He waited therefore before speaking, at first until the
month of November should be ended, deluding himself with the vague hope
that Hemerlingue might change his mind, as though he did not know that
will as of some mollusk flabby and tenacious upon its ingot of gold.
Then when his salary had been paid up and another accountant had taken
his place before the high desk at which he had stood for so long, he
hoped to find something else quickly and repair his misfortune before
being obliged to confess it.

Every morning he feigned to start for the office, allowed himself to
be equipped and accompanied to the door as usual, his huge leather
portfolio all ready for the evening’s numerous commissions. Although he
would forget some of them on purpose because of the approaching and
so problematical end of the month, he did not lack time now to execute
them. He had his day to himself, the whole of an interminable day which
he spent in rushing about Paris in search for an employment. People gave
him addresses, excellent recommendations. But in that terrible month of
December, so cold and with such short hours of daylight, bringing with
it so many expenses and preoccupations, employees need to take patience
and employers also. Each man tries to end the year in peace, postponing
to the month of January, to that great leap of time towards a fresh
halting-place, any changes, ameliorations, attempts at a new life.

In every house where M. Joyeuse presented himself, he beheld faces
suddenly grow cold as soon as he explained the object of his visit.

“What! You are no longer with Hemerlingue & Son? How is that?”

He would explain the matter as best he could through a caprice of the
head of the firm, the ferocious Hemerlingue whom Paris knew; but he
was conscious of a coldness, a mistrust in the uniform reply which he
received: “Call on us again after the holidays.” And, timid as he was to
begin with, he reached a point at which he could no longer bring himself
to call on any one, a point at which he could walk past the same door
a score of times and never have crossed its threshold at all had it not
been for the thought of his daughters. This alone pushed him along by
the shoulders, put heart in his legs, despatched him in the course
of the same day to the opposite extremities of Paris, to very vague
addresses given to him by comrades, to a great manufactory of animal
black at Aubervilliers, where he was made to return for nothing three
days in succession.

Oh, the journeys in the rain, in the frost, the closed doors, the master
who is out or engaged, the promises given and immediately withdrawn,
the hopes deceived, the enervation of hours of waiting, the humiliations
reserved for every man who asks for work, as though it were a shameful
thing to lack it. M. Joyeuse knew all these melancholy things and, too,
the good will that tires and grows discouraged before the persistence of
evil fortune. And you may imagine how the hard martyrdom of “the man who
seeks a place” was rendered tenfold more bitter by the mirages of his
imagination, by those chimeras which rose before him from the Paris
pavements as over them he journeyed along on foot in every direction.

For a month he was one of those woeful puppets, talking in monologue,
gesticulating on the footways, from whom every chance collision with the
crowd wrests an exclamation as of one walking in his sleep. “I told you
so,” or “I have no doubt of it, sir.” One passes by, almost one would
laugh, but one is seized with pity before the unconsciousness of those
unhappy men possessed by a fixed idea, blind whom the dream leads, drawn
along by an invisible leash. The terrible thing was that after those
long, cruel days of inaction and fatigue, when M. Joyeuse returned home,
he had perforce to play the comedy of the man returning from his work,
to recount the incidents of the day, the things he had heard, the gossip
of the office with which he had been always wont to entertain his girls.

In humble homes there is always a name which comes up more often than
all others, which is invoked in days of stress, which is mingled with
every wish, with every hope, even with the games of the children,
penetrated as they are with its importance, a name which sustains in
the dwelling the part of a sub-Providence, or rather of a household
divinity, familiar and supernatural. In the Joyeuse family, it was
Hemerlingue, always Hemerlingue, returning ten times, twenty times a
day in the conversation of the girls, who associated it with all their
plans, with the most intimate details of their feminine ambitions.
“If Hemerlingue would only----” “All that depends on Hemerlingue.” And
nothing could be more charming than the familiarity with which these
young people spoke of that enormously wealthy man whom they had never
seen.

They would ask for news of him. Had their father spoken to him? Was he
in a good temper? And to think that we all of us, whatever our position,
however humble we be, however weighed down by fate, we have always
beneath us unfortunate beings more humble, yet more weighed down, for
whom we are great, for whom we are as gods, and in our quality of gods,
indifferent, disdainful, or cruel.

One imagines the torture of M. Joyeuse, obliged to invent stories and
anecdotes about the wretch who had so ruthlessly discharged him after
ten years of good service. He played his little comedy, however, so well
as completely to deceive everybody. Only one thing had been remarked,
and that was that father when he came home in the evening always sat
down to table with a great appetite. I believe it! Since he lost his
place the poor man had gone without his luncheon.

The days passed. M. Joyeuse found nothing. Yes, one place as accountant
in the Territorial Bank, which he refused, however, knowing too much
about banking operations, about all the corners and innermost recesses
of the financial Bohemia in general, and of the Territorial bank in
particular, to set foot in that den.

“But,” said Passajon to him--for it was Passajon who, meeting the honest
fellow and hearing that he was out of employment, had suggested to
him that he should come to Paganetti’s--“but since I repeat that it is
serious. We have lots of money. They pay one. I have been paid. See how
prosperous I look.”

In effect, the old office porter had a new livery, and beneath his tunic
with its buttons of silver-gilt his paunch protruded, majestic. All
the same M. Joyeuse had not allowed himself to be tempted, even after
Passajon, opening wide his shallow-set blue eyes, had whispered into his
ear with emphasis these words rich in promises:

“The Nabob is in the concern.”

Even after that, M. Joyeuse had had the courage to say No. Was it not
better to die of hunger than to enter a fraudulent house of which
he might perhaps one day be summoned to report upon the books in the
courts?

So he continued to wander; but, discouraged, he no longer sought employ.
As it was necessary that he should absent himself from home, he used
to linger over the stalls on the quays, lean for hours on the parapets,
watch the water flow and the unladening of the vessels. He became one of
those idlers whom one sees in the first rank whenever a crowd collects
in the street, taking shelter from the rain under the porches, warming
himself at the stoves where, in the open air, the tar of the asphalters
reeks, sinking on a bench of some boulevard when his legs could no
longer carry him.

To do nothing! What a fine way of making life seem longer!

On certain days, however, when M. Joyeuse was too weary or the sky
too unkind, he would wait at the end of the street until his daughters
should have closed their window again and, returning to the house,
keeping close to the walls, would mount the staircase very quickly, pass
before his own door holding his breath, and take refuge in the apartment
of the photographer Andre Maranne, who, aware of his ill-fortune, always
gave him that kindly welcome which the poor have for each other. Clients
are rare so near the outskirts of the town. He used to remain long hours
in the studio, talking in a very low voice, reading at his friend’s
side, listening to the rain on the window-panes or the wind that blew
as it does on the open sea, shaking the old doors and the window-sashes
below in the wood-sheds. Beneath him he could hear sounds well known
and full of charm, songs that escaped in the satisfaction of work
accomplished, assembled laughter, the pianoforte lesson being given by
Bonne Maman, the tic-tac of the metronome, all the delicious household
stir that pleased his heart. He lived with his darlings, who certainly
never could have guessed that they had him so near them.

Once, when Maranne was out, M. Joyeuse keeping faithful watch over the
studio and its new apparatus, heard two little strokes given on the
ceiling of the apartment below, two separate, very distinct strokes,
then a cautious pattering of fingers, like the scamper of mice. The
friendliness of the photographer with his neighbours sufficiently
authorized these communications like those of prisoners. But what did
they mean? How reply to what seemed a call? Quite at hazard, he repeated
the two strokes, the light tapping, and the conversation ended there. On
the return of Andre Maranne he learned the explanation of the incident.
It was very simple. Sometimes, in the course of the day, the young
ladies below, who only saw their neighbour in the evening, would inquire
how things were going with him, whether any clients were coming in. The
signal he had heard meant, “Is business good to-day?” And M. Joyeuse had
replied, obeying only an instinct without any knowledge, “Fairly well
for the season.” Although young Maranne was very red as he made this
affirmation, M. Joyeuse accepted his word at once. Only this idea of
frequent communications between the two households made him afraid for
the secrecy of his position, and from that time forward he cut himself
off from what he used to call his “artistic days.” Moreover, the
moment was approaching when he would no longer be able to conceal his
misfortune, the end of the month arriving, complicated by the ending of
the year.

Paris was already assuming the holiday appearance which it wears during
the last weeks of December. In the way of national or popular rejoicing
it had little left but that. The follies of the Carnival died with
Gavarni, the religious festivals with their peals of bells which one
scarcely hears amid the noise of the streets confine themselves within
their heavy church-doors, the 15th of August has never been anything but
the Saint Charles-the-Great of the barracks; but Paris has maintained
its observance of New Year’s Day.

From the beginning of December an immense childishness begins to
permeate the town. You see hand-carts pass laden with gilded drums,
wooden horses, playthings by the dozen. In the industrial quarters, from
top to bottom of the five-storied houses, the old private residences
still standing in that low-lying district, where the warehouses have
such lofty ceilings and majestic double doors, the nights are passed in
the making up of gauze flowers and spangles, in the gumming of labels
upon satin-lined boxes, in sorting, marking, packing, the thousand
details of the toy, that great branch of commerce on which Paris places
the seal of its elegance. There is a smell about of new wood, of fresh
paint, glossy varnish, and, in the dust of garrets, on the wretched
stairways where the poor leave behind them all the dirt through which
they have passed, there lie shavings of rosewood, scraps of satin and
velvet, bits of tinsel, all the _debris_ of the luxury whose end is to
dazzle the eyes of children. Then the shop-windows are decorated. Behind
the panes of clear glass the gilt of presentation-books rises like a
glittering wave under the gaslight, the stuffs of various and tempting
colours display their brittle and heavy folds, while the young ladies
behind the counter, with their hair dressed tapering to a point and with
a ribbon beneath their collar, tie up the article, little finger in the
air, or fill bags of moire into which the sweets fall like a rain of
pearls.

But, over against this kind of well-to-do business, established in
its own house, warmed, withdrawn behind its rich shop-front, there is
installed the improvised commerce of those wooden huts, open to the
wind of the streets, of which the double row gives to the boulevards
the aspect of some foreign mall. It is in these that you find the true
interest and the poetry of New Year’s gifts. Sumptuous in the district
of the Madeleine, well-to-do towards the Boulevard Saint-Denis, of more
“popular” order as you ascend to the Bastille, these little sheds adapt
themselves according to their public, calculate their chances of success
by the more or less well-lined purses of the passers-by. Among these,
there are set up portable tables, laden with trifling objects, miracles
of the Parisian trade that deals in such small things, constructed out
of nothing, frail and delicate, and which the wind of fashion sometimes
sweeps forward in its great rush by reason of their very triviality.
Finally, along the curbs of the footways, lost in the defile of the
carriage traffic which grazes their wandering path, the orange-girls
complete this peripatetic commerce, heaping up the sun-coloured fruit
beneath their lanterns of red paper, crying “La Valence” amid the fog,
the tumult, the excessive haste which Paris displays at the ending of
its year.

Ordinarily, M. Joyeuse was accustomed to make one of the busy crowd
which goes and comes with the jingle of money in its pocket and parcels
in every hand. He would wander about with Bonne Maman at his side on the
lookout for New Year’s presents for his girls, stop before the booths of
the small dealers, who are accustomed to do much business and excited
by the appearance of the least important customer, have based upon
this short season hopes of extraordinary profits. And there would be
colloquies, reflections, an interminable perplexity to know what to
select in that little complex brain of his, always ahead of the present
instant and of the occupation of the moment.

This year, alas! nothing of that kind. He wandered sadly through the
town in its rejoicing, time seeming to hang all the heavier for the
activity around him, jostled, hustled, as all are who stand obstructing
the way of active folk, his heart beating with a perpetual fear, for
Bonne Maman for some days past, in conversation with him at table,
had been making significant allusions with regard to the New Year’s
presents. Consequently he avoided finding himself alone with her and had
forbidden her to come to meet him at the office at closing-time. But
in spite of all his efforts he knew the moment was drawing near when
concealment would be impossible and his grievous secret be unveiled.
Was, then, a very formidable person, Bonne Maman, that M. Joyeuse should
stand in such fear of her? By no means. A little stern, that was all,
with a pretty smile that instantly forgave one. But M. Joyeuse was
a coward, timid from his birth; twenty years of housekeeping with a
masterful wife, “a member of the nobility,” having made him a slave for
ever, like those convicts who, after their imprisonment is over, have to
undergo a period of surveillance. And for him this meant all his life.

One evening the Joyeuse family was gathered in the little drawing-room,
last relic of its splendour, still containing two upholstered chairs,
many crochet decorations, a piano, two lamps crowned with little green
shades, and a what-not covered with bric-a-brac.

True family life exists in humble homes.

For the sake of economy, there was lighted for the whole household but
one fire and a single lamp, around which the occupations and amusements
of all were grouped. A fine big family lamp, whose old painted
shade--night scenes pierced with shining dots--had been the astonishment
and the joy of every one of those young girls in her early childhood.
Issuing softly from the shadow of the room, four young heads were bent
forward, fair or dark, smiling or intent, into that intimate and warm
circle of light which illumined them as far as the eyes, seemed to feed
the fire of their glance, to shelter them, protect them, preserve them
from the black cold blowing outside, from phantoms, from snares, from
miseries and terrors, from all the sinister things that a winter night
in Paris brings forth in the remoteness of its quiet suburbs.

Thus, drawn close together in a small room at the top of the lonely
house, in the warmth, the security of their comfortable home, the
Joyeuse household seems like a nest right at the top of a lofty
tree. The girls sew, read, chat a little. A leap of the lamp-flame,
a crackling of fire, is what you may hear, with from time to time an
exclamation from M. Joyeuse, a little removed from his small circle,
lost in the shadow where he hides his anxious brow and all the
extravagance of his imagination. Just now he is imagining that in
the distress into which he finds himself driven beyond possibility
of escape, in that absolute necessity of confessing everything to his
children, this evening, at latest to-morrow, an unhoped-for succour may
come to him. Hemerlingue, seized with remorse, sends to him, as to
all those who took part in the work connected with the Tunis loan, his
December gratuity. A tall footman brings it: “On behalf of M. le Baron.”
 The visionary says those words aloud. The pretty faces turn towards him;
the girls laugh, move their chairs, and the poor fellow awakes suddenly
to reality.

Oh, how angry he is with himself now for his delay in confessing all,
for that false security which he has maintained around him and which he
will have to destroy at a blow. What need had he, too, to criticise that
Tunis loan? At this moment he even reproaches himself for not having
accepted a place in the Territorial Bank. Had he the right to refuse?
Ah, the sorry head of a family, without strength to keep or to defend
the happiness of his own! And, glancing at the pretty group within
the circle of the lamp-shade, whose reposeful aspect forms so great a
contrast with his own internal agitation, he is seized by a remorse so
violent for the weakness of his soul that his secret rises to his lips,
is about to escape him in a burst of sobs, when the ring of a bell--no
chimera, that--gives them all a start and arrests him at the very moment
when he was about to speak.

Whoever could it be, coming at this hour? They had lived in retirement
since the mother’s death and saw almost nobody. Andre Maranne, when
he came down to spend a few minutes with them, tapped like a familiar
friend. Profound silence in the drawing-room, long colloquy on the
landing. Finally, the old servant--she had been in the family as long as
the lamp--showed in a young man, complete stranger, who stopped, struck
with admiration at the charming picture of the four darlings gathered
round the table. This made his entrance timid, rather awkward. However,
he explained clearly the object of his visit. He had been referred to M.
Joyeuse by an honest fellow of his acquaintance, old Passajon, to take
lessons in bookkeeping. One of his friends happened to be engaged in
large financial transactions in connection with an important joint-stock
company. He wished to be of service to him in keeping an eye on the
employment of the capital, the straightforwardness of the operations;
but he was a lawyer, little familiar with financial methods, with the
terms employed in banking. Could not M. Joyeuse in the course of a few
months, with three or four lessons a week--

“Yes, indeed, sir, yes, indeed,” stammered the father, quite overcome by
this unlooked-for piece of good luck. “Assuredly I can undertake, in a
few months, to qualify you for such auditing work. Where shall we have
our lessons?”

“Here, at your own house, if you are agreeable,” said the young man,
“for I am anxious that no one should know that I am working at the
subject. But I shall be grieved if I always frighten everybody away as I
have this evening.”

For, at the first words of the visitor, the four curly heads had
disappeared, with little whisperings, and with rustlings of skirts, and
the drawing-room looked very bare now that the big circle of white light
was empty.

Always quick to take offence, where his daughters were concerned, M.
Joyeuse replied that “the young girls were accustomed to retire early
every evening,” and the words were spoken in a brief, dry tone which
very clearly signified: “Let us talk of our lessons, young man, if you
please.” Days were then fixed, free hours in the evening.

As for the terms, they would be whatever monsieur desired.

Monsieur mentioned a sum.

The accountant became quite red. It was the amount he used to earn at
Hemerlingue’s.

“Oh, no, that is too much.”

But the other was no longer listening. He was seeking for words, as
though he had something very difficult to say, and suddenly, making up
his mind to it:

“Here is your first month’s salary.”

“But, monsieur--”

The young man insisted. He was a stranger. It was only fair that he
should pay in advance. Evidently, Passajon has told his secret.

M. Joyeuse understood, and in a low voice said, “Thank you, oh, thank
you,” so deeply moved that words failed him. Life! it meant life,
several months of life, the time to turn round, to find another place.
His darlings would want for nothing. They would have their New Year’s
presents. Oh, the mercy of Providence!

“Till Wednesday, then, M. Joyeuse.”

“Till Wednesday, monsieur--”

“De Gery--Paul de Gery.”

And they separated, both delighted, fascinated, the one by the
apparition of this unexpected saviour, the other by the adorable picture
of which he had only a glimpse, all those young girls grouped round the
table covered with books, exercise-books, and skeins of wool, with an
air of purity, of industrious honesty. This was a new Paris for Paul de
Gery, a courageous, home-like Paris, very different from that which he
already knew, a Paris of which the writers of stories in the newspapers
and the reporters never speak, and which recalled to him his own country
home, with an additional charm, that charm which the struggle and tumult
around lend to the tranquil, secured refuge.



FELICIA RUYS

“And your son, Jenkins. What are you doing with him? Why does one never
see him now at your house? He seemed a nice fellow.”

As she spoke in that tone of disdainful bluntness which she almost
always used when speaking to the Irishman, Felicia was at work on the
bust of the Nabob which she had just commenced, posing her model, laying
down and taking up the boasting-tool, quickly wiping her fingers with
the little sponge, while the light and peace of a fine Sunday afternoon
fell on the top-light of the studio. Felicia “received” every Sunday,
if to receive were to leave her door open to allow people to come in,
go out, sit down for a moment, without stirring from her work or even
interrupting the course of a discussion to welcome the new arrivals.
They were artists, with refined heads and luxuriant beards; here and
there you might see among them white-haired friends of Ruys, her father;
then there were society men, bankers, stock-brokers, and a few young men
about town, come to see the handsome girl rather than her sculpture, in
order to be able to say at the club in the evening, “I was at Felicia’s
to-day.” Among them was Paul de Gery, silent, absorbed in an admiration
which each day sunk into his heart a little more deeply, trying to
understand the beautiful sphinx draped in purple cashmere and ecru lace,
who worked away bravely amid her clay, a burnisher’s apron reaching
nearly to her neck, allowing her small, proud head to emerge with those
transparent tones, those gleams of veiled radiance of which the sense,
the inspiration bring the blood to the cheek as they pass. Paul always
remembered what had been said of her in his presence, endeavoured to
form an opinion for himself, doubted, worried himself, and was charmed,
vowing to himself each time that he would come no more and never missing
a Sunday. A little woman with gray, powdered hair was always there in
the same place, her pink face like a pastel somewhat worn by years, who,
in the discrete light of a recess, smiled sweetly, with her hands lying
idly on her knees, motionless as a fakir. Jenkins, amiable, with his
open face, his black eyes, and his apostolical manner, moved on from one
group to another, liked and known by all. He did not miss, either, one
of Felicia’s days; and, indeed, he showed his patience in this, all the
snubs of his hostess both as artist and pretty woman being reserved for
him alone. Without appearing to notice them, with ever the same smiling,
indulgent serenity, he continued to pay his visits to the daughter of
his old Ruys, of the man whom he had so loved and tended to his last
moments.

This time, however, the question which Felicia had just addressed to him
respecting his son appeared extremely disagreeable to him, and it was
with a frown and a real expression of annoyance that he replied:
“Ma foi! I know no more than yourself what he is doing. He has quite
deserted us. He was bored at home. He cares only for his Bohemia.”

Felicia gave a jump that made them all start, and with flashing eyes and
nostrils that quivered, said:

“That is too absurd. Ah, now, come, Jenkins. What do you mean by
Bohemia? A charming word, by-the-bye, and one that ought to recall long
days of wandering in the sun, halts in woody nooks, all the freshness of
fruits gathered by the open road. But since you have made a reproach of
the name, to whom do you apply it? To a few poor devils with long hair,
in love with liberty in rags, who starve to death in a fifth-floor
garret, or seek rhymes under tiles through which the rain filters;
to those madmen, growing more and more rare, who, from horror of the
customary, the traditional, the stupidity of life, have put their feet
together and made a jump into freedom? Come, that is too old a story.
It is the Bohemia of Murger, with the workhouse at the end, terror of
children, boon of parents, Red Riding-Hood eaten by the wolf. It was
worn out a long time ago, that story. Nowadays, you know well that
artists are the most regular people in their habits on earth, that they
earn money, pay their debts, and contrive to look like the first man you
may meet on the street. The true Bohemians exist, however; they are the
backbone of our society; but it is in your own world especially that
they are to be found. _Parbleu!_ They bear no external stamp and
nobody distrusts them; but, so far as uncertainty, want of substantial
foundation in their lives is concerned, they have nothing to wish for
from those whom they call so disdainfully ‘irregulars.’ Ah! if we
knew how much turpitude, what fantastic or abominable stories, a black
evening-coat, the most correct of your hideous modern garments, can
mask. Why, see, Jenkins, the other evening at your house I was amusing
myself by counting them--all these society adventurers--”

The little old lady, pink and powdered, put in gently from her place:

“Felicia, take care!”

But she continued, without listening:

“What do you call Monpavon, doctor? And Bois l’Hery? And de Mora
himself? And--” She was going to say “and the Nabob?” but stopped
herself.

“And how many others! Oh, truly, you may well speak of Bohemia with
contempt. But your fashionable doctor’s clientele, oh sublime Jenkins,
consists of that very thing alone. The Bohemia of commerce, of finance,
of politics; unclassed people, shady people of all castes, and the
higher one ascends the more you find of them, because rank gives
impunity and wealth can pay for rude silence.”

She spoke with a hard tone, greatly excited, with lip curled by a savage
disdain. The doctor forced a laugh and assumed a light, condescending
tone, repeating: “Ah, feather-brain, feather-brain!” And his glance,
anxious and beseeching, sought the Nabob, as though to demand his pardon
for all these paradoxical impertinences.

But Jansoulet, far from appearing vexed, was so proud of posing to this
handsome artist, so appreciative of the honour that was being done him,
that he nodded his head approvingly.

“She is right, Jenkins,” said he at last, “she is right. It is we who
are the true Bohemia. Take me, for example; take Hemerlingue, two of the
men who handle the most money in Paris. When I think of the point from
which we started, of all the trades through which we have made our way.
Hemerlingue, once keeper of a regimental canteen. I, who have carried
sacks of wheat in the docks of Marseilles for my living. And the strokes
of luck by which our fortunes have been built up--as all fortunes,
moreover, in these times are built up. Go to the Bourse between three
and five. But, pardon, mademoiselle, see, through my absurd habit of
gesticulating when I speak, I have lost the pose. Come, is this right?”

“It is useless,” said Felicia. A true daughter of an artist, of a genial
and dissolute artist, thoroughly in the romantic tradition, as was
Sebastien Ruys. She had never known her mother. She was the fruit of one
of those transient loves which used to enter suddenly into the bachelor
life of the sculptor like swallows into a dovecote of which the door is
always open, and who leave it again because no nest can be built there.

This time, the lady, ere she flew away, had left to the great artist,
then about forty years of age, a beautiful child whom he had brought
up, and who became the joy and the passion of his life. Until she
was thirteen, Felicia had lived in her father’s house, introducing a
childish and tender note into that studio full of idlers, models, and
huge greyhounds lying at full length on the couches. There was a corner
reserved for her, for her attempts at sculpture, a whole miniature
equipment, a tripod, wax, etc., and old Ruys would cry to those who
entered:

“Don’t go there. Don’t move anything. That is the little one’s corner.”

So it came about that at ten years old she scarcely knew how to read and
could handle the boasting-tool with marvellous skill. Ruys would have
liked to keep always with him this child whom he never felt to be in the
way, a member of the great brotherhood from her earliest years. But
it was pitiful to see the little girl amid the free behaviour of the
frequenters of the house, the constant going and coming of the models,
the discussions of an art, so to speak, entirely physical, and even at
the noisy Sunday dinner-parties, sitting among five or six women, to all
of whom her father spoke familiarly. There were actresses, dancers or
singers, who, after dinner, would settle themselves down to smoke with
their elbows on the table absorbed in the indecent stories so keenly
relished by their host. Fortunately, childhood is protected by a
resisting candour, by an enamel over which all impurities glide. Felicia
became noisy, turbulent, ill-behaved, but without being touched by all
that passed over her little soul so near to earth.

Every year, in the summer, she used to go to stay for a few days with
her godmother, Constance Crenmitz, the elder Crenmitz, whom all Europe
had called for so long “the famous dancer,” and who lived in peaceful
retirement at Fontainebleau.

The arrival of the “little demon” used to bring into the life of the old
dancer an element of disturbance from which she had afterward all the
year to recover. The frights which the child caused her by her daring
in climbing, in jumping, in riding, all the passionate transports of
her wild nature made this visit for her at once delicious and terrible;
delicious for she adored Felicia, the one family tie that remained to
this poor old salamander in retirement after thirty years of fluttering
in the glare of the footlights; terrible, for the demon used to upset
without pity the dancer’s house, decorated, carefully ordered, perfumed,
like her dressing-room at the opera, and adorned with a museum of
souvenirs dated from every stage in the world.

Constance Crenmitz was the one feminine element in Felicia’s childhood.
Futile, limited in mind, she had at least a coquettish taste, agile
fingers that knew how to sew, to embroider, to arrange things, to leave
in every corner of the room their dainty and individual trace. She
alone undertook to train up the wild young plant, and to awaken with
discretion the woman in this strange being on whom cloaks, furs,
everything elegant devised by fashion, seemed to take odd folds or look
curiously awkward.

It was the dancer again--in what neglect must she not have lived, this
little Ruys--who, triumphing over the paternal selfishness, insisted
upon a necessary separation, when Felicia was twelve or thirteen years
old; and she took also the responsibility of finding a suitable school,
a school which she selected of deliberate purpose, very comfortable and
very respectable, right at the upper end of an airy road, occupying a
roomy, old-world building surrounded by high walls, big trees, a sort of
convent without its constraint and contempt of serious studies.

Much work, on the contrary, was done in Mme. Belin’s institution,
where the pupils went out only on the principal holidays and had no
communication with outside except the visits of relatives on Thursdays,
in a little garden planted with flowering shrubs or in the immense
parlour with carved and gilded work over its doors. The first entry
of Felicia into this almost monastic house caused indeed a certain
sensation; her dresses chosen by the Austrian dancer, her hair curling
to her waist, her gait free and easy like a boy’s, aroused some
hostility, but she was a Parisian and could adapt herself quickly to
every situation and to all surroundings. A few days later, she looked
better than any one in the little black apron, to which the more
coquettish were wont to hang their watches, the straight skirt--a severe
and hard prescription at that period when fashion expanded women’s
figures with an infinity of flounces--the regulation coiffure, two
plaits tied rather low, at the neck, after the manner of the Roman
peasants.

Strange to say, the regularity of the classes, their calm exactitude,
suited Felicia’s nature, intelligent and quick, in which the taste
for study was relieved by a juvenile expansion at ease in the noisy
good-humour of playtime. She was popular. Among those daughters of
wealthy businessmen, of Parisian lawyers or of gentlemen-farmers, a
respectable and rather affectedly serious world, the well-known name
of old Ruys, the respect with which at Paris an artist’s reputation is
surrounded, created for Felicia a greatly envied position, rendered more
brilliant still by her successes in the school-work, a genuine talent
for drawing, and her beauty, that superiority which asserts its
power even among young girls. In the wholesale atmosphere of the
boarding-school, she was conscious of an extreme pleasure as she grew
feminized, in resuming her sex, in learning to know order, regularity,
otherwise than these were taught by that amiable dancer whose kisses
seemed always to keep the taste of paint and her embraces somewhat
artificial in the curving of her arms. Ruys, her father, was enraptured
each time that he came to see his daughter, to find her more grown,
womanly, knowing how to enter, to walk, and to leave a room with that
pretty courtesy which caused all Mme. Belin’s pupils to long for the
trailing rustle of a long skirt.

At first he came often, then, as he had not time enough for all his
commissions, accepted and undertaken, the advances on which went to pay
for the scrapes, the pleasures of his existence, he was seen more seldom
in the parlour. Finally, sickness intervened. Stricken by an incurable
anaemia, he would remain for weeks without leaving his house, without
doing any work. Thereupon he wished to have his daughter with him again;
and from the boarding-school, sheltered by so healthy a tranquility,
Felicia returned once more to her father’s studio, haunted still by the
same boon companions, the parasites which swarm around every celebrity,
into the midst of which sickness had introduced a new personage, Dr.
Jenkins.

His fine open countenance, the air of candour, of serenity that seemed
to dwell about the person of this physician, already famous, who was
wont to speak of his art so carelessly and yet seemed to work miraculous
cures, the care with which he surrounded her father, these things made
a great impression on the young girl. Jenkins became immediately her
friend, confidant, a vigilant and kind guardian. Occasionally, when,
in the studio, somebody--her father most likely of all--uttered a risky
jest, the Irishman would contract his eyebrows, give a little click of
the tongue, or perhaps distract Felicia’s attention.

He often used to take her to pass the day with Mme. Jenkins,
endeavouring to prevent her from becoming again the wild young thing she
was before going to school, or even something worse, as she threatened
to do in the moral neglect, sadder than all other, in which she was
left.

But the young girl had as a protection something even better than the
irreproachable and worldly example of the handsome Mme. Jenkins: the art
that she adored, the enthusiasm which it implanted in her nature wholly
occupied with outside things, the sentiment of beauty, of truth, which,
from her thoughtful brain, full of ideas, passed into her fingers with
a little quivering of the nerves, a desire of the idea accomplished, of
the realized image. All day long she would work at her sculpture, giving
shape to her dreams with that happiness of instinctive youth which
lends so much charm to early work; this prevented her from any excessive
regret for the austerity of the Belin institution, sheltering and light
as the veil of a novice before her vows, and preserved her also from
dangerous conversations, unheard amid her unique preoccupation.

Ruys was proud of this talent growing up at his side. Growing every day
feebler, already at that stage in which the artist regrets himself, he
found in following Felicia’s progress a certain consolation for his
own ended career. He saw the boasting-tool, which trembled in his hand,
taken up again under his eye with a virile firmness and assurance,
tempered by all those delicacies of her being which a woman can apply to
the realization of an art. A strange sensation, this double paternity,
this survival of genius as it abandons the man whose day is over to pass
into him who is at his dawn, like those beautiful, familiar birds which,
on the eve of a death, will desert the menaced roof to fly away to a
less mournful lodging.

During the last period of her father’s life, Felicia--a great artist and
still a mere child--used to execute half of his works; and nothing was
more touching than this collaboration of father and daughter, in the
same studio, around the same group. The operation did not always proceed
peaceably; although her father’s pupil, Felicia already felt her
own personality rebel against any despotic direction. She had those
audacities of the beginner, those intuitions of the future which are the
heritage of young talents, and, in opposition to the romantic traditions
of Sebastien Ruys, a tendency to modern realism, a need to plant that
glorious old flag upon some new monument.

These things were the occasion of terrible arguments, of discussions
from which the father came out beaten, conquered by his daughter’s
logic, astonished at the progress made by the young, while the old, who
have opened the way for them, remain motionless at the point from which
they started. When she was working for him, Felicia would yield more
easily; but, where her own sculpture was concerned she was found to
be intractable. Thus the _Joueur de Boules_, her first exhibited work,
which obtained so great a success at the Salon of 1862, was the subject
of violent scenes between the two artists, of contradictions so strong,
that Jenkins had to intervene and help to secure the safety of the
plaster-cast which Ruys had threatened to destroy.

Apart from such little dramas, which in no way affected the tenderness
of their hearts, these two beings adored each other with the
presentiment and, gradually, the cruel certitude of an approaching
separation, when suddenly there occurred in Felicia’s life a horrible
event. One day, Jenkins had taken her to dine at his house, as often
happened. Mme. Jenkins was away on a couple of days’ visit, as also her
son; but the doctor’s age, his semi-paternal intimacy, allowed him to
have with him, even in his wife’s absence, this young girl whose fifteen
years, the fifteen years of an Eastern Jewess glorious in her precocious
beauty, left her still near childhood.

The dinner was very gay, and Jenkins pleasant and cordial as usual.
Afterwards they went into the doctor’s study, and suddenly, on the
couch, in the middle of an intimate and quite friendly conversation
about her father, his health, their work together, Felicia felt as it
were the chill of a gulf between herself and this man, then the brutal
grasp of a faun. She beheld an unknown Jenkins, wild-looking, stammering
with a besotted laugh and outraging hands. In the surprise, the
unexpectedness of this bestial attack, any other than Felicia--a child
of her own age, really innocent, would have been lost. As for her, poor
little thing! what saved her was her knowledge. She had heard so many
stories of this kind of thing at her father’s table! and then art,
and the life of the studio--She was not an _ingenue_. In a moment she
understood the object of this grasp, struggled, sprang up, then, not
being strong enough, cried out. He was afraid, released his hold, and
suddenly she found herself standing up, free, with the man on his knees
weeping and begging forgiveness. He had yielded to a fit of madness.
She was so beautiful; he loved her so much. For months he had been
struggling. But now it was over, never again, oh, never again! Not
even would he so much as touch the hem of her dress. She made no reply,
trembled, put her hair and her clothes straight again with the fingers
of a woman demented. To go home--she wished to go home instantly, quite
alone. He sent a servant with her; and, quite low, as she was getting
into the carriage, whispered:

“Above all, not a word. It would kill your father.”

He knew her so well, he was so sure of his power over her through that
suggestion, the blackguard! that he returned on the morrow looking
bright as ever and with loyal face as though nothing had happened. In
fact, she never spoke of the matter to her father, nor to any one. But,
dating from that day, a change came over her, a sudden development, as
it were, of her haughty ways. She was subject to caprices, wearinesses,
a curl of disgust in her smile, and sometimes quick fits of anger
against her father, a glance of contempt which reproached him for not
having known how to watch over her.

“What is the matter with her?” Ruys, her father, used to say; and
Jenkins, with the authority of a doctor, would put it down to her age
and some physical disturbance. He avoided speaking to the girl herself,
counting on time to efface the sinister impression, and not despairing
of attaining his end, for he desired it still, more than ever, prey to
the exasperated love of a man of forty-seven to one of those incurable
passions of maturity; and that was this hypocrite’s punishment. This
unusual condition of his daughter was a real grief to the sculptor; but
this grief was of short duration. Without warning, Ruys flickered out of
life, fell to pieces in a moment, as was the way with all the Irishman’s
patients. His last words were:

“Jenkins, I beg you to look after my daughter.”

They were so ironically mournful that Jenkins could not prevent himself
from turning pale.

Felicia was even more stupefied than grief-stricken. To the amazement
caused by death, which she had never seen and which now came before her
wearing features so dear, there was joined the sense of a vast solitude
surrounded by darkness and perils.

A few of the sculptor’s friends gathered together as a family council
to consider the future of this unfortunate child without relatives or
fortune. Fifty francs had been discovered in the box where Sebastien
used to put his money, on a piece of the studio furniture well known to
its needy frequenters and visited by them without scruple. There was
no other inheritance, at least in cash; only a quantity of artistic
and curious furniture of the most sumptuous description, a few valuable
pictures, and a certain amount of money owing but scarcely sufficing
to cover numberless debts. It was proposed to organize a sale. Felicia,
when she was consulted, replied that she would not care if everything
were sold, but, for God’s sake, let them leave her in peace.

The sale did not take place, however, thanks to the godmother, the
excellent Crenmitz, who suddenly made her appearance, calm and gentle as
usual.

“Don’t listen to them, my child. Sell nothing. Your old Constance has
an income of fifteen thousand francs, which was destined to come to you
later on. You will take advantage of it at once, that is all. We will
live here together. You will see, I shall not be in the way. You will
work at your sculpture, I shall manage the house. Does that suit you?”

It was said so tenderly, with that childishness of accent which
foreigners have when expressing themselves in French, that the girl
was deeply moved. Her heart that had seemed turned to stone opened, a
burning flood came pouring from her eyes, and she rushed, flung herself
into the arms of the dancer. “Ah, godmother, how good you are to me!
Yes, yes, don’t leave me any more. Stay with me always. Life frightens
and disgusts me. I see so much hypocrisy in it, so much falsehood.” And
the old woman arranged for herself a silken and embroidered nest in this
house so like a traveller’s camp laden with treasures from every land,
and the suggested dual life began for these two different natures.

It was no small sacrifice that Constance had made for the dear demon in
quitting her Fontainebleau retreat for Paris, which inspired her with
terror. Ever since the day when this dancer, with her extravagant
caprices, who made princely fortunes flow and disappear through her five
open fingers, had descended from her triumphant position, a little of
its dazzling glitter still in her eyes, and had attempted to resume
an ordinary existence, to manage her little income and her modest
household, she had been the object of a thousand impudent exploitations,
of frauds that were easy in view of the ignorance of this poor butterfly
that was frightened by reality and came into collision with all its
unknown difficulties. Living in Felicia’s house, the responsibility
became still more serious by reason of the wastefulness introduced long
ago by the father and continued by the daughter, two artists knowing
nothing of economy. She had, moreover, other difficulties to conquer.
She found the studio insupportable with its permanent atmosphere of
tobacco smoke, an impenetrable cloud for her, in which the discussions
on art, the analysis of ideas, were lost and which infallibly gave her a
headache. “Chaff,” above all, frightened her. As a foreigner, as at
one time a divinity of the green-room, brought up on out-of-date
compliments, on gallantries _a la Dorat_, she did not understand it,
and would feel terrified in the presence of the wild exaggerations, the
paradoxes of these Parisians refined by the liberty of the studio.

That kind of thing was intimidating to her who had never possessed wit
save in the vivacity of her feet, and reduced her simply to the rank of
a lady-companion; and, seeing this amiable old dame sitting, silent and
smiling, her knitting in her lap, like one of Chardin’s _bourgeoises_,
or hastening by the side of her cook up the long Rue de Chaillot, where
the nearest market happened to be, one would never have guessed that
that simple old body had ruled kings, princes, the whole class
of amorous nobles and financiers, at the caprice of her step and
pirouettings.

Paris is full of such fallen stars, extinguished by the crowd.

Some of these famous ones, these conquerors of a former day, cherish a
rage in their heart; others, on the contrary, enjoy the past blissfully,
digest in an ineffable content all their glorious and ended joys, asking
only repose, silence, shadow, good enough for memory and contemplations,
so that when they die people are quite astonished to learn that they had
been still living.

Constance Crenmitz was among these fortunate ones. The household of
these two women was a curious one. Both were childlike, placing side by
side in a common domain, inexperience and ambition, the tranquility of
an accomplished destiny and the fever of a life plunged in struggle,
all the different qualities manifest even in the serene style of dress
affected by this blonde who seemed all white like a faded rose,
with something beneath her bright colours that vaguely suggested the
footlights, and that brunette with the regular features, who almost
always clothed her beauty in dark materials, simple in fold, a
semblance, as it were, of virility.

Things unforeseen, caprices, ignorance of even the least important
details, led to an extreme disorder in the finances of the household,
disorder which was only rectified by dint of privations, by the
dismissal of servants, by reforms that were laughable in their
exaggeration. During one of these crises, Jenkins had made veiled
delicate offers, which, however, were repulsed with contempt by Felicia.

“It is not nice of you,” Constance would remark to her, “to be so
hard on the poor doctor. After all, there was nothing offensive in his
suggestion. An old friend of your father.”

“He, any one’s friend! Ah, the hypocrite!”

And Felicia, hardly able to contain herself, would give an ironical turn
to her wrath, imitating Jenkins with his oily manner and his hand on his
heart; then, puffing out her cheeks, she would say in a loud, deep voice
full of lying unction:

“Let us be humane, let us be kind. To do good without hope of reward!
That is the whole point.”

Constance used to laugh till the tears came, in spite of herself. The
resemblance was so perfect.

“All the same, you are too hard. You will end by driving him away
altogether.”

“Little fear of that,” a shake of the girl’s head would reply.

In effect he always came back, pleasant, amiable, dissimulating his
passion, which was visible only when it grew jealous of newcomers,
paying assiduous attention to the old dancer, who, in spite of
everything, found his good-nature pleasing and recognised in him a man
of her own time, of the time when one accosted a woman with a kiss on
her hand, with a compliment on her appearance.

One morning, Jenkins having called in the course of his round, found
Constance alone and doing nothing in the antechamber.

“You see, doctor, I am on guard,” she remarked tranquilly.

“How is that?”

“Felicia is at work. She wishes not to be disturbed; and the servants
are so stupid, I am myself seeing that her orders are obeyed.”

Then, seeing that the Irishman made a step towards the studio:

“No, no, don’t go in. She told me very particularly not to let any one
go in.”

“But I?”

“I beg you not. You would get me a scolding.”

Jenkins was about to take his leave when a burst of laughter from
Felicia, coming through the curtains, made him prick up his ears.

“She is not alone, then?”

“No, the Nabob is with her. They are having a sitting for the portrait.”

“And why this mystery? It is a very singular thing.” He commenced to
walk backward and forward, evidently very angry, but containing his
wrath.

At last he burst forth.

It was an unheard-of impropriety to let a girl thus shut herself in with
a man.

He was surprised that one so serious, so devoted as Constance--What did
it look like?

The old lady looked at him with stupefaction. As though Felicia were
like other girls! And then what danger was there with the Nabob, so
staid a man and so ugly? Besides, Jenkins ought to know quite well that
Felicia never consulted anybody, that she always had her own way.

“No, no, it is impossible! I cannot tolerate this,” exclaimed the
Irishman.

And, without paying any further heed to the dancer, who raised her arms
to heaven as a call upon it to witness what was about to happen, he
moved towards the studio; but, instead of entering immediately, he
softly half-opened the door and raised a corner of the hangings, whereby
the portion of the room in which the Nabob was posing became visible to
him, although at a considerable distance.

Jansoulet, seated without cravat and with his waist-coat open, was
talking apparently in some agitation and in a low voice. Felicia was
replying in a similar tone, in laughing whispers. The sitting was very
animated. Then a silence, a silken rustle of skirts, and the artist,
going up to her model, turned down his linen collar all round with
familiar gesture, allowing her light hand to run over the sun-tanned
skin.

That Ethiopian face on which the muscles stood out in the very
intoxication of health, with its long drooping eyelashes as of some deer
being gently stroked in its sleep; the bold profile of the girl as she
leaned over those strange features in order to verify their proportions;
then a violent, irresistible gesture, clutching the delicate hand as it
passed and pressing it to two thick, passionate lips. Jenkins saw all
that in one red flash.

The noise that he made in entering caused the two personages instantly
to resume their respective positions, and, in the strong light which
dazzled his prying eyes, he saw the young girl standing before him,
indignant, stupefied.

“Who is that? Who has taken the liberty?” and the Nabob, on his
platform, with his collar turned down, petrified, monumental.

Jenkins, a little abashed, frightened by his own audacity, murmured some
excuses. He had something very urgent to say to M. Jansoulet, a piece of
news which was most important and would suffer no delay. “He knew upon
the best authority that certain decorations were to be bestowed on the
16th of March.”

Immediately the face of the Nabob, that for a moment had been frowning,
relaxed.

“Ah! can it be true?”

He abandoned his pose. The thing was worth the trouble, _que diable!_
M. de la Perriere, a secretary of the department involved had been
commissioned by the Empress to visit the Bethlehem Refuge. Jenkins had
come in search of the Nabob to take him to see the secretary at the
Tuileries and to appoint a day. This visit to Bethlehem, it meant the
cross for him.

“Quick, let us start, my dear doctor. I follow you.”

He was no longer angry with Jenkins for having disturbed him, and he
knotted his cravat feverishly, forgetting in his new emotions how he had
been upset a moment earlier, for ambition with him came before all else.

While the two men were talking in a half-whisper, Felicia, standing
motionless before them, with quivering nostrils and her lip curled in
contempt, watched them with an air of saying, “Well, I am waiting.”

Jansoulet apologized for being obliged to interrupt the sitting; but a
visit of the most extreme importance--She smiled in pity.

“Don’t mention it, don’t mention it. At the point which we have reached
I can work without you.”

“Oh, yes,” said the doctor, “the work is almost completed.”

He added with the air of a connoisseur:

“It is a fine piece of work.”

And, counting upon covering his retreat with this compliment, he made
for the door with shoulders drooped; but Felicia detained him abruptly.

“Stay, you. I have something to say to you.”

He saw clearly from her look that he would have to yield, on pain of an
explosion.

“You will excuse me, _cher ami_? Mademoiselle has a word for me. My
brougham is at the door. Get in. I will be with you immediately.”

As soon as the door of the studio had closed on that heavy, retreating
foot, each of them looked at the other full in the face.

“You must be either drunk or mad to have allowed yourself to behave in
this way. What! you dare to enter my house when I am not at home? What
does this violence mean? By what right--”

“By the right of a despairing and incurable passion.”

“Be silent, Jenkins, you are saying words that I will not hear. I allow
you to come here out of pity, from habit, because my father was fond of
you. But never speak to me again of your--love”--she uttered the word in
a very low voice, as though it were shameful--“or you shall never see me
again, even though I should have to kill myself in order to escape you
once and for all.”

A child caught in mischief could not bend its head more humbly than did
Jenkins, as he replied:

“It is true. I was in the wrong. A moment of madness, of blindness--But
why do you amuse yourself by torturing my heart as you do?”

“I think of you often, however.”

“Whether you think of me or not, I am there, I see what goes on, and
your coquetry hurts me terribly.”

A touch of red mounted to her cheeks at this reproach.

“A coquette, I? And with whom?”

“With that,” said the Irishman, indicating the ape-like and powerful
bust.

She tried to laugh.

“The Nabob? What folly!”

“Don’t tell an untruth about it now. Do you think I am blind, that I
do not notice all your little manoeuvres? You remain alone with him for
very long at a time. Just now, I was there. I saw you.” He dropped his
voice as though breath had failed him. “What do you want, strange and
cruel child? I have seen you repulse the most handsome, the most noble,
the greatest. That little de Gery devours you with his eyes; you take no
notice. The Duc de Mora himself has not been able to reach your heart.
And it is that man there who is ugly, vulgar, who had no thought of you,
whose head is full of quite other matters than love. You saw how he went
off just now. What can you mean? What do you expect from him?”

“I want--I want him to marry me. There!”

Coldly, in a softened tone, as though this avowal had brought her
nearer the level of the man whom she so much despised, she explained her
motives. The life which she led was pushing her into a situation from
which there was no way out. She had luxurious and expensive tastes,
habits of disorder which nothing could conquer and which would bring her
inevitably to poverty, both her and that good Crenmitz, who was allowing
herself to be ruined without saying a word. In three years, four years
at the outside, all would be over with them. And then the wretched
expedients, the debts, the tatters and old shoes of poor artists’
households. Or, indeed, the lover, the man who keeps a mistress--that is
to say, slavery and infamy.

“Come, come,” said Jenkins. “And what of me, am I not here?”

“Anything rather than you,” she exclaimed, stiffening. “No, what I
require, what I want, is a husband who will protect me from others and
from myself, who will save me from many terrible things of which I am
afraid in my moments of ennui, from the gulfs in which I feel that I may
perish, some one who will love me while I am at work and relieve my poor
old wearied fairy of her sentry duty. This man here suits my purpose,
and I thought of him from the first time I met him. He is ugly, but he
has a kind manner; then, too, he is ridiculously rich, and wealth, upon
that scale, must be amusing. Oh, I know well enough. No doubt there
is in his life some blemish that has brought him luck. All that money
cannot be made honestly. But come, truly now, Jenkins, with your hand
on that heart you so often invoke, do you think me a wife who should be
very attractive to an honest man? See: among all these young men who ask
permission as a favour to be allowed to come here, which one has dreamed
of offering me marriage? Never a single one. De Gery no more than the
rest. I am attractive, but I make men afraid. It is intelligible enough.
What can one imagine of a girl brought up as I have been, without a
mother, among my father’s models and mistresses? What mistresses, _mon
Dieu_! And Jenkins for sole guardian. Oh, when I think, when I think!”

And from that far-off memory things surged up that stirred her to a
deeper wrath.

“Ah, yes, _parbleu_! I am a daughter of adventure, and this adventurer
is, of a truth, the fit husband for me.”

“You must wait at least till he is a widower,” replied Jenkins calmly.
“And, in that case, you run the risk of having a long time to wait, for
his Levantine seems to enjoy excellent health.”

Felicia Ruys turned pale.

“He is married?”

“Married? certainly, and father of a bevy of children. The whole camp of
them landed a couple of days ago.”

For a minute she remained overwhelmed, looking into space, her cheeks
quivering. Opposite her, the Nabob’s large face, with its flattened
nose, its sensual and weak mouth, spoke insistently of life and reality
in the gloss of its clay. She looked at it for an instant, then made a
step forward and, with a gesture of disgust, overturned, with the high
wooden stool on which it stood, the glistening and greasy block, which
fell on the floor shattered to a heap of mud.



JANSOULET AT HOME

Married he was and had been so for twelve years, but he had mentioned
the fact to no one among his Parisian acquaintances, through Eastern
habit, that silence which the people of those countries preserve upon
affairs of the harem. Suddenly it was reported that madame was coming,
that apartments were to be prepared for herself, her children, and her
female attendants. The Nabob took the whole second floor of the house
on the Place Vendome, the tenant of which was turned out at an expense
worthy of a Nabob. The stables also were extended, the staff doubled;
then, one day, coachmen and carriages went to the Gare de Lyon to meet
madame, who arrived by train heated expressly for her during the journey
from Marseilles and filled by a suite of negresses, serving-maids, and
little negro boys.

She arrived in a condition of frightful exhaustion, utterly worn out
and bewildered by her long railway journey, the first of her life, for,
after being taken to Tunis while still quite a child, she had never left
it. From her carriage, two negroes carried her into her apartments on an
easy chair which, subsequently, always remained downstairs beneath
the entrance porch, in readiness for these difficult removals. Mme.
Jansoulet could not mount the staircase, which made her dizzy; she
would not have lifts, which creaked under her weight; besides, she
never walked. Of enormous size, bloated to such a degree that it was
impossible to assign to her any particular age between twenty-five and
forty, with a rather pretty face but grown shapeless in its features,
dull eyes beneath lids that drooped, vulgarly dressed in foreign
clothes, laden with diamonds and jewels after the fashion of a Hindu
idol, she was as fine a sample as could be found of those transplanted
European women called Levantines--a curious race of obese creoles whom
speech and costume alone attach to our world, but whom the East wraps
round with its stupefying atmosphere, with the subtle poisons of its
drugged air in which everything, from the tissues of the skin to the
waists of garments, even to the soul, is enervated and relaxed.

This particular specimen of it was the daughter of an immensely rich
Belgian who was engaged in the coral trade at Tunis, and in whose
business Jansoulet, after his arrival in the country, had been employed
for some months. Mlle. Afchin, in those days a delicious little doll of
twelve years old, with radiant complexion, hair, and health, used often
to come to fetch her father from the counting-house in the great chariot
with its yoke of mules which carried them to their fine villa at La
Marsu, in the vicinity of Tunis. This mischievous child with splendid
bare shoulders, had dazzled the adventurer as he caught glimpses of
her amid her luxurious surroundings, and, years afterward, when, having
become rich and the favourite of the Bey, he began to think of settling
down, it was to her that his thoughts went. The child had grown into a
fat young woman, heavy and white. Her intelligence, dull in the first
instance, had become still more obscured through the inertia of a
dormouse’s existence, the carelessness of a father given over to
business, the use of opium-saturated tobacco and of preserves made from
rose-leaves, the torpor of her Flemish blood, re-enforced by Oriental
indolence. Furthermore, she was ill-bred, gluttonous, sensual, arrogant,
a Levantine jewel in perfection.

But Jansoulet saw nothing of all this.

For him she was, and remained, up to the time of her arrival in Paris, a
superior creature, a lady of the most exalted rank, a Demoiselle Afchin.
He addressed her with respect, in her presence maintained an attitude
which was a little constrained and timid, gave her money without
counting, satisfied her most costly fantasies, her wildest caprices, all
the strange desires of a Levantine’s brain disordered through boredom
and idleness. One word alone excused everything. She was a Demoiselle
Afchin. Beyond this, no intercourse between them; he always at the
Kasbah or the Bardo, courting the favour of the Bey, or else in his
counting-houses; she passing her days in bed, wearing in her hair a
diadem of pearls worth three hundred thousand francs which she never
took off, befuddling her brain with smoking, living as in a harem,
admiring herself in the glass, adorning herself, in company with a few
other Levantines, whose supreme distraction consisted in measuring with
their necklaces arms and legs which rivalled each other in plumpness,
and bearing children about whom she never gave herself the least
trouble, whom she never used to see, who had not even cost her a pang,
for she gave birth to them under chloroform. A lump of white flesh
perfumed with musk. And, as Jansoulet used to say with pride: “I married
a Demoiselle Afchin!”

Under the sky of Paris and its cold light the disillusion began.
Determined to settle down, to receive, to give entertainments, the Nabob
had brought his wife over with the idea of setting her at the head of
the establishment; but when he saw the arrival of that display of gaudy
draperies of Palais-Royal jewelry, and all the strange paraphernalia in
her suite, he had the vague impression of a Queen Pomare in exile.
The fact was that now he had seen real women of the world, and he made
comparisons. After having planned a great ball to celebrate her arrival,
he prudently changed his mind. Besides, Mme. Jansoulet desired to see
nobody. Here her natural indolence was increased by the home-sickness
which she suffered, from the first hour of her coming, by the chilliness
of a yellow fog and the dripping rain. She passed several days without
getting up, weeping aloud like a child, saying that it was in order to
cause her death that she had been brought to Paris, and not permitting
her women to do even the least thing for her. She lay there bellowing
among the laces of her pillow, with her hair bristling in disorder about
her diadem, the windows of the room closed, the curtains drawn close,
the lamps lighted night and day, crying out that she wanted to go
away-y, to go away-y; and it was pitiful to see, in that funeral gloom,
the half-unpacked trunks scattered over the carpets, the frightened
maids, the negresses crouched around their mistress in her nervous
attack, they also groaning, with haggard eyes like those dogs of artic
travellers that go mad without the sun.

The Irish doctor, called in to deal with all this trouble, had no
success with his fatherly manners, the pretty phrases that issued from
his compressed lips. The Levantine would have nothing to do at any price
with the arsenic pearls as a tonic. The Nabob was in consternation.
What was to be done? Send her back to Tunis with the children? It was
scarcely possible. He was decidedly in disgrace in that quarter. The
Hemerlingues were triumphant. A last affront had filled up the
measure. At Jansoulet’s departure, the Bey had commissioned him to have
gold-pieces struck at the Paris Mint of a new design to the value of
several millions; then the order, suddenly withdrawn, had been given
to Hemerlingue. Publicly outraged, Jansoulet had replied by a public
demonstration, offering for sale all his possessions, his palace at
the Bardo given to him by the former Bey, his villas of La Marsu all of
white marble, surrounded by splendid gardens, his counting-houses which
were the largest and the most sumptuous in the city, and, charging,
finally, the intelligent Bompain to bring over to him his wife and
children in order to make a clear affirmation of a definitive departure.
After such an uproar, it was no easy thing for him to return there;
this was what he endeavoured to make evident to Mlle. Afchin, who only
replied to him by deep groans. He tried to console her, to amuse her,
but what distraction could be found to appeal to that monstrously
apathetic nature? And then, could he change the sky of Paris, restore to
the unhappy Levantine her _patio_ paved with marble, where she used to
pass long hours in a cool, delicious sleepiness, listening to the water
as it dripped on the great alabaster fountain with its three basins, one
over the other, and her gilded barge, with its awning of crimson, which
eight Tripolitan boatmen supple and vigorous rowed after sunset on the
beautiful lake of El-Baheira? However luxurious the apartment of the
Place Vendome might be, it could not compensate for the loss of these
marvels. And then she would be more miserable than ever. At last, a man
who was a frequent visitor to the house succeeded in lifting her out
of her despair. This was Cabassu, the man who described himself on his
cards as “professor of massage,” a big, dark, thick-set man, smelling
of garlic and pomade, square-shouldered, hairy to the eyes, and who
knew stories of Parisian seraglios, tales within the reach of madame’s
intelligence. Having once come to massage her, she wished to see him
again, retained him. He had to give up all his other clients, and
became, at the salary of a senator, the masseur of this stout lady, her
page, her reader, her body-guard. Jansoulet, delighted to see his wife
contented, was unconscious of the ridicule attached to this intimacy.

Cabassu was now seen in the Bois, seated beside the favourite maid in
the huge and sumptuous open carriage, also at the back of the theatre
boxes taken by the Levantine, for she began to go out, since she had
grown less torpid under the treatment of her masseur and was determined
to amuse herself. The theatre pleased her, especially farces or
melodramas. The apathy of her large body found a stimulus in the false
glare of the footlights. But it was to Cardailhac’s theatre that she
went for preference. There, the Nabob found himself in his own house.
From the chief superintendent to the humblest _ouvreuse_, the whole
staff was under his control. He had a key which enabled him to pass from
the corridors on to the stage; and the small drawing-room communicating
with his box was decorated in Oriental manner, with a concave ceiling
like a beehive, its couches covered in camel’s hair, the flame of the
gas inclosed in a little Moorish lantern. Here one could enjoy a siesta
during rather long intervals between the acts; a gallant attention on
the part of the manager to the wife of his partner. Nor did that ape of
a Cardailhac stop at this. Remarking the taste of the Demoiselle Afchin
for the drama, he had ended by persuading her that she also possessed
the intuition, the knowledge of it, and by begging her when she had
nothing better to do to glance over and let him know what she thought
of the pieces that were submitted to him. A good way of cementing the
partnership more firmly.

Poor manuscripts in your blue or yellow covers, bound by hope with
fragile ribbons, that set out full of ambition and dreams, who knows
what hands may touch you, turn over your pages, what indiscreet fingers
deflower your charm, the charm of the unknown, that glittering dust
which lies on new ideas? Who may judge you and who condemn? Sometimes,
before dining out, Jansoulet, mounting to his wife’s room, would find
her on her lounge, smoking, her head thrown back, bundles of manuscripts
by her side, and Cabassu, armed with a blue pencil, reading in his thick
voice and with the Bourg-Saint-Andeol accent, some dramatic lucubration
which he cut and scored without pity at the least criticism from the
lady.

“Don’t disturb yourselves,” the good Nabob would signal with his hand,
entering on tiptoe. He would listen, shake his head with an admiring
air, as he watched his wife: “She is astonishing!” for he himself
understood nothing about literature, and there, at least, he could
discover once again the superiority of Mlle. Afchin.

“She had the instinct of the stage,” as Cardailhac used to say; but, on
the other hand, the maternal instinct was wanting in her. Never did
she take any interest in her children, abandoning them to the hands of
strangers, and, when they were brought to her once a month, contenting
herself with offering to them the flaccid and inanimate flesh of
her cheeks between two puffs of cigarette-smoke, without making any
inquiries into those details of their bringing up and of their health
which perpetuate the physical bond of maternity and make the hearts of
true mothers bleed at the least suffering of their children.

They were three big, dull and apathetic boys of eleven, nine, and seven
years, having, with the sallow complexion and the precocious bloatedness
of the Levantine, the kind, black, velvety eyes of their father. They
were ignorant as young lords of the middle ages. At Tunis, M. Bompain
had directed their studies; but at Paris, the Nabob, anxious to give
them the benefit of a Parisian education, had sent them to that smartest
and most expensive of boarding-schools, the College Bourdaloue, managed
by good priests who sought less to instruct their pupils than to make of
them good-mannered and right-thinking men of the world, and succeeded
in turning them out affectedly grave and ridiculous little prigs,
disdainful of games, absolutely ignorant, without anything spontaneous
or boyish about them, and of a desperate precocity. The little
Jansoulets were not very happy in this forcing-house, notwithstanding
the immunities which they enjoyed by reason of their immense wealth;
they were, indeed, utterly left to themselves. Even the creoles in the
charge of the institution had some friend whom they visited and people
who came to see them; but the Jansoulets were never summoned to the
parlour, no one knew any of their relatives; from time to time they
received basketfuls of sweetmeats, piles of confectionery, and that was
all. The Nabob, doing some shopping in Paris, would strip for them the
whole of a pastry-cook’s window and send the spoils to the college, with
that generous impulse of the heart mingled with negro ostentation
which characterized all his actions. It was the same in the matter
of playthings. They were always too pretty, tricked out too finely,
useless--those toys that are for show but which the Parisian does not
buy. But that which above all attracted to the little Jansoulets the
respect both of pupils and masters, were their purses heavy with gold,
ever ready for school subscriptions, for the professors’ birthdays,
and the charity visits, those famous visits organized by the College
Bourdaloue, one of the tempting things in the prospectus, the marvel of
sensitive souls.

Twice a month, turn and turn about, the pupils who were members of the
miniature Society of St. Vincent de Paul founded in the college upon the
model of the great one, went in little squads, alone, as though they had
been grown-up, to bear succour and consolation into the deepest recesses
of the more densely populated quarters of the town. This was designed
to teach them a practical charity, the art of knowing the needs, the
miseries of the lower classes, and to heal these heart-rending evils
by a nostrum of kind words and ecclesiastical maxims. To console, to
evangelize the masses by the help of childhood, to disarm religious
incredulity by the youth and _naivete_ of the apostles, such was the aim
of this little society; an aim entirely missed, moreover. The children,
healthy, well-dressed, well-fed, calling only at addresses previously
selected, found poor persons of good appearance, sometimes rather
unwell, but very clean, already on the parish register and in receipt of
aid from the wealthy organization of the Church. Never did they
chance to enter one of those nauseous dwellings wherein hunger, grief,
humiliation, all physical and moral ills are written in leprous mould on
the walls, in indelible lines on the brows. Their visits were prepared
for, like that of the sovereign who enters a guard-room to taste the
soldiers’ soup: the guard-room is warmed and the soup seasoned for
the royal palate. Have you seen those pictures in pious books, where a
little communicant, with candle in hand, and perfectly groomed, comes
to minister to a poor old man lying sick on his straw pallet and turning
the whites of his eyes to heaven? These visits of charity had the same
conventionality of setting and of accent. To the measured gestures of
the little preachers were corresponding words learned by heart and
false enough to make one squint. To the comic encouragement, to the
“consolations lavished” in prize-book phrases by the voices of young
urchins with colds, were the affecting benedictions, the whining and
piteous mummeries of a church-porch after vespers. And the moment the
young visitors departed, what an explosion of laughter and shouting in
the garret, what a dance in a circle round the present brought, what an
upsetting of the arm-chair in which one had pretended to be lying ill,
of the medicine spilt in the fire, a fire of cinders very artistically
prepared!

When the little Jansoulets went out to visit their parents at home,
they were intrusted to the care of the man with the red fez, the
indispensable Bompain. It was Bompain who conducted them to the
Champs-Elysees, clad in English jackets, bowler hats of the latest
fashion--at seven years old!--and carrying little canes in their
dog-skin-gloved hands. It was Bompain who stuffed the race-wagonette
with provisions. Here he mounted with the children, who, with their
entrance-cards stuck in their hats round which green veils were twisted,
looked very like those personages in Liliputian pantomimes whose entire
funniness lies in the enormous size of their heads compared with their
small legs and dwarf-like gestures. They smoked and drank; it was a
painful sight. Sometimes the man in the fez, hardly able to hold himself
upright, would bring them home frightfully sick. And yet Jansoulet was
fond of them, the youngest especially, who, with his long hair, his
doll-like manner, recalled to him the little Afchin passing in her
carriage. But they were still of the age when children belong to the
mother, when neither the fashionable tailor, nor the most accomplished
masters, nor the smart boarding-school, nor the ponies girthed specially
for the little men in the stable, nor anything else can replace
the attentive and caressing hand, the warmth and the gaiety of the
home-nest. The father could not give them that; and then, too, he was so
busy!

A thousand irons in the fire: the Territorial Bank, the installation
of the picture gallery, drives to Tattersall’s with Bois l’Hery,
some _bibelot_ to inspect, here or there, at the houses of collectors
indicated by Schwalbach, hours passed with trainers, jockeys, dealers
in curiosities, the encumbered and multiple existence of a _bourgeois
gentilhomme_ in modern Paris. This rubbing of shoulders with all sorts
and conditions of people brought him improvement, in that each day he
was becoming a little more Parisianized; he was received at Monpavon’s
club, in the green-room of the ballet, behind the scenes at the
theatres, and presided regularly at his famous bachelor luncheons, the
only receptions possible in his household. His existence was really a
very busy one, and de Gery relieved him of the heaviest part of it, the
complicated department of appeals and of charities.

The young man now became acquainted with all the audacious and burlesque
inventions, all the serio-comic combinations of that mendicancy of great
cities, organized like a department of state, innumerable as an army,
which subscribes to the newspapers and knows its _Bottin_ by heart. He
received the blonde lady, bold, young, and already faded, who only asks
for a hundred napoleons, with the threat that she will throw herself
into the river when she leaves if they are not given to her, and the
stout matron of prepossessing and unceremonious manner, who says, as she
enters: “Sir, you do not know me. Neither have I the honour of knowing
you. But we shall soon make each other’s acquaintance. Be kind enough to
sit down and let us have a chat.” The merchant at bay, on the verge of
bankruptcy--sometimes it is true--who comes to entreat you to save his
honour, with a pistol ready to shoot himself, bulging out the pocket
of his overcoat--sometimes it is only his pipe-case. And often genuine
distresses, wearisome and prolix, of people who are unable even to tell
how little competent they are to earn a livelihood. Side by side with
this open begging, there was that which wears various kinds of disguise:
charity, philanthropy, good works, the encouragement of projects of art,
the house-to-house begging for infant asylums, parish churches, rescued
women, charitable societies, local libraries. Finally, those who wear
a society mask, with tickets for concerts, benefit performances,
entrance-cards of all colours, “platform, front seats, reserved seats.”
 The Nabob insisted that no refusals should be given, and it was a
concession that he no longer burdened his own shoulders with such
matters. For quite a long time, in generous indifference, he had gone
on covering with gold all that hypocritical exploitation, paying
five hundred francs for a ticket for the concert of some Wurtemberg
cithara-player or Languedocian flutist, which at the Tuileries or at the
Duc de Mora’s might have fetched ten francs. There were days when the
young de Gery issued from these audiences nauseated. All the honesty of
his youth revolted; he approached the Nabob with schemes of reform. But
the Nabob’s face, at the first word, would assume the bored expression
of weak natures when they have to make a decision, or he would perhaps
reply: “But that is Paris, my dear boy. Don’t get frightened or
interfere with my plans. I know what I am doing and what I want.”

At that time he wanted two things: a deputyship and the cross of the
Legion of Honour. These were for him the first two stages of the great
ascent to which his ambition pushed him. Deputy he would certainly be
through the influence of the Territorial Bank, at the head of which he
stood. Paganetti of Porto-Vecchio was often saying it to him: “When the
day arrives, the island will rise and vote for you as one man.”

It is not enough, however, to control electors; it is necessary also
that there be a seat vacant in the Chamber, and the representation of
Corsica was complete. One of its members, however, the old Popolusca,
infirm and in no condition to do his work, might perhaps, upon certain
conditions, be willing to resign his seat. It was a difficult matter to
negotiate, but quite feasible, the old fellow having a numerous family,
estates which produced little or nothing, a palace in ruins at Bastia,
where his children lived on _polenta_, and a furnished apartment at
Paris in an eighteenth-rate lodging-house. If a hundred or two hundred
thousand francs were not a consideration, one ought to be able to
obtain a favourable decision from this honourable pauper who, sounded
by Paganetti, would say neither yes nor no, tempted by the large sum
of money, held back by the vainglory of his position. The matter had
reached that point, it might be decided from one day to another.

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.

To tell the truth, the whole establishment was one vast infirmary. The
children had hardly arrived when they fell ill, languished, and ended
by dying, if their parents did not quickly take them away and put them
again under the protection of home. The cure of Nanterre had to go so
often to Bethlehem with his black vestments and his silver cross, the
undertaker had so many orders from the house, that it became known
in the district, and indignant mothers shook their fists at the model
nurse; from a long way off, it is true, for they might chance to have in
their arms pink-and-white babies to be preserved from all the contagions
of the place. It was these things that gave to the poor place so
heart-rending an aspect. A house in which children die cannot be gay;
you cannot see trees break into flower there, birds building, streams
flowing like rippling laughter.

The thing seemed altogether false. Excellent in itself, Jenkins’s scheme
was difficult, almost impracticable in its application. Yet, God knows,
the affair had been started and carried out with the greatest enthusiasm
to the last details, with as much money and as large a staff as were
requisite. At its head, one of the most skilful of practitioners, M.
Pondevez, who had studied in the Paris hospitals; and by his side, to
attend to the more intimate needs of the children, a trusty matron, Mme.
Polge. Then there were nursemaids, seamstresses, infirmary-nurses. And
how many the arrangements and how thorough was the maintenance of the
establishment, from the water distributed by a regular system from fifty
taps to the omnibus trotting off with jingling of its posting bells
to meet every train of the day at Rueil station! Finally, magnificent
goats, Thibetan goats, silky, swollen with milk. In regard to
organization, everything was admirable; but there was a point where
it all failed. This artificial feeding, so greatly extolled by the
advertisements, did not agree with the children. It was a singular piece
of obstinacy, a word which seemed to have been passed between them by
a signal, poor little things! for they couldn’t yet speak, most of them
indeed were never to speak at all: “Please, we will not suck the goats.”
 And they did not suck them, they preferred to die one after another
rather than suck them. Was Jesus of Bethlehem in his stable suckled by a
goat? On the contrary, did he not press a woman’s soft breast, on which
he could go to sleep when he was satisfied? Who ever saw a goat between
the ox and the ass of the story on that night when the beasts spoke to
each other? Then why lie about it, why call 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 soon
took them home again, and there only remained in the establishment some
little unfortunates picked up on doorsteps or in out-of-the-way places,
sent from the foundling hospitals, doomed to all evil things from their
birth. As the mortality continued to increase, even these came to be
scarce, and the omnibus which had posted to the railway station would
return bouncing and light as an empty hearse. How long would the thing
last? How long would the twenty-five or thirty little ones who remained
take to die? This was what Monsieur the Director, or rather, to give
him the nickname which he had himself invented, Monsieur the
Grantor-of-Certificates-of-death Pondevez, was asking himself one
morning as he sat opposite Mme. Polge’s venerable ringlets, taking a
hand in this lady’s favourite game.

“Yes, my good Mme. Polge, what is to become of us? Things cannot go on
much longer as they are. Jenkins will not give way; the children are as
obstinate as mules. There is no denying it, they will all slip through
our fingers. There is the little Wallachian--I mark the king, Mme.
Polge--who may die from one moment to another. Just think, the poor
little chap for the last three days has had nothing in his stomach. It
is useless for Jenkins to talk. You cannot improve children like snails
by making them go hungry. It is disheartening all the same not to be
able to save one of them. The infirmary is full. It is really a wretched
outlook. Forty and bezique.”

A double ring at the entrance gate interrupted his monologue. The
omnibus was returning from the railway station and its wheels were
grinding on the sand in an unusual manner.

“What an astonishing thing,” remarked Pondevez, “the conveyance is not
empty.”

Indeed it did draw up at the foot of the steps with a certain pride, and
the man who got out of it sprang up the staircase at a bound. He was
a courier from Jenkins bearing a great piece of news. The doctor would
arrive in two hours to visit the Home, accompanied by the Nabob and
a gentleman from the Tuileries. He urgently enjoined that everything
should be ready for their reception. The thing had been decided at such
short notice that he had not had the time to write; but he counted on M.
Pondevez to do all that was necessary.

“That is good!--necessary!” murmured Pondevez in complete dismay. The
situation was critical. This important visit was occurring at the worst
possible moment, just as the system had utterly broken down. The poor
Pompon, exceedingly perplexed, tugged at his beard, thoughtfully gnawing
wisps of it.

“Come,” said he suddenly to Mme. Polge, whose long face had grown still
longer between her ringlets, “we have only one course to take. We must
remove the infirmary and carry all the sick into the dormitory. They
will be neither better nor worse for passing another half-day there. As
for those with the rash, we will put them out of the way in some corner.
They are too ugly, they must not be seen. Come along, you up there! I
want every one on the bridge.”

The dinner-bell being violently rung, immediately hurried steps are
heard. Seamstresses, infirmary-nurses, servants, goatherds, issue from
all directions, running, jostling each other across the court-yards.
Others fly about, cries, calls; but that which dominates is the noise
of a mighty cleansing, a streaming of water as though Bethlehem had been
suddenly attacked by fire. And those groanings of sick children snatched
from the warmth of their beds, all those little screaming bundles
carried across the damp park, their coverings fluttering through the
branches, powerfully complete the impression of a fire. At the end of
two hours, thanks to a prodigious activity, the house is ready from top
to bottom for the visit which it is about to receive, all the staff at
their posts, the stove lighted, the goats picturesquely sprinkled over
the park. Mme. Polge has donned her green silk dress, the director a
costume somewhat less _neglige_ than usual, but of which the simplicity
excluded all idea of premeditation. The Departmental Secretary may come.

And here he is.

He alights with Jenkins and Jansoulet from a splendid coach with the
red and gold livery of the Nabob. Feigning the deepest astonishment,
Pondevez rushes forward to meet his visitors.

“Ah, M. Jenkins, what an honour! What a surprise!”

Greetings are exchanged on the flight of steps, bows, shakings of hands,
introductions. Jenkins with his flowing overcoat wide open over
his loyal breast, beams his best and most cordial smile; there is
a significant wrinkle on his brow, however. He is uneasy about the
surprises which may be held in store for them by the establishment, of
the distressful condition of which he is better aware than any one. If
only Pondevez had taken proper precautions. Things begin well, at any
rate. The rather theatrical view from the entrance, of those white
fleeces frisking about among the bushes, have enchanted M. de la
Perriere, who himself, with his honest eyes, his little white beard,
and the continual nodding of his head, resembles a goat escaped from its
tether.

“In the first place, gentlemen, the apartment of principal importance
in the house, the nursery,” said the director, opening a massive door at
the end of the entrance-hall. His guests follow him, go down a few
steps and find themselves in an immense, low room, with a tiled floor,
formerly the kitchen of the mansion. The most striking object on
entering is a lofty and vast fireplace built on the antique model,
of red brick, with two stone benches opposite one another beneath the
chimney, and the singer’s coat of arms--an enormous lyre barred with
a roll of music--carved on the monumental pediment. The effect is
startling; but a frightful draught comes from it, which joined to the
coldness of the tile floor and the dull light admitted by the little
windows on a level with the ground, may well terrify one for the
health of the children. But what was do be done? The nursery had to
be installed in this insalubrious spot on account of the sylvan and
capricious nurses, accustomed to the unconstraint of the stable. You
only need to notice the pools of milk, the great reddish puddles drying
up on the tiles, to breathe in the strong odour that meets you as
you enter, a mingling of whey, of wet hair, and of many other things
besides, in order to be convinced of the absolute necessity of this
arrangement.

The gloomy-walled apartment is so large that to the visitors at first
the nursery seems to be deserted. However, at the farther end, a group
of creatures, bleating, moaning, moving about, is soon distinguished.
Two peasant women, hard and brutalized in appearance, with dirty faces,
two “dry-nurses,” who well deserve the name, are seated on mats,
each with an infant in her arms and a big nanny-goat in front of her,
offering its udder with legs parted. The director seems pleasantly
surprised.

“Truly, gentlemen, this is lucky. Two of our children are having their
little luncheon. We shall see how well the nurses and infants understand
each other.”

“What can he be doing? He is mad,” said Jenkins to himself in
consternation.

But the director on the contrary knows very well what he is doing and
has himself skilfully arranged the scene, selecting two patient and
gentle beasts and two exceptional subjects, two little desperate mortals
who want to live at any price and open their mouths to swallow, no
matter what food, like young birds still in the nest.

“Come nearer, gentlemen, and observe.”

Yes, they are indeed sucking, these little cherubs! One of them, lying
close to the ground, squeezed up under the belly of the goat, is going
at it so heartily that you can hear the gurglings of the warm milk
descending, it would seem, even into the little limbs that kick with
satisfaction at the meal. The other, calmer, lying down indolently,
requires some little encouragement from his Auvergnoise attendant.

“Suck, will you suck then, you little rogue!” And at length, as though
he had suddenly come to a decision, he begins to drink with such avidity
that the woman leans over to him, surprised by this extraordinary
appetite, and exclaims laughing:

“Ah, the rascal, is he not cunning?--it is his thumb that he is sucking
instead of the goat.”

The angel has hit on that expedient so that he may be left in peace.
The incident does not create a bad impression. M. de la Perriere is much
amused by this notion of the nurse that the child was trying to
take them all in. He leaves the nursery, delighted. “Positively
de-e-elighted,” he repeats, nodding his head as they ascend the great
staircase with its echoing walls decorated with the horns of stags,
leading to the dormitory.

Very bright, very airy, is this vast room, running the whole length of
one side of the house, with numerous windows and cots, separated one
from another by a little distance, hung with fleecy white curtains like
clouds. Women go and come through the large arch in the centre, with
piles of linen on their arms, or keys in their hands, nurses with the
special duty of washing the babies.

Here too much has been attempted and the first impression of the
visitors is a bad one. All this whiteness of muslin, this polished
parquet, the brightness of the window-panes reflecting the sky sad at
beholding these things, seem to throw into bold relief the thinness, the
unhealthy pallor of these dying little ones, already the colour of their
shrouds. Alas! the oldest are only aged some six months, the youngest
barely a fortnight, and already there is in all these faces, these faces
in embryo, a disappointed expression, a scowling, worn look, a suffering
precocity visible in the numerous lines on those little bald foreheads,
cramped by linen caps edged with poor, narrow hospital lace. What are
they suffering? What diseases can they have? They have everything,
everything that one can have: diseases of children and diseases of
men. The fruit of vice and poverty, they bring into the world hideous
phenomena of heredity at their very birth. This one has a perforated
palate, and this great copper-coloured patches on the forehead, all
of them rickety. Then they are dying of hunger. Notwithstanding the
spoonfuls of milk, of sweetened water, which are forced down their
throats, notwithstanding the feeding-bottle employed now and then,
though against orders, they perish of inanition. These little
creatures, worn out before birth, require the most tender and the most
strengthening food; the goats might perhaps be able to give it, but
apparently they have sworn not to suck the goats. And this is what
makes the dormitory mournful and silent, not one of those little
clinched-fisted tempers, one of those cries showing the pink and firm
gums in which the child makes trial of his lungs and strength; only a
plaintive moaning, as it were the disquiet of a soul that turns over
and over in a little sick body, without being able to find a comfortable
place to rest there.

Jenkins and the director, who have seen the bad impression produced on
their guests by this inspection of the dormitory, try to put a little
life into the situation, talk very loudly in a good-natured, complacent,
satisfied way. Jenkins shakes hands warmly with the superintendent.

“Well, Mme. Polge, and how are our little nurslings getting on?”

“As you see, M. le Docteur,” she replies, pointing to the beds.

This tall Mme. Polge is funereal in her green dress, the ideal of
dry-nurses. She completes the picture.

But where has Monsieur the Departmental Secretary gone? He has stopped
before a cot which he examines sadly, as he stands nodding his head.

“_Bigre de bigre!_” says Pompon in a low voice to Mme. Polge. “It is the
Wallachian.”

The little blue placard hung over the cot, as in the foundling
hospitals, states the child’s nationality: “Moldo, Wallachian.” What a
piece of ill-luck that Monsieur the Secretary’s attention should have
been attracted to that particular child! Oh, that poor little head lying
on the pillow, its linen cap askew, with pinched nostrils, and mouth
half opened by a quick, panting respiration, the breathing of the newly
born, of those also who are about to die.

“Is he ill?” asked Monsieur the Secretary softly of the director, who
has come up to him.

“Not the least in the world,” the shameless Pompon replies, and,
advancing to the side of the cot, he tries to make the little one laugh
by tickling him with his finger, straightens the pillow, and says in a
hearty voice, somewhat overcharged with tenderness: “Well, old fellow?”
 Shaken out of his torpor, escaping for a moment from the shades which
already are closing on him, the child opens his eyes on those faces
leaning over him, glances at them with a gloomy indifference, then,
returning to his dream which he finds more interesting, clinches his
little wrinkled hands and heaves an elusive sigh. Mystery! Who shall say
for what end that baby had been born into life? To suffer for two months
and to depart without having seen anything, understood anything, without
any one even knowing the sound of his voice.

“How pale he is!” murmurs M. de la Perriere, very pale himself. The
Nabob is livid also. A cold breath seems to have passed over the place.
The director assumes an air of unconcern.

“It is the reflection. We are all of us green here.”

“Yes, yes, that is so,” remarks Jenkins, “it is the reflection of the
lake. Come and look, Monsieur the Secretary.” And he draws him to the
window to point out to him the large sheet of water with its dipping
willows, while Mme. Polge makes haste to draw over the eternal dream of
the little Wallachian the parted curtains of his cradle.

The inspection of the establishment must be continued very quickly in
order to destroy this unfortunate impression.

To begin with, M. de la Perriere is shown a splendid laundry, with
stoves, drying-rooms, thermometers, immense presses of polished walnut,
full of babies’ caps and frocks, labelled and tied up in dozens. When
the linen has been warmed, the linen-room maid passes it out through
a little door in exchange for the number left by the nurse. A perfect
order reigns, one can see, and everything, down to its healthy smell of
soap-suds, gives to this apartment a wholesome and rural aspect. There
is clothing here for five hundred children. That is the number which
Bethlehem can accommodate, and everything has been arranged upon a
corresponding scale; the vast pharmacy, glittering with bottles and
Latin inscriptions, pestles and mortars of marble in every corner, the
hydropathic installation, its large rooms built of stone, with gleaming
baths possessing a huge apparatus including pipes of all dimensions for
douches, upward and downward, spray, jet, or whip-lash, and the kitchens
adorned with superb kettles of copper, and with economical coal and gas
ovens. Jenkins wished to institute a model establishment; and he found
the thing easy, for the work was done on a large scale, as it can be
when funds are not lacking. You feel also over it all the experience and
the iron hand of “our intelligent superintendent,” to whom the director
cannot refrain from paying a public tribute. This is the signal for
general congratulations. M. de la Perriere, delighted with the manner in
which the establishment is equipped, congratulates Dr. Jenkins upon his
fine creations, Jenkins compliments his friend Pondevez, who, in his
turn, thanks the Departmental secretary for having consented to honour
Bethlehem with a visit. The good Nabob makes his voice heard in this
chorus of eulogy, finds a kind word for each one, but is a little
surprised all the same that he has not been congratulated himself, since
they were about it. It is true that the best of congratulations awaits
him on the 16th March on the front page of the _Official Journal_ in
a decree which flames in advance before his eyes and makes him glance
every now and then at his buttonhole.

These pleasant words are exchanged as the party passes along a big
corridor in which the voices ring out in all their honest accents; but
suddenly a frightful noise interrupts the conversation and the advance
of the visitors. It seems to be made up of the mewing of cats in
delirium, of bellowings, of the howlings of savages performing a
war-dance, an appalling tempest of human cries, reverberated, swelled,
and prolonged by the echoing vaults. It rises and falls, ceases
suddenly, then goes on again with an extraordinary effect of unanimity.

Monsieur the Director begins to be uneasy, makes an inquiry. Jenkins
rolls furious eyes.

“Let us go on,” says the director, rather anxious this time. “I know
what it is.”

He knows what it is; but M. de la Perriere wishes to know also what it
is, and, before Pondevez has had the time to unfasten it, he pushes open
the massive door whence this horrible concert proceeds.

In a sordid kennel which the great cleansing has passed over, for, in
fact, it was not intended to be exhibited, on mattresses ranged on the
floor, a dozen little wretches are laid, watched over by an empty chair
on which the beginning of a knitted vest lies with an air of dignity,
and by a little broken saucepan, full of hot wine, boiling on a smoky
wood fire. These are the children with ringworm, with rashes, the
disfavoured of Bethlehem, who had been hidden in this retired corner
with recommendation to their dry-nurse to rock them, to soothe them, to
sit on them, if need were, in order to keep them from crying; but whom
this country-woman, stupid and inquisitive, had left alone there in
order to see the fine carriage standing in the court-yard. Her back
turned, the infants had very quickly grown weary of their horizontal
position; and then all these little scrofulous patients raised their
lusty concert, for they, by a miracle, are strong, their malady saves
and nourishes them. Bewildered and kicking like beetles when they are
turned on their backs, helping themselves with their hips and their
elbows, some fallen on one side and unable to regain their balance,
others raising in the air their little benumbed, swaddled legs,
spontaneously they cease their gesticulations and cries as they see the
door open; but M. de la Perrier’s nodding goatee beard reassures them,
encourages them anew, and in the renewed tumult the explanation given
by the director is only heard with difficulty: “Children kept
separate--Contagion--Skin-diseases.” This is quite enough for Monsieur
the Departmental Secretary; less heroic than Bonaparte on his visit to
the plague-stricken of Jaffa, he hastens towards the door, and in his
timid anxiety, wishing to say something and yet not finding words,
murmurs with an ineffable smile: “They are char-ar-ming.”

Next, the inspection at an end, see them all gathered in the salon on
the ground floor, where Mme. Polge has prepared a little luncheon. The
cellar of Bethlehem is well stocked. The keen air of the table-land,
these climbs up and downstairs have given the old gentleman from the
Tuileries an appetite such as he has not known for a long time, so that
he chats and laughs as if he were at a picnic, and at the moment of
departure, as they are all standing, raises his glass, nodding his head,
to drink, “To Be-Be-Bethlehem!” Those present are moved, glasses are
touched, then, at a quick trot, the carriage bears the party away down
the long avenue of limes, over which a red and cold sun is just setting.
Behind them the park resumes its dismal silence. Great dark masses
gather in the depths of the copses, surround the house, gain little by
little the paths and open spaces. Soon all is lost in gloom save the
ironical letters embossed above the entrance-gate, and, away over
yonder, at a first-floor window, one red and wavering spot, the light of
a candle burning by the pillow of the dead child.

     “By a decree dated the 12th March, 1865, issued upon the proposal
     of the Minister of the Interior, Monsieur the Doctor Jenkins,
     President and Founder of the Bethlehem Society is named a
     Chevalier of the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour. Great
     devotion to the cause of humanity.”

As he read these words on the front page of the _Official Journal_, on
the morning of the 16th, the poor Nabob felt dazed.

Was it possible?

Jenkins decorated, and not he!

He read the paragraph twice over, distrusting his own eyes. His ears
buzzed. The letters danced double before his eyes with those great red
rings round them which they have in strong sunlight. He had been so
confident of seeing his name in this place; Jenkins, only the evening
before, had repeated to him with so much assurance, “It is already
done!” that he still thought his eyes must have deceived him. But no,
it was indeed Jenkins. The blow was heavy, deep, prophetic, as it were a
first warning from destiny, and one that was felt all the more intensely
because for years this man had been unaccustomed to failure. Everything
good in him learned mistrust at the same time.

“Well,” said he to de Gery as he came as usual every morning into his
room, and found him visibly affected, holding the newspaper in his hand,
“have you seen? I am not in the _Official_.”

He tried to smile, his features puckered like those of a child
restraining his tears. Then, suddenly, with that frankness which was
such a pleasing quality in him: “It is a great disappointment to me. I
was looking forward to it too confidently.”

The door opened upon these words, and Jenkins rushed in, out of breath,
stammering, extraordinarily agitated.

“It is an infamy, a frightful infamy! The thing cannot be, it shall not
be!”

The words stumbled over each other in disorder on his lips, all trying
to get out at once; then he seemed to despair of finding expression for
his thoughts and in disgust threw on the table a small box and a large
envelope, both bearing the stamp of the chancellor’s office.

“There are my cross and my brevet. They are yours, friend. I could not
keep them.”

At bottom the words did not signify much. Jansoulet adorning himself
with Jenkins’s ribbon might very well have been guilty of illegality.
But a piece of theatrical business is not necessarily logical; this one
brought about between the two men an effusion of feeling, embraces, a
generous battle, at the end of which Jenkins replaced the objects in his
pocket, speaking of protests, letters to the newspapers. The Nabob was
again obliged to check him.

“Be very careful you do no such thing. To begin with, it would be to
injure my chances for another time--who knows, perhaps on the 15th of
August, which will soon be here.”

“Oh, as to that,” said Jenkins, jumping at this idea, and stretching out
his arm as in the _Oath_ of David, “I solemnly swear it.”

The matter was dropped at this point. At luncheon the Nabob was as gay
as usual. This good humour was maintained all day, and de Gery, for whom
the scene had been a revelation of the true Jenkins, the explanation of
the ironies and the restrained wrath of Felicia Ruys whenever she spoke
of the doctor, asked himself in vain how he could enlighten his dear
patron about such hypocrisy. He should have been aware, however, that
in southerners, with all their superficiality and effusion, there is no
blindness, no enthusiasm, so complete as to remain insensible before
the wisdom of reflection. In the evening the Nabob had opened a shabby
little letter-case, worn at the corners, in which for ten years he had
been accustomed to work out the calculations of his millions, writing
down in hieroglyphics understood only by himself his receipts and
expenditures. He buried himself in his accounts for a moment, then
turning to de Gery:

“Do you know what I am doing, my dear Paul?” he asked.

“No, sir.”

“I am just calculating”--and his mocking glance thoroughly
characteristic of his race, rallied the good nature of his smile--“I
am just calculating that I have spend four hundred and thirty thousand
francs to get a decoration for Jenkins.”

Four hundred and thirty thousand francs! And that was not the end.



BONNE MAMAN

Paul de Gery went three times a week in the evening to take his lesson
in bookkeeping in the Joyeuses’ dining-room, not far from that little
parlour in which he had seen the family the first day, and while with
his eyes fixed on his teacher he was being initiated into all the
mysteries of “debtor and creditor,” he used to listen, in spite of
himself, for the light sounds coming from the industrious group behind
the door, with thoughts dwelling regretfully on the vision of all those
pretty brows bent in the lamplight. M. Joyeuse never said a word of his
daughters; jealous of their charms as a dragon watching over beautiful
princesses in a tower, and excited by the fantastic imaginings of his
excessive affection for them, he would answer with marked brevity the
inquiries of his pupil regarding the health of “the young ladies,” so
that at last the young man ceased to mention them.

He was surprised, however, at not once seeing that Bonne Maman whose
name was constantly recurring in the conversation of M. Joyeuse,
entering into the least details of his existence, hovering over the
household like the emblem of its perfect ordering and of its peace.

So great a reserve on the part of a venerable lady who must assuredly
have passed the age at which the interest of young men is to be feared,
seemed to him exaggerated. The lessons, however, were good ones,
given with great clearness, the teacher having an excellent system
of demonstration, and only one fault, that of becoming absorbed in
silences, broken by sudden starts and exclamations let off like rockets.
Apart from this, he was the best of masters, intelligent, patient, and
conscientious, and Paul learned to know his way through the complex
labyrinth of commercial books and resigned himself to ask nothing
beyond.

One evening, towards nine o’clock, as the young man had risen to go, M.
Joyeuse asked him if he would do him the honour of taking a cup of tea
with his family, a custom dating from the time when Mme. Joyeuse, _nee_
de Saint-Amand, was alive, she having been used to receive her friends
on Thursdays. Since her death and the change in the financial position,
the friends had become dispersed; but his little weekly function had
been kept up.

Paul having accepted, the good old fellow opened the door and called:

“Bonne Maman!”

An alert footstep in the passage, and immediately the face of a girl of
twenty, in a halo of abundant brown hair, made its appearance.

De Gery, stupefied, looked at M. Joyeuse.

“Bonne Maman?”

“Yes, it is a name that we gave her when she was a little girl. With her
frilled cap, her authority as the eldest child, she had a quaint little
air. We thought her like her grandmother. The name has clung to her.”

From the honest fellow’s tone as he spoke thus, one felt that to him
this grandparent’s title applied to such an embodiment of attractive
youth seemed the most natural thing in the world. Every one else thought
as he did on the point; both her sisters, who had hastened to their
father’s side, grouping themselves round him somewhat as in the portrait
exhibited in the window on the ground floor, and the old servant
who placed on the table in the little drawing-room a magnificent
tea-service, a relic of the former splendours of the household. Every
one called the girl “Bonne Maman” without her ever once having grown
tired of it, the influence of that sacred title touching the affection
of each one with a deference which flattered her and gave to her ideal
authority a singular gentleness of protection.

Whether or not it were by reason of this appellation of grandmother
which as a child he had learned to reverence, de Gery felt an
inexpressible attraction towards this young girl. It was not like the
sudden shock which he had received from that other, that emotional
agitation in which were mingled the desire to flee, to escape from a
possession and the persistent melancholy of the morrow of a festivity,
extinguished candles, the lost refrains of songs, perfumes vanished
into the night. In the presence of this young girl as she stood
superintending the family table, seeing if anything were wanting,
enveloping her children, her grandchildren, with the active tenderness
of her eyes, there came to him a longing to know her, to be counted
among her old friends, to confide to her things which he confessed only
to himself; and when she offered him his cup of tea without any of the
mincings of society or drawing-room affectations, he would have liked to
say with the rest a “Thank you, Bonne Maman,” in which he would have put
all his heart.

Suddenly, a cheerful knock at the door made everybody start.

“Ah, here comes M. Andre. Elise, a cup quickly. Jaia, the little cakes.”
 At the same time, Mlle. Henriette, the third of M. Joyeuse’s daughters,
who had inherited from her mother, _nee_ de Saint-Amand, a certain
instinct for society, observing the number of visitors who seemed likely
to crowd their rooms that evening, rushed to light the two candles on
the piano.

“My fifth act is finished,” cried the newcomer as he entered, then he
stopped short. “Ah, pardon,” and his face assumed a rather discomfited
expression in the presence of the stranger. M. Joyeuse introduced
them to each other: “M. Paul de Gery--M. Andre Maranne,” not without
a certain solemnity. He remembered the receptions held formerly by
his wife, and the vases on the chimneypiece, the two large lamps, the
what-not; the easy chairs grouped in a circle had an air of joining in
this illusion, and seemed more brilliant by reason of this unaccustomed
throng.

“So your play is finished?”

“Finished, M. Joyeuse, and I hope to read it to you one of these
evenings.”

“Oh, yes, M. Andre. Oh, yes,” said all the girls in chorus.

Their neighbour was in the habit of writing for the stage, and no one
here doubted of his success. Photography, in any case, promised fewer
profits. Clients were very rare, passers-by little disposed to business.
To keep his hand in and to save his new apparatus from rusting, M. Andre
was accustomed to practise anew on the family of his friends on
each succeeding Sunday. They lent themselves to his experiments
with unequalled long-suffering; the prosperity of this suburban
photographer’s business was for them all an affair of _amour propre_,
and awakened, even in the girls, that touching confraternity of feeling
which draws together the destinies of people as insignificant in
importance as sparrows on a roof. Andre Maranne, with the inexhaustible
resources of his great brow full of illusion, used to explain without
bitterness the indifference of the public. Sometimes the season was
unfavourable, or, again, people were complaining of the bad state of
business generally, and he would always end with the same consoling
reflection, “When _Revolt_ is produced!” That was the title of his play.

“It is surprising all the same,” said the fourth of M. Joyeuse’s
daughters, twelve years old, with her hair in a pigtail, “it is
surprising that with such a good balcony so little business should
result.”

“And, if he were established on the Boulevard des Italiens,” remarks M.
Joyeuse thoughtfully, and he is launched forth!--riding his chimera
till it is brought to the ground suddenly with a gesture and these words
uttered sadly: “Closed on account of bankruptcy.” In the space of a
moment the terrible visionary has just installed his friend in splendid
quarters on the Boulevard, where he gains enormous sums of money, at the
same time, however, increasing his expenditure to so disproportionate an
extent that a fearful failure in a few months engulfs both photographer
and his photography. They laugh heartily when he gives this explanation;
but all agree that the Rue Saint-Ferdinand, although less brilliant, is
much more to be depended upon than the Boulevard des Italiens. Besides,
it happens to be quite near the Bois de Boulogne, and if once the
fashionable world got into the way of passing through it--That exalted
society which was so much sought by her mother, is Mlle. Henriette’s
fixed idea, and she is astonished that the thought of receiving “le
high-life” in his little apartment on the fifth floor makes their
neighbour laugh. The other week, however, a carriage with livery had
called on him. Only just now, too, he had a very “swell” visit.

“Oh, quite a great lady!” interrupts Bonne Maman. “We were at the window
on the lookout for father. We saw her alight from her carriage and look
at the show-frame; we made sure that her visit was for you.”

“It was for me,” said Andre, a little embarrassed.

“For a moment we were afraid that she was going to pass on like so many
others, on account of your five flights of stairs. So all four of us
tried to attract her without her knowing it, by the magnetism of our
four staring pairs of eyes. We drew her gently by the feathers of her
hat and the laces of her cape. ‘Come up then, madame, come up,’ and
finally she entered. There is so much magnetism in eyes that are kindly
disposed.”

Magnetism she certainly had, the dear creature, not only in her glances,
indeterminate of colour, veiled or gay like the sky of her Paris, but in
her voice, in the draping of her dress, in everything about her, even to
the long curl, falling over the neck erect and delicate as a statue’s.

Tea having been served, while the gentlemen finished their cups and
talked--old Joyeuse was always very long over everything he did, by
reason of his sudden expeditions to the moon--the girls brought out
their work, the table became covered with wicker baskets, embroideries,
pretty wools that rejuvenated with their bright tints the faded flowers
of the old carpet, and the group of the other evening gathered once
more within the bright circle defined by the lamp-shade, to the great
satisfaction of Paul de Gery. It was the first evening of the kind that
he had spent in Paris; it recalled to him others of a like sort very far
away, lulled by the same innocent laughter, the peaceful sound produced
by scissors as they are put down on the table, by a needle as it pierces
through linen, or the rustle of a page turned over, and dear faces,
disappeared for ever, gathered also around the family lamp, alas! so
abruptly extinguished.

Having been admitted to this charming intimacy, he remained in it, took
his lessons in the presence of the girls and was encouraged to chat with
them when the good old man closed his big book. Here everything rested
him after the whirl of that life into which he was thrown by the
luxurious social existence of the Nabob; he come to renew his strength
in this atmosphere of honesty, of simplicity, tried, too, to find
healing there for the wounds with which a hand more indifferent than
cruel stabbed his heart mercilessly.

“Some women have hated me, other women have loved me. She who has hurt
me most never either loved or hated me.” Paul had met that woman of whom
Henri Heine speaks. Felicia was full of welcome and cordiality for him.
There was no one whom she treated with more favour. She used to reserve
for him a special smile wherein one felt the kindliness of an artist’s
eye arrested by and dwelling on a pleasing type, and the satisfaction of
a jaded mind amused by anything new, however simple in appearance it may
be. She liked that reserve, suggestive in a southerner, the honesty
of that judgment, independent of every artistic or social formula and
enlivened by a touch of provincial accent. These things were a change
for her from the zigzag stroke of the thumb illustrating a eulogy with
its gesture of the studio, from the compliments of comrades on the way
in which she would snub some old fellow, or again from those affected
admirations, from the “char-ar-ming, very nice indeed’s” with which
young men about town, sucking the knobs of their canes, were accustomed
to regale her. This young man at any rate did not say such things as
that to her. She had nicknamed him Minerva, on account of his apparent
tranquility and the regularity of his profile; and the moment she saw
him, however far-off, she would call:

“Ah, here comes Minerva. Hail, beautiful Minerva! Put down your helmet
and let us have a chat.”

But this familiar, almost fraternal, tone convinced the young man that
he would make no further advance into that feminine comradeship in
which tenderness was wanting, and that he lost each day something of
his charm--the charm of the unforeseen--in the eyes of that woman born
weary, who seemed to have already lived her life and found in all that
she heard or saw the insipidity of a repetition. Felicia was bored.
Her art alone could distract her, carry her away, transport her into a
dazzling fairyland, whence she would fall back worn out, surprised
each time by this awakening like a physical fall. She used to draw
a comparison between herself and those jelly-fish whose transparent
brilliancy, so much alive in the cool movements of the waves, drift to
their death on the shore in little gelatinous pools. During those
times devoid of inspiration, when the artist’s hand was heavy on
his instrument, Felicia, deprived of the one moral support of her
intellectual being, became unsociable, unapproachable, a tormenting
mocker--the revenge taken of human weakness on the tired brains of
genius. After having brought tears to the eyes of every one who cared
for her, raking up painful recollections or enervating anxieties, she
reached the lowest depths of her fatigue, and as there was always some
fun in her, even in her _ennui_ in a kind of caged wild-beast’s howl,
which she called “the cry of the jackal in the desert,” and which used
to make the good Crenmitz turn pale.

Poor Felicia! That life of hers was indeed a frightful desert when art
did not beguile it with its illusions; a desert mournful and flat, where
everything was lost, reduced to one level, beneath the same monotonous
immensity, the naive love of a child of twenty, a passionate duke’s
caprice, in which all was overwhelmed by an arid sand driven by blasting
fates. Paul was conscious of that void, desired to escape it; but
something held him back, like a weight which unrolls a chain, and in
spite of the calumnies he heard, and notwithstanding the odd whims of
the strange creature, he dallied deliciously after her, at the price
of bearing away with him from this long lover’s contemplation only the
despair of a believer reduced to the adoring of images alone.

The refuge lay down there, in that remote quarter of the town where the
wind blew so hard, yet without preventing the flame from mounting white
and straight--it was the family circle presided over by Bonne Maman. Oh!
she at least was not bored, she never uttered the cry of the “jackal
in the desert.” Her life was far too full; the father to encourage, to
sustain, the children to teach, all the material cares of a home where
the mother’s hand is wanting, those preoccupations that awake with the
dawn and are put to sleep by the evening, unless indeed it bring them
back in dream, one of those devotions, tireless but without apparent
effort, very pleasant for poor human egotism, because they dispense from
all gratitude and hardly make themselves felt, so light is their hand.
She was not the courageous daughter who works to support her parents,
gives private lessons from morning to night, forgets in the excitement
of a profession all the troubles of the household. No, she had
understood her task in a different sense, a sedentary bee restricting
her cares to the hive, without once humming out of doors in the open air
among the flowers. A thousand functions: tailoress, milliner, mender
of clothes, bookkeeper also for M. Joyeuse, who, incapable of all
responsibility, left to her the free disposal of their means, to be
pianoforte-teacher, governess.

As it happens in families that have been in a good position, Aline,
as the eldest daughter, had been educated at one of the best
boarding-schools in Paris. Elise had been with her there for two years;
but the last two, born too late, and sent to small day-schools in the
locality, had all their studies yet to complete, and this was no easy
matter, the youngest laughing upon every occasion from sheer good
health, warbling like a lark intoxicated with the delight of green corn,
and flying away far out of sight of desk and exercises, while Mlle.
Henriette, ever haunted by her ideas of grandeur, her love of luxurious
things, took to work hardly less unwillingly. This young person of
fifteen, to whom her father had transmitted something of his imaginative
faculties, was already arranging her life in advance and declared
formally that she should marry one of the nobility, and would never
have more than three children: “A boy to inherit the name and two little
girls--so as to be able to dress them alike.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Bonne Maman would say, “you shall dress them alike.
In the meantime, let us attend to our participles a little.”

But the one who caused the most concern was Elise, with her examination
taken thrice without success, always failing in history and preparing
herself anew, seized by a deep fear and a mistrust of herself which
made her carry about with her everywhere and open every moment that
unfortunate history of France, in the omnibus, in the street, even at
the luncheon-table; she was already a grown girl and very pretty, and
she no longer possessed that little mechanical memory of childhood
wherein dates and events lodge themselves for the whole of one’s life.
Beset by other preoccupations, the lesson was forgotten in an instant,
despite the apparent application of the pupil, with her long lashes
fringing her eyes, her curls sweeping over the pages, and her rosy
mouth animated by a little quiver of attention, repeating ten times in
succession: “Louis, surnamed le Hutin, 1314-1316; Philip V, surnamed
the Long, 1316-1322. Ah, Bonne Maman, it’s no good; I shall never know
them.” Whereupon Bonne Maman would come to her assistance, help her
to concentrate her attention, to store up a few of those dates of the
Middle Ages, barbarous and sharp as the helmets of the warriors of the
period. And in the intervals of these occupations, of this general
and constant superintendence, she yet found time to do some pretty
needlework, to extract from her work-basket some delicate crochet lace
or a piece of tapestry on which she was engaged and to which she clung
as closely as the young Elise to her history of France. Even when she
talked, her fingers never remained unoccupied for a moment.

“Do you never take any rest?” said de Gery to her, as she counted under
her breath the stitches of her tapestry, “three, four, five,” to secure
the right variation in the shading of the colours.

“But this is a rest from work,” she answered. “You men cannot understand
how good needlework is for a woman’s mind. It gives order to the
thoughts, fixes by a stitch the moment that passes what would otherwise
pass with it. And how many griefs are calmed, anxieties forgotten,
thanks to this wholly physical act of attention, to this repetition of
an even movement, in which one finds--of necessity and very quickly--the
equilibrium of one’s whole being. It does not hinder me from following
the conversation around me, from listening to you still better than I
should if I were doing something. Three, four, five.”

Oh, yes, she listened. That was apparent in the animation of her face,
in the way in which she would suddenly straighten herself as she sat,
needle in air, the thread taut over her raised little finger. Then she
would quickly resume her work, sometimes after putting in a thoughtful
word, which agreed generally with the opinions of friend Paul.

An affinity of nature, responsibilities and duties similar in character,
drew these two young people together, interested each of them in the
other’s occupations. She knew the names of his two brothers Pierre and
Louis, his plans for their future when they should have left school.
Pierre wanted to be a sailor. “Oh, no, not a sailor,” Bonne Maman would
say, “it will be much better for him to come to Paris with you.” And
when he admitted that he was afraid of Paris for them, she laughed at
his fears, called him provincial, full of affection for the city
in which she had been born, in which she had grown to chaste young
womanhood, and that gave her in return those vivacities, those natural
refinements, that jesting good-humour which incline one to believe
that Paris, with its rain, its fogs, its sky which is no sky, is the
veritable fatherland of woman, whose nerves it heals gently and whose
qualities of intelligence and patience it develops.

Each day Paul de Gery came to appreciate Mlle. Aline better--he was the
only person in the house who so called her--and, strange circumstance,
it was Felicia who completed the cementing of their intimacy. What
relations could there exist between the artist’s daughter, moving in the
highest spheres, and this little middle-class girl buried in the
depths of a suburb? Relations of childhood and of friendship, common
recollections, the great court-yard of the Institution Belin, where
they had played together for three years. Paris is full of these
juxtapositions. A name uttered by chance in the course of a conversation
brought out suddenly the bewildered question:

“You know her then?”

“Do I know Felicia? Why, our desks were next each other in the first
form. We had the same garden. Such a nice girl, and so handsome and
clever!”

And, observing the pleasure with which she was listened to, Aline used
to recall the times which already formed a past for her, seductive and
melancholy like all pasts. She was very much alone in life, the little
Felicia. On Thursdays, when the visitors’ names were called out in the
parlour, there was no one for her; except from time to time a good but
rather absurd lady, formerly a dancer, it was said, whom Felicia called
the Fairy. In the same way she used to have pet names for all the people
she cared for and whom she transformed in her imaginations. In the
holidays they used to see each other. Mme. Joyeuse, while she refused to
allow Aline to visit the studio of M. Ruys, used to invite Felicia over
for whole days, very short days they seemed, minglings of study, music,
dual dreams, young intimate conversations. “Oh, when she used to talk to
me of her art, with that enthusiasm which she put into everything, how
delighted I was to listen to her! How many things I have understood
through her, of which I should never have had any idea. Even now when we
go to the Louvre with papa, or to the exhibition of the 1st of May,
that special feeling I have about a beautiful piece of sculpture, a good
picture, carries me back immediately to Felicia. In my early girlhood
she represented art to me, and it corresponded with her beauty. Her
nature was a little vague, but so kind, I always felt she was something
superior to myself, that bore me to great heights without frightening
me. Suddenly she stopped coming to see me. I wrote to her; no reply.
Later on, fame came to her; to me great sorrows, absorbing duties. And
of all that friendship, which was very deep, however, since I cannot
speak of it without--‘three, four, five’--nothing now remains except old
memories like dead ashes.”

Bending over her work, the brave girl made haste to count her stitches,
to imprison her regret in the capricious designs of her tapestry, while
de Gery, moved as he heard the testimony of those pure lips against the
calumnies of rejected young dandies or of jealous comrades, felt himself
raised, restored to the proud dignity of his love. This sensation was
so sweet to him that he returned in search of it very often, not only
on the evenings of the lessons, but on other evenings, too, and almost
forgot to go to see Felicia for the pleasure of hearing Aline talk about
her.

One evening, as he was leaving the Joyeuses’ home, Paul met the
neighbour, M. Andre, on the landing, who was waiting for him and took
his arm feverishly.

“Monsieur de Gery,” he said in a trembling voice, with eyes that
glittered behind their spectacles, the one feature of his face that was
visible in the darkness. “I have an explanation to ask from you. Will
you come up to my rooms for a moment?”

There had only been between this young man and himself the banal
relations of two persons accustomed to frequent the same house, whom no
tie unites, who seem ever separated by a certain antipathy of nature, of
manner of life. What explanation could there be called for between them?
He followed him with much perplexed curiosity.

The aspect of the little studio, chilly under its top-light, the empty
fireplace, the wind blowing as though they were out of doors and making
the candle flicker, the solitary light on the scene of the night’s
labour of a poor and lonely man, reflected on sheets of paper scribbled
over and scattered about, in short, this atmosphere of habitations
wherein the soul of the inhabitants lives on its own aspirations, caused
de Gery to understand the visionary air of Andre Maranne, his long hair
thrown back and streaming loose, that somewhat excessive appearance,
very excusable when it is paid for by a life of sufferings and
privations, and his sympathy immediately went out to this courageous
fellow whose intrepidity of spirit he guessed at a glance. But the
other was too deeply moved by emotion to notice the progress of these
reflections. As soon as the door was closed upon them, he said, with the
accent of a stage hero addressing the perfidious seducer, “M. de Gery, I
am not yet a Cassandra.”

And seeing the stupefaction of de Gery:

“Yes, yes,” he went on, “we understand each other. I have known
perfectly well what it is that draws you to M. Joyeuse’s house, and
the eager welcome with which you are received there has not escaped my
notice either. You are rich, you are of noble birth, there can be no
hesitation between you and the poor poet who follows a ridiculous trade
in order to give himself full time to reach a success which perhaps will
never come. But I shall not allow my happiness to be stolen from me.
We must fight, monsieur, we must fight,” he repeated, excited by the
peaceful calm of his rival. “For long I have loved Mlle. Joyeuse. That
love is the end, the joy, and the strength of an existence which is very
hard, in many respects painful. I have only it in the world, and I would
rather die than give it up.”

Strangeness of the human soul! Paul did not love the charming Aline. His
whole heart belonged to the other. He thought of her simply as a friend,
the most adorable of friends. But the idea that Maranne was interested
in her, that she no doubt returned this regard, gave him the jealous
shiver of an annoyance, and it was with some considerable sharpness that
he inquired whether Mlle. Joyeuse was aware of this sentiment of Andre’s
and had in any way authorized him thus to proclaim his rights.

“Yes, monsieur, Mlle. Elise knows that I love her, and before your
frequent visits--”

“Elise? It is of Elise you are speaking?”

“And of whom, then, should I be speaking? The two others are too young.”

He fully entered into the traditions of the family, this Andre. For him,
Bonne Maman’s age of twenty years, her triumphant grace, were obscured
by a surname full of respect and the attributes of a Providence which
seemed to cling to her.

A very brief explanation having calmed Andre Maranne’s mind, he offered
his apologies to de Gery, begged him to sit down in the arm-chair
of carved wood which was used by his sitters, and their conversation
quickly assumed an intimate and sympathetic character, brought about by
the so abrupt avowal at its opening. Paul confessed that he, too, was in
love, and that he came so often to M. Joyeuse’s only in order to speak
of her whom he loved with Bonne Maman, who had known her formerly.

“That is my case, too,” said Andre. “Bonne Maman knows all my secrets;
but we have not yet ventured to say anything to the father. My position
is too unsatisfactory. Ah, when I shall have got _Revolt_ produced!”

Then they talked of that famous drama, _Revolt_, upon which he had been
at work for six months, day and night, which had kept him warm all the
winter, a very severe winter, but whose rigours the magic of composition
had tempered in the little studio, which it transformed. It was there,
within that narrow space, that all the heroes of his piece had appeared
to his poet’s vision like familiar gnomes dropped from the roof or
riding moon-beams, and with them the gorgeous tapestries, the glittering
chandeliers, the park scenes with their gleaming flights of steps, all
the luxurious circumstance expected in stage effects, as well as
the glorious tumult of his first night, the applause of which was
represented for him by the rain beating on the glass roof and the boards
rattling in the door, while the wind, driving below over the murky
timber-yard with a noise as of far-off voices, borne near and anew
carried off into the distance, resembled the murmurs from the boxes
opened on the corridor to let the news of his success circulate among
the gossip and wonderment of the crowd. It was not only fame and money
that it was destined to procure him, this thrice-blessed play, but
something also more precious still. With what care accordingly did he
not turn over the leaves of the manuscript in five thick books, all
bound in blue, books like those that the Levantine was accustomed to
strew about on the divan where she took her siestas, and that she marked
with her managerial pencil.

Paul, having in his turn approached the table in order to examine the
masterpiece had his glance attracted by a richly framed portrait of a
woman, which, placed so near to the artist’s work, seemed to be there to
preside over it. Elise, doubtless? Oh, no, Andre had not yet the right
to bring out from its protecting case the portrait of his little friend.
This was a woman of about forty, gentle of aspect, fair, and extremely
elegant. As he perceived her, de Gery could not suppress an exclamation.

“You know her?” asked Andre Maranne.

“Why, yes. Mme. Jenkins, the wife of the Irish doctor. I have had supper
at their house this winter.”

“She is my mother.” And the young man added in a lower tone:

“Mme. Maranne made a second marriage with Dr. Jenkins. You are
surprised, are you not, to see me in these poor surroundings, while my
relatives are living in the midst of luxury? But, you know, the chances
of family life sometimes group together natures that differ very widely.
My stepfather and I have never been able to understand each other. He
wished to make me a doctor, whereas my only taste was for writing. So at
last, in order to avoid the continual discussions which were painful to
my mother, I preferred to leave the house and plough my furrow alone,
without the help of anybody. A rough business. Funds were wanting. The
whole fortune has gone to that--to M. Jenkins. The question was to
earn a livelihood, and you are aware what a difficult thing that is for
people like ourselves, supposed to be well brought-up. To think that
among all the accomplishments gained from what we are accustomed to call
a complete education, this child’s play was the only thing I could find
by which I could hope to earn my bread. A few savings, my own purse,
slender like that of most young men, served to buy my first outfit and
I installed myself here far away, in the remotest region of Paris, in
order not to embarrass my relatives. Between ourselves, I don’t expect
to make a fortune out of photography. The first days especially were
very difficult. Nobody came, or if by chance some unfortunate wight did
mount, I made a failure of him, got on my plate only an image blurred
and vague as a phantom. One day, at the very beginning, a wedding-party
came up to me, the bride all in white, the bridegroom with a
waistcoat--like that! And all the guests in white gloves, which they
insisted on keeping on for the portrait on account of the rarity of such
an event with them. No, I thought I should go mad. Those black
faces, the great white patches made by the dresses, the gloves, the
orange-blossoms, the unlucky bride, looking like a queen of Niam-niam
under her wreath merging indistinguishably into her hair. And all of
them so full of good-will, of encouragements to the artist. I began them
over again at least twenty times, and kept them till five o’clock in the
evening. And then they only left me because it was time for dinner. Can
you imagine that wedding-day passed at a photographer’s?”

While Andre was recounting to him with this good humour the troubles of
his life, Paul recalled the tirade of Felicia that day when Bohemians
had been mentioned, and all that she had said to Jenkins of their lofty
courage, avid of privations and trials. He thought also of Aline’s
passion for her beloved Paris, of which he himself was only acquainted,
for his part, with the unwholesome eccentricities, while the great city
hid in its recesses so many unknown heroisms and noble illusions. This
last impression, already experienced within the sheltered circle of the
Joyeuse’s great lamp, he received perhaps still more vividly in this
atmosphere, less warm, less peaceful, wherein art also entered to add
its despairing or glorious uncertainty; and it was with a moved heart
that he listened to Andre Maranne as he spoke to him of Elise, of
the examinations which it was taking her so long to pass, of the
difficulties of photography, of all that unforeseen element in his life
which would end certainly “when he could have secured the production
of _Revolt_,” a charming smile accompanying on the poet’s lips this so
often expressed hope, which he was wont himself to hasten to make fun
of, as though to deprive others of the right to do so.



MEMOIRS OF AN OFFICE PORTER SERVANTS

Truly Fortune in Paris has bewildering turns of the wheel!

To have seen the Territorial Bank as I have seen it, the rooms without
fires, never swept, the desert with its dust, protested bills piled high
as _that_ on the desks, every week a notice of sale posted at the door,
my stew spreading throughout the whole place the odour of a poor man’s
kitchen; and then to witness now the reconstitution of our company in
its newly furnished halls, in which I have orders to light fires big
enough for a Government department, amid a busy crowd, blowings of
whistles, electric bells, gold pieces piled up till they fall over; it
savours of miracle. I need to look at myself in the glass before I can
believe it, to see in the mirror my iron-gray coat, trimmed with silver,
my white tie, my usher’s chain like the one I used to wear at the
Faculty on the days when there were sittings. And to think that to work
this transformation, to bring back to our brows gaiety, the mother of
concord, to restore to our scrip its value ten times over, to our dear
governor the esteem and confidence of which he had been so unjustly
deprived, one man has sufficed, the being of supernatural wealth whom
the hundred voices of renown designate by the name of the Nabob.

Oh, the first time that he came to the office, with his fine presence,
his face a little worn perhaps, but so distinguished, his manners of one
accustomed to frequent courts, upon terms of the utmost familiarity with
all the princes of the Orient--in a word, that indescribable quality of
assurance and greatness which is bestowed by immense wealth--I felt my
heart bursting beneath the double row of buttons on my waistcoat. People
may mouth in vain their great words of equality and fraternity; there
are men who stand so surely above the rest that one would like to
bow one’s self down flat in their presence, to find new phrases of
admiration in order to compel them to take a practical interest in one.
Let us hasten to add that I had need of nothing of the kind to attract
the attention of the Nabob. As I rose at his passage--moved to some
emotion, but with dignity, you may trust Passajon for that--he looked
at me with a smile and said in an undertone to the young man who
accompanied him: “What a fine head, like a--” Then there came a word
which I did not catch very well, a word ending in _art_, something like
_leopard_. No, however, it cannot have been that. _Jean-Bart_, perhaps,
although even then I hardly see the connection. However that be, in
any case he did say, “What a fine head,” and this condescension made me
proud. Moreover, all the directors show me a marked degree of kindness
and politeness. It seems that there was a discussion with regard to me
at the meeting of the board, to determine whether I should be kept or
dismissed like our cashier, that ill-tempered fellow who was always
talking of getting everybody sent to the galleys, and whom they have
now invited to go elsewhere to manufacture his cheap shirt-fronts.
Well done! That will teach him to be rude to people. So far as I
am concerned, Monsieur the Governor kindly consented to overlook my
somewhat hasty words, in consideration of my record of service at the
Territorial and elsewhere; and at the conclusion of the board meeting,
he said to me with his musical accent: “Passajon, you remain with us.”
 It may be imagined how happy I was and how profuse in the expression
of my gratitude. But just think! I should have left with my few pence
without hope of ever saving any more; obliged to go and cultivate my
vineyard in that little country district of Montbars, a very narrow
field for a man who has lived in the midst of all the financial
aristocracy of Paris, and among those great banking operations by which
fortunes are made at a stroke. Instead of that, here I am established
afresh in a magnificent situation, my wardrobe renewed, and my savings,
which I spent a whole day in fingering over, intrusted to the kind
care of the governor, who has undertaken to invest them for me
advantageously. I think that is a manoeuvre which he is the very man
to execute successfully. And no need for the least anxiety. Every fear
vanishes before the word which is in vogue just now at all the councils
of administration, in all shareholders’ meetings, on the Bourse, the
boulevards, and everywhere: “The Nabob is in the affair.” That is to
say, gold is being poured out abundantly, the worst _combinazioni_ are
excellent.

He is so rich, that man!

Rich to a degree one cannot imagine. Has he not just lent fifteen
million francs as a simple loan passing from hand to hand, to the Bey
of Tunis? I repeat, fifteen millions. It was a trick he played on the
Hemerlingues, who wished to embroil him with that monarch and cut the
grass under his feet in those fine regions of the Orient where it grows
golden, high, and thick. It was an old Turk whom I know, Colonel Brahim,
one of our directors at the Territorial, who arranged the affair.
Naturally, the Bey, who happened to be, it appears, short of
pocket-money, was very much touched by the alacrity of the Nabob to
oblige him, and he has just sent him through Brahim a letter of thanks
in which he announces that upon the occasion of his next visit to
Vichy, he will stay a couple of days with him at that fine Chateau de
Saint-Romans, which the former Bey, the brother of this one, honoured
with a visit once before. You may fancy, what an honour! To receive a
reigning prince as a guest! The Hemerlingues are in a rage. They who had
manoeuvred so carefully--the son at Tunis, the father in Paris--to get
the Nabob into disfavour. And then it is true that fifteen millions is
a big sum. And do not say, “Passajon is telling us some fine tales.” The
person who acquainted me with the story has held in his hands the paper
sent by the Bey in an envelope of green silk stamped with the royal
seal. If he did not read it, it was because this paper was written in
Arabic, otherwise he would have made himself familiar with its contents
as in the case of all the rest of the Nabob’s correspondence. This
person is his _valet de chambre_, M. Noel, to whom I had the honour
of being introduced last Friday at a small evening-party of persons in
service which he gave to all his friends. I record an account of this
function in my memoirs as one of the most curious things which I have
seen in the course of my four years of sojourn in Paris.

I had thought at first when M. Francis, Monpavon’s _valet de chambre_,
spoke to me of the thing, that it was a question of one of those little
clandestine junketings such as are held sometimes in the garrets of our
boulevards with the fragments of food brought up by Mlle. Seraphine and
the other cooks in the building, at which you drink stolen wine, and
gorge yourself, sitting on trunks, trembling with fear, by the light
of a couple of candles which are extinguished at the least noise in the
corridors. These secret practices are repugnant to my character. But
when I received, as for the regular servants’ ball, an invitation
written in a very beautiful hand upon pink paper:

“M. Noel rekwests M---- to be present at his evenin-party on the 25th
instent. Super will be provided”

I saw clearly, not withstanding the defective spelling, that it was a
question of something serious and authorized. I dressed myself therefore
in my newest frock-coat, my finest linen, and arrived at the Place
Vendome at the address indicated by the invitation.

For the giving of his party, M. Noel had taken advantage of a
first-night at the opera, to which all fashionable society was
thronging, thus giving the servants a free rein, and putting the entire
place at our disposal until midnight. Notwithstanding this, the host
had preferred to receive us upstairs in his own bed-chamber, and this I
approved highly, being in that matter of the opinion of the old fellow
in the rhyme:

     Fie on the pleasure
     That fear may corrupt!

But my word, the luxury on the Place Vendome! A felt carpet on the
floor, the bed hidden away in an alcove, Algerian curtains with red
stripes, an ornamental clock in green marble on the chimneypiece, the
whole lighted by lamps of which the flames can be regulated at will. Our
oldest member, M. Chalmette, is not better lodged at Dijon. I arrived
about nine o’clock with Monpavon’s old Francis, and I must confess that
my entry made a sensation, preceded as I was by my academical past, my
reputation for politeness, and great knowledge of the world. My fine
presence did the rest, for it must be said that I know how to go into a
room. M. Noel, in a dress-coat, very dark skinned and with mutton-chop
whiskers, came forward to meet us.

“You are welcome, M. Passajon,” said he, and taking my cap with silver
galloons which, according to the fashion, I had kept in my right hand
while making my entry, he gave it to a gigantic negro in red and gold
livery.

“Here, Lakdar, hang that up--and that,” he added by way of a joke,
giving him a kick in a certain region of the back.

There was much laughter at this sally, and we began to chat together
in very friendly fashion. An excellent fellow, this M. Noel, with his
accent of the Midi, his pronounced style of dress, the smoothness and
the simplicity of his manners. He reminded me of the Nabob, without
his distinction, however. I noticed, moreover, that evening, that these
resemblances are frequently to be observed in _valets de chambre_ who,
living in the intimacy of their masters, by whom they are always a
little dazzled, end by acquiring their manners and habits. Thus, M.
Francis has a certain way of straightening his body when displaying his
linen-front, a mania for raising his arms in order to pull his cuffs
down--it is Monpavon to a T. Now one, for instance, who bears no
resemblance to his master is Joey, the coachman of Dr. Jenkins. I call
him Joey, but at the party every one called him Jenkins; for, in that
world, the stable folk among themselves give to each other the names
of their masters, call each other Bois l’Hery, Monpavon, and Jenkins,
without ceremony. Is it in order to degrade their superiors, to raise
the status of menials? Every country has its customs; it is only a fool
who will be surprised by them. To return to Joey Jenkins, how can the
doctor, affable as he is, so polished in every particular, keep in his
service that brute, bloated with _porter_ and _gin_, who will remain
silent for hours at a time, then, at the first mounting of liquor to
his head, begins to howl and to wish to fight everybody, as witness the
scandalous scene which had just occurred when we entered?

The marquis’s little groom, Tom Bois l’Hery, as they call him here, had
desired to have a jest with this uncouth creature of an Irishman, who
had replied to a bit of Parisian urchin’s banter with a terrible Belfast
blow of his fist right in the lad’s face.

“A sausage with paws, I! A sausage with paws, I!” repeated the coachman,
choking with rage, while his innocent victim was being carried into the
adjoining room, where the ladies and girls found occupation in bathing
his nose. The disturbance was quickly appeased, thanks to our arrival,
thanks also to the wise words of M. Barreau, a middle-aged man, sedate
and majestic, with a manner resembling my own. He is the Nabob’s cook,
a former _chef_ of the Cafe Anglais, whom Cardailhac, the manager of
the Nouveautes, has procured for his friend. To see him in a dress-coat,
with white tie, his handsome face full and clean-shaven, you would have
taken him for one of the great functionaries of the Empire. It is true
that a cook in an establishment where the table is set every morning
for thirty persons, in addition to madame’s special meal, and all eating
only the very finest and most delicate of food, is not the same as the
ordinary preparer of a _ragout_. He is paid the salary of a colonel,
lodged, boarded, and then the perquisites! One has hardly a notion
of the extent of the perquisites in a berth like this. Every one
consequently addressed him respectfully, with the deference due to a man
of his importance. “M. Barreau” here, “My dear M. Barreau” there. For
it is a great mistake to imagine that servants among themselves are all
cronies and comrades. Nowhere do you find a hierarchy more prevalent
than among them. Thus at M. Noel’s party I distinctly noticed that the
coachmen did not fraternize with their grooms, nor the valets with the
footmen and the lackeys, any more than the steward or the butler would
mix with the lower servants; and when M. Barreau emitted any little
pleasantry it was amusing to see how exceedingly those under his orders
seemed to enjoy it. I am not opposed to this kind of thing. Quite on
the contrary. As our oldest member used to say, “A society without
a hierarchy is like a house without a staircase.” The observation,
however, seems to me one worth setting down in these memoirs.

The party, I need scarcely say, did not shine with its full splendour
until after the return of its most beauteous ornaments, the ladies and
girls who had gone to nurse the little Tom, ladies’-maids with shining
and pomaded hair, chiefs of domestic departments in bonnets adorned with
ribbons, negresses, housekeepers, a brilliant assembly in which I was
immediately given great prestige, thanks to my dignified bearing and to
the surname of “Uncle” which the younger among these delightful persons
saw fit to bestow upon me.

I fancy there was in the room a good deal of second-hand frippery in
the way of silk and lace, rather faded velvet, even, eight-button
gloves that had been cleaned several times, and perfumes abstracted from
madame’s dressing-table, but the faces were happy, thoughts given wholly
to gaiety, and I was able to make a little corner for myself, which was
very lively, always within the bounds of propriety--that goes without
saying--and of a character suitable for an individual in my position.
This was, moreover, the general tone of the party. Until towards the end
of the entertainment I heard none of those unseemly jests, none of those
scandalous stories which give so much amusement to the gentlemen of
our Board; and I take pleasure in remarking that Bois l’Hery the
coachman--to cite only one example--is much more observant of the
proprieties than Bois l’Hery the master.

M. Noel alone was conspicuous by his familiar tone and by the liveliness
of his repartees. In him you have a man who does not hesitate to call
things by their names. Thus he remarked aloud to M. Francis, from one
end of the room to the other: “I say, Francis, that old swindler of
yours has made a nice thing out of us again this week.” And as the other
drew himself up with a dignified air, M. Noel began to laugh.

“No offence, old chap. The coffer is solid. You will never get to the
bottom of it.”

And it was on this that he told us of the loan of fifteen millions, to
which I alluded above.

I was surprised, however, to see no sign of preparation for the supper
which was mentioned on the cards of invitation, and I expressed my
anxiety on the point to one of my charming nieces, who replied:

“They are waiting for M. Louis.”

“M. Louis?”

“What! you do not know M. Louis, the _valet de chambre_ of the Duc de
Mora?”

I then learned who this influential personage was, whose protection is
sought by prefects, senators, even ministers, and who must make them pay
stiffly for it, since with his salary of twelve hundred francs from
the duke he has saved enough to produce him an income of twenty-five
thousand, sends his daughters to the convent school of the Sacre Coeur,
his son to the College Bourdaloue, and owns a chalet in Switzerland
where all his family goes to stay during the holidays.

At this juncture the personage in question arrived; but nothing in his
appearance would have suggested the unique position in Paris which is
his. Nothing of majesty in his deportment, a waistcoat buttoned up to
the collar, a mean-looking and insolent manner, and a way of speaking
without moving the lips which is very impolite to those who are
listening to you.

He greeted the assembly with a slight nod of the head, extended a finger
to M. Noel, and we were sitting there looking at each other, frozen by
his grand manners, when a door opened at the farther end of the room and
we beheld the supper laid out with all kinds of cold meats, pyramids
of fruit, and bottles of all shapes beneath the light falling from two
candelabra.

“Come, gentlemen, give the ladies your hands.” In a minute we were at
table, the ladies seated next the eldest or the most important among
us all, the rest on their feet, serving, chattering, drinking from
everybody’s glass, picking a morsel from any plate. I had M. Francis
for my neighbour and I had to listen to his grudges against M. Louis, of
whose place he was envious, so brilliant was it in comparison with that
which he occupied under the noble but worn-out old gambler who was his
master.

“He is a _parvenu_,” he muttered to me in a low voice. “He owes his
fortune to his wife, to Mme. Paul.”

It appears that this Mme. Paul is a housekeeper, who has been in the
duke’s establishment for twenty years, and who excels beyond all others
in the preparation for him of a certain ointment for an affection to
which he is subject. She is indispensable to Mora. Recognising this, M.
Louis made love to the old lady, married her though much younger than
she, and in order not to lose his sick-nurse and her ointments, his
excellency engaged the husband as _valet de chambre_. At bottom, in
spite of what I said to M. Francis, for my own part I thought the
proceeding quite praiseworthy and conformable to the loftiest morality,
since the mayor and the priest had a finger in it. Moreover, that
excellent meal, composed of delicate and very expensive foods with
which I was unacquainted even by name, had strongly disposed my mind to
indulgence and good-humour. But every one was not similarly inclined,
for from the other side of the table I could hear the bass voice of M.
Barreau, complaining:

“Why can he not mind his own business? Do I go pushing my nose into
his department? To begin with, the thing concerns Bompain, not him. And
then, after all, what is it that I am charged with? The butcher sends me
five baskets of meat every morning. I use only two of them and sell the
three others back to him. Where is the _chef_ who does not do the same?
As if, instead of coming to play the spy in my basement, he would not
do better to look after the great leakage up there. When I think that
in three months that gang on the first floor has smoked twenty-eight
thousand francs’ worth of cigars. Twenty-eight thousand francs! Ask
Noel if I am not speaking the truth. And on the second floor, in the
apartments of madame, that is where you should look to see a fine
confusion of linen, of dresses thrown aside after being worn once,
jewels by the handful, pearls that you crush on the floor as you walk.
Oh, but wait a little. I shall get my own back from that same little
gentleman.”

I understood that the allusion was to M. de Gery, that young secretary
of the Nabob who often comes to the Territorial, where he is always
occupied rummaging into the books. Very polite, certainly, but a very
haughty young man, who does not know how to push himself forward. From
all round the table there came nothing but a concert of maledictions
on him. M. Louis himself addressed some remarks to the company upon the
subject with his grand air:

“In our establishment, my dear M. Barreau, the cook quite recently had
an affair, similar to yours, with the chief of his excellency’s Cabinet,
who had permitted himself to make some comments upon the expenditure.
The cook went up to the duke’s apartments upon the instant in his
professional costume, and with his hand on the strings of his apron,
said, ‘Let your excellency choose between monsieur and myself.’ The duke
did not hesitate. One can find as many Cabinet leaders as one desires,
while the good cooks, you can count them. There are in Paris four
altogether. I include you, my dear Barreau. We dismissed the chief
of our Cabinet, giving him a prefecture of the first class by way of
consolation; but we kept the _chef_ of our kitchen.”

“Ah, you see,” said M. Barreau, who rejoiced to hear this story,
“you see what it is to serve in the house of a _grand seigneur_. But
_parvenus_ are _parvenus_--what will you have?”

“And that is all Jansoulet is,” added M. Francis, tugging at his cuffs.
“A man who used to be a street porter at Marseilles.”

M. Noel took offence at this.

“Hey, down there, old Francis, you are very glad all the same to have
him to pay your card-debts, the street porter of La Cannebriere. You may
well be embarrassed by _parvenus_ like us who lend millions to kings,
and whom _grand seigneurs_ like Mora do not blush to admit to their
tables.”

“Oh, in the country,” chuckled M. Francis, with a sneer that showed his
old tooth.

The other rose, quite red in the face. He was about to give way to his
anger when M. Louis made a gesture with his hand to signify that he had
something to say, and M. Noel sat down immediately, putting his hand to
his ear like all the rest of us in order to lose nothing that fell from
those august lips.

“It is true,” remarked the personage, speaking with the slightest
possible movement of his mouth and continuing to take his wine in little
sips, “it is true that we received the Nabob at Grandbois the other
week. There even happened something very funny on the occasion. We have
a quantity of mushrooms in the second park, and his excellency amuses
himself sometimes by gathering them. Now at dinner was served a large
dish of fungi. There were present, what’s his name--I forget, what is
it?--Marigny, the Minister of the Interior, Monpavon, and your master,
my dear Noel. The mushrooms went the round of the table, they looked
nice, the gentlemen helped themselves freely, except M. le Duc, who
cannot digest them and out of politeness feels it his duty to remark to
his guests: ‘Oh, you know, it is not that I am suspicious of them. They
are perfectly safe. It was I myself who gathered them.’

“‘_Sapristi!_’ said Monpavon, laughing, ‘then, my dear Auguste, allow me
to be excused from tasting them.’ Marigny, less familiar, glanced at his
plate out of the corner of his eye.

“‘But, yes, Monpavon, I assure you. They look extremely good, these
mushrooms. I am truly sorry that I have no appetite left.’

“The duke remained very serious.

“‘Come, M. Jansoulet, I sincerely hope that you are not going to offer
me this affront, you also. Mushrooms selected by myself.’

“‘Oh, Excellency, the very idea of such a thing! Why, I would eat them
with my eyes closed.’

“So you see what sort of luck he had, the poor Nabob, the first time
that he dined with us. Duperron, who was serving opposite him, told us
all about it in the pantry. It seems there could have been nothing more
comic than to see the Jansoulet stuffing himself with mushrooms, and
rolling terrified eyes, while the others sat watching him curiously
without touching their plates. He sweated under the effort, poor wretch.
And the best of it was that he took a second portion, he actually found
the courage to take a second portion. He kept drinking off glasses of
wine, however, like a mason, between each mouthful. Ah, well, do you
wish to hear my opinion? What he did there was very clever, and I am no
longer surprised that this fat cow-herd should have become the
favourite of sovereigns. He knows where to flatter them in those little
pretensions which no man avows. In brief, the duke has been crazy over
him since that day.”

This little story caused much laughter and scattered the clouds which
had been raised by a few imprudent words. So then, since the wine had
untied people’s tongues, and they knew each other better, elbows were
leaned on the table and the conversation fell on masters, on the places
in which each of them had served, on the amusing things he had seen in
them. Ah! of how many such adventures did I not hear, how much of the
interior life of those establishments did I not see pass before me.
Naturally I also made my own little effect with the story of my larder
at the Territorial, the times when I used to keep my stew in the empty
safe, which circumstance, however, did not prevent our old cashier, a
great stickler for forms, from changing the key-word of the lock every
two days, as though all the treasures of the Bank of France had been
inside. M. Louis appeared to find my anecdote entertaining. But the
most astonishing was what the little Bois l’Hery, with his Parisian
street-boy’s accent, related to us concerning the household of his
employers.

Marquis and Marquise de Bois l’Hery, second floor, Boulevard Haussmann.
Furniture rich as at the Tuileries, blue satin on all the walls,
Chinese ornaments, pictures, curiosities, a veritable museum, indeed,
overflowing even on to the stairway. The service very smart: six
men-servants, chestnut livery in winter, nankeen livery in summer.
These people are seen everywhere at the small Mondays, at the races, at
first-nights, at embassy balls, and their name always in the newspapers
with a remark upon the handsome toilettes of Madame, and Monsieur’s
remarkable chic. Well! all that is nothing at all but pretence, plated
goods, show, and when the marquis wants five francs nobody would
lend them to him upon his possessions. The furniture is hired by
the fortnight from Fitily, the upholsterer of the demi-monde. The
curiosities, the pictures, belong to old Schwalbach, who sends his
clients round there and makes them pay doubly dear, since people don’t
bargain when they think they are dealing with a marquis, an amateur.
As for the toilettes of the marquise, the milliner and the dressmaker
provide her with them each season gratis, get her to wear the new
fashions, a little ridiculous sometimes but which society subsequently
adopts because Madame is still a very handsome woman and reputed for
her elegance; she is what is called a _launcher_. Finally, the servants!
Makeshifts like the rest, changed each week at the pleasure of the
registry office which sends them there to do a period of probation by
way of preliminary to a serious engagement. If you have neither sureties
nor certificates, if you have just come out of prison or anything of
that kind, Glanand, the famous agent of the Rue de la Paix, sends you
off to the Boulevard Haussmann. You remain in service there for a
week or two, just the time necessary to buy a good reference from the
marquis, who, of course, it is understood, pays you nothing and barely
boards you; for in that house the kitchen-ranges are cold most of the
time, Monsieur and Madame dining out nearly every evening or going to
balls, where a supper is included in the entertainment. It is positive
fact that there are people in Paris who take the sideboard seriously and
make the first meal of their day after midnight. The Bois l’Herys, in
consequence, are well-informed with regard to the houses that provide
refreshments. They will tell you that you get a very good supper at the
Austrian Embassy, that the Spanish Embassy rather neglects the wines,
and that it is at the Foreign Office again that you find the best
_chaud-froid de volailles_. And that is the life of this curious
household. Nothing that they possess is really theirs; everything is
tacked on, loosely fastened with pins. A gust of wind and the whole
thing blows away. But at least they are certain of losing nothing. It is
this assurance which gives to the marquis that air of raillery worthy of
a Father Tranquille which he has when he looks at you with both hands in
his pockets, as much as to say: “Ah, well, and what then? What can they
do to me?”

And the little groom, in the attitude which I have just mentioned, with
his head like that of a prematurely old and vicious child, imitated his
master so well that I could fancy I saw himself as he looks at our board
meetings, standing in front of the governor and overwhelming him with
his cynical pleasantries. All the same, one must admit that Paris is
a tremendously great city, for a man to be able to live thus, through
fifteen, twenty years of tricks, artifice, dust thrown in people’s eyes,
without everybody finding him out, and for him still to be able to make
a triumphal entry into a drawing-room in the rear of his name announced
loudly and repeatedly, “Monsieur le Marquis de Bois l’Hery.”

No, look you, the things that are to be learned at a servants’ party,
what a curious spectacle is presented by the fashionable world of Paris,
seen thus from below, from the basements, you need to go to one
before you can realize. Here, for instance, is a little fragment of
conversation which, happening to find myself between M. Francis and M.
Louis, I overheard about the worthy sire de Monpavon.

“You are making a mistake, Francis. You are in funds just now. You
ought to take advantage of the occasion to restore that money to the
Treasury.”

“What will you have?” replied M. Francis with a despondent air. “Play is
devouring us.”

“Yes, I know it well. But take care. We shall not always be there. We
may die, fall from power. Then you will be asked for accounts by the
people down yonder. And it will be a terrible business.”

I had often heard whispered the story of a forced loan of two hundred
thousand francs which the marquis was reputed to have secured from the
State at the time when he was Receiver-General; but the testimony of his
_valet de chambre_ was worse than all. Ah! if masters had any suspicion
of how much servants know, of all the stories that are told in the
servants’ hall, if they could see their names dragged among the
sweepings of the house and the refuse of the kitchen, they would never
again dare to say even “shut the door” or “harness the horses.” Why, for
instance, take Dr. Jenkins, with the most valuable practice in Paris,
ten years of life in common with a magnificent woman, who is sought
after everywhere; it is in vain that he has done everything to
dissimulate his position, announced his marriage in the newspapers after
the English fashion, admitted to his house only foreign servants knowing
hardly three words of French. In those three words, seasoned with vulgar
oaths and blows of his fist on the table, his coachman Joey, who hates
him, told us his whole history during supper.

“She is going to kick the bucket, his Irish wife, the real one. Remains
to be seen now whether he will marry the other. Forty-five, she is, Mrs.
Maranne, and not a shilling. You should see how afraid she is of being
left in the lurch. Whether he marries her or whether he does not marry
her--kss, kss--we shall have a good laugh.”

And the more drink he was given, the more he told us about her, speaking
of his unfortunate mistress as though she were the lowest of the low.
For my own part, I confess that she interested me, this false Mme.
Jenkins, who goes about weeping in every corner, implores her lover
as though he were the executioner, and runs the chance of being thrown
overboard altogether, when all society believes her to be married,
respectable, and established in life. The others only laughed over the
story, the women especially. Dame! it is amusing when one is in service
to see that the ladies of the upper ten have their troubles also and
torments that keep them awake at night.

Our festal board at this stage presented the most lively aspect, a
circle of gay faces stretched towards this Irishman whose story was
adjudged to have won the prize. The fact excited envy; the rest sought
and hunted through their memories for whatever they might hold in the
way of old scandals, adventures of deceived husbands, of those intimate
privacies which are emptied on the kitchen-table along with the scraps
from the plates and the dregs from the bottles. The champagne was
beginning to claim its own among the guests. Joey wanted to dance a jig
on the table-cloth. The ladies, at the least word that was a little gay,
threw themselves back with the piercing laughter of people who are being
tickled, allowing their embroidered skirts to trail beneath the table,
loaded with the remains of the food and covered with spilt grease. M.
Louis had discreetly retired. Glasses were filled up before they had
been emptied; one of the housekeepers dipped a handkerchief in hers,
filled with water, and bathed her forehead with it, because her head was
swimming, she said. It was time that the festivity should end; and,
in fact, an electric bell ringing in the corridor warned us that the
footman, on duty at the theatre, had come to summon the coachmen.
Thereupon Monpavon proposed the health of the master of the house,
thanking him for his little party. M. Noel announced that he proposed
to give another at Saint-Romans, in honour of the visit of the Bey, to
which most of those present would probably be invited. And I was about
to rise in my turn, being sufficiently accustomed to social banquets
to know that on such an occasion the oldest man present is expected to
propose the health of the ladies, when the door opened abruptly, and
a tall footman, bespattered with mud, a dripping umbrella in his hand,
perspiring, out of breath, cried to us, without respect for the company:

“But come on then, you set of idiots! What are you sticking here for?
Don’t you know it is over?”



THE FESTIVITIES IN HONOUR OF THE BEY

In the regions of the Midi, of bygone civilization, historical castles
still standing are rare. Only at long intervals on the hillsides some
old abbey lifts its tottering and dismembered front, perforated by holes
that once were windows, whose empty spaces look now only to the sky.
A monument of dust, burnt up by the sun, dating from the time of the
Crusades or of the Courts of Love, without a trace of man among its
stones, where even the ivy no longer clings nor the acanthus, but which
the dried lavenders and the ferns embalm. In the midst of all those
ruins the castle of Saint-Romans is an illustrious exception. If you
have travelled in the Midi you have seen it, and you are to see it again
now. It is between Valence and Montelimart, on a site just where the
railway runs alongside the Rhone, at the foot of the rich slopes
of Baume, Raucoule, and Mercurol, where the far-famed vineyards of
l’Ermitage, spreading out for five miles in close-planted rows of vines,
which seem to grow as one looks, roll down almost into the river, which
is there as green and full of islands as the Rhine at Basle, but under
a sun the Rhine has never known. Saint-Romans is opposite on the other
side of the river; and, in spite of the brevity of the vision, the
headlong rush of the train, which seems trying to throw itself madly
into the Rhone at each turning, the castle is so large, so well situated
on the neighbouring hill, that it seems to follow the crazy race of the
train, and stamps on your mind forever the memory of its terraces, its
balustrades, its Italian architecture; two low stories surmounted by a
colonnaded gallery and flanked by two slate-roofed pavilions dominating
the great slopes where the water of the cascades rebounds, the network
of gravel walks, the perspective of long hedges, terminated by some
white statue which stands out against the blue sky as on the luminous
ground of a stained-glass window. Quite at the top, in the middle of the
vast lawns whose green turf shines ironically under the scorching sun,
a gigantic cedar uplifts its crested foliage, enveloped in black and
floating shadows--an exotic silhouette, upright before this former
dwelling of some Louis XIV farmer of revenue, which makes one think of a
great negro carrying the sunshade of a gentleman of the court.

From Valence to Marseilles, throughout all the Valley of the Rhone,
Saint-Romans of Bellaignes is famous as an enchanted palace; and,
indeed, in that country burnt up by the fiery wind, this oasis of
greenness and beautiful rushing water is a true fairy-land.

“When I am rich, mamma,” Jansoulet used to say, as quite a small boy,
to his mother whom he adored, “I shall give you Saint-Romans of
Bellaignes.” And as the life of the man seemed the fulfilment of a story
from the Arabian Nights, as all his wishes came true, even the most
disproportionate, as his maddest chimeras came to lie down before him,
to lick his hands like familiar and obedient spaniels, he had bought
Saint-Romans to offer it, newly furnished and grandiosely restored, to
his mother. Although it was ten years since then, the dear old woman was
not yet used to her splendid establishment. “It is the palace of Queen
Jeanne that you have given me, my dear Bernard,” she wrote to her son.
“I shall never live there.” She never did live there, as a matter of
fact, having stayed at the steward’s house, an isolated building of
modern construction, situated quite at the other end of the grounds,
so as to overlook the outbuildings and the farm, the sheepfolds and the
oil-mills, with their rural horizon of stacks, olive-trees and vines,
extending over the plain as far as one could see. In the great castle
she would have imagined herself a prisoner in one of those enchanted
dwellings where sleep seizes you in the midst of your happiness and
does not let you go for a hundred years. Here, at least, the
peasant-woman--who had never been able to accustom herself to
this colossal fortune, come too late, from too far, and like a
thunder-clap--felt herself linked to reality by the coming and going of
the work-people, the letting-out and taking-in of the cattle, their slow
movement to the drinking pond, all that pastoral life which woke her by
the familiar call of the cocks and the sharp cries of the peacocks, and
brought her down the corkscrew staircase of the pavilion before dawn.
She looked upon herself only as the trustee of this magnificent estate,
which she was taking care of for her son, and wished to give back to him
in perfect condition on the day when, rich enough and tired of living
with the Turks, he would come, according to his promise, to live with
her beneath the shade of Saint-Romans.

Then, too, what universal and indefatigable supervision! Through the
mists of early morning the farm-servants heard her rough and husky
voice: “Olivier, Peyrol, Audibert. Come on! It is four o’clock.” Then
she would hasten to the immense kitchen, where the maids, heavy with
sleep, were heating the porridge over the crackling, new-lit fire.
They gave her a little dish of red Marseilles-ware full of boiled
chestnuts--frugal breakfast of bygone times, which nothing would have
induced her to change. At once she was off, hurrying with great strides,
her large silver keyring at her belt, whence jingled all her keys, her
plate in her hand, balanced by the distaff which she held, in working
order, under her arm, for she spun all day long, and did not stop even
to eat her chestnuts. On the way, a glance at the stables, still dark,
where the animals were moving duly, at the stifling pens with their rows
of impatient and outstretched muzzles; and the first glimmers of light
creeping over the layers of stones that supported the embankment of the
park, lit up the figure of the old woman, running in the dew, with the
lightness of a girl, despite her seventy years--verifying exactly each
morning all the wealth of the domain, anxious to make sure that the
night had not taken away the statues and the vases, uprooted the
hundred-year-old quincunx, dried up the springs which filtered into
their resounding basins. Then the full sunlight of midday, humming and
vibrating, showed still, on the sand of an alley, against the white wall
of a terrace, the long figure of the old woman, elegant and straight
as her spindle, picking up bits of dead wood, breaking off some uneven
branch of a shrub, careless of the shock it caused her and the sweat
which broke out over her skin. Towards this hour another figure was to
be seen in the park also--less active, less noisy, dragging rather than
walking, leaning against the walls and railings--a poor round-shouldered
being, shaky and stiff, a figure from which life seemed to have gone
out, never speaking, when he was tired giving a little plaintive cry
towards the servant, who was always near, who helped him to sit down, to
crouch upon some step, where he would stay for hours, motionless, mute,
his mouth hanging, his eyes blinking, hushed by the strident monotony of
the grasshopper’s cry--a blotch of humanity in the splendid horizon.

This, this was the first-born, Bernard’s brother, the darling child of
his father and mother, the glorious hope of the nail-maker’s family.
Slaves, like so many others in the Midi, to the superstition of the
rights of primogeniture, they had made every possible sacrifice to send
to Paris their fine, ambitious lad, who set out assured of success, the
admiration of all the young women of the town; and Paris, after having
for six years, beaten, twisted, and squeezed in its great vat the
brilliant southern stripling, after having burnt him with all its
vitriol, rolled him in all its mud, finished by sending him back in
this state of wreckage, stupefied and paralyzed--killing his father with
sorrow, and forcing his mother to sell her all, and live as a sort of
char-woman in the better-class houses of her own country-side. Lucky it
was that just then, when this broken piece of humanity, discharged
from all the hospitals of Paris, was sent back by public charity to
Bourg-Saint-Andeol, Bernard--he whom they called Cadet, as in these
southern families, half Arab as they are, the eldest always takes the
family name, and the last-comer that of Cadet--Bernard was at Tunis
making his fortune, and sending home money regularly. But what pain it
was for the poor mother to owe everything, even the life, the comfort
of the sad invalid, to the robust and courageous boy whom his father and
she had loved without any tenderness; who, since he was five years old,
they had treated as a “hand,” because he was very strong, woolly-headed,
and ugly, and even then knew better than any one in the house how to
deal in old nails. Ah! how she longed to have him near her, her Cadet,
to make some return to him for all the good he did, to pay at last the
debt of love and motherly tenderness that she owed him!

But, you see, these princely fortunes have the burdens, the wearinesses
of royal lives. This poor mother, in her dazzling surroundings, was very
like a real queen: familiar with long exiles, cruel separations, and the
trials which detract from greatness; one of her sons forever stupefied,
the other far away, seldom writing, absorbed in his business, saying,
“I will come,” and never coming. She had only seen him once in twelve
years, and then in the whirl of a visit of the Bey to Saint-Romans--a
rush of horses and carriages, of fireworks, and of banquets. He had gone
in the suite of his monarch, having scarcely time to say good-bye to his
old mother, to whom there remained of this great joy only a few pictures
in the illustrated papers, showing Bernard Jansoulet arriving at the
castle with Ahmed, and presenting his mother. Is it not thus that kings
and queens have their family feelings exploited in the journals? There
was also a cedar of Lebanon, brought from the other end of the world, a
regular mountain of a tree, whose transport had been as difficult and as
costly as that of Cleopatra’s needle, and whose erection as a souvenir
of the royal visit by dint of men, money, and teams had shaken the very
foundations. But this time, at least, knowing him to be in France for
several months--perhaps for good--she hoped to have her Bernard to
herself. And now he returned to her, one fine evening, enveloped in the
same triumphant glory, in the same official display, surrounded by a
crowd of counts, of marquises, of fine gentlemen from Paris, filling,
they and their servants, the two large wagonettes she had sent to meet
them at the little station of Giffas on the other side of the Rhone.

“Come, give me a kiss, my dear mother. There is nothing to be ashamed
of in giving a good hug to the boy you haven’t seen all these years.
Besides, all these gentlemen are our friends. This is the Marquis
de Monpavon, the Marquis de Bois d’Hery. Ah! the time is past when
I brought you to eat vegetable soup with us, little Cabassu and
Jean-Batiste Bompain. You know M. de Gery? With my old friend
Cardailhac, whom I now present, that makes the first batch. There are
others to come. Prepare yourself for a fine upsetting. We entertain the
Bey in four days.”

“The Bey again!” said the old woman, astounded. “I thought he was dead.”

Jansoulet and his guests could not help laughing at this comical terror,
accentuated by her southern intonation.

“It is another, mamma. There is always a Bey--thank goodness. But
don’t be afraid. You won’t have so much bother this time. Our friend
Cardailhac has undertaken everything. We are going to have magnificent
celebrations. In the meantime, quick--dinner and our rooms. Our
Parisians are worn out.”

“Everything is ready, my son,” said the old lady quietly, stiff and
straight under her Cambrai cap, the head-dress with its yellowing flaps,
which she never left off even for great occasions. Good fortune had not
changed her. She was a true peasant of the Rhone valley, independent and
proud, without any of the sly humilities of Balzac’s country folk, too
artless to be purse-proud. One pride alone she had--that of showing her
son with what scrupulous care she had discharged her duties as guardian.
Not an atom of dust, not a trace of damp on the walls. All the splendid
ground-floor, the reception-rooms with their hangings of iridescent silk
new out of the dust sheets, the long summer galleries cool and sonorous,
paved with mosaics and furnished with a flowery lightness in the
old-fashioned style, with Louis XIV sofas in cane and silk, the immense
dining-room decorated with palms and flowers, the billiard-room with its
rows of brilliant ivory balls, its crystal chandeliers and its suits
of armour--all the length of the castle, through its tall windows, wide
open to the stately terrace, lay displayed for the admiration of the
visitors. The marvellous beauty of the horizon and the setting sun, its
own serene and peaceful richness, were reflected in the panes of glass
and in the waxed and polished wood with the same clearness as in the
mirror-like ornamental lakes, the pictures of the poplars and the swans.
The setting was so lovely, the whole effect so grand, that the clamorous
and tasteless luxury melted away, disappeared, even to the most
hypercritical eyes.

“There is something to work on,” said Cardailhac, the manager, his glass
in his eye, his hat on one side, combining already his stage-effect.
And the haughty air of Monpavon, whom the head-dress of the old woman
receiving them on the terrace had shocked, gave way to a condescending
smile. Here was something to work on, certainly, and, guided by persons
of taste, their friend Jansoulet could really give his Moorish Highness
an exceedingly suitable reception. All the evening they talked of
nothing else. In the sumptuous dining-room, their elbows on the table,
full of meat and drink, they planned and discussed. Cardailhac, who had
great ideas, had already his plan complete.

“First of all, you give me _carte-blanche_, don’t you, Nabob?
_Carte-blanche_, old fellow, and make that fat Hemerlingue burst with
envy.”

Then the manager explained his scheme. The festivities were to be
divided into days, as at Vaux, when Fouquet entertained Louis XIV. One
day a play; another day Provencal games, dances, bull-fights,
local bands; the third day--And already the manager’s hand sketched
programmes, announcements; while Bois l’Hery slept, his hands in his
pockets, his chair tilted back, his cigar sunk in the corner of
his sneering mouth; and the Marquis de Monpavon, always on his best
behaviour, straightened his shirt-front to keep himself awake.

De Gery had left them early. He had sought refuge beside the old
mother--who had known him as a boy, him and his brothers--in the humble
parlour of the brightly decorated, white-curtained house, where the
Nabob’s mother tried to perpetuate her humble past with the help of a
few relics saved from its wreck.

Paul chatted quietly with the fine old woman, admiring her severe and
regular features, her white hair massed together like the hemp of her
distaff, as she sat holding herself straight in her seat--never in her
life having leaned back or sat in an arm-chair--a little green shawl
folded tightly across her flat breast. He called her Francoise, and she
called him M. Paul. They were old friends. And guess what they talked
about? Of her grandchildren, of Bernard’s three sons, whom she did not
know and so much longed to know.

“Ah, M. Paul, if you knew how I long to see them! I should have been
so happy if he had brought them, my three little ones, instead of these
fine gentlemen. Think, I have never seen them, only their portraits
which are over there. I am a little afraid of their mother, she is quite
a great lady, a Miss Afchin. But them, the children, I am sure they are
not proud, and they would love their old granny. It would be like having
their father a little boy again, and I would give to them what I did not
give to him. You see, M. Paul, parents are not always just. They have
their favourites. But God is just, he is. The ones that are most petted
and spoiled at the expense of the others, you should see what he does to
them for you! And the favour of the old often brings misfortune to the
young!”

She sighed, looking towards the large recess from behind the curtains of
which there came, at intervals, a long sobbing breath like the sleeping
wail of a beaten child who has cried bitterly.

A heavy step on the staircase, a loud, sweet voice saying, very softly,
“It is I; don’t move,” and Jansoulet appeared. He knew his mother’s
habits, how her lamp was the last to go out, so when every one in the
castle was in bed, he came to see her, to chat with her for a little, to
rejoice her heart with an affection he could not show before the others.
“Oh, stay, my dear Paul; we don’t mind you,” and once more a child in
his mother’s presence, with loving gestures and words that were really
touching, the huge man threw himself on the ground at her feet. She was
very happy to have him there, so dearly near, but she was just a little
shy. She looked upon him as an all-powerful being, extraordinary,
raising him, in her simplicity, to the greatness of an Olympian
commanding the thunder and lightning. She spoke to him, asking about his
friends, his business, but not daring to put the question she had asked
de Gery: “Why haven’t my grandchildren come?” But he spoke of them
himself. “They are at school, mother. Whenever the holidays begin they
shall be sent with Bompain. You remember Jean-Baptiste Bompain? And you
shall keep them for two long months. They will come to you and make you
tell them stories, and they will go to sleep with their heads on your
lap--there, like that.”

And he himself, putting his heavy, woolly head on her knee, remembered
the happy evenings of his childhood when he would go to sleep so, if she
would let him, and his brother had not taken up all the room. He tasted
for the first time since his return to France a few minutes of delicious
peace away from his restless and artificial life, as he lay pressed to
his old mother’s heart, in the deep silence of night and of the country
which one feels hovering over him in limitless space; the only sounds
the beating of that old faithful heart and the swing of the pendulum of
the ancient clock in the corner. Suddenly came the same long sigh, as of
a child fallen asleep sobbing. Jansoulet lifted his head and looked at
his mother, and softly asked: “Is it--?” “Yes,” she said, “I make him
sleep there. He might need me in the night.”

“I would like to see him, to embrace him.”

“Come, then.” She rose very gravely, took the lamp and went to the
alcove, of which she softly drew the large curtain, making a sign to her
son to draw near quietly.

He was sleeping. And no doubt something lived in him while he slept that
was not there when he waked, for instead of the flaccid immobility in
which he was congealed all day, he was now shaken by sudden starts, and
on the inexpressive and death-like face there were lines of pain and the
contractions of suffering life. Jansoulet, much affected, looked long
at those wasted features, faded and sickly, where the beard grew with a
surprising vigour. Then he bent down, put his lips to the damp brow, and
feeling him move, said very gravely and respectfully, as one speaks to
the head of the family, “Good-night, my brother.” Perhaps the captive
soul had heard it from the depths of its dark and abject limbo. For the
lips moved and a long moan answered him, a far-away wail, a despairing
cry, which filled with helpless tears the glance exchanged between
Francoise and her son, and tore from them both the same cry in which
their sorrow met, “Pecaire,” the local word which expressed all pity and
all tenderness.

The next day, from early morning, the commotion began with the arrival
of the actors, an avalanche of hats and wigs and big boots, of short
skirts and affected cries, of floating veils and fresh make-ups. The
women were in a great majority, as Cardailhac thought that for a Bey
the play was of little consequence, and that all that was needful was to
have catchy tunes in pretty mouths, to show fine arms and shapely legs
in the easy costume of light opera. All the well-made celebrities of his
theatre were there, Amy Ferat at the head of them, a bold young woman
who had already had her teeth in the gold of several crowns. There
were two or three well-known men whose pale faces made the same kind of
chalky and spectral spots amid the green of the trees as the plaster of
the statues. All these people, enlivened by the journey, the surprise of
the country, the overflowing hospitality, as well as the hope of making
something out of this sojourn of Beys and Nabobs and other gilded fools,
wanted only to play, to jest and sing with the vulgar boisterousness
of a crew of freshly discharged Seine boatmen. But Cardailhac meant
otherwise. No sooner were they unpacked, freshened up, and luncheon over
than, quick, the parts, the rehearsals! There was no time to lose. They
worked in the small drawing-room next the summer gallery, where the
theatre was already being fitted up; and the noise of hammers, the songs
from the burlesque, the shrill voices, the conductor’s fiddle, mingled
with the loud trumpet-like calls of the peacocks, and rose upon the hot
southern wind, which, not recognising it as only the mad rattle of its
own grasshoppers, shook it all disdainfully on the trailing tip of its
wings.

Seated in the centre of the terrace, as in the stage-box of his theatre,
Cardailhac watched the rehearsals, gave orders to a crowd of workmen
and gardeners, had trees cut down as spoiling the view, designed the
triumphal arches, sent off telegrams, express messengers to mayors, to
sub-prefects, to Arles--to arrange for a deputation of girls in national
costume; to Barbantane, where the best dancers are; to Faraman, famous
for its wild bulls and Camargue horses. And as the name of Jansoulet,
joined to that of the Bey of Tunis, flared at the end of all these
messages, on all sides they hastened to obey; the telegraph wires were
never still, messengers wore out horses on the roads. And this little
Sardanapalus of the stage called Cardailhac repeated ever, “There’s
something to work on here,” happy to scatter gold at random like
handfuls of seed, to have a stage of forty leagues to stir about--the
whole of Provence, of which this rabid Parisian was a native and whose
picturesque resources he knew to the core.

Dispossessed of her office, the old mother never appeared. She occupied
herself with the farm, and her invalid. She was terrified by this crowd
of visitors, these insolent servants whom it was difficult to know from
the masters, these women with their impudent and elegant airs, these
clean-shaven men who looked like bad priests--all these mad-caps who
chased each other at night in the corridors with pillows, with wet
sponges, with curtain tassels they had torn down, for weapons. Even
after dinner she no longer had her son; he was obliged to stay with his
guests, whose number grew each day as the _fetes_ approached; not even
the resource of talking to M. Paul about her grandchildren was left, for
Jansoulet, a little embarrassed by the seriousness of his friend,
had sent him to spend a few days with his brothers. And the careful
housekeeper, to whom they came every minute asking the keys for linen,
for a room, for extra silver, thought of her piles of beautiful dishes,
of the sacking of her cupboards and larders, remembered the state
in which the old Bey’s visit had left the castle, devastated as by a
cyclone, and said in her _patois_ as she feverishly wet the linen on her
distaff: “May lightning strike them, this Bey and all the Beys!”

At last the day came, the great day which is still spoken of in all the
country-side. Towards three o’clock in the afternoon, after a sumptuous
luncheon at which the old mother presided, this time in a new cap, over
a company composed of Parisian celebrities, prefects, deputies, all in
full uniform, mayors with their sashes, priests newshaven, Jansoulet in
full dress stepped out on to the terrace surrounded by his guests. He
saw before him in that splendid frame of magnificent natural scenery, in
the midst of flags and arches and coats of arms, a vast swarm of people,
a flare of brilliant costumes in rows on the slopes, at corners of the
walks; here, grouped in beds, like flowers on a lawn, the prettiest
girls of Arles, whose little dark heads showed delicately from beneath
their lace fichus; farther down were the dancers from Barbantane--eight
tambourine players in a line, ready to begin, their hands joined,
ribbons flying, hats cocked, and the red scarves round their hips;
beyond them, on the succeeding terraces were the choral societies in
rows, dressed in black with red caps, their standard-bearer in front,
grave, important, his teeth clinched, holding high his carved staff;
farther down still, on a vast circular space now arranged as an
amphitheatre, were the black bulls, and the herdsmen from Camargue
seated on their long-haired white horses, their high boots over their
knees, at their wrists an uplifted spear; then more flags, helmets,
bayonets, and decorations right down to the triumphal arch at the gates;
as far as the eye could see, on the other side of the Rhone (across
which the two railways had made a pontoon bridge that they might
come straight from the station to Saint-Romans), whole villages were
assembling from every side, crowding to the Giffas road in a cloud of
dust and a confusion of cries, sitting at the hedge-sides, clinging to
the elms, squeezed in carts--a living wall for the procession. Above all
a great white sun which scintillated in every direction--on the copper
of a tambourine, on the point of a trident, on the fringe of a banner;
and in the midst the great proud Rhone carrying to the sea the moving
picture of this royal feast. Before these marvels, where shone all the
gold of his coffers, the Nabob had a sudden feeling of admiration and of
pride.

“This is beautiful,” he said, paling; and behind him his mother
murmured, “It is too beautiful for man. It is as if God were coming.”
 She was pale, too, but with an unutterable fear.

The sentiment of the old Catholic peasant was indeed that which was
vaguely felt by all those people massed upon the roads as though for the
passing of a gigantic Corpus Christi procession, and whom this visit
of an Eastern prince to a child of their own country reminded of the
legends of the Magi, or the advent of Gaspard the Moor, bringing to the
carpenter’s son myrrh and the triple crown.

As Jansoulet was being warmly congratulated by every one, Cardailhac,
who had not been seen since morning, suddenly appeared, triumphant and
perspiring. “Didn’t I tell you there was something to work on! Eh? Isn’t
it fine? What a scene! I bet our Parisians would pay dear to be at such
a first performance as this!” And lowering his voice, on account of the
mother who was quite near, “Have you seen our country girls? No? Examine
them more closely--the first, the one in front, who is to present the
bouquet.”

“Why, it is Amy Ferat!”

“Just so. You see, old fellow, if the Bey should throw his handkerchief
amid that group of loveliness there must be some one to pick it up. They
wouldn’t understand, these innocents. Oh, I have thought of everything,
you will see. Everything is prepared and regulated just as on the stage.
Garden side--farm side.”

Here, to give an idea of the perfect organization, the manager raised
his stick. Immediately his gesture was repeated from the top to the
bottom of the park, and from the choral societies, from the brass bands,
from the tambourines, there burst forth the majestic strains of the
popular southern song, _Grand Soleil de la Provence_. Voices and
instruments rose in the sunlight, the banners filled, the dancers swayed
to their first movement, while on the other side of the river a report
flew like a breeze that the Bey had arrived unexpectedly by another
route. The manager made another gesture, and the immense orchestra was
hushed. The response was slower this time, there were little delays, a
hail of words lost in the leaves; but one could not expect more from a
concourse of three thousand people. Just then the carriages appeared,
the state coaches which had been used on the occasion of the last Bey’s
visit--two large chariots, pink and gold as at Tunis. Mme. Jansoulet
had tended them almost as holy relics, and they had come out of their
coverings, with their panels, their hangings and their gold fringes,
as shining and new as the day they were made. Here again Cardailhac’s
ingenuity had been freely exercised. He had thought horses looked too
heavy for those unreal fragilities, so he had harnessed instead eight
mules, with white reins, decorated with bows and pompons and bells, and
caparisoned from head to foot in that marvellous Esparto work--an art
Provence has borrowed from the Moors and perfected. How could the Bey
not be pleased!

The Nabob, Monpavon, the prefect, and one of the generals got into the
first coach; the others filled the succeeding carriages. The priests and
the mayors, swelling with importance, rushed to the head of the choral
societies of their villages which were to go in front, and all moved off
along the road to Giffas.

The weather was magnificent, but hot and heavy, three months in advance
of the season, as often happens in this impetuous country, where
everything is in a hurry and comes too soon. Although there was not a
cloud to be seen, the stillness of the atmosphere--the wind had
fallen suddenly like a loose sail--dazzling and heated white, a silent
solemnity hanging over all, foretold a storm brewing in some corner
of the horizon. The immense torpor of things gradually influenced the
living beings. One heard too distinctly the tinkling mule-bells, the
heavy steps in the dust of the band of singers whom Cardailhac was
placing at regular distances in the seething human hedge which bordered
the road and was lost in the distance; a sudden call, children’s voices,
and the cry of the water-seller, that necessary accompaniment of all
open-air festivals in the Midi.

“Open your window, general, it is stifling,” said Monpavon, crimson,
fearing for his paint, and the lowered windows exposed to the populace
these high functionaries mopping their august faces, strained, agonized,
by the same expression of waiting--waiting for the Bey, for the storm,
waiting for something, in short.

Still another trimphal arch. It was at Giffas, its long, stony street
strewn with green palms, and its sordid houses gay with flowers and
bright hangings. The station was outside the village, white and square,
stuck like a thimble on the roadside--true type of a little country
station, lost in the midst of vineyards, never having any one in it
except perhaps sometimes an old woman and her parcels waiting in a
corner, come three hours before the time.

In honour of the Bey this slight building had been rigged out with
flags, adorned with rugs and divans; a splendid buffet had been fitted
up with sherbets, all ready for his Highness. Once there and out of the
carriage the Nabob tried to dispel the feeling of uneasiness which he,
too, had begun to suffer from. Prefects, generals, deputies, people
in dress-coats and uniforms, were standing about on the platform in
imposing groups, their faces solemn, their mouths pursed, their bodies
swaying and jerking in the knowing way of public functionaries who feel
people are looking at them. And you can imagine how noses were flattened
against the windows to see all this hierarchical swelldom. There
was Monpavon, his shirt-front bulging like a whipped egg. Cardailhac
breathlessly giving his last orders, and the honest face of Jansoulet,
whose sparkling eyes, set over his fat, sunburnt cheeks, looked like two
gold nails in a goffering of Spanish leather. Suddenly an electric
bell rang. The station-master, in a new uniform, ran down the line:
“Gentlemen, the train is signalled. It will be here in eight minutes.”
 Every one started, and with the same instinctive movement pulled out
their watches. Only six minutes more. Then in the great silence some one
said: “Look over there!” To the right, on the side from which the train
was to come, two great slopes, covered with vines, made a sort of funnel
into which the track disappeared as though swallowed up. Just then all
this hollow was as black as ink, darkened by an enormous cloud, a bar of
gloom, cutting the blue of the sky perpendicularly, throwing out banks
that resembled cliffs of basalt on which the light broke all white like
moonshine. In the solemnity of the deserted track, over the lines of
silent rails where one felt that everything was ready for the coming
of the prince, it was terrifying to see this aerial crag approaching,
throwing its shadow before it, to watch the play of the perspective
which gave the cloud a slow, majestic movement, and the shadow the
rapidity of a galloping horse. “What a storm we shall have directly!”
 was the thought which came to every one, but none had voice to express
it, for a strident whistle sounded and the train appeared at the end of
the dark funnel. A real royal train, rapid and short, and decorated with
flags. The smoking, roaring engine carried a large bouquet of roses on
its breastplate, like a bridesmaid at some leviathan wedding.

It came out of the funnel at full speed, but slowed down as it
approached. The functionaries grouped themselves, straightened their
backs, hitched their swords and eased their collars, while Jansoulet
went down the track to meet the train, an obsequious smile on his lips,
his back curved ready for the “Salam Alek.” The train proceeded very
slowly. Jansoulet thought it had stopped, and put his hand on the door
of the royal carriage, glittering with gold under the black sky. But,
doubtless, the impetus had been too strong, and the train continued to
advance, the Nabob walking beside it, trying to open the accursed door
which was stuck fast, and making signs to the engine-driver. The
engine was not answering. “Stop, stop, there!” It did not stop. Losing
patience, he jumped on to the velvet-covered step, and in that fiery,
impulsive manner of his which had so delighted the old Bey, he cried,
his woolly head at the door, “Saint-Romans station, your Highness.”

You know the sort of vague light there is in dreams, the colourless
empty atmosphere where everything has the look of a phantom. Jansoulet
was suddenly enveloped in this, stricken, paralyzed. He wanted to speak,
words would not come, his nerveless hand held the door so feebly that
he almost fell backward. What had he seen? On a divan at the back of
the saloon, reposing on his elbow, his beautiful dark head with its
long silky beard leaning on his hand, was the Bey, close wrapped in
his Oriental coat, without other ornaments than the large ribbon of the
Legion of Honour across his breast and the diamond in the aigrette
of his fez. He was fanning himself impassively with a little fan of
gold-embroidered strawwork. Two aides-de-camp and an engineer of the
railway company were standing beside him. Opposite, on another divan,
in a respectful attitude, but favoured evidently, as they were the only
ones seated in the Bey’s presence, were two owl-like men, their long
whiskers falling on their white ties, one fat and the other thin. They
were the Hemerlingues, father and son, who had won over his Highness
and were bearing him off in triumph to Paris. What a horrible dream! All
three men, who knew Jansoulet well, looked at him coldly as though his
face recalled nothing. Piteously white, his forehead covered with sweat,
he stammered, “But, your Highness, are you not going to--” A vivid flash
of lightning, followed by a terrible peal of thunder, stopped the
words. But the lightning in the eyes of his sovereign seemed to him as
terrible. Sitting up, his arm outstretched, in guttural voice as of one
accustomed to roll the hard Arab syllables, but in pure French, the
Bey struck him down with the slow, carefully prepared words: “Go home,
swindler. The feet go where the heart guides. Mine will never enter the
house of the man who has cheated my country.”

Jansoulet tried to say something. The Bey made a sign: “Go on.” The
engineer pressed a button, a whistle replied, the train, which had never
really stopped, seemed to stretch itself, making all its iron muscles
crack, to take a bound and start off at full speed, the flags fluttering
in the storm-wind, and the black smoke meeting the lightning flashes.

Jansoulet, left standing on the track, staggering, stunned, ruined,
watched his fortune fly away and disappear, oblivious of the large
drops of rain which were falling on his bare head. Then, when the others
rushed upon him, surrounded him, rained questions upon him, he stuttered
some disconnected words: “Court intrigues--infamous plot.” And suddenly,
shaking his fist after the train, with eyes that were bloodshot, and a
foam of rage upon his lips, he roared like a wild beast, “Blackguards!”

“You forget yourself, Jansoulet, you forget yourself.” You guess who it
was that uttered those words, and, taking the Nabob’s arm, tried to pull
him together, to make him hold his head as high as his own, conducted
him to the carriage through the rows of stupefied people in uniform,
and made him get in, exhausted and broken, like a near relation of the
deceased that one hoists into a mourning-coach after the funeral. The
rain began to fall, peals of thunder followed one another. Every one now
hurried into the carriages, which quickly took the homeward road. Then
there occurred a heart-rending yet comical thing, one of the cruel
farces played by that cowardly destiny which kicks its victims after
they are down. In the falling day and the growing darkness of the
cyclone, the crowd, squeezed round the approaches of the station,
thought they saw his Highness somewhere amid the gorgeous trappings, and
as soon as the wheels started an immense clamour, a frightful bawling,
which had been hatching for an hour in all those breasts, burst out,
rose, rolled, rebounded from side to side and prolonged itself in the
valley. “Hurrah, hurrah for the Bey!” This was the signal for the first
bands to begin, the choral societies started in their turn, and the
noise growing step by step, the road from Giffas to Saint-Romans was
nothing but an uninterrupted bellow. Cardailhac and all the gentlemen,
Jansoulet himself, leant in vain out of the windows making desperate
signs, “That will do! That’s enough!” Their gestures were lost in the
tumult and the darkness; what the crowd did see seemed to act only as
an excitant. And I promise you there was no need of that. All these
meridionals, whose enthusiasm had been carefully led since early
morning, excited the more by the long wait and the storm, shouted with
all the force of their voices and the strength of their lungs, mingling
with the song of Provence the cry of “Hurrah for the Bey!” till it
seemed a perpetual chorus. Most of them had no idea what a Bey was,
did not even think about it. They accentuated the appellation in an
extraordinary manner as though it had three b’s and ten y’s. But it made
no difference, they excited themselves with the cry, holding up their
hands, waving their hats, becoming agitated as a result of their own
activity. Women wept and rubbed their eyes. Suddenly, from the top of an
elm, the shrill voice of a child made itself heard: “Mamma, mamma--I see
him!” He saw him! They all saw him, for that matter! Now even, they will
all swear to you they saw him!

Confronted by such a delirium, in the impossibility of imposing silence
and calm on such a crowd, there was only one thing for the people in the
carriages to do: to leave them alone, pull up the windows and dash along
at full speed. It would at least shorten a bitter martyrdom. But this
was even worse. Seeing the procession hurrying, all the road began to
gallop with it. To the dull booming of their tambourines the dancers
from Barbantane, hand in hand, sprang--a living garland--round the
carriage doors. The choral societies, breathless with singing as they
ran, but singing all the same, dragged on their standard-bearers, the
banners now hanging over their shoulders; and the good, fat priests, red
and panting, shoving their vast overworked bellies before them, still
found strength to shout into the very ear of the mules, in an unctuous,
effusive voice, “Long live our noble Bey!” The rain on all this, the
rain falling in buckets, discolouring the pink coaches, precipitating
the disorder, giving the appearance of a rout to this triumphal return,
but a comic rout, mingled with songs and laughs, mad embraces, and
infernal oaths. It was something like the return of a religious
procession flying before a storm, cassocks turned up, surplices over
heads, and the Blessed Sacrament put back in all haste, under a porch.

The dull roll of the wheels over the wooden bridge told the poor Nabob,
motionless and silent in a corner of his carriage, that they were almost
there. “At last!” he said, looking through the clouded windows at the
foaming waters of the Rhone, whose tempestuous rush seemed calm after
what he had just suffered. But at the end of the bridge, when the first
carriage reached the great triumphal arch, rockets went off, drums beat,
saluting the monarch as he entered the estates of his faithful subject.
To crown the irony, in the gathering darkness a gigantic flare of gas
suddenly illuminated the roof of the castle, and in spite of the wind
and the rain, these fiery letters could still be seen very plainly,
“Long liv’ th’ B’Y ‘HMED!”

“That--that is the wind-up,” said the poor Nabob, who could not help
laughing, though it was a very piteous and bitter laugh. But no, he was
mistaken. The end was the bouquet waiting at the castle door. Amy Ferat
came to present it, leaving the group of country maidens under the
veranda, where they were trying to shelter the shining silks of their
skirts and the embroidered velvets of their caps as they waited for
the first carriage. Her bunch of flowers in her hand, modest, her eyes
downcast, but showing a roguish leg, the pretty actress sprang forward
to the door in a low courtesy, almost on her knees, a pose she had
worked at for a week. Instead of the Bey, Jansoulet got out, stiff and
troubled, and passed without even seeing her. And as she stayed there,
bouquet in hand, with the silly look of a stage fairy who has missed her
cue, Cardailhac said to her with the ready chaff of the Parisian who
is never at a loss: “Take away your flowers, my dear. The Bey is not
coming. He had forgotten his handkerchief, and as it is only with that
he speaks to ladies, you understand--”


Now it is night. Everything is asleep at Saint-Romans after the
tremendous uproar of the day. Torrents of rain continue to fall; and in
the park, where the triumphal arches and the Venetian masts still lift
vaguely their soaking carcasses, one can hear streams rushing down the
slopes transformed into waterfalls. Everything streams or drips. A noise
of water, an immense noise of water. Alone in his sumptuous room, with
its lordly bed all hung with purple silks, the Nabob is still awake,
turning over his own black thoughts as he strides to and fro. It is not
the affront, that public outrage before all these people, that occupies
him, it is not even the gross insult the Bey had flung at him in the
presence of his mortal enemies. No, this southerner, whose sensations
were all physical and as rapid as the firing of new guns, had already
thrown off the venom of his rancour. And then, court favourites, by
famous examples, are always prepared for these sudden falls. What
terrifies him is that which he guesses to lie behind this affront.
He reflects that all his possessions are over there, firms,
counting-houses, ships, all at the mercy of the Bey, in that lawless
East, that country of the ruler’s good-pleasure. Pressing his burning
brow to the streaming windows, his body in a cold sweat, his hands icy,
he remains looking vaguely out into the night, as dark, as obscure as
his own future.

Suddenly a noise of footsteps, of precipitate knocks at the door.

“Who is there?”

“Sir,” said Noel, coming in half dressed, “it is a very urgent telegram
that has been sent from the post-office by special messenger.”

“A telegram! What can there be now?”

He takes the envelope and opens it with shaking fingers. The god, struck
twice already, begins to feel himself vulnerable, to know the fears,
the nervous weakness of other men. Quick--to the signature. MORA! Is
it possible? The duke--the duke to him! Yes, it is indeed--M-O-R-A.
And above it: “Popolasca is dead. Election coming in Corsica. You are
official candidate.”

Deputy! It was salvation. With that, nothing to fear. No one dares treat
a representative of the great French nation as a mere swindler. The
Hemerlingues were finely defeated.

“Oh, my duke, my noble duke!”

He was so full of emotion that he could not sign his name. Suddenly:
“Where is the man who brought this telegram?”

“Here, M. Jansoulet,” replied a jolly south-country voice from the
corridor.

He was lucky, that postman.

“Come in,” said the Nabob. And giving him the receipt, he took in a
heap from his pockets--ever full--as many gold pieces as his hands could
hold, and threw them into the cap of the poor fellow, who stuttered,
distracted and dazzled by the fortune showered upon him, in the night of
this fairy palace.



A CORSICAN ELECTION

Pozzonegro--near Sartene.

At last I can give you my news, dear M. Joyeuse. During the five days
we have been in Corsica we have rushed about so much, made so many
speeches, so often changed carriages and mounts--now on mules, now on
asses, or even on the backs of men for crossing the torrents--written so
many letters, noted so many requests, visited so many schools,
presented chasubles, altar-cloths, renewed cracked bells, and founded
kindergartens; we have inaugurated so many things, proposed so many
toasts, listened to so many harangues, consumed so much Talano wine and
white cheese, that I have not found time to send even a greeting to the
little family circle round the big table, from which I have been missing
these two months. Happily my absence will not be for much longer, as we
expect to leave the day after to-morrow, and are coming straight back
to Paris. From the electioneering point of view, I think our journey has
been a success. Corsica is an admirable country, indolent and poor, a
mixture of poverty and pride, which makes both the nobles and the middle
classes strive to keep up an appearance of easy circumstances at the
price of the most painful privations. They speak quite seriously of
Popolasca’s fortune--that needy deputy whom death robbed of the four
thousand pounds his resignation in favour of the Nabob would have
brought him. All these people have, as well, an administrative mania, a
thirst for places which give them any sort of uniform, and a cap to
wear with the words “Government official” written on it. If you gave a
Corsican peasant the choice between the richest farm in France and the
shabbiest sword-belt of a village policeman, he would not hesitate and
would take the belt. In that conditions of things, you may imagine
what chances of election a candidate has who can dispose of a personal
fortune and the Government favours. Thus, M. Jansoulet will be elected;
and especially if he succeeds in his present undertaking, which has
brought us here to the only inn of a little place called Pozzonegro
(black well). It is a regular well, black with foliage, consisting of
fifty small red-stone houses clustered round a long Italian church, at
the bottom of a ravine between rigid hills and coloured sandstone rocks,
over which stretch immense forests of larch and juniper trees. From my
open window, at which I am writing, I see up above there a bit of blue
sky, the orifice of the well; down below on the little square--which
a huge nut-tree shades as though the shadows were not already thick
enough--two shepherds clothed in sheep-skins are playing at cards, with
their elbows on the stone of a fountain. Gambling is the bane of this
land of idleness, where they get men from Lucca to do their harvesting.
The two poor wretches I see probably haven’t a farthing between them,
but one bets his knife against a cheese wrapped up in vine leaves, and
the stakes lie between them on the bench. A little priest smokes his
cigar as he watches them, and seems to take the liveliest interest in
their game.

And that is not all. Not a sound anywhere except the drops of water on
the stone, the oaths of one of the players who swears by the _sango
del seminaro_, and from underneath my room in the inn parlour the eager
voice of our friend mingling with the sputterings of the illustrious
Paganetti, who is interpreter, in his conversation with the not less
illustrious Piedigriggio.

M. Piedigriggio (gray feet) is a local celebrity. He is a tall, old man
of seventy-five, with a flowing beard and a straight back. He wears a
little pilot coat, a brown wool Catalonian cap on his white locks. At
his belt he carries a pair of scissors to cut the long leaves of the
green tobacco he smokes into the hollow of his hand. A venerable-looking
person in fact, and when he crossed the square, shaking hands with
the priest, smiling protectingly at the gamblers, I would never have
believed that I was looking at the famous brigand Piedigriggio, who held
the woods in Monte-Rotondo from 1840 to 1860, outwitted the police and
the military, and who to-day, thanks to the proscription by which he
benefits, after seven or eight cold-blooded murders, moves peaceably
about the country which witnessed his crimes, and enjoys a considerable
importance. This is why: Piedigriggio has two sons who, nobly following
in his footsteps, have taken to the carbine and the woods, in their
turn not to be found, not to be caught, as their father was, for twenty
years; warned by the shepherds of the movements of the police, when the
latter leave a village, they make their appearance in it. The eldest,
Scipio, came to mass last Sunday at Pozzonegro. To say they love them,
and that the bloody hand-shake of those wretches is a pleasure to all
who harbour them, would be to calumniate the peaceful inhabitants of
this parish. But they fear them, and their will is law.

Now, these Piedigriggios have taken it into their heads to favour our
opponent in the election. And their influence is a formidable power, for
they can make two whole cantons vote against us. They have long
legs, the rascals, as long in proportion as the reach of their guns.
Naturally, we have the police on our side, but the brigands are far more
powerful. As our innkeeper said this morning: “The police, they go away;
_ma_ the _banditti_ they stay.” In the face of this logical reasoning
we understood that the only thing to be done was to treat with the
Gray-feet, to try a “job,” in fact. The mayor said something of this to
the old man, who consulted his sons, and it is the conditions of this
treaty they are discussing downstairs. I hear the voice of our general
director, “Come, my dear fellow, you know I am an old Corsican myself,”
 and then the other’s quiet replies, broken, like his tobacco, by the
irritating noise of his scissors. The “dear fellow” does not seem to
have much confidence, and until the coin is ringing upon the table I
fancy there will not be any advance.

You see, Paganetti is known in his native country. The worth of his word
is written on the square in Corte, still waiting for the monument to
Paoli, on the vast fields of carrots which he has managed to plant
on the Island of Ithaca, in the gaping empty purses of all those
unfortunate small tradesmen, village priests, and petty nobility, whose
poor savings he has swallowed up dazzling their eyes with chimerical
_combinazioni_. Truly, for him to dare to come back here, it needed all
his phenomenal audacity, as well as the resources now at his disposal to
satisfy all claims.

And, indeed, what truth is there in the fabulous works undertaken by the
Territorial Bank?

None.

Mines, which produce nothing and never will produce anything, for they
exist only on paper; quarries, which are still innocent of pick or
dynamite, tracts of uncultivated sandy land that they survey with a
gesture, telling you, “We begin here, and we go right over there, as
far as you like.” It is the same with the forests. The whole of a wooded
hill in Monte-Rotondo belongs to us, it seems, but the felling of the
trees is impossible unless aeronauts undertake the woodman’s work. It is
the same with the watering-places, among which this miserable hamlet
of Pozzonegro is one of the most important, with its fountain whose
astonishing ferruginous properties Paganetti advertises. Of the
streamers, not a shadow. Stay--an old, half-ruined Genoese tower on the
shore of the Gulf of Ajaccio bears on a tarnished escutcheon, above
its hermetically sealed doors, this inscription: “Paganetti’s Agency.
Maritime Company. Inquiry Office.” Fat, gray lizards tend the office in
company with an owl. As for the railways, all these honest Corsicans to
whom I spoke of it smiled knowingly, replied with winks and mysterious
hints, and it was only this morning that I had the exceedingly
buffoonish explanation of all this reticence.

I had read among the documents which the director-general flaunts in our
eyes from time to time, like a fan to puff up his impostures, the bill
of sale of a marble quarry at a place said to be “Taverna,” two hours’
distance from Pozzonegro. Profiting by our stay here, I got on a mule
this morning, without telling any one, and guided by a tall scamp of
a fellow with legs like a deer--true type of a Corsican poacher or
smuggler, his thick, red pipe in his mouth, his gun in a bandoleer--I
went to Taverna. After a fearful progress across cracked rocks and bogs,
past abysses of unsoundable depths--on the very edges of which my
mule maliciously walked as though to mark them out with her shoes--we
arrived, by an almost perpendicular descent, at the end of our journey.
It was a vast desert of rocks, absolutely bare, all white with the
droppings of gulls and sea-fowl, for the sea is at the bottom, quite
near, and the silence of the place was broken only by the flow of the
waves and the shrill cries of the wheeling circles of birds. My guide,
who has a holy horror of excisemen and the police, stayed above on the
cliff, because of a little coastguard station posted like a watchman on
the shore. I made for a large red building which still maintained, in
this burning solitude its three stories, in spite of broken windows
and ruinous tiles. Over the worm-eaten door was an immense sign-board:
“Territorial Bank. Carr----bre----54.” The wind, the sun, the rain, have
wiped out the rest.

There has been there, certainly, a commencement of operations, for a
large square, gaping hole, cut out with a punch, is still open in the
ground, showing along its crumbling sides, like a leopard’s spots, red
slabs with brown veins, and at the bottom, in the brambles, enormous
blocks of the marble, called in the trade “black-heart” (marble spotted
with red and brown), condemned blocks that no one could make anything of
for want of a road leading to the quarry or a harbour to make the coast
accessible for freight ships, and for want, above all, of subsidies
considerable enough to carry out one or the other of these two projects.
So the quarry remains abandoned, at a few cable-lengths from the
shore, as cumbrous and useless as Robinson Crusoe’s canoe in the same
unfortunate circumstances. These details of the heart-rending story of
our sole territorial wealth were furnished by a miserable caretaker,
shaking with fever, whom I found in the low-ceilinged room of the yellow
house trying to roast a piece of kid over the acrid smoke of a pistachio
bush.

This man, who in himself is the whole staff of the Territorial Bank in
Corsica, is Paganetti’s foster-father, an old lighthouse-keeper upon
whom the solitude does not weigh. Our director-general leaves him there
partly for charity and partly because letters dated from the Taverna
quarry, now and again, make a good show at the shareholders’ meetings.
I had the greatest difficulty extracting a little information from this
poor creature, three parts savage, who looked upon me with cautious
mistrust, half hidden behind the long hair of his goat-skin _pelone_. He
told me, however, without intending it, what the Corsicans understand by
the word “railway,” and why they put on mysterious airs when they speak
of it. As I was trying to find out if he knew anything about the scheme
for a railway in the country, this old man, instead of smiling knowingly
like his compatriots, said, quite naturally, in passable French, his
voice rusty and benumbed like an ancient, little-used lock:

“Oh, sir, no need of a railway here.”

“But it would be most valuable, most useful; it would facilitate
communications.”

“I don’t say no; but with the police we have enough here.”

“The policemen?”

“Certainly.”

This _quid pro quo_ went on for some five minutes before I discovered
that here the secret police service is called “the railway.” As there
are many Corsican policemen on the Continent they use this euphemism to
designate the ignoble calling they follow. You inquire of the relations,
“Where is your brother Ambrosini? What is your uncle Barbicaglia doing?”
 They will answer with a little wink, “He has a place on the railway,”
 and every one knows what that means. Among the people, the peasants,
who have never seen a railway and don’t know what it is, it is quite
seriously believed that the great occult administration of the Imperial
police has no other name than that. Our principal agent in the country
shares this touching simplicity of belief. It shows you the real
state of the “Line from Ajaccio to Bastia, passing by Bonifacio, Porto
Vecchio, etc.,” as it is written on the big, green-backed books of
the house of Paganetti. In fact all the goods of the Territorial Bank
consist of a few sign-boards and two ruins, the whole not worthy of
lying in the “old materials” yard in the Rue Saint-Ferdinand; every
night as I go to sleep I hear the old vanes grating and the old doors
banging on emptiness.

But in this case, where have gone, where are going now, the enormous
sums M. Jansoulet has spent during the last five months--not to count
what came from the outside, attracted by the magic of his name? I
thought, as you did, that all these soundings, borings, purchasings of
land that the books set forth in fine round-hand were exaggerated beyond
measure. But who could suspect such effrontery? This is why the director
was so opposed to the idea of bringing me on the electioneering trip.
I don’t want to have an explanation now. My poor Nabob has quite enough
trouble in this election. Only, whenever we get back, I shall lay before
him all the details of my long inquiry, and, whether he wants it or not,
I will get him out of this den of thieves. They have finished below.
Old Piedigriggio is crossing the square, pulling up the slip-knot of
his long peasant’s purse, which looks to me well filled. The bargain is
made, I conclude. Good-bye, hurriedly, my dear M. Joyeuse; remember me
to your daughters and ask them to keep a tiny little place for me round
the work-table.

PAUL DE GERY.

The electioneering whirlwind which had enveloped them in Corsica,
crossed the sea behind them like a blast of the sirocco and filled the
flat in the Place Vendome with a mad wind of folly. It was overrun from
morning to night by the habitual element, augmented now by a constant
arrival of little dark men, brown as the locust-bean, with regular
features and thick beards, some turbulent and talkative, like Paganetti,
others silent, self-contained and dogmatic: the two types of the race
upon which the same climate produces different effects. All these
famished islanders, in the depths of their savage country, promised
each other to meet at the Nabob’s table. His house had become an inn, a
restaurant, a market-place. In the dining-room, where the table was
kept constantly laid, there was always to be found some newly arrived
Corsican, with the bewildered and greedy appearance of a country cousin,
having something to eat.

The boasting, clamorous race of election agents is the same everywhere;
but these were unusually fiery, had a zeal even more impassioned and
the vanity of turkey-cocks, all worked up to white heat. The most
insignificant recorder, inspector, mayor’s secretary, village
schoolmaster, spoke as if he had the whole country behind him, and the
pockets of his threadbare black coat full of votes. And it is a fact,
in Corsican parishes (Jansoulet had seen it for himself) families are
so old, have sprung from so little, have so many ramifications, that any
poor fellow breaking stones on the road is able to claim relationship
with the greatest personages of the island, and is thereby able to exert
a serious influence. These complications are aggravated still more
by the national temperament, which is proud, secretive, scheming, and
vindictive; so it follows that one has to be careful how one walks amid
the network of threads stretching from one extremity of the people to
the other.

The worst was that all these people were jealous of each other,
detested each other, and quarrelled across the table about the election,
exchanging black looks and grasping the handles of their knives at the
least contradiction. They spoke very loud and all at once, some in the
hard, sonorous Genoese dialect, and others in the most comical French,
all choking with suppressed oaths. They threw in each other’s teeth
names of unknown villages, dates of local scandals, which suddenly
revived between two fellow guests two centuries of family hatreds. The
Nabob was afraid of seeing his luncheons end tragically, and strove to
calm all this violence and conciliate them with his large good-natured
smile. But Paganetti reassured him. According to him, the vendetta,
though still existing in Corsica, no longer employs the stiletto or the
rifle except very rarely, and among the lowest classes. The anonymous
letter had taken their place. Indeed, every day unsigned letters were
received at the Place Vendome written in this style:

“M. Jansoulet, you are so generous that I cannot do less than point out
to you that the Sieur Bornalinco (Ange-Marie) is a traitor, bought by
your enemies. I could say very differently about his cousin Bornalinco
(Louis-Thomas), who is devoted to the good cause, etc.”

Or again:

“M. Jansoulet, I fear your chances of election will come to nothing, and
are on a poor foundation for success if you continue to employ one named
Castirla (Josue), of the parish of Omessa. His relative, Luciani, is the
man you need.”

Although he no longer read any of these missives, the poor candidate
suffered from the disturbing effect of all these doubts and of all these
unchained passions. Caught in the gearing of those small intrigues, full
of fears, mistrustful, curious, feverish, he felt in every aching nerve
the truth of the Corsican proverb, “The greatest ill you can wish your
enemy is an election in his house.”

It may be imagined that the check-book and the three deep drawers in
the mahogany cabinet were not spared by this hoard of devouring locusts
which had fallen upon “Moussiou Jansoulet’s” dwelling. Nothing could
be more comic than the haughty manner in which these good islanders
effected their loans, briskly, and with an air of defiance. At the same
time it was not they who were the worst--except for the boxes of cigars
which sank in their pockets as though they all meant to open a “Civette”
 on their return to their own country. For just as the very hot
weather inflames and envenoms old sores, so the election had given
an astonishing new growth to the pillaging already established in the
house. Money was demanded for advertising expenses, for Moessard’s
articles, which were sent to Corsica in bales of thousands of copies,
with portraits, biographies, pamphlets--all the printed clamour that
it was possible to raise round a name. And always the usual work of the
suction-pumps went on, those pumps now fixed to this great reservoir of
millions. Here, the Bethlehem Society, a powerful machine working with
regular, slow-recurring strokes, full of impetus; the Territorial Bank,
a marvellous exhauster, indefatigable, with triple and quadruple rows
of pumps, several thousand horse-power, the Schwalbach pump, the Bois
l’Hery pump, and how many others as well? Some enormous and noisy
with screaming pistons, some quite dumb and discreet with clack-valves
knowingly oiled, pumps with tiny valves, dear little pumps as fine
as the sting of insects, and like them, leaving a poison in the place
whence they have drawn life; all working together and bound to bring
about if not a complete drought, at least a serious lowering of level.

Already evil rumours, vague as yet, were going the round of the Bourse.
Was this a move of the enemy? For Jansoulet was waging a furious money
war against Hemerlingue, trying to thwart all his financial operations,
and was losing considerable sums at the game. He had against him his own
fury, his adversary’s coolness, and the blunderings of Paganetti, who
was his man of straw. In any case his golden star was no longer in
the ascendant. Paul de Gery knew this through Joyeuse, who was now a
stock-broker’s accountant and well up in the doings on the Bourse. What
troubled him most, however, was the Nabob’s singular agitation, his need
of constant distraction which had succeeded his former splendid calm of
strength and security, the loss, too, of his southern sobriety. He kept
himself in a continual state of excitement, drinking great glasses
of _raki_ before his meals, laughing long, talking loud, like a rough
sailor ashore. You felt that here was a man overdoing himself to escape
from some heavy care. It showed, however, in the sudden contraction of
all the muscles of his face, as some unhappy thought crossed his
mind, or when he feverishly turned the pages of his little gilt-edged
note-book. The serious interview that Paul wanted so much Jansoulet
would not give him at any price. He spent his nights at the club, his
mornings in bed, and from the moment he awoke his room was full of
people who talked to him as he dressed, and to whom he replied, sponge
in hand. If, by a miracle, de Gery caught him alone for a second, he
fled, stopping his words with a “Not now, not now, I beg of you.” In the
end the young man had recourse to drastic measures.

One morning, towards five o’clock, when Jansoulet came home from his
club, he found a letter on the table near his bed. At first he took it
to be one of the many anonymous denunciations he received daily. It
was indeed a denunciation, but it was signed and undisguised; and it
breathed in every word the loyalty and the earnest youthfulness of him
who wrote it. De Gery pointed out very clearly all the infamies and all
the double dealing which surrounded him. With no beating about the bush
he called the rogues by their names. There was not one of the usual
guests whom he did not suspect, not one who came with any other object
than to steal and to lie. From the top to the bottom of the house all
was pillage and waste. Bois l’Hery’s horses were unsound, Schwalbach’s
gallery was a swindle, Moessard’s articles a recognised blackmail. De
Gery had made a long detailed memorandum of these scandalous abuses,
with proofs in support of it. But he specially recommended to
Jansoulet’s attention the accounts of the Territorial Bank as the real
danger of the situation. Attracted by the Nabob’s name, as chairman
of the company, hundreds of shareholders had fallen into the infamous
trap--poor seekers of gold, following the lucky miner. In the other
matters it was only money he lost; here his honour was at stake.
He would discover what a terrible responsibility lay upon him if he
examined the papers of the business, which was only deception and
cheatery from one end to the other.

“You will find the memorandum of which I speak,” said Paul de Gery, at
the end of his letter, “in the top drawer of my desk along with sundry
receipts. I have not put them in your room, because I mistrust Noel
like the rest. When I go away to-night I will give you the key. For I
am going away, my dear benefactor and friend, I am going away full of
gratitude for the good you have done me, and heartbroken that your blind
confidence has prevented me from repaying you even in part. As things
are now, my conscience as an honest man will not let me stay any longer
useless at my post. I am looking on at a disaster, at the sack of a
palace, which I can do nothing to prevent. My heart burns at all I see.
I give handshakes which shame me. I am your friend, and I seem their
accomplice. And who knows that if I went on living in such an atmosphere
I might not become one?”

This letter, which he read slowly and carefully, even between the lines
and through the words, made so great an impression on the Nabob that,
instead of going to bed, he went at once to find his young secretary. De
Gery had a study at the end of the row of public rooms where he slept on
a sofa. It had been a provisional arrangement, but he had preferred not
to change it.

The house was still asleep. As he was crossing the lofty rooms, filled
with the vague light of a Parisian dawn (those blinds were never
lowered, as no evening receptions were held there), the Nabob stopped,
struck by the look of sad defilement his luxury wore. In the heavy
odour of tobacco and various liqueurs which hung over everything, the
furniture, the ceilings, the woodwork could be seen, already faded and
still new. Spots on the crumpled satins, ashes staining the beautiful
marbles, dirty footmarks on the carpets. It reminded one of a huge
first-class railway carriage incrusted with all the laziness, the
impatience, the boredom of a long journey, and all the wasteful,
spoiling disdain of the public for a luxury for which it has paid.
In the middle of this set scene, still warm from the atrocious comedy
played there every day, his own image, reflected in twenty cold and
staring looking-glasses, stood out before him, forbidding yet comical,
in absolute contrast to his elegant clothes, his eyes swollen, his face
bloated and inflamed.

What an obvious and disenchanting to-morrow to the mad life he was
leading!

He lost himself for a moment in dreary thought; then he gave his
shoulders a vigorous shake, a movement frequent with him--it was like a
peddler shifting his pack--as though to rid himself of too cruel cares,
and again took up the burden every man carried with him, which bows his
back, more or less, according to his courage or his strength, and went
into de Gery’s room, who was already up, standing at his desk sorting
papers.

“First of all, my friend,” said Jansoulet, softly shutting the door for
their interview, “answer me frankly. Is it really for the motives given
in your letter that you have resolved to leave me? Is there not, beneath
it all, one of those scandals that I know are being circulated in Paris
against me? I am sure you would be loyal enough to warn me and to give
me the opportunity of--of clearing myself to you.”

Paul assured him that he had no other reasons for going, but that those
were surely sufficient, since it was a matter of conscience.

“Then, my boy, listen to me, and I am sure of keeping you. Your letter,
so eloquent of honesty and sincerity, has told me nothing that I have
not been convinced of for three months. Yes, my dear Paul, you were
right. Paris is more complicated than I thought. What I needed, when I
arrived, was an honest and disinterested cicerone to put me on my guard
against people and things. I met only swindlers. Every worthless rascal
in the town has left the mud of his boots on my carpets. I was looking
at them just now--my poor drawing-rooms. They need a fine sweeping out.
And I swear to you they shall have it, by God, and with no light hand!
But I must wait for that until I am a deputy. All these scoundrels are
of use to me for the election, and this election is far too necessary
now for me to risk losing the smallest chance. In a word, this is the
situation: Not only does the Bey mean to keep the money I lent him three
months ago, but he has replied to my summons by a counter action for
eighty millions, the sum out of which he says I cheated his brother. It
is a frightful theft, an audacious libel. My fortune is mine, my own. I
made it by my trade as a merchant. I had Ahmed’s favour; he gave me the
opportunity of becoming rich. It is possible I may have put on the screw
a little tightly sometimes. But one must not judge these things from
a European standpoint. Over there, the enormous profits the Levantines
make is an accepted fact--a known thing. It is the ransom those savages
pay for the western comfort we bring them. That wretch Hemerlingue, who
is suggesting all this persecution against me, has done just as much.
But what is the use of talking? I am in the lion’s jaws. While waiting
for me to go to defend myself at his tribunals--and how I know it,
justice of the Orient!--the Bey has begun by putting an embargo on all
my goods, ships, and palaces, and what they contain. The affair was
conducted quite regularly by a decree of the Supreme Court. Young
Hemerlingue had a hand in that, you can see. If I am made a deputy, it
is only a joke. The court takes back its decree and they give me back
my treasure with every sort of excuse. If I am not elected I lose
everything, sixty, eighty millions, even the possibility of making
another fortune. It is ruin, disgrace, dishonour. Are you going to
abandon me in such a crisis? Think--I have only you in the whole world.
My wife--you have seen her, you know what help, what support she is
to her husband. My children--I might as well not have any. I never see
them; they would scarcely know me in the street. My horrible wealth
has killed all affection around me and has enveloped me with shameless
self-seeking. I have only my mother to love me, and she is far away, and
you who came to me from my mother. No, you will not leave me alone amid
all the scandals that are creeping around me. It is awful--if you only
knew! At the club, at the play, wherever I go I seem to see the little
viper’s head of the Baroness Hemerlingue, I hear the echo of her hiss,
I feel the venom of her bite. Everywhere mocking looks, conversation
stopped when I appear, lying smiles, or kindness mixed with a little
pity. And then the deserters, and the people who keep out of the way as
at the approach of a misfortune. Look at Felicia Ruys: just as she had
finished my bust she pretends that some accident, I know not what, has
happened to it, in order to avoid having to send it to the _Salon_. I
said nothing, I affected to believe her. But I understood that there
again was some new evil report. And it is such a disappointment to me.
In a crisis as grave as this everything has its importance. My bust in
the exhibition, signed by that famous name, would have helped me greatly
in Paris. But no, everything falls away, every one fails me. You see now
that I cannot do without you. You must not desert me.”



A DAY OF SPLEEN

Five o’clock in the afternoon. Rain since morning and a gray sky low
enough to be reached with an umbrella; the close weather which sticks.
Mess, mud, nothing but mud, in heavy puddles, in shining trails in the
gutters, vainly chased by the street-scrapers and the scavengers, heaved
into enormous carts which carry it slowly towards Montreuil--promenading
it in triumph through the streets, always moving, and always springing
up again, growing through the pavements, splashing the panels of the
carriages, the breasts of the horses, the clothes of the passers-by,
spattering the windows, the door-steps, the shop-fronts, till one feared
that the whole of Paris would sink and disappear under this sorrowful,
miry soil where everything dissolves and is lost in mud. And it moves
one to pity to see the invasion of this dirt on the whiteness of the new
houses, on the parapets of the quays, and on the colonnades of the stone
balconies. There is some one, however, who rejoices at the sight, a
poor, sick, weary being, lying all her length on a silk-embroidered
divan, her chin on her clinched fists. She is looking out gladly through
the dripping windows and delighting in all the ugliness.

“Look, my fairy! this is indeed the weather I wanted to-day. See them
draggling along! Aren’t they hideous? Aren’t they dirty? What mire! It
is everywhere--in the streets, on the quays, right down to the Seine,
right up to the heavens. I tell you, mud is good when one is sad. I
would like to play in it, to make sculpture with it--a statue a hundred
feet high, that should be called ‘My weariness.’”

“But why are you so miserable, dearest?” said the old dancer gently,
amiable and pink, and sitting straight in her seat for fear of
disarranging her hair, which was even more carefully dressed than usual.
“Haven’t you everything to make you happy?” And for the hundredth time
she enumerated in her tranquil voice the reasons for her happiness: her
glory, her genius, her beauty, all the men at her feet, the handsomest,
the greatest--oh! yes, the very greatest, as this very day--But a
terrible howl, like the heart-rending cry of the jackal exasperated by
the monotony of his desert, suddenly made all the studio windows shake,
and frightened the old and startled little chrysalis back into her
cocoon.

A week ago, Felicia’s group was finished and sent to the exhibition,
leaving her in a state of nervous prostration, moral sickness, and
distressful exasperation. It needs all the tireless patience of the
fairy, all the magic of her memories constantly evoked, to make life
supportable beside this restlessness, this wicked anger, which growls
beneath the girl’s long silences and suddenly bursts out in a bitter
word or in an “Ugh!” of disgust at everything. All the critics are
asses. The public? An immense goitre with three rows of chains. And yet,
the other Sunday, when the Duc de Mora came with the superintendent of
the art section to see her exhibits in the studio, she was so happy, so
proud of the praise they gave her, so fully delighted with her own work,
which she admired from the outside, as though the work of some one else,
now that her tools no longer created between her and her work that bond
which makes impartial judgment so hard for the artist.

But it is like this every year. The studio stripped of her recent work,
her glorious name once again thrown to the unexpected caprice of the
public, Felicia’s thoughts, now without a visible object, stray in the
emptiness of her heart and in the hollowness of her life--that of the
woman who leaves the quiet groove--until she be engrossed in some new
work. She shuts herself up and will see no one, as though she mistrusted
herself. Jenkins is the only person who can help her during these
attacks. He seems even to court them, as though he expected something
therefrom. She is not pleasant with him, all the same, goodness knows.
Yesterday, even, he stayed for hours beside this wearied beauty without
her speaking to him once. If that be the welcome she is keeping for the
great personage who is doing them the honour of dining with them--Here
the good Crenmitz, who is quietly turning over all these thoughts as she
gazes at the bows on the pointed toes of her slippers, remembers that
she has promised to make a dish of Viennese cakes for the dinner of the
personage in question, and goes out of the studio, silently, on the tips
of her little feet.

The rain falls, the mud deepens; the beautiful sphinx lies still, her
eyes lost in the dull horizon. What is she thinking of? What does she
see coming there, over those filthy roads, in the falling night, that
her lip should take that curve of disgust and her brow that frown? Is
she waiting for her fate? A sad fate, that sets forth in such weather,
fearless of the darkness and the dirt.

Some one comes into the studio with a heavier tread than the mouse-like
step of Constance--the little servant, doubtless; and, without looking
round, Felicia says roughly, “Go away! I don’t want any one in.”

“I should have liked to speak to you very much, all the same,” says a
friendly voice.

She starts, sits up. Mollified and almost smiling at this unexpected
visitor, she says:

“What--you, young Minerva! How did you get in?”

“Very easily. All the doors are open.”

“I am not surprised. Constance is crazy, since this morning, over her
dinner.”

“Yes, I saw. The anteroom is full of flowers. Who is coming?”

“Oh! a stupid dinner--an official dinner. I don’t know how I could--Sit
down here, near me. I am so glad to see you.”

Paul sat down, a little disturbed. She had never seemed to him so
beautiful. In the dusk of the studio, amid the shadowy brilliance of the
works of art, bronzes, and tapestries, her pallor was like a soft light,
her eyes shone like precious stones, and her long, close-fitting gown
revealed the unrestraint of her goddess-like body. Then, she spoke so
affectionately, she seemed so happy because he had come. Why had he
stayed away so long? It was almost a month since they had seen him. Were
they no longer friends? He excused himself as best he could--business,
a journey. Besides, if he hadn’t been there, he had often spoken of
her--oh, very often, almost every day.

“Really? And with whom?”

“With----”

He was going to say “With Aline Joyeuse,” but a feeling of restraint
stopped him, an undefinable sentiment, a sense of shame at pronouncing
her name in the studio which had heard so many others. There are things
that do not go together, one scarcely knows why. Paul preferred to reply
with a falsehood, which brought him at once to the object of his visit.

“With an excellent fellow to whom you have given very unnecessary pain.
Come, why have you not finished the poor Nabob’s bust? It was a great
joy to him, such a very proud thing for him, to have that bust in the
exhibition. He counted upon it.”

At the Nabob’s name she was slightly troubled.

“It is true,” she said, “I broke my word. But what do you expect? I am
made of caprice. See, the cover is over it; all wet, so that the clay
does not harden.”

“And the accident? You know, we didn’t believe in it.”

“Then you were wrong. I never lie. It had a fall, a most awful upset;
only the clay was fresh, and I easily repaired it. Look!”

With a sweeping gesture she lifted the cover. The Nabob suddenly
appeared before them, his jolly face beaming with the pleasure of being
portrayed; so like, so tremendously himself, that Paul gave a cry of
admiration.

“Isn’t it good?” she said artlessly. “Still a few touches here and
there--” She had taken the chisel and the little sponge and pushed the
stand into what remained of the daylight. “It could be done in a few
hours. But it couldn’t go to the exhibition. To-day is the 22nd; all the
exhibits have been in a long time.”

“Bah! With influence----”

She frowned, and her bad expression came back, her mouth turning down.

“That’s true. The _protege_ of the Duc de Mora. Oh! you have no need to
apologize. I know what people say, and I don’t care _that_--” and she
threw a little ball of clay at the wall, where it stuck, flat. “Perhaps
men, by dint of supposing the thing which is not--But let us leave these
infamies alone,” she said, holding up her aristocratic head. “I really
want to please you, Minerva. Your friend shall go to the _Salon_ this
year.”

Just then a smell of caramel and warm pastry filled the studio, where
the shadows were falling like a fine gray dust, and the fairy appeared,
a dish of sweetmeats in her hand. She looked more fairy-like than ever,
bedecked and rejuvenated; dressed in a white gown which showed her
beautiful arms through sleeves of old lace; they were beautiful still,
for the arm is the beauty that fades last.

“Look at my _kuchen_, dearie; they are such a success this time. Oh! I
beg your pardon. I did not see you had friends. And it is M. Paul! How
are you M. Paul? Taste one of my cakes.”

And the charming old lady, whose dress seemed to lend her an
extraordinary vivacity, came towards him, balancing the plate on the
tips of her tiny fingers.

“Don’t bother him. You can give him some at dinner,” said Felicia
quietly.

“At dinner?”

The dancer was so astonished that she almost upset her pretty pastries,
which looked as light and airy and delicious as herself.

“Yes, he is staying to dine with us. Oh! I beg it of you,” she added,
with a particular insistence as she saw he was going to refuse, “I beg
you to stay. Don’t say no. You will be rendering me a real service by
staying to-night. Come--I didn’t hesitate a few minutes ago.”

She had taken his hand; and in truth might have been struck by a strange
disproportion between her request and the supplicating, anxious tone in
which it was made. Paul still attempted to excuse himself. He was not
dressed. How could she propose it!--a dinner at which she would have
other guests.

“My dinner? But I will countermand it! That is the kind of person I am.
We shall be alone, just the three of us, with Constance.”

“But, Felicia, my child, you can’t really think of such a thing. Ah,
well! And the--the other who will be coming directly.

“I am going to write to him to stay at home, _parbleu_!”

“You unlucky being, it is too late.”

“Not at all. It is striking six o’clock. The dinner was for half past
seven. You must have this sent to him quickly.”

She was writing hastily at a corner of the table.

“What a strange girl, _mon Dieu! mon Dieu!_” murmured the dancer in
bewilderment, while Felicia, delighted, transfigured, was joyously
sealing her letter.

“There! my excuse is made. Headaches have not been invented for Kadour.”

Then, the letter having been despatched:

“Oh, how pleased I am! What a jolly evening we shall have! Do kiss me,
Constance! It will not prevent us from doing honour to your _kuchen_,
and we shall have the pleasure of seeing you in a pretty toilette which
makes you look younger than I do.”

This was more than was required to cause the dancer to forgive this new
caprice of her dear demon, and the crime of _lese-majeste_ in which she
had just been involved against her will. To treat so great a personage
so cavalierly! There was no one like her in the world--there was no one
like her. As for Paul de Gery, he no longer tried to resist, under the
spell once more of that attraction from which he had been able to fancy
himself released by absence, but which, from the moment he crossed the
threshold of the studio, had put chains on his will, delivered him over,
bound and vanquished, to the sentiment which he was quite resolved to
combat.

Evidently the dinner--a repast for a veritable _gourmet_, superintended
by the Austrian lady in its least details--had been prepared for a guest
of great mark. From the lofty Kabyle chandelier with its seven branches
of carved wood, which cast its light over the table-cloth covered with
embroidery, to the long-necked decanters holding the wines within their
strange and exquisite form, the sumptuous magnificence of the service,
the delicacy of the meats, to which edge was given by a certain
unusualness in their selection, revealed the importance of the expected
visitor, the anxiety which there had been to please him. The table was
certainly that of an artist. Little silver, but superb china, much unity
of effect, without the least attempt at matching. The old Rouen, the
pink Sevres, the Dutch glass mounted in old filigree pewter met on this
table as on a sideboard devoted to the display of rare curios collected
by a connoisseur exclusively for the satisfaction of his taste. A little
disorder naturally, in this household equipped at hazard, as choice
things could be picked up. The wonderful cruet-stand had lost its
stoppers. The chipped salt-cellar allowed its contents to escape on the
table-cloth, and at every moment you would hear, “Why! what is become of
the mustard-pot?” “What has happened to this fork?” This embarrassed de
Gery a little on account of the young mistress of the house, who for her
part took no notice of it.

But something made Paul feel still more ill at ease--his anxiety,
namely, to know who the privileged guest might be whom he was replacing
at this table, who could be treated at once with so much magnificence
and so complete an informality. In spite of everything, he felt
him present, an offence to his personal dignity, that visitor whose
invitation had been cancelled. It was in vain that he tried to forget
him; everything brought him back to his mind, even the fine dress of the
good fairy sitting opposite him, who still maintained some of the grand
airs with which she had equipped herself in advance for the solemn
occasion. This thought troubled him, spoiled for him the pleasure of
being there.

On the other hand, by contrast, as it happens in all friendships
between two people who meet very rarely, never had he seen Felicia so
affectionate, in such happy temper. It was an overflowing gaiety that
was almost childish, one of those warm expansions of feeling that are
experienced when a danger has been passed, the reaction of a bright
roaring fire after the emotion of a shipwreck. She laughed heartily,
teased Paul about his accent and what she called his _bourgeois_ ideas.
“For you are a terrible _bourgeois_, you know. But it is that that I
like in you. It is an effect of contraries, doubtless; it is because I
myself was born under a bridge, in a gust of wind, that I have always
liked sedate, reasonable natures.”

“Oh, my child, what are you going to have M. Paul think, that you were
born under a bridge?” said the good Crenmitz, who could not accustom
herself to the exaggeration of certain metaphors, and always took
everything literally.

“Let him think what he likes, my fairy. We are not trying to catch him
for a husband. I am sure he would not want one of those monsters who are
known as female artists. He would think he was marrying the devil. You
are quite right, Minerva. Art is a despot. One has to give one’s self
entirely up to him. To toil in his service, one devotes all the ideal,
all the energy, honesty, conscience, that one possesses, so that you
have none of these things left for real life, and the completed labour
throws you down, strengthless and without a compass, like a dismantled
hulk at the mercy of every wave. A sorry acquisition, such a wife!”

“And yet,” the young man hazarded timidly, “it seems to me that art,
however exigent it be, cannot for all that entirely absorb a woman.
What would she do with her affections, of that need to love, to devote
herself, which in her, much more than in us, is the spring of all her
actions?”

She mused a moment before replying.

“Perhaps you are right, wise Minerva. It is true that there are days
when my life rings terribly hollow. I am conscious of abysses, profound
chasms in it. Everything that I throw in to fill it up disappears. My
finest enthusiasms of the artist are engulfed there and die each time
in a sigh. And then I think of marriage. A husband; children--a swarm of
children, who would roll about the studio; a nest to look after for them
all; the satisfaction of that physical activity which is lacking in
our existences of artists; regular occupations; high spirits, songs,
innocent gaieties, which would oblige you to play instead of thinking in
the air, in the dark--to laugh at a wound to one’s self-love, to be
only a contented mother on the day when the public should see you as a
worn-out, exhausted artist.”

And before this tender vision the girl’s beauty took on an expression
which Paul had never seen in it before, an expression which gripped his
whole being, and gave him a mad longing to carry off in his arms that
beautiful wild bird, dreaming of the home-cote, to protect and shelter
it in the sure love of an honest man.

She, without looking at him, continued:

“I am not so erratic as I appear; don’t think it. Ask my good godmother
if, when she sent me to boarding-school, I did not observe the rules.
But what a muddle in my life afterward. If you knew what sort of an
early youth I had; how precocious an experience tarnished my mind, in
the head of the little girl I was, what a confusion of the permitted and
the forbidden, of reason and folly! Art alone, extolled and discussed,
stood out boldly from among it all, and I took refuge in it. That is
perhaps why I shall never be anything but an artist, a woman apart
from others, a poor Amazon with heart imprisoned in her iron cuirass,
launched into the conflict like a man, and as a man condemned to live
and die.”

Why did he not say to her, at this:

“Beauteous lady-warrior, lay down your arms, resume the flowing robe and
the graces of the woman’s sphere. I love you! Marry me, I implore you,
and win happiness both for yourself and for me.”

Ah, there it is! He was afraid lest the other--you know him, the man who
was to have come to dinner that evening and who remained between them
despite his absence--should hear him speak thus and be in a position to
jest at or to pity him for that fine outburst.

“In any case, I firmly swear one thing,” she resumed, “and it is that if
ever I have a daughter, I will try to make a true woman of her, and not
a poor lonely creature like myself. Oh! you know, my fairy, it is not
for you that I say that. You have always been kind to your demon, full
of attentions and tenderness. But just see how pretty she is, how young
she looks this evening.”

Animated by the meal, the bright lights, one of those white dresses the
reflection from which effaces wrinkles, the Crenmitz, leaning back
in her chair, held up on a level with her half-closed eyes a glass of
Chateau-Yquem, come from the cellar of the neighbouring Moulin-Rouge;
and her dainty little rosy face, her flowing garments, like those you
might see in some pastel, reflected in the golden wine, which lent to
them its own piquant fervour, recalled to mind the quondam heroine of
gay little suppers after the theatre, the Crenmitz of the brave old
days--not an audacious creature after the manner of the stars of our
modern opera, but unconscious, and wrapped in her luxury like a fine
pearl in the delicate whiteness of its shell. Felicia, who decidedly
that evening was anxious to please everybody, turned her mind gently
to the chapter of recollections; got her to recount once more her great
triumphs in _Gisella_, in the _Peri_, and the ovations of the public;
the visit of the princes to her dressing-room; the present of Queen
Amelia, accompanied by such a charming little speech. The recalling of
these glories intoxicated the poor fairy; her eyes shone; they heard
her little feet moving impatiently under the table as though seized by
a dancing frenzy. And in effect, dinner over, when they had returned to
the studio, Constance began to walk backward and forward, now and
then half executing a step, a pirouette, while continuing to talk,
interrupting herself to hum some ballad air of which she would keep
the rhythm with a movement of the head; then suddenly she bent herself
double, and with a bound was at the other end of the studio.

“Now she is off!” said Felicia in a low voice to de Gery. “Watch! It is
worth your while; you are going to see the Crenmitz dance.”

It was charming and fairy-like. Against the background of the immense
room lost in shadow and receiving almost no light save through the
arched glass roof over which the moon was climbing in a pale sky of
night blue, a veritable sky of the opera, the silhouette of the famous
dancer stood out all white, like a droll little shadow, light and
imponderable, which seemed rather to be flying in the air than springing
over the floor; then, erect upon the tips of her toes, supported in the
air only by her extended arms, her face lifted in an elusive pose, which
left nothing visible but the smile, she advanced quickly towards the
light or fled away with little rushes so rapid that you were constantly
expecting to hear a slight shivering of glass and to see her thus mount
backward the slope of the great moonbeam that lay aslant the studio.
That which added a charm, a singular poetry, to this fantastic ballet
was the absence of music, the sound alone of the rhythmical beat the
force of which was accentuated by the semi-darkness, of that quick and
light tapping not heavier on the parquet floor than the fall, petal by
petal, of a dahlia going out of bloom.

Thus it went on for some minutes, at the end of which they knew, by
hearing her shorter breathing, that she was becoming fatigued.

“Enough! enough! Sit down now,” said Felicia. Thereupon the little white
shadow halted beside an easy chair, and there remained posed, ready
to start off again, smiling and breathless, until sleep overcame her,
rocking and balancing her gently without disturbing her pretty pose,
as of a dragon-fly on the branch of a willow dipping in the water and
swayed by the current.

While they watched her, dozing on her easy chair:

“Poor little fairy!” said Felicia, “hers is what I have had best and
most serious in my life in the way of friendship, protection, and
guardianship. Can you wonder now at the zig-zags, the erratic nature of
my mind? Fortunate at that, to have gone no further.”

And suddenly, with a joyous effusion of feeling:

“Ah, Minerva, Minerva, I am very glad that you came this evening! But
you must not leave me to myself for so long again, mind. I need to have
near me an honest mind like yours, to see a true face among the masks
that surround me. A fearful _bourgeois_, all the same,” she added,
laughing, “and a provincial into the bargain. But no matter! It is you,
for all that, whom it gives me the most pleasure to see. And I believe
that my liking for you is due especially to one thing: you remind me of
some one who was the great affection of my youth, a sedate and sensible
little being she also, chained to the matter-of-fact side of existence,
but tempering it with that ideal element which we artists set aside
exclusively for the profit of our work. Certain things which you say
seem to me as though they had come from her. You have the same mouth,
like an antique model’s. Is it that that gives this resemblance to your
words? I have no idea, but most certainly you are like each other. You
shall see.”

On the table laden with sketches and albums, at which she was sitting
facing him, she drew, as she talked, with brow inclined and her rather
wild curly hair shading her graceful little head. She was no longer the
beautiful couchant monster, with the anxious and gloomy countenance,
condemning her own destiny, but a woman, a true woman, in love, and
eager to beguile. This time Paul forgot all his mistrusts in presence
of so much sincerity and such passing grace. He was about to speak, to
persuade. The minute was decisive. But the door opened and the little
page appeared. M. le Duc had sent to inquire whether mademoiselle was
still suffering from her headache of earlier in the evening.

“Still just as much,” she said with irritation.

When the servant had gone out, a moment of silence fell between them,
a glacial coldness. Paul had risen. She continued her sketch, with her
head still bowed.

He took a few paces in the studio; then, having come back to the table,
he asked quietly, astonished to feel himself so calm:

“It was the Duc de Mora who was to have dined here?”

“Yes. I was bored--a day of spleen. Days of that kind are bad for me.”

“Was the duchess to have come?”

“The duchess? No. I don’t know her.”

“Well, in your place I would never receive in my house, at my table, a
married man whose wife I did not meet. You complain of being deserted;
why desert yourself? When one is without reproach, one should avoid the
very suspicion of it. Do I vex you?”

“No, no, scold me, Minerva. I have no objection to your ethics. They
are honest and frank, yours; they do not blink uncertain, like those of
Jenkins. I told you, I need some one to guide me.”

And tossing over to him the sketch which she had just finished:

“See, that is the friend of whom I was speaking to you. A profound and
sure affection, which I was foolish enough to allow to be lost to me,
like the bungler I am. She it was to whom I appealed in moments of
difficulty, when a decision required to be taken, some sacrifice made. I
used to say to myself, ‘What will she think of this?’ just as we artists
may stop in the midst of a piece of work to refer it mentally to some
great man, one of our masters. I must have you take her place for me.
Will you?”

Paul did not answer. He was looking at the portrait of Aline. It was
she, herself to the letter; her pure profile, her mocking and kindly
mouth, and the long curl like a caress on the delicate neck. Felicia had
ceased to exist for him.

Poor Felicia, endowed with superior talents, she was indeed like those
magicians who knot and unknot the destinies of men, without possessing
any power over their own happiness.

“Will you give me this sketch?” he said in a low, quivering voice.

“Most willingly. She is nice--isn’t she? Ah! her indeed, if you should
meet, love her, marry her. She is worth more than all the rest of
womankind together. And yet, failing her--failing her----”

And the beautiful sphinx, tamed, raised to him, moist and laughing, her
great eyes, in which an enigma had ceased to be indecipherable.



THE EXHIBITION


“SUPERB!”

“A tremendous success! Barye has never done anything so good before.”

“And the bust of the Nabob! What a marvel. How happy Constance Crenmitz
is! Look at her trotting about!”

“What! That little old lady in the ermine cape is the Crenmitz? I
thought she had been dead twenty years ago.”

Oh, no! Very much alive, on the contrary. Delighted, made young again
by the triumph of her goddaughter, who had made what is decidedly the
success of the exhibition, she passes about among the crowd of artists
and fashionable people, who, wedged together and stifling themselves in
order to get a look at the two points where the works sent by Felicia
are exhibited, form as it were two solid masses of black backs and
jumbled dresses. Constance, ordinarily so timid, edges her way into the
front rank, listens to the discussions, catches, as they fly, disjointed
phrases, formulas which she takes care to remember, approves with a
nod, smiles, raises her shoulders when she hears a stupid remark made,
inclined to murder the first person who should not admire.

Whether it be the good Crenmitz or another, you will always see it at
every opening of the _Salon_, that furtive silhouette, prowling near
wherever a conversation is going on, with an anxious manner and alert
ear; sometimes a simple old fellow, some father, whose glance thanks you
for any kind word said in passing, or assumes a grieved expression by
reason of some epigram, flung at the work of art, that may wound some
heart behind you. A figure not to be forgotten, certainly, if ever
it should occur to any painter with a passion for modernity to fix on
canvas that very typical manifestation of Parisian life, the opening of
an exhibition in that vast conservatory of sculpture, with its paths
of yellow sand, and its immense glass roof beneath which, half-way up,
stand out the galleries of the first floor, lined by heads bent over to
look down, and decorated with improvised flowing draperies.

In a rather cold light, made pallid by those green curtains that
hang all around, in which one would fancy that the light-rays become
rarefied, in order to give to the vision of the people walking about
the room a certain contemplative justice, the slow crowd goes and comes,
pauses, disperses itself over the seats in serried groups, and yet
mixing up different sections of society more thoroughly than any other
assembly, just as the weather, uncertain and changeable at this time of
the year, produces a confusion in the world of clothes, causes to brush
each other as they pass, the black laces, the imperious train of the
great lady come to see how her portrait looks, and the Siberian furs of
the actress just back from Russia and anxious that everybody should know
it.

Here, no boxes, no stalls, no reserved seats, and it is this that gives
to this _premiere_ in full daylight so great a charm of curiosity.
Genuine ladies of fashion are able to form an opinion of those painted
beauties who receive so much commendation in an artificial light;
the little hat, following a new mode of the Marquise de Bois l’Hery,
confronts the more than modest toilette of some artist’s wife or
daughter; while the model who posed for that beautiful Andromeda at the
entrance, goes by victoriously, clad in too short a skirt, in wretched
garments that hide her beauty beneath all the false lines of fashion.
People observe, admire, criticise each other, exchange glances
contemptuous, disdainful, or curious, interrupted suddenly at the
passage of a celebrity, of that illustrious critic whom we seem still to
see, tranquil and majestic, his powerful head framed in its long hair,
making the round of the exhibits in sculpture followed by a dozen young
disciples eager to hear the verdict of his kindly authority. If the
sound of voices is lost beneath that immense dome, sonorous only under
the two vaults of the entrance and the exit, faces take on there an
astonishing intensity, a relief of movement and animation concentrated
especially in the huge, dark bay where refreshments are served, crowded
to overflowing and full of gesticulation, the brightly coloured hats
of the women and the white aprons of the waiters gleaming against the
background of dark clothes, and in the great space in the middle where
the oval swarming with visitors makes a singular contrast with
the immobility of the exhibited statues, producing the insensible
palpitation with which their marble whiteness and their movements as of
apotheosis are surrounded.

There are wings poised in giant flight, a sphere supported by four
allegorical figures whose attitude of turning suggests some vague
waltz-measure--a total effect of equilibrium well conveying the illusion
of the sweeping onward of the earth; and there are arms raised to give
the signal, bodies heroically risen, containing an allegory, a symbol
which stamps them with death and immortality, secures to them a place in
history, in legend, in that ideal world of museums which is visited by
the curiosity or the admiration of the nations.

Although Felicia’s group in bronze had not the proportions of these
large pieces, its exceptional merit had caused it to be selected to
adorn one of the open spaces in the middle, from which at this moment
the public was holding itself at a respectful distance, watching, over
the hedge of custodians and policemen, the Bey of Tunis and his suite,
an array of long bernouses falling in sculptural folds, which had the
effect of placing living statues opposite the other ones.

The Bey, who had been in Paris since a few days before, and was the
lion of all the _premieres_, had desired to see the opening of the
exhibition. He was “an enlightened prince, a friend of art,” who
possessed at the Bardo a gallery of remarkable Turkish paintings and
chromo-lithographic reproductions of all the battles of the First
Empire. The moment he entered, the sight of the big Arab greyhound
had struck him as he passed. It was the _sleughi_ all over, the true
_sleughi_, delicate and nervous, of his own country, the companion of
all his hunting expeditions. He laughed in his black beard, felt the
loins of the animal, stroked its muscles, seemed to want to urge it on
still faster, while with nostrils open, teeth showing, all its
limbs stretched out and unwearying in their vigorous elasticity, the
aristocratic beast, the beast of prey, ardent in love and the chase,
intoxicated with their double intoxication, its eyes fixed, was already
enjoying a foretaste of its capture with a little end of its tongue
which hung and seemed to sharpen the teeth with a ferocious laugh. When
you only looked at the hound you said to yourself, “He has got him!” But
the sight of the fox reassured you immediately. Beneath the velvet of
his lustrous coat, cat-like almost lying along the ground, covering it
rapidly without effort, you felt him to be a veritable fairy; and his
delicate head with its pointed ears, which as he ran he turned towards
the hound, had an expression of ironical security which clearly marked
the gift received from the gods.

While an Inspector of Fine Arts, who had rushed up in all haste, with
his official dress in disorder, and a head bald right down to his back,
explained to Mohammed the apologue of “The Dog and the Fox,” related in
the descriptive catalogue with these words inscribed beneath, “Now it
happened that they met,” and the indication, “The property of the Duc
de Mora,” the fat Hemerlingue, perspiring and puffing by his Highness’s
side, had great difficulty to convince him that this masterly piece
of sculpture was the work of the beautiful young lady whom they had
encountered the previous evening riding in the Bois. How could a woman,
with her feeble hands, thus mould the hard bronze, and give to it the
very appearance of the living body? Of all the marvels of Paris, this
was the one which caused the Bey the most astonishment. He inquired
consequently from the functionary if there was nothing else to see by
the same artist.

“Yes, indeed, monseigneur, another masterpiece. If your Highness will
deign to step this way I will conduct you to it.”

The Bey commenced to move on again with his suite. They were all
admirable types, with chiselled features and pure lines, warm pallors of
complexion of which even the reflections were absorbed by the whiteness
of their _haiks_. Magnificently draped, they contrasted with the busts
ranged on either side of the aisle they were following, which, perched
on their high columns, looking slender in the open air, exiled from
their own home, from the surroundings in which doubtless they would
have recalled severe labours, a tender affection, a busy and courageous
existence, had the sad aspect of people gone astray in their path, and
very regretful to find themselves in their present situation. Excepting
two or three female heads, with opulent shoulders framed in petrified
lace, and hair rendered in marble with that softness of touch which
gives it the lightness of a powdered wig, excepting, too, a few profiles
of children with their simple lines, in which the polish of the stone
seems to resemble the moistness of the living flesh, all the rest
were only wrinkles, crow’s-feet, shrivelled features and grimaces, our
excesses in work and in movement, our nervousness and our feverishness,
opposing themselves to that art of repose and of beautiful serenity.

The ugliness of the Nabob had at least energy in its favour, the vulgar
side of him as an adventurer, and that expression of benevolence, so
well rendered by the artist, who had taken care to underlay her plaster
with a layer of ochre, which gave it almost the weather-beaten and
sunburned tone of the model. The Arabs, when they saw it, uttered a
stifled exclamation, “Bou-Said!” (the father of good fortune). This was
the surname of the Nabob in Tunis, the label, as it were, of his luck.
The Bey, for his part, thinking that some one had wished to play a trick
on him in thus leading him to inspect the bust of the hated trader,
regarded his guide with mistrust.

“Jansoulet?” said he in his guttural voice.

“Yes, Highness: Bernard Jansoulet, the new deputy for Corsica.”

This time the Bey turned to Hemerlingue, with a frown on his brow.

“Deputy?”

“Yes, monseigneur, since this morning; but nothing is yet settled.”

And the banker, raising his voice, added with a stutter:

“No French Chamber will ever admit that adventurer.”

No matter. The stroke had fallen on the blind faith of the Bey in his
baron financier. The latter had so confidently affirmed to him that the
other would never be elected and that their action with regard to him
need not be fettered or in any way hampered by the least fear. And
now, instead of a man ruined and overthrown, there rose before him
a representative of the nation, a deputy whose portrait in stone the
Parisians were coming to admire; for in the eyes of the Oriental, an
idea of distinction being mingled in spite of everything with this
public exhibition, that bust had the prestige of a statue dominating
a square. Still more yellow than usual, Hemerlingue internally accused
himself of clumsiness and imprudence. But how could he ever have dreamed
of such a thing? He had been assured that the bust was not finished. And
in fact it had been there only since morning, and seemed quite at
home, quivering with satisfied pride, defying its enemies with the
good-tempered smile of its curling lip. A veritable silent revenge for
the disaster of Saint-Romans.

For some minutes the Bey, cold and impassible as the sculptured image,
gazed at it without saying anything, his forehead divided by a straight
crease wherein his courtiers alone could read his anger; then, after
two quick words in Arabic, to order the carriages and to reassemble his
scattered suite, he directed his steps gravely towards the door of exit,
without consenting to give even a glance to anything else. Who shall
say what passes in these august brains surfeited with power? Even our
sovereigns of the West have incomprehensible fantasies; but they are
nothing compared with Oriental caprices. Monsieur the Inspector of Fine
Arts, who had made sure of taking his Highness all round the
exhibition and of thus winning the pretty red-and-green ribbon of the
Nicham-Iftikahr, never knew the secret of this sudden flight.

At the moment when the white _haiks_ were disappearing under the porch,
just in time to see the last wave of their folds, the Nabob made his
entry by the middle door. In the morning he had received the news,
“Elected by an overwhelming majority”; and after a sumptuous luncheon,
at which the new deputy for Corsica had been extensively toasted, he
came, with some of his guests, to show himself, to see himself also, to
enjoy all his new glory.

The first person whom he saw as he arrived was Felicia Ruys, standing,
leaning on the pedestal of a statue, surrounded by compliments and
tributes of admiration, to which he made haste to add his own. She was
simply dressed, clad in a black costume embroidered and trimmed with
jet, tempering the severity of her attire with a glittering of reflected
lights, and with a delightful little hat all made of downy plumes, the
play of colour in which her hair, curled delicately on her forehead and
drawn back to the neck in great waves, seemed to continue and to soften.

A crowd of artists and fashionable people were assiduous in their
attentions to so great a genius allied to so much beauty; and Jenkins,
bareheaded, and puffing with warm effusiveness, was going from one to
the other, stimulating their enthusiasm but widening the circle around
this young fame of which he constituted himself at once the guardian and
the trumpeter. His wife during this time was talking to the young girl.
Poor Mme. Jenkins! She had heard that savage voice, which she alone
knew, say to her, “You must go and greet Felicia.” And she had gone to
do so, controlling her emotion; for she knew now what it was that hid
itself at the bottom of that paternal affection, although she avoided
all discussion of it with the doctor, as if she had been fearful of the
issue.

After Mme. Jenkins, it is the turn of the Nabob to rush up, and taking
the artist’s two long, delicately-gloved hands between his fat paws, he
expresses his gratitude with a cordiality which brings the tears to his
own eyes.

“It is a great honour that you have done me, mademoiselle, to associate
my name with yours, my humble person with your triumph, and to prove
to all this vermin gnawing at my heels that you do not believe the
calumnies which have been spread with regard to me. Yes, truly, I shall
never forget it. In vain I may cover this magnificent bust with gold and
diamonds, I shall still be your debtor.”

Fortunately for the good Nabob, with more feeling than eloquence, he is
obliged to make way for all the others attracted by a dazzling talent,
the personality in view; extravagant enthusiasms which, for want of
words to express themselves, disappear as they come; the conventional
admirations of society, moved by good-will, by a lively desire to
please, but of which each word is a douche of cold water; and then the
hearty hand-shakes of rivals, of comrades, some very frank, others that
communicate to you the weakness of their grasp; the pretentious great
booby, at whose idiotic eulogy you must appear to be transported with
gladness, and who, lest he should spoil you too much, accompanies it
with “a few little reserves,” and the other, who, while overwhelming
you with compliments, demonstrates to you that you have not learned the
first word of your profession; and the excellent busy fellow, who stops
just long enough to whisper in your ear “that so-and-so, the famous
critic, does not look very pleased.” Felicia listened to it all with the
greatest calm, raised by her success above the littleness of envy, and
quite proud when a glorious veteran, some old comrade of her father,
threw to her a “You’ve done very well, little one!” which took her back
to the past, to the little corner reserved for her in the old days in
her father’s studio, when she was beginning to carve out a little glory
for herself under the protection of the renown of the great Ruys. But,
taken altogether, the congratulations left her rather cold, because
there lacked one which she desired more than any other, and which she
was surprised not to have yet received. Decidedly he was more often in
her thoughts than any other man had ever been. Was it love at last, the
great love which is so rare in an artist’s soul, incapable as that is
of giving itself entirely up to the sway of sentiment, or was it perhaps
simply a dream of honest _bourgeoise_ life, well sheltered against
_ennui_, that spiritless _ennui_, the precursor of storms, which she had
so much reason to dread? In any case, she was herself taken in by it,
and had been living for some days past in a state of delicious trouble,
for love is so strong, so beautiful a thing, that its semblances, its
mirages, allure and can move us as deeply as itself.

Has it ever happened to you in the street, when you have been
preoccupied with thoughts of some one dear to you, to be warned of his
approach by meeting persons with a vague resemblance to him, preparatory
images, sketches of the type to appear directly afterward, which stand
out for you from the crowd like successive appeals to your overexcited
attention? Such presentiments are magnetic and nervous impressions at
which one should not be too disposed to smile, since they constitute
a faculty of suffering. Already, in the moving and constantly renewed
stream of visitors, Felicia had several times thought to recognise the
curly head of Paul de Gery, when suddenly she uttered a cry of joy. It
was not he, however, this time again, but some one who resembled him
closely, whose regular and peaceful physiognomy was always now connected
in her mind with that of her friend Paul through the effect of a
likeness more moral than physical, and the gentle authority which both
exercised over her thoughts.

“Aline!”

“Felicia!”

If nothing is more open to suspicion than the friendship of two
fashionable ladies sharing the prerogatives of drawing-room royalty and
lavishing on each other epithets, and the trivial graces of feminine
fondness, the friendships of childhood keep in the grown woman
a frankness of manner which distinguishes them, and makes them
recognisable among all others, bonds woven naively and firm as the
needlework of little girls in which an experienced hand had been
prodigal of thread and big knots; plants reared in fresh soil, in
flower, but with strong roots, full of vitality and new shoots. And what
a joy, hand in hand--you glad dances of boarding-school days, where are
you?--to retrace some steps of one’s way with somebody who has an equal
acquaintance with it and its least incidents, and the same laugh of
tender retrospection. A little apart, the two girls, for whom it has
been sufficient to find themselves once more face to face to forget five
years of separation, carry on a rapid exchange of recollections, while
the little _pere_ Joyeuse, his ruddy face brightened by a new cravat,
straightens himself in pride to see his daughter thus warmly welcomed by
such an illustrious person. Proud certainly he had reason to be, for
the little Parisian, even in the neighbourhood of her brilliant friend,
holds her own in grace, youth, fair candour, beneath her twenty smooth
and golden years, which the gladness of this meeting brings to fresh
bloom.

“How happy you must be! For my part, I have seen nothing yet; but I hear
everybody saying it is so beautiful.”

“Happy above all to see you again, little Aline. It is so long--”

“I should think so, you naughty girl! Whose the fault?”

And from the saddest corner of her memory, Felicia recalls the date of
the breaking off of their relations, coinciding for her with another
date on which her youth came to its end in an unforgettable scene.

“And what have you been doing, darling, all this time?”

“Oh, I, always the same thing--or, nothing to speak of.”

“Yes, yes, we know what you call doing nothing, you brave little thing!
Giving your life to other people, isn’t it?”

But Aline was no longer listening. She was smiling affectionately to
some one straight in front of her; and Felicia, turning round to see who
it was, perceived Paul de Gery replying to the shy and tender greeting
of Mlle. Joyeuse.

“You know each other, then?”

“Do I know M. Paul! I should think so, indeed. We talk of you very
often. He has never told you, then?”

“Never. He must be a terribly sly fellow.”

She stopped short, her mind enlightened by a flash; and quickly without
heed to de Gery, who was coming up to congratulate her on her triumph,
she leaned over towards Aline and spoke to her in a low voice. That
young lady blushed, protested with smiles and words under her breath:
“How can you think of such a thing? At my age--a ‘grandmamma’!” and
finally seized her father’s arm in order to escape some friendly
teasing.

When Felicia saw the two young people going off together, when she had
realized the fact, which they had not yet grasped themselves, that they
were in love with each other, she felt as it were a crumbling all
around her. Then upon her dream, now fallen to the ground in a thousand
fragments, she set herself to stamp furiously. After all, he was quite
right to prefer this little Aline to herself. Would an honest man
ever dare to marry Mlle. Ruys? She, a home, a family--what nonsense! A
harlot’s daughter you are, my dear; you must be a harlot too if you want
to become anything at all.

The day wore on. The crowd, more active now that there were empty spaces
here and there, commenced to stream towards the door of exit after great
eddyings round the successes of the year, satisfied, rather tired, but
excited still by that air charged with the electricity of art. A great
flood of sunlight, such as sometimes occurs at four o’clock in the
afternoon, fell on the stained-glass rose-window, threw on the sand
tracks of rainbow-coloured lights, softly bathing the bronze or the
marble of the statues, imparting an iridescent hue to the nudity of a
beautiful figure, giving to the vast museum something of the luminous
life of a garden. Felicia, absorbed in her deep and sad reverie, did not
notice the man who advanced towards her, superb, elegant, fascinating,
through the respectfully opened ranks of the public, while the name of
“Mora” was everywhere whispered.

“Well, mademoiselle, you have made a splendid success. I only regret one
thing about it, and that is the cruel symbol which you have hidden in
your masterpiece.”

As she saw the duke before her, she shuddered.

“Ah, yes, the symbol,” she said, lifting her face towards his with a
smile of discouragement; and leaning against the pedestal of the large,
voluptuous statue near which they happened to be standing, with the
closed eyes of a woman who gives or abandons herself, she murmured low,
very low:

“Rabelais lied, as all men lie. The truth is that the fox is utterly
wearied, that he is at the end of his breath and his courage, ready to
fall into the ditch, and that if the greyhound makes another effort----”

Mora started, became a shade paler, all the blood he had in his body
rushing back to his heart. Two sombre flames met with their eyes, two
rapid words were exchanged by lips that hardly moved; then the duke
bowed profoundly, and walked away with a step gay and light, as though
the gods were bearing him.

At that moment there was in the palace only one man as happy as he, and
that was the Nabob. Escorted by his friends, he occupied, quite filled
up, the principal bay with his own party alone, speaking loudly,
gesticulating, proud to such a degree that he looked almost handsome, as
though by dint of naive and long contemplation of his bust he had been
touched by something of the splendid idealization with which the
artist had haloed the vulgarity of his type. The head, raised to the
three-quarters position, standing freely out from the wide, loose
collar, drew contradictory remarks on the resemblance from the
passers-by; and the name of Jansoulet, so many times repeated by the
electoral ballot-boxes, was repeated over again now by the prettiest
mouths, by the most authoritative voices, in Paris. Any other than the
Nabob would have been embarrassed to hear uttered, as he passed,
these expressions of curiosity which were not always friendly. But the
platform, the springing-board, well suited that nature which became
bolder under the fire of glances, like those women who are beautiful or
witty only in society, and whom the least admiration transfigures and
completes.

When he felt this delirious joy growing calmer, when he thought to
have drunk the whole of its proud intoxication, he had only to say to
himself, “Deputy! I am a Deputy!” And the triumphal cup foamed once more
to the brim. It meant the embargo raised from all his possessions, the
awakening from a nightmare that had lasted two months, the puff of cool
wind sweeping away all his anxieties, all his inquietudes, even to the
affront of Saint-Romans, very heavy though that was in his memory.

Deputy!

He laughed to himself as he thought of the baron’s face when he learned
the news, of the stupefaction of the Bey when he had been led up to his
bust; and suddenly, upon the reflection that he was no longer merely
an adventurer stuffed with gold, exciting the stupid admiration of
the crowd, as might an enormous rough nugget in the window of a
money-changer, but that people saw in him, as he passed, one of the
men elected by the will of the nation, his simple and mobile face grew
thoughtful with a deliberate gravity, there suggested themselves to him
projects of a career, of reform, and the wish to profit by the lessons
that had been latterly taught by destiny. Already, remembering the
promise which he had given to de Gery, for the household troop that
wriggled ignobly at his heels, he made exhibition of certain disdainful
coldnesses, a deliberate pose of authoritative contradiction. He called
the Marquis de Bois l’Hery “my good fellow,” imposed silence very
sharply on the governor, whose enthusiasm was becoming scandalous, and
made a solemn vow to himself to get rid as soon as possible of all that
mendicant and promising Bohemian set, when he should have occasion to
begin the process.

Penetrating the crowd which surrounded him, Moessard--the handsome
Moessard, in a sky-blue cravat, pale and bloated like a white embodiment
of disease, and pinched at the waist in a fine frock-coat--seeing that
the Nabob, after having gone twenty times round the hall of sculpture,
was making for the door, dashed forward, and passing his arm through
his, said:

“You are taking me with you, you know.”

Especially of late, since the time of the election, he had assumed, in
the establishment of the Place Vendome, an authority almost equal to
that of Monpavon, but more impudent; for, in point of impudence, the
Queen’s lover was without his equal on the pavement that stretches from
the Rue Drouot to the Madeleine. This time he had gone too far. The
muscular arm which he pressed was shaken violently, and the Nabob
answered very dryly:

“I am sorry, _mon cher_, but I have not a place to offer you.”

No place in a carriage that was as big as a house, and which five of
them had come in!

Moessard gazed at him in stupefaction.

“I had, however, a few words to say to you which are very urgent. With
regard to the subject of my note--you received it, did you not?”

“Certainly; and M. de Gery should have sent you a reply this very
morning. What you ask is impossible. Twenty thousand francs! _Tonnerre
de Dieu!_ You go at a fine rate!”

“Still, it seems to me that my services--” stammered the beauty-man.

“Have been amply paid for. That is how it seems to me also. Two hundred
thousand francs in five months! We will draw the line there, if you
please. Your teeth are long, young man; you will have to file them down
a little.”

They exchanged these words as they walked, pushed forward by the surging
wave of the people going out. Moessard stopped:

“That is your last word?”

The Nabob hesitated for a moment, seized by a presentiment as he looked
at that pale, evil mouth; then he remembered the promise which he had
given to his friend:

“That is my last word.”

“Very well! We shall see,” said the handsome Moessard, whose switch-cane
cut the air with the hiss of a viper; and, turning on his heel, he made
off with great strides, like a man who is expected somewhere on very
urgent business.

Jansoulet continued his triumphal progress. That day much more would
have been required to upset the equilibrium of his happiness; on the
contrary, he felt himself relieved by the so-quickly achieved fulfilment
of his purpose.

The immense vestibule was thronged by a dense crowd of people whom the
approach of the hour of closing was bringing out, but whom one of those
sudden showers, which seem inseparable from the opening of the _Salon_,
kept waiting beneath the porch, with its floor beaten down and sandy
like the entrance to the circus where the young dandies strut about. The
scene that met the eye was curious, and very Parisian.

Outside, great rays of sunshine traversing the rain, attaching to
its limpid beads those sharp and brilliant blades which justify the
proverbial saying, “It rains halberds”; the young greenery of the
Champs-Elysees, the clumps of rhododendrons, rustling and wet, the
carriages ranged in the avenue, the mackintosh capes of the coachmen,
all the splendid harness-trappings of the horses receiving from the
rain and the sunbeams an added richness and effect, and blue everywhere
looming out, the blue of a sky which is about to smile in the interval
between two downpours.

Within, laughter, gossip, greetings, impatience, skirts held up, satins
bulging out above the delicate folds of frills, of lace, of flounces
gathered up in the hands of their wearers in heavy, terribly frayed
bundles. Then, to unite the two sides of the picture, these prisoners
framed in by the vaulted ceiling of the porch and in the gloom of its
shadow, with the immense background in brilliant light, footmen running
beneath umbrellas, crying out names of coachmen or of masters, broughams
coming up at walking pace, and flustered couples getting into them.

“M. Jansoulet’s carriage!”

Everybody turned round, but, as one knows, that did not embarrass him.
And while the good Nabob, waiting for his suite, stood posing a little
amid these fashionable and famous people, this mixed _tout Paris_ which
was there, with its every face bearing a well-known name, a nervous and
well-gloved hand was stretched out to him, and the Duc de Mora, on his
way to his brougham, threw to him, as he passed, these words, with that
effusion which happiness gives to the most reserved of men:

“My congratulations, my dear deputy.”

It was said in a loud voice, and every one could hear it: “My dear
deputy.”


There is in the life of all men one golden hour, one luminous peak,
whereon all that they can hope of prosperity, joy, triumph, waits for
them and is given into their hands. The summit is more or less lofty,
more or less rugged and difficult to climb, but it exists equally for
all, for powerful and humble alike. Only, like that longest day of the
year on which the sun has shone with its utmost brilliance, and of which
the morrow seems a first step towards winter, this _summum_ of human
existences is but a moment given to be enjoyed, after which one can but
redescend. This late afternoon of the first of May, streaked with rain
and sunshine, thou must forget it not, poor man--must fix forever its
changing brilliance in thy memory. It was the hour of thy full summer,
with its flowers in bloom, its fruits bending their golden boughs, its
ripe harvests of which so recklessly thou wast plucking the corn. The
star will now pale, gradually growing more remote and falling, incapable
ere long of piercing the mournful night wherein thy destiny shall be
accomplished.



MEMOIRS OF AN OFFICE PORTER IN THE ANTCHAMBER

Great festivities last Saturday in the Place Vendome. In honour of
his election, M. Bernard Jansoulet, the new deputy for Corsica, gave
a magnificent evening party, with municipal guards at the door,
illumination of the entire mansion, and two thousand invitations sent
out to fashionable Paris.

I owed to the distinction of my manners, to the sonority of my vocal
organ, which the chairman of the board had had occasion to notice at the
meetings at the Territorial Bank, the opportunity of taking part in
this sumptuous entertainment, at which, for three hours, standing in the
vestibule, amid the flowers and hangings, clad in scarlet and gold, with
that majesty peculiar to persons who are rather generously built, and
with my calves exposed for the first time in my life, I launched, like
a cannon-ball, through the five communicating drawing-rooms, the name
of each guest, which a glittering beadle saluted every time with the
“_bing_” of his halberd on the floor.

How many the curious observations which that evening again I was able
to make; how many the pleasant sallies, the high-toned jests exchanged
among the servants upon all that world as it passed by! Not with
the vine-dressers of Montbars in any case should I have heard such
drolleries. I should remark that the worthy M. Barreau, to begin with,
had caused to be served to us all in his pantry, filled to the ceiling
with iced drinks and provisions, a solid lunch well washed down, which
put each of us in a good humour that was maintained during the evening
by the glasses of punch and champagne pilfered from the trays when
dessert was served.

The masters, indeed, seemed in less joyous mood than we. So early as
nine o’clock, when I arrived at my post, I was struck by the uneasy
nervousness apparent on the face of the Nabob, whom I saw walking with
M. de Gery through the lighted and empty drawing-rooms, talking quickly
and making large gestures.

“I will kill him!” he said; “I will kill him!”

The other endeavoured to soothe him; then madame came in, and the
subject of their conversation was changed.

A mighty fine woman, this Levantine, twice as stout as I am, dazzling to
look at with her tiara of diamonds, the jewels with which her huge
white shoulders were laden, her back as round as her bosom, her waist
compressed within a cuirass of green gold, which was continued in long
braids down the whole length of her stiff skirt. I have never seen
anything so imposing, so rich. She suggested one of those beautiful
white elephants that carry towers on their backs, of which we read in
books of travel. When she walked, supporting herself with difficulty
by means of clinging to the furniture, her whole body quivered, her
ornaments clattered like a lot of old iron. Added to this, a small,
very piercing voice, and a fine red face which a little negro boy
kept cooling for her all the time with a white feather fan as big as a
peacock’s tail.

It was the first time that this indolent and retiring person had showed
herself to Parisian society, and M. Jansoulet seemed very happy and
proud that she had been willing to preside over his party; which
undertaking, for that matter, did not cost the lady much trouble, for,
leaving her husband to receive the guests in the first drawing-room,
she went and lay down on the divan of the small Japanese room, wedged
between two piles of cushions, motionless, so that you could see her
from a distance right in the background, looking like an idol, beneath
the great fan which her negro waved regularly like a piece of clockwork.
These foreign women possess an assurance!

All the same, the Nabob’s irritation had struck me, and seeing the
_valet de chambre_ go by, descending the staircase four steps at a time,
I caught him on the wing and whispered in his ear:

“What’s the matter, then, with your governor, M. Noel?”

“It is the article in the _Messenger_,” was his reply, and I had to
give up the idea of learning anything further for the moment, the
loud ringing of a bell announcing that the first carriage had arrived,
followed soon by a crowd of others.

Wholly absorbed in my occupation, careful to utter clearly the names
which were given to me, and to make them echo from salon to salon, I
had no longer a thought for anything besides. It is no easy business to
announce in a proper manner persons who are always under the impression
that their name must be known, whisper it under their breath as they
pass, and then are surprised to hear you murder it with the finest
accent, and are almost angry with you on account of those entrances
which, missing fire and greeted with little smiles, follow upon an
ill-made announcement. At M. Jansoulet’s, what made the work still
more difficult for me was the number of foreigners--Turks, Egyptians,
Persians, Tunisians. I say nothing of the Corsicans, who were very
numerous that day, because during my four years at the Territorial I
have become accustomed to the pronunciation of those high-sounding,
interminable names, always followed by that of the locality: “Paganetti
de Porto Vecchio, Bastelica di Bonifacio, Paianatchi de Barbicaglia.”

It was always a pleasure to me to modulate these Italian syllables, to
give them all their sonority, and I saw clearly, from the bewildered
airs of these worthy islanders, how charmed and surprised they were to
be introduced in such a manner into the high society of the Continent.
But with the Turks, these pashas, beys, and effendis, I had much
more trouble, and I must have happened often to fall on a wrong
pronunciation; for M. Jansoulet, on two separate occasions, sent word
to me to pay more attention to the names that were given to me, and
especially to announce in a more natural manner. This remark, uttered
aloud before the whole vestibule with a certain roughness, annoyed me
greatly, and prevented me--shall I confess it?--from pitying this rich
_parvenu_ when I learned, in the course of the evening, what cruel
thorns lay concealed in his bed of roses.

From half past ten until midnight the bell was constantly ringing,
carriages rolling up under the portico, guests succeeding one another,
deputies, senators, councillors of state, municipal councillors,
who looked much rather as though they were attending a meeting of
shareholders than an evening-party of society people. What could account
for this? I had not succeeded in finding an explanation, but a remark of
the beadle Nicklauss opened my eyes.

“Do you notice, M. Passajon,” said that worthy henchman, as he stood
opposite me, halberd in hand, “do you notice how few ladies we have?”

That was it, egad! Nor were we the only two to observe the fact. As each
new arrival made his entry I could hear the Nabob, who was standing near
the door, exclaim, with consternation in his thick voice like that of a
Marseillais with a cold in his head:

“What! all alone?”

The guest would murmur his excuses. “Mn-mn-mn--his wife a trifle
indisposed. Certainly very sorry.” Then another would arrive, and the
same question call forth the same reply.

By its constant repetition this phrase “All alone?” had eventually
become a jest in the vestibule; lackeys and footmen threw it at each
other whenever there entered a new guest “all alone!” And we laughed
and were put in good-humour by it. But M. Nicklauss, with his great
experience of the world, deemed this almost general abstention of the
fair sex unnatural.

“It must be the article in the _Messenger_,” said he.

Everybody was talking about it, this rascally article, and before the
mirror garlanded with flowers, at which each guest gave a finishing
touch to his attire before entering, I surprised fragments of whispered
conversation such as this:

“You have read it?”

“It is horrible!”

“Do you think the thing possible?”

“I have no idea. In any case, I preferred not to bring my wife.”

“I have done the same. A man can go everywhere without compromising
himself.”

“Certainly. While a woman----”

Then they would go in, opera hat under arm, with that conquering air of
married men when they are unaccompanied by their wives.

What, then, could there be in this newspaper, this terrible article, to
menace to this degree the influence of so wealthy a man? Unfortunately,
my duties took up the whole of my time. I could go down neither to the
pantry nor to the cloak-room to obtain information, to chat with the
coachmen and valets and lackeys whom I could see standing at the foot
of the staircase, amusing themselves by jests upon the people who were
going up. What will you? Masters give themselves great airs also. How
not laugh to see go by with an insolent manner and an empty stomach the
Marquis and the Marquise de Bois l’Hery, after all that we have been
told about the traffickings of Monsieur and the toilettes of Madame? And
the Jenkins couple, so tender, so united, the doctor carefully putting
a lace shawl over his lady’s shoulders for fear she should take cold
on the staircase; she herself smiling and in full dress, all in velvet,
with a great long train, leaning on her husband’s arm with an air that
seems to say, “How happy I am!” when I happened to know that, in fact,
since the death of the Irishwoman, his real, legitimate wife, the doctor
is thinking of getting rid of the old woman who clings to him, in order
to be able to marry a chit of a girl, and that the old woman passes her
nights in lamentation, and in spoiling with tears whatever beauty she
has left.

The humorous thing is that not one of these people had the least
suspicion of the rich jests and jeers that were spat over their backs
as they passed, not a notion of the filth which those long trains drew
after them as they crossed the carpet of the antechamber, and they all
would look at you so disdainfully that it was enough to make you die of
laughing.

The two ladies whom I have just named, the wife of the governor, a
little Corsican, to whom her bushy eyebrows, her white teeth, and her
shining cheeks, dark beneath the skin, give the appearance of a woman of
Auvergne with a washed face, a good sort, for the rest, and laughing all
the time except when her husband is looking at other women; in addition,
a few Levantines with tiaras of gold or pearls, less perfect specimens
of the type than our own, but still in a similar style, wives of
upholsterers, jewellers, regular tradesmen of the establishment, with
shoulders as large as shop-fronts, and expensive toilettes; finally,
sundry ladies, wives of officials of the Territorial, in sorry, badly
creased dresses; these constituted the sole representation of the fair
sex in the assembly, some thirty ladies lost among a thousand black
coats--that is to say, practically none at all. From time to time
Cassagne, Laporte, Grandvarlet, who were serving the refreshments in
trays, stopped to inform us of what was passing in the drawing-rooms.

“Ah, my boys, if you could see it! it has a gloom, a melancholy. The men
don’t stir from the buffets. The ladies are all at the back, seated in a
circle, fanning themselves and saying nothing. The fat old lady does
not speak to a soul. I fancy she is sulking. You should see the look on
Monsieur! Come, _pere_ Passajon, a glass of Chateau-Larose; it will pick
you up a bit.”

They were charmingly kind to me, all these young people, and took a
mischievous pleasure in doing me the honours of the cellar so often and
so copiously, that my tongue commenced to become heavy, uncertain, and
as the young folk said to me, in their somewhat free language. “Uncle,
you are babbling.” Happily the last of the effendis had just arrived,
and there was nobody else to announce; for it was in vain that I sought
to shake off the impression, every time I advanced between the curtains
to send a name hurtling through the air at random, I saw the chandeliers
of the drawing-rooms revolving with hundreds of dazzling lights, and the
floors slipping away with sharp and perpendicular slopes like Russian
mountains. I was bound to get my speech mixed, it is certain.

The cool night-air, sundry ablutions at the pump in the court-yard,
quickly got the better of this small discomfort, and when I entered the
cloak-room nothing of it was any longer apparent. I found a numerous and
gay company collected round a _marquise au champagne_, of which all
my nieces, wearing their best dresses, with their hair puffed out
and cravats of pink ribbon, took their full share notwithstanding
exclamations and bewitching little grimaces that deceived nobody.
Naturally, the conversation turned on the famous article, an article by
Moessard, it appears, full of frightful occupations which the Nabob was
alleged to have followed fifteen or twenty years ago, at the time of his
first sojourn in Paris.

It was the third attack of the kind which the _Messenger_ had published
in the course of the last week, and that rogue of a Moessard had the
spite to send the number each time done up in a packet to the Place
Vendome.

M. Jansoulet received it in the morning with his chocolate; and at the
same hour his friends and his enemies--for a man like the Nabob could
be regarded with indifference by none--would be reading, commenting,
tracing for themselves the relation to him a line of conduct designed to
save them from becoming compromised. Today’s article must be supposed to
have struck hard all the same; for Jansoulet, the coachman, recounted
to us a few hours ago, in the Bois, his master had not exchanged ten
greetings in the course of ten drives round the lake, while ordinarily
his hat is as rarely on his head as a sovereign’s when he takes the air.
Then, when they got back, there was another trouble. The three boys had
just arrived at the house, all in tears and dismay, brought home from
the College Bourdaloue by a worthy father in the interest of the poor
little fellows themselves, who had received a temporary leave of absence
in order to spare them from hearing in the parlour or the playground
any unkind story or painful allusion. Thereupon the Nabob flew into a
terrible passion, which caused him to destroy a service of porcelain,
and it appears that, had it not been for M. de Gery, he would have
rushed off at once to punch Moessard’s head.

“And he would have done very well,” remarked M. Noel, entering at these
last words, very much excited. “There is not a line of truth in that
rascal’s article. My master had never been in Paris before last year.
From Tunis to Marseilles, from Marseilles to Tunis, those were his only
journeys. But this knave of a journalist is taking his revenge because
we refused him twenty thousand francs.”

“There you acted very unwisely,” observed M. Francis upon
this--Monpavon’s Francis, Monpavon the old beau whose solitary tooth
shakes about in the centre of his mouth at every word he says, but whom
the young ladies regard with a favourable eye all the same on account of
his fine manners. “Yes, you were unwise. One must know how to conciliate
people, so long as they are in a position to be useful to us or to
injure us. Your Nabob has turned his back too quickly upon his friends
after his success; and between you and me, _mon cher_, he is not
sufficiently firmly established to be able to disregard attacks of this
kind.”

I thought myself able here to put in a word in my turn:

“That is true enough, M. Noel, your governor is no longer the same since
his election. He has adopted a tone and manners which I can hardly but
describe as reprehensible. The day before yesterday, at the Territorial,
he raised a commotion which you can hardly imagine. He was heard to
exclaim before the whole board: ‘You have lied to me; you have robbed
me, and made me a robber as much as yourselves. Show me your books, you
set of rogues!’ If he has treated Moessard in the same sort of fashion,
I am not surprised any longer that the latter should be taking his
revenge in his newspaper.”

“But what does this article say?” asked M. Barreau. “Who is present that
has read it?”

Nobody answered. Several had tried to buy it, but in Paris scandal sells
like bread. At ten o’clock in the morning there was not a single copy
of the _Messenger_ left in the office. Then it occurred to one of my
nieces--a sharp girl, if ever there was one--to look in the pocket of
one of the numerous overcoats in the cloak-room, folded carefully in
large pigeon-holes. At the first which she examined:

“Here it is!” exclaimed the charming child with an air of triumph, as
she drew out a _Messenger_ crumpled in the folding like a paper that has
just been read.

“Here is another!” cried Tom Bois l’Hery, who was making a search on his
own account. A third overcoat, a third _Messenger_. And in every one the
same thing: pushed down to the bottom of a pocket, or with its titlepage
protruding, the newspaper was everywhere, just as its article must
have been in every memory; and one could imagine the Nabob up above
exchanging polite phrases with his guests, while they could have reeled
off by heart the atrocious things that had been printed about him. We
all laughed much at this idea; but we were anxious to make acquaintance
in our own turn with this curious article.

“Come, _pere_ Passajon, read it aloud to us.”

It was the general desire, and I assented.

I don’t know if you are like me, but when I read aloud I gargle my
throat with my voice; I introduce modulations and flourishes to such an
extent that I understand nothing of what I am saying, like those singers
to whom the sense of the words matters little, provided the notes be
true. The thing was entitled “The Boat of Flowers”--a sufficiently
complicated story, with Chinese names, about a very rich mandarin, who
had at one time in the past kept a “boat of flowers” moored quite at the
far end of the town near a barrier frequented by the soldiers. At the
end of the article we were not farther on than at the beginning. We
tried certainly to wink at each other, to pretend to be clever; but,
frankly, we had no reason. A veritable puzzle without solution; and we
should still be stuck fast at it if old Francis, a regular rascal who
knows everything, had not explained to us that this meeting place of
the soldiers must stand for the Military School, and that the “boat of
flowers” did not bear so pretty a name as that in good French. And this
name, he said it aloud notwithstanding the presence of the ladies.
There was an explosion of cries, of “Ah’s!” and “Oh’s!” some saying, “I
suspected it!” others, “It is impossible!”

“Pardon me,” added Francis, formerly a trumpeter in the Ninth
Lancers--the regiment of Mora and of Monpavon--“pardon me. Twenty years
ago, during the last half year of my service, I was in barracks in the
Military School, and I remember very well that near the fortifications
there was a dirty dancing-hall known as the Jansoulet Rooms, with a
little furnished flat above and bedrooms at twopence-halfpenny the hour,
to which one could retire between two quadrilles.”

“You are an infamous liar!” said M. Noel, beside himself with rage--“a
thief and a liar like your master. Jansoulet has never been in Paris
before now.”

Francis was seated a little outside our circle engaged in sipping
something sweet, because champagne has a bad effect on his nerves and
because, too, it is not a sufficiently distinguished beverage for him.
He rose gravely, without putting down his glass, and, advancing towards
M. Noel, said to him very quietly:

“You are wanting in manners, _mon cher_. The other evening I found
your tone coarse and unseemly. To insult people serves no good purpose,
especially in this case, since I happen to have been an assistant to a
fencing-master, and, if matters were carried further between us, could
put a couple of inches of steel into whatever part of your body I might
choose. But I am good-natured. Instead of a sword-thrust, I prefer to
give you a piece of advice, which your master will do well to follow.
This is what I should do in your place: I should go and find Moessard,
and I should buy him, without quibbling about price. Hemerlingue has
given him twenty thousand francs to speak; I would offer him thirty
thousand to hold his tongue.”

“Never! never!” vociferated M. Noel. “I should rather go and knock the
rascally brigand’s head off.”

“You will do nothing of the kind. Whether the calumny be true or false,
you have seen the effect of it this evening. This is a sample of the
pleasures in store for you. What can you expect, _mon cher_? You have
thrown away your crutches too soon, and thought to walk by yourselves.
That is all very well when one is well set up and firm on the legs; but
when one had not a very solid footing, and has also the misfortune
to feel Hemerlingue at his heels, it is a bad business. Besides, your
master is beginning to be short of money; he has given notes of hand to
old Schwalbach--and don’t talk to me of a Nabob who gives notes of hand.
I know well that you have millions over yonder, but your election must
be declared valid before you can touch them; a few more articles like
to-day’s, and I answer for it that you will not secure that declaration.
You set yourselves up to struggle against Paris, _mon bon_, but you are
not big enough for such a match; you know nothing about it. Here we
are not in the East, and if we do not wring the necks of people who
displease us, if we do not throw them into the water in a sack, we have
other methods of effecting their disappearance. Noel, let your master
take care. One of these mornings Paris will swallow him as I swallow
this plum, without spitting out either the stone or skin.”

He was terrible, this old man, and notwithstanding the paint on his
face, I felt a certain respect for him. While he was speaking, we could
hear the music upstairs, and the horses of the municipal guards shaking
their curb-chains in the square. From without, our festivities must have
seemed very brilliant, all lighted up by their thousands of candles,
and with the great portico illuminated. And when one reflected that ruin
perhaps lay beneath it all! We sat there in the vestibule like rats that
hold counsel with each other at the bottom of a ship’s hold, when the
vessel is beginning to leak and before the crew has found it out, and I
saw clearly that all the lackeys and chambermaids would not be long in
decamping at the first note of alarm. Could such a catastrophe indeed be
possible? And in that case what would become of me, and the Territorial,
and the money I had advanced, and the arrears due to me?

That Francis has left me with a cold shudder down my back.



A PUBLIC MAN

The bright warmth of a clear May afternoon heated the lofty casement
windows of the Mora mansion to the temperature of a greenhouse. The
blue silk curtains were visible from outside through the branches of the
trees, and the wide terraces, where exotic flowers were planted out of
doors for the first time of the season, ran in borders along the whole
length of the quay. The raking of the garden paths traced the light
footprints of summer in the sand, while the soft fall of the water from
the hoses on the lawns was its refreshing song.

All the luxury of the princely residence lay sunning itself in the soft
warmth of the temperature, borrowing a beauty from the silence, the
repose of this noontide hour, the only hour when the roll of carriages
was not to be heard under the arches, nor the banging of the great doors
of the antechamber, and that perpetual vibration which the ringing of
bells upon arrivals or departures sent coursing through the very ivy on
the walls; the feverish pulse of the life of a fashionable house. It was
well known that up to three o’clock the duke held his reception at the
Ministry, and that the duchess, a Swede still benumbed by the snows
of Stockholm, had hardly issued from her drowsy curtains; consequently
nobody came to call, neither visitors or petitioners, and only the
footmen, perched like flamingoes on the deserted flight of steps in
front of the house, gave the place a touch of animation with the slim
shadows of their long legs and their yawning weariness of idlers.

As an exception, however, that day Jenkins’s brougham was standing
waiting in a corner of the court-yard. The duke, unwell since the
previous evening, had felt worse after leaving the breakfast-table, and
in all haste had sent for the man of the pearls in order to question him
on his singular condition. Pain nowhere, sleep and appetite as usual;
only an inconceivable lassitude, and a sense of terrible chill which
nothing could dissipate. Thus at that moment, notwithstanding the
brilliant spring sunshine which flooded his chamber and almost
extinguished the fire flaming in the grate, the duke was shivering
beneath his furs, surrounded by screens; and while signing papers for an
_attache_ of his cabinet on a low table of gold lacquer, placed so near
to the fire that it frizzled, he kept holding out his numb fingers
every moment toward the blaze, which might have burned the skin without
restoring circulation.

Was it anxiety caused by the indisposition of his illustrious client?
Jenkins appeared nervous, disquieted, walked backward and forward with
long strides over the carpet, hunting about right and left, seeking
in the air something which he believed to be present, a subtle and
intangible something like the trace of a perfume or the invisible track
left by a bird in its flight. You heard the crackling of the wood in
the fireplace, the rustle of papers hurriedly turned over, the indolent
voice of the duke indicating in a sentence, always precise and clear, a
reply to a letter of four pages, and the respectful monosyllables of
the _attache_--“Yes, M. le Ministre,” “No, M. le Ministre”; then the
scraping of a rebellious and heavy pen. Out of doors the swallows were
twittering merrily over the water, the sound of a clarinet was wafted
from somewhere near the bridges.

“It is impossible,” suddenly said the Minister of State, rising. “Take
that away, Lartigues; you must return to-morrow. I cannot write. I am
too cold. See, doctor; feel my hands--one would think that they had just
come out of a pail of iced water. For the last two days my whole body
has been the same. Isn’t it too absurd, in this weather!”

“I am not surprised,” muttered the Irishman, in a sullen, curt tone,
rarely heard from that honeyed personage.

The door had closed upon the young _attache_, bearing off his papers
with majestic dignity, but very happy, I imagine, to feel himself free
and to be able to stroll for an hour or two, before returning to the
Ministry, in the Tuileries gardens, full of spring frocks and pretty
girls sitting near the still empty chairs round the band, under the
chestnut-trees in flower, through which from root to summit there ran
the great thrill of the month when nests are built. The _attache_ was
certainly not frozen.

Jenkins, silently, examined his patient, sounded him, and tapped his
chest; then, in the same rough tone which might be explained by his
anxious devotion, the annoyance of the doctor who sees his orders
transgressed:

“Ah, now, my dear duke, what sort of life have you been living lately?”

He knew from the gossip of the antechamber--in the case of his regular
clients the doctor did not disdain this--he knew that the duke had a new
favourite, that this caprice of recent date possessed him, excited him
in an extraordinary measure, and the fact, taken together with
other observations made elsewhere, had implanted in Jenkins’s mind a
suspicion, a mad desire to know the name of this new mistress. It
was this that he was trying to read on the pale face of his patient,
attempting to fathom the depth of his thoughts rather than the origin
of his malady. But he had to deal with one of those faces which are
hermetically sealed, like those little coffers with a secret spring
which hold jewels and women’s letters, one of those discreet natures
closed by a cold, blue eye, a glance of steel by which the most astute
perspicacity may be baffled.

“You are mistaken, doctor,” replied his excellency tranquilly. “I have
made no changes in my habits.”

“Very well, M. le Duc, you have done wrong,” remarked the Irishman
abruptly, furious at having made no discovery.

And then, feeling that he was going too far, he gave vent to his bad
temper and to the severity of his diagnosis in words which were a tissue
of banalities and axioms. One ought to take care. Medicine was not
magic. The power of the Jenkins pearls was limited by human strength,
by the necessities of age, by the resources of nature, which,
unfortunately, are not inexhaustible. The duke interrupted him in an
irritable tone:

“Come, Jenkins, you know very well that I don’t like phrases. I am not
all right, then? What is the matter with me? What is the reason of this
chilliness?”

“It is anaemia, exhaustion--a sinking of the oil in the lamp.”

“What must I do?”

“Nothing. An absolute rest. Eat, sleep, nothing besides. If you could go
and spend a few weeks at Grandbois.”

Mora shrugged his shoulders:

“And the Chamber--and the Council--and--? Nonsense! how is it possible?”

“In any case, M. le Duc, you must put the brake on; as somebody said,
renounce absolutely--”

Jenkins was interrupted by the entry of the servant on duty, who,
discreetly, on tiptoe, like a dancing-master, came in to deliver a
letter and a card to the Minister of State, who was still shivering
before the fire. At the sight of that satin-gray envelope of a peculiar
shape the Irishman started involuntarily, while the duke, having opened
and glanced over his letter, rose with new vigor, his cheeks wearing
that light flush of artificial health which all the heat of the stove
had not been able to bring there.

“My dear doctor, I must at any price--”

The servant still stood waiting.

“What is it? Ah, yes; this card. Take the visitor to the gallery. I
shall be there directly.”

The gallery of the Duke de Mora, open to visitors twice a week, was for
himself, as it were, a neutral ground, a public place where he could see
any one without binding or compromising himself in any way. Then, the
servant having withdrawn:

“Jenkins, _mon bon_, you have already worked miracles for me. I ask you
for one more. Double the dose of my pearls; find something, whatever
you will. But I must be feeling young by Sunday. You understand me,
altogether young.”

And on the little letter in his hand, his fingers, warm once more and
feverish, clinched themselves with a thrill of eager desire.

“Take care, M. le Duc,” said Jenkins, very pale and with compressed
lips. “I have no wish to alarm you unnecessarily with regard to the
feeble state of your health, but it becomes my duty--”

Mora gave a smile of pretty arrogance:

“Your duty and my pleasure are two separate things, my worthy friend.
Let me burn the candle at both ends, if it amuses me. I have never had
so fine an opportunity as this time.”

He started:

“The duchess!”

A door concealed behind a curtain had just opened to give passage to a
merry little head with fair curls in disorder, quite fairy-like amid the
laces and frills of a dressing-jacket worthy of a princess:

“What do I hear? You have not gone out? But do scold him, doctor. He is
wrong, isn’t he, to have so many fancies about himself? Look at him--a
picture of health!”

“There--you see,” said the duke, laughing, to the Irishman. “You will
not come in, duchess?”

“No, I am going to carry you off, on the contrary. My uncle d’Estaing
has sent me a cage full of tropical birds. I want to show them to you.
Wonderful creatures, of all colours, with little eyes like black pearls.
And so sensitive to cold--nearly as much so as you are.”

“Let us go and have a look at them,” said the minister. “Wait for me,
Jenkins. I shall be back in a moment.”

Then, noticing that he still had his letter in his hand, he threw it
carelessly into the drawer of the little table at which he had been
signing papers, and left the room behind the duchess, with the fine
coolness of a husband accustomed to these changes of situation.

What prodigious mechanic, what incomparable manufacturer of toys,
must it have been who succeeded in endowing the human mask with its
suppleness, its marvellous elasticity! How interesting to observe
the face of this great seigneur surprised in the very planning of his
adultery, with cheeks flushed in the anticipation of promised delights,
calming down at a moment’s notice into the serenity of conjugal
tenderness; how fine the devout obsequiousness, the paternal smile,
after the Franklin method, of Jenkins, in the presence of the duchess,
giving place suddenly, when he found himself alone, to a savage
expression of anger and hatred, the pallor of a criminal, the pallor of
a Castaing or of a Lapommerais hatching his sinister treasons.

One rapid glance towards each of the two doors, and he stood before the
drawer full of precious papers, the little gold key still remaining in
the lock with an arrogant carelessness, which seemed to say, “No one
will dare.”

Jenkins dared.

The letter lay there, the first on a pile of others. The grain of
the paper, an address of three words dashed off in a simple, bold
handwriting, and then the perfume, that intoxicating, suggestive
perfume, the very breath of her divine lips--It was true, then, his
jealous love had not deceived him, nor the embarrassment she had shown
in his presence for some time past, nor the secretive and rejuvenated
airs of Constance, nor those bouquets magnificently blooming in the
studio as in the shadow of an intrigue. That indomitable pride had
surrendered, then, at last? But in that case, why not to him, Jenkins?
To him who had loved her for so long--always; who was ten years
younger than the other man, and who certainly was troubled with no cold
shiverings! All these thoughts passed through his head like arrows shot
from a tireless bow. And, stabbed through and through, torn to pieces,
his eyes blinded, he stood there looking at the little satiny and cold
envelope which he did not dare open for fear of dismissing a final
doubt, when the rustling of a curtain warned him that some one had just
come in. He threw the letter back quickly, and closed the wonderfully
adjusted drawer of the lacquered table.

“Ah! it is you, Jansoulet. How is it you are here?”

“His excellency told me to come and wait for him in his room,” replied
the Nabob, very proud of being thus introduced into the privacy of the
apartments, at an hour, especially, when visitors were not generally
received. As a fact, the duke was beginning to show a real liking for
this savage, for several reasons: to begin with, he liked audacious
people, adventurers who followed their lucky star. Was he not one of
them himself? Then, the Nabob amused him; his accent, his frank manners,
his rather coarse and impudent flattery, were a change for him from
the eternal conventionality of his surroundings, from that scourge
of administrative and court life which he held in horror--the set
speech--in such great horror that he never finished a sentence which he
had begun. The Nabob had an unforeseen way of finishing his which was
sometimes full of surprises. A fine gambler as well, losing games of
_ecarte_ at five thousand francs the fish without flinching. And so
convenient when one wanted to get rid of a picture, always ready to
buy, no matter at what price. To these motives of condescending kindness
there had come to be joined of late a sentiment of pity and indignation
in the face of the tenacity with which the unfortunate man was being
persecuted, the cowardly and merciless war so ably managed, that public
opinion, always credulous and with neck outstretched to see which way
the wind is blowing, was beginning to be seriously influenced. One
must do to Mora the justice of admitting that he was no follower of the
crowd. When he had seen in a corner of the gallery the simple but rather
piteous and discomfited face of the Nabob, he had thought it cowardly to
receive him there, and had sent him up to his private room.

Jenkins and Jansoulet, sufficiently embarrassed by each other’s
presence, exchanged a few commonplace words. Their great friendship
had recently cooled, Jansoulet having refused point-blank all further
subsidies to the Bethlehem Society, leaving the business on the
Irishman’s hands, who was furious at this defection, and much more
furious still at this moment because he had not been able to open
Felicia’s letter before the arrival of the intruder. The Nabob, on his
side, was asking himself whether the doctor was going to be present at
the conversation which he wished to have with the duke on the subject of
the infamous insinuations with which the _Messenger_ was pursuing him;
anxious also to know whether these calumnies might not have produced a
coolness in that sovereign good-will which was so necessary to him at
the moment of the verification of his election. The greeting which he
had received in the gallery had half reassured him on this point; he
was entirely satisfied when the duke entered and came towards him with
outstretched hand:

“Well, my poor Jansoulet, I hope Paris is making you pay dearly enough
for your welcome. What brawling and hate and spite one finds!”

“Ah, M. le Duc, if you knew--”

“I know. I have read it,” said the minister, moving closer to the fire.

“I sincerely hope that your excellency does not believe these infamies.
Besides, I have here--I bring the proof.”

With his strong hairy hands, trembling with emotion, he hunted among the
papers in an enormous shagreen portfolio which he had under his arm.

“Never mind that--never mind. I am acquainted with the whole affair. I
know that, wilfully or not, they have mixed you up with another person,
whom family considerations--”

The duke could not restrain a smile at the bewilderment of the Nabob,
stupefied to find him so well informed.

“A Minister of State has to know everything. But don’t worry. Your
election will be declared valid all the same. And once declared valid--”

Jansoulet heaved a sigh of relief.

“Ah, M. le Duc, how it cheers me to hear you speak thus! I was beginning
to lose all confidence. My enemies are so powerful. And a piece of bad
luck into the bargain. Do you know that it is Le Merquier himself who is
charged with the report on my election?”

“Le Merquier? The devil!”

“Yes, Le Merquier, Hemerlingue’s agent, the dirty hypocrite who
converted the baroness, no doubt because his religion forbade him to
have a Mohammedan for a mistress.”

“Come, come, Jansoulet.”

“Well, M. le Duc? One can’t help being angry. Think of the situation
in which these wretches are placing me. Here I ought to have had my
election made valid a week ago, and they arrange the postponement of the
sitting expressly because they know the terrible position in which I am
placed--my whole fortune paralyzed, the Bey waiting for the decision of
the Chamber to decide whether or not he can plunder me. I have eighty
millions over there, M. le Duc, and here I begin to be short of money.
If the thing goes on only a little longer--”

He wiped away the big drops of sweat that trickled down his cheeks.

“Ah, well, I will look after this validation myself,” said the minister
sharply. “I will write to what’s-his-name to hurry up with his report;
and even if I have to be carried to the Chamber--”

“Your excellency is unwell?” asked Jansoulet, in a tone of interest
which, I swear to you, had no affectation about it.

“No--a little weakness. I am rather anaemic--wanting blood; but Jenkins
is going to put me right. Aren’t you, Jenkins?”

The Irishman, who had not been listening, made a vague gesture.

“_Tonnerre!_ And here am I with only too much of it.”

And the Nabob loosened his cravat about his neck, swollen like an
apoplexy by his emotion and the heat of the room. “If I could only
transfer a little to you, M. le Duc!”

“It would be an excellent thing for both,” said the Minister of State
with pale irony. “For you, especially, who are a violent fellow, and
who at this moment need so much self-control. Take care on that point,
Jansoulet. Beware of the hot retorts, the steps taken in a fit of temper
to which they would like to drive you. Repeat to yourself now that you
are a public man, on a platform, all of whose actions are observed from
far. The newspapers are abusing you; don’t read them, if you cannot
conceal the emotion which they cause you. Don’t do what I did, with my
blind man of the Pont de la Concorde, that frightful clarinet-player,
who for the last ten years has been blighting my life by playing all
day ‘De tes fils, Norma.’ I have tried everything to get him away from
there--money, threats. Nothing has succeeded in inducing him to go. The
police? Ah, yes, indeed. With modern ideas, it becomes quite a business
to clear off a blind man from a bridge. The Opposition newspapers would
talk of it, the Parisians would make a story out of it--‘_The Cobbler
and the Financier_.’ ‘The Duke and the Clarinet.’ No, I must resign
myself. It is, besides, my own fault. I never ought to have let this
man see that he annoyed me. I am sure that my torture makes half the
pleasure of his life now. Every morning he comes forth from his wretched
lodging with his dog, his folding-stool, his frightful music, and says
to himself, ‘Come, let us go and worry the Duc de Mora.’ Not a day
does he miss, the wretch! Why, see, if I were but to open the window a
trifle, you would hear his deluge of little sharp notes above the noise
of the water and the traffic. Well, this journalist of the _Messenger_,
he is your clarinet; if you allow him to see that his music wearies you,
he will never finish. And with this, my dear deputy, I will remind you
that you have a meeting at three o’clock at the office, and I must send
you back to the Chamber.”

Then turning to Jenkins:

“You know what I asked of you, doctor--pearls for the day after
to-morrow; and let them be extra strong!”

Jenkins started, shook himself as at the sudden awakening from a dream:

“Certainly, my dear duke. You shall be given some stamina--oh, yes;
stamina, breath enough to win the great Derby stakes.”

He bowed, and left the room laughing, the veritable laugh of a wolf
showing its gleaming white teeth. The Nabob took leave in his turn, his
heart filled with gratitude, but not daring to let anything of it appear
in the presence of this sceptic in whom all demonstrativeness aroused
distrust. And the Minister of State, left alone, rolled up in his wraps
before the crackling and blazing fire, sheltered in the padded warmth of
his luxury, doubled that day by the feverish caress of the May sunshine,
began to shiver with cold again, to shiver so violently that Felicia’s
letter which he had reopened and was reading rapturously shook in his
hands.

A deputy is in a very singular situation during the period which follows
his election and precedes--as they say in parliamentary jargon--the
verification of its validity. It is a little like the position of the
newly married man during the twenty-four hours separating the civil
marriage from its consecration by the Church. Rights of which he cannot
avail himself, a half-happiness, a semi-authority, the embarrassment
of keeping the balance a little on this side or on that, the lack of a
defined footing. One is married and yet not married, a deputy and yet
not perfectly sure of being it; only, for the deputy, this uncertainty
is prolonged over days and weeks, and since the longer it lasts the more
problematical does the validation become, it is like torture for the
unfortunate representative on probation to be obliged to attend the
Chamber, to occupy a place which he will perhaps not keep, to listen to
discussions of which it is possible that he will never hear the end, to
fix in his eyes and ears the delicious memory of parliamentary sittings
with their sea of bald or apoplectic foreheads, their confused noise of
rustling papers, the cries of attendants, wooden knives beating a tattoo
on the tables, private conversations from amid which the voice of
the orator issues, a thundering or timid solo with a continuous
accompaniment.

This situation, at best so trying to the nerves, was complicated in
the Nabob’s case by these calumnies, at first whispered, now printed,
circulated in thousands of copies by the newspapers, with the
consequence that he found himself tacitly put in quarantine by his
colleagues.

The first days he went and came in the corridors, the library, the
dining-room, the lecture-hall, like the rest, delighted to roam through
all the corners of that majestic labyrinth; but he was unknown to most
of his associates, unacknowledged by a few members of the Rue Royale
Club, who avoided him, detested by all the clerical party of which
Le Merquier was the head. The financial set was hostile to this
multi-millionaire, powerful in both “bull” and “bear” market, like those
vessels of heavy tonnage which displace the water of a harbour, and
thus his isolation only became the more marked by the change in his
circumstances and the same enmity followed him everywhere.

His gestures, his manner, showed trace of it in a certain constraint,
a sort of hesitating distrust. He felt he was watched. If he went for a
minute into the _buffet_, that large bright room opening on the gardens
of the president’s house, which he liked because there, at the broad
counter of white marble laden with bottles and provisions, the deputies
lost their big, imposing airs, the legislative haughtiness allowed
itself to become more familiar, even there he knew that the next day
there would appear in the _Messenger_ a mocking, offensive paragraph
exhibiting him to his electors as a wine-bibber of the most notorious
order.

Those terrible electors added to his embarrassments.

They arrived in crowds, invaded the Salle des Pas-Perdus, galloped all
over the place like little fiery black kids, shouting to each other from
one end to the other of the echoing room, “O Pe! O Tche!” inhaling with
delight the odour of government, of administration, pervading the air,
watching admiringly the ministers as they passed, following in their
trail with keen nose, as though from their respected pockets, from their
swollen portfolios, there might fall some appointment; but especially
surrounding “Moussiou” Jansoulet with so many exacting petitions,
reclamations, demonstrations, that, in order to free himself from the
gesticulating uproar which made everybody turn round, and turned him
as it were into the delegate of a tribe of Tuaregs in the midst of
civilized folk, he was obliged to implore with a look the help of some
attendant on duty familiar with such acts of rescue, who would come to
him with an air of urgency to say “that he was wanted immediately in
Bureau No. 8.” So at last, embarrassed everywhere, driven from the
corridors, from the Pas-Perdus, from the refreshment-room, the poor
Nabob had adopted the course of never leaving his seat, where he
remained motionless and without speaking during the whole time of the
sitting.

He had, however, one friend in the Chamber, a deputy newly elected for
the Deux-Sevres, called M. Sarigue, a poor man sufficiently resembling
the inoffensive and ill-favoured animal whose name he bore, with his red
and scanty hair, his timorous eyes, his hopping walk, his white gaiters;
he was so timid that he could not utter two words without stuttering,
almost voiceless, continually sucking jujubes, which completed the
confusion of his speech. One asked what such a weakling as he had come
to do in the Assembly, what feminine ambition run mad had urged into
public life this being useless for no matter what private activity.

By an amusing irony of fate, Jansoulet, himself agitated by all the
anxieties of his own validation, was chosen in Bureau no. 8 to draw up
the report on the election in the Deux-Sevres; and M. Sarigue, humble
and supplicating, conscious of his incapacity and filled by a horrible
dread of being sent back to his home in disgrace, used to follow about
this great jovial fellow with the curly hair and big shoulder blades
that moved like the bellows of a forge beneath a light and tightly
fitting frock-coat, without any suspicion that a poor anxious being like
himself lay concealed within that solid envelope.

As he worked at the report on the Deux-Sevres election, as he examined
the numerous protests, the accusations of electioneering trickery, meals
given, money spent, casks of wine broached at the doors of the mayors’
houses, the usual accompaniments of an election in those days, Jansoulet
used to shudder on his own account. “Why, I did all that myself,” he
would say to himself, terrified. Ah! M. Sarigue need not be afraid;
never could he have put his hand on an examiner with kinder intentions
or more indulgent, for the Nabob, taking pity on the sufferer, knowing
by experience how painful is the anguish of waiting, had made haste
through his labour; and the enormous portfolio which he carried under
his arm, as he left the Mora mansion, contained his report ready to be
sent in to the bureau.

Whether it were this first essay in a public function, the kind words
of the duke, or the magnificent weather out of doors, keenly enjoyed by
this southerner, with his susceptibility to wholly physical impressions
and accustomed to life under a blue sky and the warmth of the
sunshine--however that may have been, certain it is that the attendants
of the legislative body beheld that day a proud and haughty Jansoulet
whom they had not previously known. The fat Hemerlingue’s carriage,
caught sight of at the gate, recognisable by the unusual width of its
doors, completed his reinstatement in the possession of his true nature
of assurance and bold audacity. “The enemy is there. Attention!” As
he crossed the Salle des Pas-Perdus, he caught sight of the financier
chatting in a corner with Le Merquier, the examiner; he passed quite
near them, and looked at them with a triumphant air which made people
wonder:

“What is the meaning of this?”

Then, highly pleased at his own coolness, he passed on towards the
committee-rooms, big and lofty apartments opening right and left on a
long corridor, and having large tables covered with green baize, and
heavy chairs all of a similar pattern and bearing the impress of a dull
solemnity. People were beginning to come in. Groups were taking up their
positions, discussing matters, gesticulating, with bows, shakings
of hands, inclinations of the head, like Chinese shadows against the
luminous background of the windows.

Men were there who walked about with bent back, solitary, as it were
crushed down beneath the weight of the thoughts which knitted their
brow. Others whispering in their neighbour’s ears, confiding to each
other exceedingly mysterious and terribly important pieces of news,
finger on lip, eyes opened wide in silent recommendation to discretion.
A provincial flavour characterized it all, varieties of intonation, the
violence of southern speech, drawling accents of the central districts,
the sing-song of Brittany, fused into one and the same imbecile
self-conceit, frock-coats as they cut them at Landerneau, mountain
shoes, home-spun linen, and a self-assurance begotten in a village or in
the club of some insignificant town, local expressions, provincialisms
abruptly introduced into the speech of the political and administrative
world, that flabby and colourless phraseology which has invented such
expressions as “burning questions that come again to the surface” and
“individualities without mandate.”

To see these excited or thoughtful people, you might have supposed them
the greatest apostles of ideas in the world; unfortunately, on the days
of the sittings they underwent a transformation, sat in hushed silence
in their places, laughing in servile fashion at the jests of the
clever man who presided over them, or only rising to make ridiculous
propositions, the kind of interruption which would tempt one to believe
that it is not a type only, but a whole race, that Henri Monnier has
satirized in his immortal sketch. Two or three orators in all the
Chamber, the rest well qualified to plant themselves before the
fireplace of a provincial drawing-room, after an excellent meal at the
Prefect’s, and to say in nasal voice, “The administration, gentlemen,”
 or “The Government of the Emperor,” but incapable of anything further.

Ordinarily the good Nabob had been dazzled by these poses, that buzzing
as of an empty spinning-wheel which is made by would-be important
people; but to-day he found his own place, and fell in with the general
note. Seated at the centre of the green table, his portfolio open before
him, his elbows planted well forward upon it, he read the report
drawn up by de Gery, and the members of the committee looked at him in
amazement.

It was a concise, clear, and rapid summary of their fortnight’s
proceedings, in which they found their ideas so well expressed that they
had great difficulty in recognising them. Then, as two or three among
them considered the report too favourable, that it passed too lightly
over certain protests that had reached the committee, the examiner
addressed the meeting with an astonishing assurance, with the prolixity,
the verbosity of his own people, demonstrated that a deputy ought not
to be held responsible beyond a certain point for the imprudence of
his election agents, that no election, otherwise, would bear a minute
examination, and since in reality it was his own cause that he
was pleading, he brought to the task a conviction, an irresistible
enthusiasm, taking care to let out now and then one of those long, dull
substantives with a thousand feet, such as the committee loved.

The others listened to him thoughtfully, communicating their sentiments
to each other by nods of the head, making flourishes, in order the
better to concentrate their attention, and drawing heads on their
blotting-pads--a proceeding which harmonized well with the schoolboyish
noises in the corridors, a murmur of lessons in course of repetition,
and those droves of sparrows which you could hear chirping under the
casements in a flagged court-yard, just like the court-yard of a school.
The report having been adopted, M. Sarigue was summoned in order that
he might offer some supplementary explanations. He arrived, pale,
emaciated, stuttering like a criminal before conviction, and you
would have laughed to see with what an air of authority and protection
Jansoulet encouraged and reassured him. “Calm yourself, my dear
colleague.” But the members of Committee No. 8 did not laugh. They were
all, or nearly all, Sarigues in their way, two or three of them
being absolutely broken down, stricken by partial paralysis. So much
assurance, such great eloquence, had moved them to enthusiasm.

When Jansoulet issued from the legislative assembly, reconducted to
his carriage by his grateful colleague, it was about six o’clock.
The splendid weather--a beautiful sunset over the Seine, which lay
stretching away like molten gold on the Trocadero side--was a temptation
to a walk for this robust plebeian, on whom it was imposed by the
conventions that he should ride in a carriage and wear gloves, but who
escaped such encumbrances as often as he possibly could. He dismissed
his servants, and, with his portfolio under his arm, set forth across
the Pont de la Concorde.

Since the first of May he had not experienced such a sense of
well-being. With rolling gait, hat a little to the back of his head,
in the position in which he had seen it worn by overworked politicians
harassed by pressure of business, allowing all the laborious fever
of their brain to evaporate in the coolness of the air, as a factory
discharges its steam into the gutter at the end of a day’s work, he
moved forward among other figures like his own, evidently coming
too from that colonnaded temple which faces the Madeleine above the
fountains of the _Place_. As they passed, people turned to look after
them, saying, “Those are deputies.” And Jansoulet felt the delight of a
child, a plebeian joy, compounded of ignorance and naive vanity.

“Ask for the _Messenger_, evening edition.”

The words came from a newspaper kiosk at the corner of the bridge, full
at that hour of fresh printed sheets in heaps, which two women were
quickly folding, and which smelt of the damp press--late news, the
success of the day or its scandal.

Nearly all the deputies bought a copy as they passed, and glanced over
it quickly in the hope of finding their name. Jansoulet, for his part,
feared to see his in it and did not stop. Then suddenly he reflected:
“Must not a public man be above these weaknesses? I am strong enough now
to read everything.” He retraced his steps and took a newspaper like
his colleagues. He opened it, very calmly, right at the place usually
occupied by Moessard’s articles. As it happened, there was one. Still
the same title: “_Chinoiseries_,” and an _M._ for signature.

“Ah! ah!” said the public man, firm and cold as marble, with a fine
smile of disdain. Mora’s lesson still rung in his ears, and, had he
forgotten it, the air from _Norma_ which was being slowly played in
little ironical notes not far off would have sufficed to recall it
to him. Only, after all calculations have been made amid the fleeting
happenings of our existence, there is always the unforeseen to be
reckoned with; and that is how it came that the poor Nabob suddenly felt
a wave of blood blind him, a cry of rage strangle itself in the sudden
contraction of his throat. This time his mother, his old Frances, had
been dragged into the infamous joke of the “Bateau de fleurs.” How well
he aimed his blows, this Moessard, how well he knew the really sensitive
spots in that heart, so frankly exposed!

“Be quiet, Jansoulet; be quiet.”

It was in vain that he repeated the words to himself again and again:
anger, a wild anger, that intoxication of the blood that demands blood,
took possession of him. His first impulse was to hail a cab, that
he might escape from the irritating street, free his body from the
preoccupation of walking and maintaining a physical composure--to hail a
cab as for a wounded man. But the carriages which thronged the square
at that hour of general home-going were victorias, landaus, private
broughams, hundreds of them, passing down from the lurid splendour
of the Arc de Triomphe towards the violet shadows of the Tuileries,
rushing, it seemed, one over another, in the sloping perspective of
the avenue, down to the great square where the motionless statues, with
their circular crowns on their brows, watched them as they separated
towards the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the Rue Royale and the Rue de
Rivoli.

Jansoulet, his newspaper in his hand, traversed this tumult without
giving it a thought, carried by force of habit towards the club where he
went every day for his game of cards from six to seven. A public man, he
was that still; but excited, speaking aloud, muttering oaths and threats
in a voice that had suddenly grown tender again at the memory of the
dear old woman. To have dragged her into that--her also! Oh, if she
should read it, if she should understand! What punishment could he
invent for such an infamy? He had reached the Rue Royale, up which were
disappearing with the speed of horses that knew they were going home
and with glancings of shining axles, visions of veiled women, heads of
fair-haired children, equipages of all kinds returning from the Bois,
depositing a little genuine earth upon the Paris pavement, and bringing
odours of spring mingled with the scent of _poudre de riz_.

Opposite the Ministry of Marine, a very high phaeton on light wheels,
rather like a great spider, its body represented by the little groom
hanging on to the box and the two persons occupying the front seat, just
missed a collision with the curb as it turned the corner.

The Nabob raised his head and stifled a cry.

Beside a painted woman, with red hair and wearing a tiny hat with wide
strings, who, perched on her leathern cushion, sat leaning stiffly
forward, hands, eyes, her whole factitious person intent on driving the
horse, there sat, pink and made-up also, grown fat with the same vices,
Moessard, the handsome Moessard--the harlot and the journalist; and of
the two, it was not the woman who had sold herself the most. High above
those women reclining in their open carriages, those men opposite them
half buried beneath the flounces of their gowns, all those poses of
fatigue and weariness which the overfed exhibit in public as in contempt
of pleasure and riches, they lorded it insolently, she very proud to be
seen driving with the lover of the Queen, and he without the least shame
in sitting beside a creature who hooked men in the drives of the Bois
with the lash of her whip, removed on her high-perched seat from all
fear of the salutary raids of the police. Perhaps, in order to whet the
appetite of his royal mistress, he chose to parade beneath her windows
in company of Suzanne Bloch, known as Suze the Red.

“Hep! hep, then!”

The horse, a high trotter with slim legs, just such a horse as a
_cocotte_ would care to own, recovered from its swerve and resumed its
proper place with dancing steps, graceful pawings executed on the same
spot without advancing. Jansoulet let fall his portfolio, and as though
he had dropped with it all his gravity, his prestige as a public man,
he made a terrible spring, and dashed to the bit of the animal, which he
held firm with his strong, hairy hands.

A carriage forcibly stopped in the Rue Royale, and in broad
daylight--only this Tartar would have dared such a stroke as that!

“Get down!” said he to Moessard, whose face had turned green and yellow
when he saw him. “Get down immediately!”

“Will you let go my horse, you bloated idiot! Whip up Suzanne; it is the
Nabob.”

She tried to gather up the reins, but the animal, held firmly, reared
so sharply that a little more and like a sling the fragile vehicle would
have sent everybody in it flying far away. At this, furious with one of
those plebeian rages which in women of her kind shatter all the veneer
of their luxury, she dealt the Nabob two stinging lashes with her whip,
which left little trace on his tanned and hardened face, but which
brought there a ferocious expression, accentuated by the short nose
which had turned white and was slit at the end like that of a sporting
terrier.

“Come down, or, by God, I will upset the whole thing!”

Amid an eddy of carriages arrested by the block in the traffic, or that
passed slowly round the obstacle, with thousands of curious eyes, amid
cries of coachmen and clinking of bits, two wrists of iron shook the
entire vehicle.

“Jump--but jump, I tell you! Don’t you see he will have us over? What a
grip!”

And the woman looked at the Hercules with interest.

Hardly had Moessard set foot to the ground, and before he could take
refuge on the pavement, whither the black military caps of policemen
could be seen hastening, Jansoulet threw himself upon him, lifted him by
the back of the neck like a rabbit, and, careless of his protestations
and his terrified stammerings:

“Yes, yes, I will give you satisfaction, you blackguard! But, first, I
intend to do to you what is done to dirty beasts to prevent them from
repeating the same offence.”

And roughly he set to work rubbing his nose and face all over with his
newspaper, which he had rolled into a ball, stifling him, blinding him
with it, and making scratches from which the blood trickled over his
skin. The man was dragged from his hands, crimson, suffocated. A little
more and he would have killed him.

The struggle over, pulling down his sleeves, adjusting his crumpled
linen, picking up his portfolio out of which the papers of the Sarigue
election were flying scattered even to the gutter, the Nabob answered
the policemen who were asking him for his name in order to draw up a
summons:

“Bernard Jansoulet, Deputy for Corsica.”

A public man!

Only then did he remember that he was one. Who would have suspected
it, seeing him breathless and bare-headed, like a porter after a street
fight, under the eager, coldly mocking glances of the crowd?



THE APPARITION

If you want simple and sincere feeling, if you would see overflowing
affection, tenderness, laughter--the laughter born of great happiness
which, at a tiny movement of the lips, is brought to the verge of
tears--and the beautiful wild joy of youth illumined by bright eyes
transparent to the very depths of the souls behind them--all these
things you may find this Sunday morning in a house that you know of, a
new house, down yonder, right at the end of the old faubourg. The glass
door on the ground floor shines more brightly than usual. More gaily
than ever dance the letters over the door, and from the open windows
comes the sound of glad cries, flowing from a stream of happiness.

“Accepted! it is accepted! Oh, what good luck! Henriette, Elise, do come
here! M. Maranne’s play is accepted!”

Andre heard the news yesterday. Cardailhac, the manager of the
_Nouveautes_, sent for him to inform him that his play was to be
produced immediately--that it would be put on next month. They passed
the evening discussing scenic arrangements and the distribution of
parts; and, as it was too late to knock at his neighbour’s door when he
got home from the theatre, the happy author waited for the morning in
feverish impatience, and then, as soon as he heard people stirring below
and the shutters open with a click against the house-front, he made
haste to go down to announce the good news to his friends. Just now they
are all assembled together, the young ladies in pretty _deshabille_,
their hair hastily twisted up, and M. Joyeuse, whom the announcement
had surprised in the midst of shaving, presenting under his embroidered
night-cap a strange face divided into two parts, one side shaved, the
other not. But Andre Maranne is the most excited, for you know what the
acceptance of _Revolt_ means for him; what was agreed between them and
Bonne Maman. The poor fellow looks at her as if to find an encouragement
in her eyes; and the rather mischievous, kind eyes seem to say, “Make
the experiment, in any case. What is the risk?” To give himself
courage he looks also at Mlle. Elise, pretty as a flower, with her long
eyelashes drooped. At last, making up his mind:

“M. Joyeuse,” said he thickly, “I have a very serious communication to
make to you.”

M. Joyeuse expresses astonishment.

“A communication? Ah, _mon Dieu_, you alarm me!”

And lowering his voice:

“Are the girls in the way?”

“No. Bonne Maman knows what I mean. Mlle. Elise also must have some
suspicion of it. It is only the children.”

Mlle. Henriette and her sister are asked to retire, which they
immediately do, the one with a dignified and annoyed air, like a true
daughter of the Saint-Amands, the other, the young Chinese Yaia, hardly
hiding a wild desire to laugh.

Thereupon a great silence; after which, the lover begins his little
story.

I quite believe that Mlle. Elise has some suspicion in her mind, for
as soon as their young neighbour spoke of a communication, she drew her
_Ansart et Rendu_ from her pocket and plunged precipitately into the
adventures of somebody surnamed the Hutin, thrilling reading which makes
the book tremble in her hands. There is reason for trembling, certainly,
before the bewilderment, the indignant stupefaction into which M.
Joyeuse receives this request for his daughter’s hand.

“Is it possible? How has it happened? What an extraordinary event! Who
could ever have suspected such a thing?”

And suddenly the good old man burst into a great roar of laughter. Well,
no, it is not true. He had heard of the affair; knew about it, a long
time ago.

Her father knew all about it! Bonne Maman had betrayed them then! And
before the reproachful glances cast in her direction, the culprit comes
forward smiling:

“Yes, my dears, it is I. The secret was too much for me. I found I could
not keep it to myself alone. And then, father is so kind--one cannot
hide anything from him.”

As she says this she throws her arms round the little man’s neck; but
there is room enough for two, and when Mlle. Elise in her turn takes
refuge there, there is still an affectionate, fatherly hand stretched
out towards him whom M. Joyeuse considers thenceforward as his son.
Silent embraces, long looks meeting each other full of emotion, blessed
moments that one would like to hold forever by the fragile tips of
their wings. There is chat, and gentle laughter when certain details
are recalled. M. Joyeuse tells how the secret was revealed to him in the
first instance by tapping spirits, one day when he was alone in
Andre’s apartment. “How is business going, M. Maranne?” the spirits had
inquired, and he himself had replied in Maranne’s absence: “Fairly well,
for the season, Sir Spirit.” The little man repeats, “Fairly well for
the season,” in a mischievous way, while Mlle. Elise, quite confused
at the thought that it was with her father that she talked that day,
disappears under her fair curls.

After the first stress of emotion they talk more seriously. It is
certain that Mme. Joyeuse, _nee_ de Saint-Amand, would never have
consented to this marriage. Andre Maranne is not rich, still less noble;
but the old accountant, luckily, has not the same ideas of grandeur that
his wife possessed. They love each other; they are young, healthy, and
good-looking--qualities that in themselves constitute fine dowries,
without involving any heavy registration fees at the notary’s. The new
household will be installed on the floor above. The photography will
be continued, unless _Revolt_ should produce enormous receipts. (The
Visionary may be trusted to see to that.) In any case, the father will
still remain near them; he has a good place at his stockbroker’s office,
some expert business in the courts; provided that the little ship
continue to sail in deep enough water, all will go well, with the aid of
wave, wind, and star.

Only one question preoccupies M. Joyeuse: “Will Andre’s parents consent
to this marriage? How will Dr. Jenkins, so rich, so celebrated, take
it?”

“Let us not speak of that man,” said Andre, turning pale; “he is a
wretch to whom I owe nothing--who is nothing to me.”

He stops, embarrassed by this explosion of anger, which he was unable to
restrain and cannot explain, and goes on more gently:

“My mother, who comes to see me sometimes in spite of the prohibition
laid upon her, was the first to be told of our plans. She already loves
Mlle. Elise as her daughter. You will see, mademoiselle, how good she
is, and how beautiful and charming. What a misfortune that she belongs
to such a wicked man, who tyrannizes over her, and tortures her even to
the point of forbidding her to utter her son’s name.”

Poor Maranne heaves a sign that speaks volumes on the great grief which
he hides in the depths of his heart. But what sadness would not have
been vanquished in presence of that dear face lighted up with its fair
curls and the radiant perspective of the future? These serious questions
having been settled, they are able to open the door and recall the two
exiles. In order to avoid filling their little heads with thoughts above
their age, it has been agreed to say nothing about the prodigious event,
to tell them nothing except that they have all to make haste and dress,
breakfast still more quickly, so as to be able to spend the afternoon in
the Bois, where Maranne will read his play to them, before they go on to
Suresnes to have dinner at Kontzen’s: a whole programme of delights in
honour of the acceptance of _Revolt_, and of another piece of good news
which they will hear later.

“Ah, really--what is it, then?” ask the two little girls, with an
innocent air.

But if you fancy they don’t know what is in the air, if you think that
when Mlle. Elise used to give three raps on the ceiling they imagined
that it was for information on business, you are more ingenuous even
than _le pere_ Joyeuse.

“That’s all right--that’s all right, children; go and dress, in any
case.”

Then there begins another refrain:

“What frock must I put on, Bonne Maman--the gray?”

“Bonne Maman, there is a string off my hat.”

“Bonne Maman, my child, have I no more starched cravats left?”

For ten minutes the charming grandmother is besieged with questions and
entreaties. Every one needs her help in some way; it is she who had the
keys of everything, she who gives out the pretty, white, fine goffered
linen, the embroidered handkerchiefs, the best gloves, all the dainty
things which, taken out from drawers and wardrobes, spread over the bed,
fill a house with a bright Sunday gaiety.

The workers, the people with tasks to fulfil, alone know that delight
which returns each week consecrated by the customs of a nation. For
these prisoners of the week, the almanac with its closed prison-like
gratings opens at regular intervals into luminous spaces, with
breaths of refreshing air. It is Sunday, the day that seems so long
to fashionable folk, to the Parisians of the boulevard whose habits it
disturbs, so gloomy to people far from their homes and relatives, that
constitutes for a multitude of human beings the only recompense, the one
aim of the desperate efforts of six days of toil. Neither rain nor hail,
nothing makes any difference, nothing will prevent them from going
out, from closing behind them the door of the deserted workshop, of the
stuffy little lodging. But when the springtime is come, when the May
sunshine glitters on it as this morning, and it can deck itself out in
gay colours, then indeed Sunday is the holiday of holidays.

If one would know it well, it must be seen especially in the working
quarters of the town, in those gloomy streets which it lights up and
enlarges by closing the shops, keeping in their sheds the heavy drays
and trucks, leaving the space free for wandering bands of children
washed and in their Sunday clothes, and for games of battledore and
shuttlecock played amid the great circlings of the swallows beneath some
porch of old Paris. It must be seen in the densely populated, feverishly
toiling suburbs, where, as soon as morning is come, you may feel it
hovering, resposeful and sweet, in the silence of the factories, passing
with the ringing of church-bells and that sharp whistle of the railways,
and filling the horizon, all around the outskirts of the city, with
an immense song, as it were, of departure and of deliverance. Then one
understands it and loves it.

O Sunday of Paris, Sunday of the toilers and the humble, often have I
cursed thee without reason, I have poured whole streams of abusive ink
over thy noisy and extravagant joys, over the dust of railway stations
filled by thy uproar and the maddening omnibuses that thou takest by
assault, over thy tavern songs bawled everywhere from carts adorned with
green and pink dresses, on thy barrel-organs grinding out their tunes
beneath the balconies of deserted court-yards; but to-day, abjuring my
errors, I exalt thee, and I bless thee for all the joy and relief thou
givest to courageous and honest labour, for the laughter of the children
who greet thee with acclamation, the pride of mothers happy to dress
their little ones in their best clothes in thy honour, for the dignity
thou dost preserve in the homes of the poorest, the glorious raiment set
aside for thee at the bottom of the old shaky chest of drawers; I bless
thee especially by reason of all the happiness thou hast brought that
morning to the great new house in the old faubourg.

Toilettes having been completed, the _dejeuner_ finished, taken on
the thumb, as they say--and you can imagine what quantity these young
ladies’ thumbs would carry--they came to put on their hats before the
mirror in the drawing-room. Bonne Maman threw around her supervising
glance, inserted a pin here, retied a ribbon there, straightened her
father’s cravat; but while all this little world was stamping with
impatience, beckoned out of doors by the beauty of the day, there came a
ring at the bell, echoing through the apartment and disturbing their gay
proceedings.

“Suppose we don’t open the door?” propose the children.

And what a relief, with a cry of delight, they see their friend Paul
come in!

“Quick! quick! Come and let us tell you the good news.”

He knew well, before any of them, that the play had been accepted. He
had had a good deal of trouble to get it read by Cardailhac, who, the
moment he saw its “short lines,” as he called verse, wished to send the
manuscript to the Levantine and her _masseur_, as he was wont to do in
the case of all beginners in the writing of drama. But Paul was careful
not to refer to his own intervention. As for the other event, the one of
which nothing was said, on account of the children, he guessed it easily
by the trembling greeting of Maranne, whose fair mane was standing
straight up over his forehead by reason of the poet’s two hands having
been pushed through it so many times, a thing he always did in his
moments of joy, by the slightly embarrassed demeanour of Elise, by the
triumphant airs of M. Joyeuse, who was standing very erect in his new
summer clothes, with all the happiness of his children written on his
face.

Bonne Maman alone preserved her usual peaceful air; but one noticed,
in the eager alacrity with which she forestalled her sister’s wants, a
certain attention still more tender than before, an anxiety to make her
look pretty. And it was delicious to watch the girl of twenty as she
busied herself about the adornment of others, without envy, without
regret, with something of the gentle renunciation of a mother welcoming
the young love of her daughter in memory of a happiness gone by. Paul
saw this; he was the only one who did see it; but while admiring Aline,
he asked himself sadly if in that maternal heart there would ever be
place for other affections, for preoccupations outside the tranquil and
bright circle wherein Bonne Maman presided so prettily over the evening
work.

Love is, as one knows, a poor blind creature, deprived of hearing
and speech, and only led by presentiments, divinations, the nervous
faculties of a sick man. It is pitiable indeed to see him wandering,
feeling his way, constantly making false steps, passing his hands over
the supports by which he guides himself with the distrustful awkwardness
of the infirm. At the very moment when Paul was doubting Aline’s
sensibility, in announcing to his friends that he was about to start on
a journey which would occupy several days, perhaps several weeks, did
not remark the girl’s sudden paleness, did not hear the distressed cry
that escaped her lips:

“You are going away?”

He was going away, going to Tunis, very much troubled at leaving his
poor Nabob in the midst of the pack of furious wolves that surrounded
him. Mora’s protection, however, gave him some reassurance; and then,
the journey in question was absolutely necessary.

“And the Territorial?” asked the old accountant, ever returning to the
subject in his mind. “How are things standing there? I see Jansoulet’s
name still at the head of the board. You cannot get him out, then, from
that Ali-Baba’s cave? Take care--take care!”

“Ah, I know all about that, M. Joyeuse. But, to leave it with honour,
money is needed, much money, a fresh sacrifice of two or three millions,
and we have not got them. That is exactly the reason why I am going to
Tunis to try to wrest from the rapacity of the Bey a slice of that great
fortune which he is retaining in his possession so unjustly. At present
I have still some chance of succeeding, while later on, perhaps--”

“Go, then, and make haste, my dear lad, and if you return, as I wish you
may, with a heavy bag, see that you deal first of all with the Paganetti
gang. Remember that one shareholder less patient than the rest has the
power to smash the whole thing up, to demand an inquiry; and you know
what the inquiry would reveal. Now I come to think of it,” added M.
Joyeuse, whose brow had contracted a frown, “I am even surprised that
Hemerlingue, in his hatred for you, has not secretly brought up a few
shares.”

He was interrupted by the chorus of imprecations which the name of
Hemerlingue raised from all the young people, who detested the fat
banker for the injury he had done their father, and for the ill-will he
bore that good Nabob, who was adored in the house through Paul de Gery.

“Hemerlingue, the heartless monster! Wretch! That wicked man!”

But amid all these exclamations, the Visionary was following up his
idea of the fat baron becoming a shareholder in the Territorial for the
purpose of dragging his enemy into the courts. And you may imagine the
stupefaction of Andre Maranne, a complete stranger to the whole affair,
when he saw M. Joyeuse turn to him, and, with face purple and swollen
with rage, point his finger at him, with these terrible words:

“The greatest rascal, after all, in this affair, is you, sir!”

“Oh, papa, papa! what are you saying?”

“Eh, what? Ah, forgive me, my dear Andre. I was fancying myself in the
examining magistrate’s private room, face to face with that rogue. It is
my confounded brain that is always running away with me.”

All broke into uproarious laughter, which escaped into the outer air
through the open windows, and went to mingle with the thousand noises of
moving vehicles and people in their Sunday clothes going up the Avenue
des Ternes. The author of _Revolt_ took advantage of the diversion to
ask whether they were not soon going to start. It was late--the good
places would be taken in the Bois.

“To the Bois de Boulogne, on Sunday!” exclaimed Paul de Gery.

“Oh, our Bois is not yours,” replied Aline with a smile. “Come with us,
and you will see.”

Did it ever happen to you, in the course of a solitary and contemplative
walk, to lie down on your face in the undergrowth of a forest, amid that
vegetation which springs up, various and manifold, through the fallen
autumn leaves, and allow your eyes to wander along the level of the
ground before you? Little by little the sense of height is lost, the
interwoven branches of the oaks above your head form an inaccessible
sky, and you behold a new forest extending beneath the other, opening
its deep avenues filled by a green and mysterious light, and formed
of tiny shrubs or root fibres taking the appearance of the stems
of sugar-canes, of severely graceful palm-trees, of delicate cups
containing a drop of water, of many-branched candlesticks bearing little
yellow lights which the wind blows on as it passes. And the miraculous
thing is, that beneath these light shadows live minute plants and
thousand of insects whose existence, observed from so near at hand, is
a revelation to you of all the mysteries. An ant, bending like a
wood-cutter under his burden, drags after it a splinter of bark bigger
than itself; a beetle makes its way along a blade of grass thrown like a
bridge from one stem to another; while beneath a lofty bracken standing
isolated in the middle of a patch of velvety moss, a little blue or red
insect waits, with antennae at attention, for another little insect
on its way through some desert path over there to arrive at the
trysting-place beneath the giant tree. It is a small forest beneath a
great one, too near the soil to be noticed by its big neighbours, too
humble, too hidden to be reached by its great orchestra of song and
storm.

A similar revelation awaits in the Bois de Boulogne. Behind those sanded
drives, watered and clean, whereon files of carriage-wheels moving
slowly round the lake trace all day long a worn and mechanical furrow,
behind that admirably set scene of trimmed green hedges, of captive
water, of flowery rocks, the true Bois, a wild wood with perennial
undergrowth, grows and flourishes, forming impenetrable recesses
traversed by narrow paths and bubbling springs.

This is the Bois of the children, the Bois of the humble, the little
forest beneath the great one. And Paul, who knew only the long avenues
of the aristocratic Parisian promenades, the sparkling lake perceived
from the depths of a carriage or from the top of a coach in a drive back
from Longchamps, was astonished to see the deliciously sheltered nook to
which his friends had led him. It was on the banks of a pond lying like
a mirror under willow-trees, covered with water-lilies, with here and
there large white shimmering spaces where sunbeams fell and lay on the
bright surface.

On the sloping bank, sheltered by the boughs of trees where the leaves
were already thick, they sat down to listen to the reading of the play,
and the pretty, attentive faces, the skirts lying puffed out over the
grass, made one think of some Decameron, more innocent and chaste, in
a peaceful atmosphere. To complete this pleasant country scene, two
windmill-sails seen through an opening in the branches were revolving
over in the direction of Suresnes, while of the dazzling and luxurious
vision to be met at every cross-roads in the Bois there reached them
only a confused and perpetual murmur, which one ended by ceasing to
notice. The poet’s voice alone rose in the silence, the verses fell on
the air tremblingly, repeated below the breath by other moved lips, and
stifled sounds of approbation greeted them, with shudders at the tragic
passages. Bonne Maman was even seen to wipe away a big tear. That comes,
you see, from having no embroidery in one’s hand!

His first work! That was what the _Revolt_ was for Andre, that first
work always too exuberant and ornate, into which the author throws, to
begin with, whole arrears of ideas and opinions, pent up like the waters
of a river-lock; that first work which is often the richest if not the
best of its writer’s productions. As for the fate that awaited it, no
one could predict it; and the uncertainty that hovered over the reading
of the drama added to its own emotion that of each auditor, the hopes,
all arrayed in white, of Mlle. Elise, the fantastic hallucinations of
M. Joyeuse, and the more positive desires of Aline as she installed
in advance the modest fortune of her sister in the nest of an artist’s
household, beaten by the winds but envied by the crowd.

Ah, if one of those idle people, taking a turn for the hundredth time
round the lake, overwhelmed by the monotony of his habitual promenade,
had come and parted the branches, how surprised he would have been at
this picture! But would he ever have suspected how much passion, how
many dreams, what poetry and hope there could be contained in that
little green corner, hardly larger than the shadow a fern throws on the
moss?

“You were right; I did not know the Bois,” said Paul in a low voice to
Aline, who was leaning on his arm.

They were following a narrow path overarched by the boughs of trees, and
as they talked were moving forward at a quick pace, well in advance
of the others. It was not, however, _pere_ Kontzen’s terrace nor his
appetizing fried dishes that drew them on. No; the beautiful lines
which they had just heard had carried them away, lifting them to great
heights, and they had not yet come down to earth again. They walked
straight on towards the ever-retreating end of the road, which opened
out at its extremity into a luminous glory, a mass of sunbeams, as if
all the sunshine of that beautiful day lay waiting for them where it had
fallen on the outskirts of the wood. Never had Paul felt so happy. That
light arm that lay on his arm, that child’s step by which his own was
guided, these alone would have made life sweet and pleasant to him, no
less than this walk over the mossy turf of a green path. He would have
told the girl so, simply, as he felt it, had he not feared to alarm that
confidence which Aline placed in him, no doubt because of the sentiments
which she knew he possessed for another woman, and which seemed to hold
at a distance from them every thought of love.

Suddenly, right before them, against the bright background, a group
of persons riding on horseback came in sight, at first vague and
indistinct, then appearing as a man and a woman, handsomely mounted, and
entered the mysterious path among the bars of gold, the leafy shadows,
the thousand dots of light with which the ground was strewn, and which,
displaced by their progress as they cantered along, rose and covered
them with flowery patterns from the chests of the horses to the blue
veil of the lady rider. They came along slowly, capriciously, and the
two young people, who had drawn back into the copse, could see pass
close by them, with a clinking of bits proudly shaken and white with
foam as though after a furious gallop, two splendid animals carrying a
pair of human beings brought very near together by the narrowing of the
path; he, supporting with one arm the supple figure moulded in a dark
cloth habit; she, with a hand resting on the shoulder of her cavalier
and her small head seen in retreating profile beneath the half-dropped
tulle of her veil, resting on it tenderly. This embrace, half disturbed
by the impatience of the horses, that kiss on which their reins became
confused, that passion which stalked in broad day through the Bois with
so great a contempt for public opinion, would have been enough to betray
the duke and Felicia, if the haughty and charming mein of the lady and
the aristocratic ease of her companion, his pallor slightly tinged with
colour as the result of his ride and of Jenkins’s miraculous pearls, had
not already betrayed them.

It is not an extraordinary thing to meet Mora in the Bois on a Sunday.
Like his master, he loved to show himself to the Parisians, to advertise
his popularity with all sections of the public; and then the duchess
never accompanied him on that day, and he could make a halt quite at his
ease in that little villa of Saint-James, known to all Paris, whose red
towers, outlined among the trees schoolboys used to point out to each
other in whispers. But only a mad woman, a daring affronter of society
like this Felicia, could have dreamt of advertising herself like this,
with the loss of her reputation forever. A sound of hoofs dying away in
the distance, of shrubs brushed in passing; a few plants that had been
pressed down and were straightening themselves again; branches pushed
out of the way resuming their places--that was all that remained of the
apparition.

“You saw?” said Paul; speaking first.

She had seen, and she had understood, notwithstanding the candour of her
innocence, for a blush spread over her features, one of those feelings
of shame experienced for the faults of those we love.

“Poor Felicia!” she said in a low voice, pitying not only the unhappy
woman who had just passed them, but also him whom this defection must
have smitten to the very heart. The truth is that Paul de Gery had felt
no surprise at this meeting, which justified previous suspicions and the
instinctive aversion which he had felt for Felicia at their dinner some
days before. But he found it pleasant to be pitied by Aline, to feel the
compassion in that voice becoming more tender, in that arm leaning upon
his. Like children who pretend to be ill for the sake of the pleasure
of being fondled by their mother, he allowed his consoler to strive to
appease his grief, speaking to him of his brothers, of the Nabob, and
of his forthcoming trip to Tunis--a fine country, they said. “You must
write to us often, and long letters about the interesting things on the
journey, the place you stay in. For one can see those who are far away
better when one imagines the kind of place they are inhabiting.”

So talking, they reached the end of the bowered path terminating in an
immense open glade through which there moved the tumult of the Bois,
carriages and riders on horseback alternating with each other, and the
crowd at that distance seeming to be tramping through a flaky dust
which blended it into a single confused herd. Paul slackened his pace,
emboldened by this last minute of solitude.

“Do you know what I am thinking of?” he said, taking Aline’s hand. “I am
thinking that it would be a pleasure to be unhappy so as to be comforted
by you. But however precious your pity may be to me, I cannot allow
you to waste your compassion on an imaginary pain. No, my heart is not
broken, but more alive, on the contrary, and stronger. And if I were to
tell you what miracle it is that has preserved it, what talisman--”

He held out before her eyes a little oval frame in which was set
a simple profile, a pencil outline wherein she recognised herself,
surprised to see herself so pretty, reflected, as it were, in the magic
mirror of Love. Tears came into her eyes without her knowing the reason,
an open spring whose stream beat within her chaste breast. He continued:

“This portrait belongs to me. It was drawn for me. And yet, at the
moment of starting on this journey I have a scruple. I do not wish to
have it except from yourself. Take it, then, and if you find a worthier
friend, some one who loves you with a love deeper and more loyal than
mine, I am willing that you should give it to him.”

She had regained her composure, and looking de Gery full in the face
with a serious tenderness, she said:

“If I listened only to my heart, I should feel no hesitation about my
reply: for, if you love me as you say, I am sure that I love you too.
But I am not free; I am not alone in the world. Look yonder.”

She pointed to her father and her sisters, who were beckoning to them in
the distance and hastening to come up with them.

“Well, and I myself?” answered Paul quickly. “Have I not similar duties,
similar responsibilities? We are like two widowed heads of families.
Will you not love mine as much as I love yours?”

“True? is it true? You will let me stay with them? I shall be Aline for
you, and Bonne Maman for all our children? Oh! then,” exclaimed the dear
creature, beaming with joy, “there is my portrait--I give it to you! And
all my soul with it, too, and forever.”



THE JENKINS PEARLS

About a week after his adventure with Moessard, that new complication in
the terrible muddle of his affairs, Jansoulet, on leaving the Chamber,
one Thursday, ordered his coachman to drive him to Mora’s house. He had
not paid a visit there since the scuffle in the Rue Royale, and the idea
of finding himself in the duke’s presence gave him, through his thick
skin, something of the panic that agitates a boy on his way upstairs
to see the head-master after a fight in the schoolroom. However, the
embarrassment of this first interview had to be gone through. They said
in the committee-rooms that Le Merquier had completed his report, a
masterpiece of logic and ferocity, that it meant an invalidation, and
that he was bound to carry it with a high hand unless Mora, so powerful
in the Assembly, should himself intervene and give him his word of
command. A serious matter, and one that made the Nabob’s cheeks flush,
while in the curved mirrors of his brougham he studied his appearance,
his courtier’s smiles, trying to think out a way of effecting a
brilliant entry, one of those strokes of good-natured effrontery which
had brought him fortune with Ahmed, and which served him likewise in his
relations with the French ambassador. All this accompanied by beatings
of the heart and by those shudders between the shoulder-blades which
precede decisive actions, even when these are settled within a gilded
chariot.

When he arrived at the mansion by the river, he was much surprised to
notice that the porter on the quay, as on the days of great receptions,
was sending carriages up the Rue de Lille, in order to keep a door free
for those leaving. Rather anxious, he wondered, “What is there going
on?” Perhaps a concert given by the duchess, a charity bazaar, some
festivity from which Mora might have excluded him on account of the
scandal of his last adventure. And this anxiety was augmented still
further when Jansoulet, after having passed across the principal
court-yard amid a din of slamming doors and a dull and continuous rumble
of wheels over the sand, found himself--after ascending the steps--in
the immense entrance-hall filled by a crowd which did not extend beyond
any of the doors leading to the rooms; centring its anxious going
and coming around the porter’s table, where all the famous names of
fashionable Paris were being inscribed. It seemed as though a disastrous
gust of wind had gone through the house, carrying off a little of its
calm, and allowing disquiet and danger to filter into its comfort.

“What a misfortune!”

“Ah! it is terrible.”

“And so suddenly!”

Such were the remarks that people were exchanging as they met.

An idea flashed into Jansoulet’s mind:

“Is the duke ill?” he inquired of a servant.

“Ah, monsieur, he is dying! He will not live through the night!”

If the roof of the palace had fallen in upon his head he would not
have been more utterly stunned. Red lights flashed before his eyes, he
tottered, and let himself drop into a seat on a velvet-covered bench
beside the great cage of monkeys. The animals, over-excited by all this
bustle, suspended by their tails, by their little long-thumbed
hands, were hanging to the bars in groups, and came, inquisitive and
frightened, to make the most ludicrous grimaces at this big, stupefied
man as he sat staring at the marble floor, repeating aloud to himself,
“I am ruined! I am ruined!”

The duke was dying. He had been seized suddenly with illness on the
Sunday after his return from the Bois. He had felt intolerable burnings
in his bowels, which passed through his whole body, searing as with a
red-hot iron, and alternating with a cold lethargy and long periods of
coma. Jenkins, summoned at once, did not say much, but ordered certain
sedatives. The next day the pains came on again with greater intensity
and followed by the same icy torpor, also more accentuated, as if life,
torn up by the roots, were departing in violent spasms. Among those
around him, none was greatly concerned. “The day after a visit to
Saint-James Villa,” was muttered in the antechamber, and Jenkins’s
handsome face preserved its serenity. He had spoken to two or
three people, in the course of his morning rounds, of the duke’s
indisposition, and that so lightly that nobody had paid much attention
to the matter.

Mora himself, notwithstanding his extreme weakness, although he felt his
head absolutely blank, and, as he said, “not an idea anywhere,” was far
from suspecting the gravity of his condition. It was only on the third
day, on waking in the morning, that the sight of a tiny stream of blood,
which had trickled from his mouth over his beard and the stained pillow,
had frightened this fastidious man, who had a horror of all human
ills, especially sickness, and now saw it arrive stealthily with its
pollutions, its weaknesses, and the loss of physical self-control,
the first concession made to death. Monpavon, entering the room behind
Jenkins, surprised the anxious expression of the great seigneur faced
by the terrible truth, and at the same time was horrified by the
ravages made in a few hours upon Mora’s emaciated face, in which all the
wrinkles of age, suddenly evident, were mingled with lines of suffering,
and those muscular depressions which tell of serious internal lesions.
He took Jenkins aside, while the duke’s toilet necessaries were carried
to him--a whole apparatus of crystal and silver contrasting with the
yellow pallor of the invalid.

“Look here, Jenkins, the duke is very ill.”

“I am afraid so,” said the Irishman, in a low voice.

“But what is the matter with him?”

“What he wanted, _parbleu_!” answered the other in a fury. “One cannot
be young at his age with impunity. This intrigue will cost him dear.”

Some evil passion was getting the better of him but he subdued it
immediately, and, puffing out his cheeks as though his head were full of
water, he sighed deeply as he pressed the old nobleman’s hands.

“Poor duke! poor duke! Ah, my friend, I am most unhappy!”

“Take care, Jenkins,” said Monpavon coldly, disengaging his hands, “you
are assuming a terrible responsibility. What! is the duke as bad
as that?--ps--ps--ps--Will you see nobody? You have arranged no
consultation?”

The Irishman raised his hands as if to say, “What good can it do?”

The other insisted. It was absolutely necessary that Brisset,
Jousseline, Bouchereau, all the great physicians should be called in.

“But you will frighten him.”

De Monpavon expanded his chest, the one pride of the old broken-down
charger.

“_Mon Cher_, if you had seen Mora and me in the trenches of
Constantine--ps--ps. Never looked away. We don’t know fear. Give notice
to your colleagues. I undertake to inform him.”

The consultation took place in the evening with great privacy, the duke
having insisted on this from a singular sense of shame produced by his
illness, by that suffering which discrowned him, making him the equal of
other men. Like those African kings who hide themselves in the recesses
of their palaces to die, he would have wished that men should believe
him carried off, transfigured, become a god. Then, too, he dreaded above
all things the expressions of pity, the condolences, the compassion with
which he knew that his sick-bed would be surrounded; the tears because
he suspected them to be hypocritical, and because, if sincere, they
displeased him still more by their grimacing ugliness.

He had always detested scenes, exaggerated sentiments, everything that
could move him to emotion or disturb the harmonious equilibrium of his
life. Every one knew this, and the order was to keep away from him the
distress, the misery, which from one end of France to the other flowed
towards Mora as to one of those forest refuges lighted during the
night at which all wanderers may knock. Not that he was hard to the
unfortunate; perhaps he may have been too easily moved to the pity which
he regarded as an inferior sentiment, a weakness unworthy of the strong,
and, refusing it to others, he dreaded it for himself, for the integrity
of his courage. Nobody in the palace, then, except Monpavon and Louis
the _valet de chambre_, knew of the visit of those three personages
introduced mysteriously into the Minister of State’s apartments. The
duchess herself was ignorant of it. Separated from her husband by the
barriers frequently placed by the political and fashionable life of
the great world between married people, she believed him slightly
indisposed, nervous more than anything else; and had so little suspicion
of a catastrophe that at the very hour when the doctors were mounting
the great, dimly lit staircase at the other end of the palace, her
private apartments were being lit up for a girls’ dance, one of those
_bals blancs_ which the ingenuity of the idle world had begun to make
fashionable in Paris.

This consultation was like all others: solemn and sinister. Doctors no
longer wear their great periwigs of the time of Moliere, but they still
assume the same gravity of the priests of Isis, of astrologers bristling
with cabalistic formulae pronounced with sage noddings of the head, to
which, for comical effect, there is only wanting the high pointed cap of
former days. In this case the scene borrowed an imposing aspect from its
setting. In the vast bed-chamber, transformed, heightened, as it were,
in dignity by the immobility of the owner, these grave figures came
forward round the bed on which the light was concentrated, illuminating
amid the whiteness of the linen and the purple of the hangings a face
worn into hollows, pale from lips to eyes, but wrapped in serenity as in
a veil, as in a shroud. The consultants spoke in low tones, cast furtive
glances as each other, or exchanged some barbarous word, remaining
impassive, without even a frown. But this mute and reticent expression
of the doctor and magistrate, this solemnity with which science and
justice hedge themselves about to hide their frailty or ignorance, had
no power to move the duke.

Sitting up in bed, he continued to talk quietly, with the upward glance
of the eye in which it seems as if thought rises before it finally takes
wing, and Monpavon coldly followed his cue, hardening himself against
his own emotion, taking from his friend a last lesson in “form”; while
Louis, in the background, stood leaning against the door leading to the
duchess’s apartment, the spectre of a silent domestic in whom detached
indifference is a duty.

The most agitated, nervous man present was Jenkins. Full of obsequious
attentions for his “illustrious colleagues,” as he called them, with his
lips pursed up, he hung round their consultation and attempted to
take part in it; but the colleagues kept him at a distance and hardly
answered him, as Fagon--the Fagon of Louis XIV--might have addressed
some empiric summoned to the royal bedside. Old Bouchereau especially
had black looks for the inventor of the Jenkins pearls. Finally, when
they had thoroughly examined and questioned their patient, they retired
to deliberate among themselves in a little room with lacquered ceilings
and walls, filled by an assortment of _bric-a-brac_ the triviality of
which contrasted strangely with the importance of the discussion.

Solemn moment! Anguish of the accused awaiting the decision of his
judges--life, death, reprieve, or pardon!

With his long, white hand Mora continued to stroke his mustache with a
favourite gesture, to talk with Monpavon of the club, of the foyer
of the _Varietes_, asking news of the Chamber, how matters stood with
regard to the Nabob’s election--all this coldly, without the least
affectation. Then, tired, no doubt, or fearing lest his glance,
constantly drawn to that curtain opposite him, from behind which the
sentence was to come presently, should betray the emotion which he must
have felt in the depths of his soul, he laid his head on the pillow,
closed his eyes, and did not open them again until the return of the
doctors. Still the same cold and sinister faces, veritable physiognomies
of judges having on their lips the terrible decree of human fate, the
final word which the courts pronounce fearlessly, but which the doctors,
whose science it mocks, elude, and express in periphrases.

“Well, gentlemen, what says the faculty?” demanded the sick man.

There were sundry murmurs of hypocritical encouragement, vague
recommendations; then the three learned physicians hastened to depart,
eager to escape from the responsibility of this disaster. Monpavon
rushed after them. Jenkins remained at the bedside, overwhelmed by the
cruel truths which he had just heard during the consultation. In vain
had he laid his hand on his heart, quoted his famous motto; Bouchereau
had not spared him. It was not the first of the Irishman’s clients whom
he had seen thus suddenly collapse; but he fervently hoped that the
death of Mora would act as a salutary warning to the world of fashion,
and that the prefect of police, after this great calamity, would send
the “dealer in cantharides” to retail his drugs on the other side of the
Channel.

The duke understood immediately that neither Jenkins nor Louis would
tell him the true issue of the consultation. He abstained, therefore,
from any insistence in his questionings of them, submitted to their
pretended confidence, affected even to share it, to believe the most
hopeful things they announced to him. But when Monpavon returned, he
summoned him to his bedside, and, confronted by the lie visible even
beneath the make-up of the decrepit old man, remarked:

“Oh, you know--no humbug! From you to me, truth. What do they say? I am
in a very bad way, eh?”

Monpavon prefaced his reply with a significant silence; then brutally,
cynically, for fear of breaking down as he spoke:

“Done for, my poor Augustus!”

The duke received the sentence full in the face without flinching.

“Ah!” he said simply.

He pulled his mustache with a mechanical gesture, but his features
remained motionless. And immediately he made up his mind.

That the poor wretch who dies in a hospital, without home or family,
without other name than the number of his bed, that he should accept
death as a deliverance or bear it as his last trial; that the old
peasant who passes away, bent double, worn out, in his dark and smoky
cellar, that he should depart without regret, savouring in advance
the taste of that fresh earth which he has so many times dug over and
over--that is intelligible. And yet how many, even among such, cling to
existence despite all their misery! how many there are who cry, holding
on to their sordid furniture and to their rags, “I don’t want to die!”
 and depart with nails broken and bleeding from that supreme wrench. But
here there was nothing of the kind.

To possess all, and to lose all. What a catastrophe!

In the first silence of that dreadful moment, while he heard the sound
of the music coming faintly from the duchess’s ball at the other end of
the palace, whatever attached this man to life, power, honour, wealth,
all that splendour must have seemed to him already far away and in an
irrevocable past. A courage of a quite exceptional temper must have
been required to bear up under such a blow without any spur of personal
vanity. No one was present save the friend, the doctor, the servant,
three intimates acquainted with all his secrets; the lights moved back,
left the bed in shadow, and the dying man might quite well have turned
his face to the wall in lamentation of his own fate without being
noticed. But not an instant of weakness, nor of useless demonstration.
Without breaking a branch of the chestnut-trees in the garden, without
withering a flower on the great staircase of the palace, his footsteps
muffled on the thick pile of the carpets, Death had opened the door of
this man of power and signed to him “Come!” And he answered simply, “I
am ready.” The true exit of a man of the world, unforeseen, rapid, and
discreet.

Man of the world! Mora was nothing if not that. Passing through life
masked, gloved, breast-plated--breast-plate of white satin, such as
the masters of fence wear on great days; preserving his fighting dress
immaculate and clean; sacrificing everything to that irreproachable
exterior which with him did duty for armour; he had determined on his
_role_ as statesman in the passage from the drawing-room to a wider
scene, and made, indeed, a statesman of the first rank on the strength
alone of his qualities as a man about town, the art of listening and of
smiling, knowledge of men, scepticism, and coolness. That coolness did
not leave him at the supreme moment.

With eyes fixed on the time, so short, which still remained to him--for
the dark visitor was in a hurry, and he could feel on his face the
draught from the door which he had not closed behind him--his one
thought now was to occupy the time well, to satisfy all the obligations
of an end like his, which must leave no devotion unrecompensed nor
compromise any friend. He gave a list of certain persons whom he wished
to see and who were sent for immediately, summoned the head of his
cabinet, and, as Jenkins ventured the opinion that it was a great
fatigue for him, said:

“Can you guarantee that I shall wake to-morrow morning? I feel strong at
this moment; let me take advantage of it.”

Louis inquired whether the duchess should be informed. The duke, before
replying, listened to the sounds of music that reached his room through
the open windows from the little ball, sounds that seemed prolonged in
the night on an invisible bow, then answered:

“Let us wait a little. I have something to finish.”

They brought to his bedside the little lacquered table that he might
himself sort out the letters which were to be destroyed; but feeling his
strength give way, he called Monpavon.

“Burn everything,” said he to him in a faint voice; and seeing him move
towards the fireplace, where a fire was burning despite the warmth of
the season.

“No,” he added, “not here. There are too many of them. Some one might
come.”

Monpavon took up the writing-table, which was not heavy, and signed to
the _valet de chambre_ to go before him with a light. But Jenkins sprang
forward:

“Stay here, Louis; the duke may want you.”

He took hold of the lamp; and moving carefully down the whole length of
the great corridor, exploring the waiting-rooms, the galleries, in which
the fireplaces proved to be filled with artificial plants and quite
emptied of ashes, they wandered like spectres in the silence and
darkness of the vast house, alive only over yonder on the right, were
pleasure was singing like a bird on a roof which is about to fall in
ruins.

“There is no fire anywhere. What is to be done with all this?” they
asked each other in great embarrassment. They might have been two
thieves dragging away a chest which they did not know how to open. At
last Monpavon, out of patience, walked straight to a door, the only one
which they had not yet opened.

“_Ma foi_, so much the worse! Since we cannot burn them, we will drown
them. Hold the light, Jenkins.”

And they entered.

Where were they? Saint-Simon relating the downfall of one of those
sovereign existences, the disarray of ceremonies, of dignities,
of grandeurs, caused by death and especially by sudden death, only
Saint-Simon might have found words to tell you. With his delicate,
carefully kept hands, the Marquis de Monpavon did the pumping. The other
passed to him the letters after tearing them into small pieces, packets
of letters, on satin paper, tinted, perfumed, adorned with crests, coats
of arms, small flags with devices, covered with handwritings, fine,
hurried, scrawling, entwining, persuasive; and all those flimsy pages
went whirling one over the other in eddying streams of water which
crumpled them, soiled them, washed out their tender links before
allowing them to disappear with a gurgle down the drain.

They were love-letters and of every kind, from the note of the
adventuress, “_I saw you pass yesterday in the Bois, M. le Duc_,” to the
aristocratic reproaches of the last mistress but one, and the complaints
of ladies deserted, and the page, still fresh, of recent confidences.
Monpavon was in the secret of all these mysteries--put a name on each of
them: “That is Mme. Moor. Hallo! Mme. d’Athis!” A confusion of coronets
and initials, of caprices and old habits, sullied by the promiscuity of
this moment, all engulfed in the horrid closet by the light of a lamp,
with the noise of an intermittent gush of water, departing into oblivion
by a shameful road. Suddenly Jenkins paused in his work of destruction.
Two satin-gray letters trembled as he held them in his fingers.

“Who is that?” asked Monpavon, noticing the unfamiliar handwriting and
the Irishman’s nervous excitement. “Ah, doctor, if you want to read them
all, we shall never have finished.”

Jenkins, his cheeks flushed, the two letters in his hand, was consumed
by a desire to carry them away, to pore over them at his ease, to
martyrize himself with delight by reading them, perhaps also to forge
out of this correspondence a weapon for himself against the imprudent
woman who had signed her name. But the rigorous correctness of the
marquis made him afraid. How could he distract his attention--get him
away? The opportunity occurred of its own accord. Among the letters, a
tiny page written in a senile and shaky hand, caught the attention
of the charlatan, who said with an ingenuous air: “Oh, oh! here is
something that does not look much like a _billet-doux. ‘Mon Duc, to the
rescue--I am sinking! The Court of Exchequer has once more stuck its
nose into my affairs.’_”

“What are you reading there?” exclaimed Monpavon abruptly, snatching the
letter from his hands. And immediately, thanks to Mora’s negligence in
thus allowing such private letters to lie about, the terrible situation
in which he would be left by the death of his protector returned to his
mind. In his grief, he had not yet given it a thought. He told himself
that in the midst of all his preparations for his departure, the duke
might quite possibly overlook him; and, leaving Jenkins to complete the
drowning of Don Juan’s casket by himself, he returned precipitately
in the direction of the bed-chamber. Just as he was on the point of
entering, the sound of a discussion held him back behind the lowered
door-curtain. It was Louis’s voice, tearful like that of a beggar in
a church-porch, trying to move the duke to pity for his distress, and
asking permission to take certain bundles of bank-notes that lay in a
drawer. Oh, how hoarse, utterly wearied, hardly intelligible the answer,
in which there could be detected the effort of the sick man to turn over
in his bed, to bring back his vision from a far-off distance already
half in sight:

“Yes, yes; take them. But for God’s sake, let me sleep--let me sleep!”

Drawers opened, closed again, a short and panting breath. Monpavon heard
no more of what was going on, and retraced his steps without entering.
The ferocious rapacity of his servant had set his pride upon its guard.
Anything rather than degradation to such a point as that.

The sleep which Mora craved for so insistently--the lethargy, to be more
accurate--lasted a whole night, and through the next morning also, with
uncertain wakings disturbed by terrible sufferings relieved each time by
soporifics. No further attempt was made to nurse him to recovery; they
tried only to soothe his last moments, to help him to slip painlessly
over that terrible last step. His eyes had opened again during this
time, but were already dimmed, fixed in the void on floating shadows,
vague forms like those a diver sees quivering in the uncertain light
under water.

In the afternoon of the Thursday, towards three o’clock, he regained
complete consciousness, and recognising Monpavon, Cardailhac, and two
or three other intimate friends, he smiled to them, and betrayed in a
sentence his only anxiety:

“What do they say about it in Paris?”

They said many things about it, different and contradictory; but very
certainly he was the only subject of conversation, and the news spread
through the town since the morning, that Mora was at his last breath,
agitated the streets, the drawing-rooms, the cafes, the workshops,
revived the question of the political situation in newspaper offices and
clubs, even in porters’ lodges and on the tops of omnibuses, in every
place where the unfolded public newspapers commented on this startling
rumour of the day.

Mora was the most brilliant incarnation of the Empire. One sees from a
distance, not the solid or insecure base of the building, but the gilded
and delicate spire, embellished, carved into hollow tracery, added
for the satisfaction of the age. Mora was what was seen in France and
throughout Europe of the Empire. If he fell, the monument would find
itself bereft of all its elegance, split as by some long and irreparable
crack. And how many lives would be dragged down by that sudden fall,
how many fortunes undermined by the weakened reverberations of
the catastrophe! None so completely as that of the big man sitting
motionless downstairs, on the bench in the monkey-house.

For the Nabob, this death was his own death, the ruin, the end of all
things. He was so deeply conscious of it that, when he entered the
house, on learning the hopeless condition of the duke, no expression of
pity, no regrets of any sort, had escaped him, only the ferocious word
of human egoism, “I am ruined!” And this word kept recurring to his
lips; he repeated it mechanically each time that he awoke suddenly
afresh to all the horror of his situation, as in those dangerous
mountain storms, when a sudden flash of lightning illumines the abyss
to its depths, showing the wounding spurs and the bushes on its sides,
ready to tear and scratch the man who should fall.

The rapid clairvoyance which accompanies cataclysms spared him no
detail. He saw the invalidation of his election almost certain, now that
Mora would no longer be there to plead his cause; then the consequences
of the defeat--bankruptcy, poverty, and still worse; for when these
incalculable riches collapse they always bury a little of a man’s honour
beneath their ruins. But how many briers, how many thorns, how many
cruel scratches and wounds before arriving at the end! In a week there
would be the Schwalbach bills--that is to say, eight hundred thousand
francs--to pay; indemnity for Moessard, who wanted a hundred thousand
francs, or as the alternative he would apply for the permission of the
Chamber to prosecute him for a misdemeanour, a suit still more sinister
instituted by the families of two little martyrs of Bethlehem against
the founders of the Society; and, on top of all, the complications of
the Territorial Bank. There was one solitary hope, the mission of Paul
de Gery to the Bey, but so vague, so chimerical, so remote!

“Ah, I am ruined! I am ruined!”

In the immense entrance-hall no one noticed his distress. The crowd of
senators, of deputies, of councillors of state, all the high officials
of the administration, came and went around him without seeing him,
holding mysterious consultations with uneasy importance near the two
fireplaces of white marble which faced one another. So many ambitions
disappointed, deceived, hurled down, met in this visit _in extremis_,
that personal anxieties dominated every other preoccupation.

The faces, strangely enough, expressed neither pity nor grief, rather a
sort of anger. All these people seemed to have a grudge against the duke
for dying, as though he had deserted them. One heard remarks of this
kind: “It is not surprising, with such a life as he has lived!” And
looking out of the high windows, these gentlemen pointed out to each
other, amid the going and coming of the equipages in the court-yard, the
drawing up of some little brougham from within which a well-gloved hand,
with its lace sleeve brushing the sash of the door, would hold out a
card with a corner turned back to the footman.

From time to time one of the _habitues_ of the palace, one of those whom
the dying man had summoned to his bedside, appeared in the medley, gave
an order, then went away, leaving the scared expression of his face
reflected on twenty others. Jenkins showed himself thus for a moment,
with his cravat untied, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his cuffs crumpled, in
all the disorder of the battle in which he was engaged upstairs
against a terrible opponent. He was instantly surrounded, besieged with
questions.

Certainly the monkeys flattening their short noses against the bars of
their cage, excited by the unaccustomed tumult, and very attentive to
all that passed about them as though they were occupied in making a
methodical study of human hypocrisy, had a magnificent model in the
Irish physician. His grief was superb, a splendid grief, masculine and
strong, which compressed his lips and made him pant.

“The agony has begun,” he said mournfully. “It is only a matter of
hours.”

And as Jansoulet came towards him, he said to him emphatically:

“Ah, my friend, what a man! What courage! He has forgotten nobody. Only
just now he was speaking to me of you.”

“Really?”

“‘The poor Nabob,’ said he, ‘how does the affair of his election
stand?’”

And that was all. The duke had added no further word.

Jansoulet bowed his head. What had he been hoping? Was it not enough
that at such a moment a man like Mora had given him a thought? He
returned and sat down on his bench, falling back into the stupor which
had been galvanized by one moment of mad hope, and remained until,
without his noticing it, the hall had become nearly deserted. He did not
remark that he was the only and last visitor left, until he heard the
men-servants talking aloud in the waning light of the evening:

“For my part, I’ve had enough of it. I shall leave service.”

“I shall stay on with the duchess.”

And these projects, these arrangements some hours in advance of death,
condemned the noble duke still more surely than the faculty.

The Nabob understood then that it was time for him to go, but, first, he
wished to inscribe his name in the visitors’ book kept by the porter. He
went up to the table, and leaned over it to see distinctly. The page was
full. A blank space was pointed out to him below a signature in a very
small, spidery hand, such as is frequently written by very fat fingers,
and when he had signed, it proved to be the name of Hemerlingue
dominating his own, crushing it, clasping it round with insidious
flourish. Superstitious, like the true Latin he was, he was struck by
this omen, and went away frightened by it.

Where should he dine? At the club? Place Vendome? To hear still more
talk of this death that obsessed him! He preferred to go somewhere by
chance, walking straight before him, like all those who are a prey to
some fixed idea which they hope to conjure away by rapid movement. The
evening was warm, the air full of sweet scents. He walked along the
quays, and reached the trees of the Cours-la-Reine, then found himself
breathing that air in which is mingled the freshness of watered roads
and the odour of fine dust so characteristic of summer evenings in
Paris. At that hour all was deserted. Here and there chandeliers were
being lighted for the concerts, blazes of gaslight flared among the
green trees. A sound of glasses and plates from a restaurant gave him
the idea of going in.

The strong man was hungry despite all his troubles. He was served under
a veranda with glazed walls backed by shrubs, and facing the great
porch of the Palais de l’Industrie, where the duke, in the presence of a
thousand people, had greeted him as a deputy. The refined, aristocratic
face rose before his memory in the darkness of the sky, while he could
see it also as it lay over yonder on the funereal whiteness of the
pillow; and suddenly, as he ran his eye over the bill of fare presented
to him by the waiter, he noticed with stupefaction that it bore the date
of the 20th of May. So a month had not elapsed since the opening of the
exhibition. It seemed to him like ten years ago. Gradually, however, the
warmth of the meal cheered him. In the corridor he could hear waiters
talking:

“Has anybody heard news of Mora? It appears he is very ill.”

“Nonsense! He will get over it, you will see. Men like him get all the
luck.”

And so deeply is hope implanted in the human soul, that, despite what
Jansoulet had himself seen and heard, these few words, helped by two
bottles of burgundy and a few glasses of cognac, sufficed to restore
his courage. After all, people had been known to recover from illnesses
quite as desperate. Doctors often exaggerate the ill in order to get
more credit afterward for curing it. “Suppose I called to inquire.” He
made his way back towards the house, full of illusion, trusting to that
chance which had served him so many times in his life. And indeed the
aspect of the princely abode had something about it to fortify his
hope. It presented the reassuring and tranquil appearance of ordinary
evenings, from the avenue with its lights at long intervals, majestic
and deserted, to the steps where stood waiting a huge carriage of
old-fashioned shape.

In the antechamber, peaceful also, two enormous lamps were burning. A
footman slept in a corner; the porter was reading before the fireplace.
He looked at the new arrival over his spectacles, made no remark, and
Jansoulet dared ask no question. Piles of newspapers lying on the table
in their wrappers, addressed to the duke, seemed to have been thrown
there as useless. The Nabob took up one of them, opened it, and tried
to read, but quick and gliding steps, a muttered chanting, made him lift
his eyes, and he saw a white-haired and bent old man, decked out in lace
as though he had been an altar, who was praying aloud as he departed
with a long priestly stride, his ample red cassock spreading in a train
over the carpet. It was the Archbishop of Paris, accompanied by two
assistants. The vision, with its murmur as of an icy north wind,
passed quickly before Jansoulet, plunged into the great carriage and
disappeared, carrying away with it his last hope.

“Doing the right thing, _mon cher_,” remarked Monpavon, appearing
suddenly at his side. “Mora is an epicurean, brought up in the ideas of
how do you say--you know--what is it you call it? Eighteenth century.
Very bad for the masses, if a man in his position--ps--ps--ps--Ah, he is
the master who sets us all an example--ps--ps--irreproachable manners!”

“Then, it is all over?” said Jansoulet, overwhelmed. “There is no longer
any hope?”

Monpavon signed to him to listen. A carriage rolled heavily along the
avenue on the quay. The visitors’ bell rang sharply several times in
succession. The marquis counted aloud: “One, two, three, four.” At the
fifth he rose:

“No more hope now. Here comes the other,” said he, alluding to the
Parisian superstition that a visit from the sovereign was always fatal
to dying persons. From every side the lackeys hastened up, opened the
doors wide, ranged themselves in line, while the porter, his hat cocked
forward and his staff resounding on the marble floor, announced the
passage of two august shadows, of whom Jansoulet only caught a confused
glimpse behind the liveried domestics, but whom he saw beyond a long
perspective of open doors climbing the great staircase, preceded by
a footman bearing a candelabrum. The woman ascended, erect and proud,
enveloped in a black Spanish mantilla; the man supported himself by the
baluster, slower in his movements and tired, the collar of his light
overcoat turned up above a rather bent back, which was shaken by a
convulsive sob.

“Let us be off, Nabob. Nothing more to be done here,” said the old beau,
taking Jansoulet by the arm and drawing him outside. He paused on the
threshold, with raised hand, making a little gesture of farewell in the
direction of the man who lay dying upstairs. “Good-bye old fellow!” The
gesture and the tone were polite, irreproachable, but the voice trembled
a little.

The club in the Rue Royale, which was famous for its gambling parties,
rarely saw one so desperate as the gaming of that night. It commenced at
eleven o’clock and was still going on at five in the morning. Enormous
sums were scattered over the green cloth, changing hands, moved now to
one side, now to the other, heaped up, distributed, regained. Fortunes
were engulfed in this monster play, at the end of which the Nabob, who
had started it to forget his terrors in the hazards of chance, after
singular alternations and runs of luck enough to turn the hair of a
beginner white, retired with winnings amounting to five hundred thousand
francs. On the boulevard the next day they said five millions, and
everybody cried out on the scandal, especially the _Messenger_,
three-quarters filled by an article against certain adventurers
tolerated in the clubs, and who cause the ruin of the most honourable
families.

Alas! what Jansoulet had won hardly represented enough to meet the first
Schwalbach bills.

During this wild play, of which Mora was, however, the involuntary
cause, and, as it were, the soul, his name was not once uttered. Neither
Cardailhac nor Jenkins put in an appearance. Monpavon had taken to his
bed, stricken more deeply than he wished it to be thought. Nobody had
any news.

“Is he dead?” Jansoulet said to himself as he left the club; and he felt
a desire to make a call to inquire before going home. It was no longer
hope that urged him, but that sort of morbid and nervous curiosity which
after a great fire leads the smitten unfortunate people, ruined and
homeless, back to the wreck of their dwellings.

Although it was still very early, and a pink mist of dawn hung in the
sky, the whole mansion stood open as if for a solemn departure. The
lamps still smoked over the fire-places, dust floated about the rooms.
The Nabob advanced amid an inexplicable solitude of desertion to the
first floor, where at last he heard a voice he knew, that of Cardailhac,
who was dictating names, and the scratching of pens over paper. The
clever stage-manager of the festivities in honour of the Bey was
organizing with the same ardour the funeral pomps of the Duc de Mora.
What activity! His excellency had died during the evening; when morning
came already ten thousand letters were being printed, and everybody
in the house who could hold a pen was busy with the writing of the
addresses. Without passing through these improvised offices, Jansoulet
reached the waiting-room, ordinarily so crowded, to-day with all its
arm-chairs empty. In the middle, on a table, lay the hat, cane, and
gloves of M. le Duc, always ready in case he should go out unexpectedly,
so as to save him even the trouble of giving an order. The objects that
we always wear keep about them something of ourselves. The curve of the
hat suggested that of the mustache; the light-coloured gloves were ready
to grasp the supple and strong Chinese cane; the total effect was one
of life and energy, as if the duke were about to appear, stretch out his
hand while talking, take up those things, and go out.

Oh, no. M. le Duc was not going out. Jansoulet had but to approach
the half-open door of the bed-chamber to see on the bed, raised three
steps--always the platform even after death--a rigid, haughty form, a
motionless and aged profile, metamorphosed by the beard’s growth of a
night, quite gray; near the sloping pillow, kneeling and burying her
head in the white drapery, was a woman, whose fair hair lay in rippled
disorder, ready to fall beneath the shears of eternal widowhood; then a
priest and a nun, gathered in this atmosphere of watch by the dead, in
which are mingled the fatigue of sleepless nights and the murmurs of
prayer.

The chamber in which so many ambitions had strengthened their wings, so
many hopes and disappointments had throbbed, was wholly given over
now to the peace of passing Death. Not a sound, not a sigh. Only,
notwithstanding the early hour, away yonder, towards the Pont de la
Concorde, a little clarinet, shrill and sharp, could be heard above
the rumbling of the first vehicles; but its exasperating mockery was
henceforth lost on him who lay there asleep, showing to the terrified
Nabob an image of his own destiny, chilled, discoloured, ready for the
tomb.

Others besides Jansoulet found that death-chamber lugubrious: the
windows wide open, the night and the wind entering freely from the
garden, making a strong draught; a human form on a table; the body,
which had just been embalmed; the hollow skull filled with a sponge,
the brain in a basin. The weight of this brain of a statesman was truly
extraordinary. It weighed--it weighed--the newspapers of the period
mentioned the figure. But who remembers it to-day?



THE FUNERAL

“Don’t weep, my fairy, you rob me of all my courage. Come, you will be a
great deal happier when you no longer have your terrible demon. You will
go back to Fontainebleau and look after your chickens. The ten thousand
francs from Brahim will help to get you settled down. And then, don’t be
afraid, once you are over there I shall send you money. Since this Bey
wants to have sculpture done by me, he will have to pay for it, as you
may imagine. I shall return rich, rich. Who knows? Perhaps a sultana.”

“Yes, you will be a sultana, but I--I shall be dead and I shall never
see you again.” And the good Crenmitz in despair huddled herself into a
corner of the cab so that she would not be seen weeping.

Felicia was leaving Paris. She was trying to escape the horrible
sadness, the sinister disgust into which Mora’s death had thrown her.
What a terrible blow for the proud girl! _Ennui_, pique, had thrown her
into this man’s arms; she had given him pride--modesty--all; and now
he had carried all away with him, leaving her tarnished for life, a
tearless widow, without mourning and without dignity. Two or three
visits to Saint-James Villa, a few evenings in the back of some box
at some small theatre, behind the curtain that shelters forbidden and
shameful pleasure, these were the only memories left to her by this
liaison of a fortnight, this loveless intrigue wherein her pride had not
found even the satisfaction of the commotion caused by a big scandal.
The useless and indelible stain, the stupid fall of a woman who does not
know how to walk and who is embarrassed in her rising by the ironical
pity of the passers-by.

For a moment she thought of suicide, then the reflection that it would
be set down to a broken heart arrested her. She saw in a glance the
sentimental compassion of the drawing-rooms, the foolish figure that her
sham passion would cut among the innumberable love affairs of the duke,
and the Parma violets scattered by the pretty Moessards of journalism
on her grave, dug so near the other. Travelling remained to her--one of
those journeys so distant that they take even one’s thoughts into a new
world. Unfortunately the money was wanting. Then she remembered that on
the morrow of her great success at the Exhibition, old Brahim Bey had
called to see her, to make her, in behalf of his master, magnificent
proposals for certain great works to be executed in Tunis. She had
said No at the time, without allowing herself to be tempted by Oriental
remuneration, a splendid hospitality, the finest court in the Bardo for
a studio, with its surrounding facades of stone in lacework carving. But
now she was quite willing. She had to make but a sign, the agreement
was immediately concluded, and after an exchange of telegrams, a hasty
packing and shutting up of the house, she set out for the railway
station as if for a week’s absence, astonished herself by her prompt
decision, flattered on all the adventurous and artistic sides of her
nature by the hope of a new life in an unknown country.

The Bey’s pleasure yacht was to await her at Genoa; and in anticipation,
closing her eyes in the cab which was taking her to the station, she
could see the white stone buildings of an Italian port embracing an
iridescent sea where the sunshine was already Eastern, where everything
sang, to the very swelling of the sails on the blue water. Paris, as it
happened, was muddy that day, uniformly gray, flooded by one of those
continuous rains of which it seems to have the special property, rains
that seem to have risen in clouds from its river, from its smoke, from
its monster’s breath, and to fall in torrents from its roofs, from
its spouts, from the innumerable windows of its garrets. Felicia
was impatient to get away from this gloomy Paris, and her feverish
impatience found fault with the cabmen who made slow progress with the
horses, two sorry creatures of the veritable cab-horse type, with an
inexplicable block of carriages and omnibuses crowded together in the
vicinity of the Pont de la Concorde.

“But go on, driver, go on, then.”

“I cannot, madame. It is the funeral procession.”

She put her head out of the window and drew it back again immediately,
terrified. A line of soldiers marching with reversed arms, a confusion
of caps and hats raised from the forehead at the passage of an endless
cortege. It was Mora’s funeral procession defiling past.

“Don’t stop here. Go round,” she cried to the cabman.

The vehicle turned about with difficulty, dragging itself regretfully
from the superb spectacle which Paris had been awaiting for four days;
it remounted the avenues, took the Rue Montaigne, and, with its slow
and surly little trot, came out at the Madeleine by the Boulevard
Malesherbes. Here the crowd was greater, more compact.

In the misty rain, the illuminated stained-glass windows of the church,
the dull echo of the funeral chants beneath the lavishly distributed
black hangings under which the very outline of the Greek temple was
lost, filled the whole square with a sense of the office in course of
celebration, while the greater part of the immense procession was still
squeezed up in the Rue Royale, and as far even as the bridges a long
black line connecting the dead man with that gate of the Legislative
Assembly through which he had so often passed. Beyond the Madeleine
the highway of the boulevard stretched away empty, and looking bigger
between two lines of soldiers with arms reversed, confining the curious
to the pavements black with people, all the shops closed, and the
balconies, in spite of the rain, overflowing with human beings all
leaning forward in the direction of the church, as if to see a mid-Lent
festival or the home-coming of victorious troops. Paris, hungry for the
spectacular, constructs it indifferently out of anything, civil war as
readily as the burial of a statesman.

It was necessary for the cab to retrace its course again and to make a
new circuit; and it is easy to imagine the bad temper of the driver and
his beasts, all three of them Parisian in soul and passions, at having
to deprive themselves of so fine a show. Then, as all the life of Paris
had been drawn into the great artery of the boulevard, there began
through the deserted and silent streets--a capricious and irregular
drive--the snail-like progress of a cab taken by the hour. First
touching the extreme points of the Faubourg Saint-Martin and the
Faubourg Saint-Denis, returning again towards the centre, and at the
conclusion of circuits and dodges finding always the same obstacle in
ambush, the same crowd, some fragment of the black defile perceived for
a moment at the branching of a street, unfolding itself in the rain to
the sound of muffled drums--a dull and heavy sound, like that of earth
falling on a coffin-lid.

What torture for Felicia! It was her weakness and her remorse crossing
Paris in this solemn pomp, this funeral train, this public mourning
reflected by the very clouds; and the proud girl revolted against this
affront done her by fate, and tried to escape from it to the back of
the carriage, where she remained exhausted with eyes closed, while old
Crenmitz, believing her nervousness to be grief, did her best to comfort
her, herself wept over their separation, and hiding also, left the
entire window of the cab to the big Algerian hound with his finely
modelled head scenting the wind, and his two paws resting in the
sash with an heraldic stiffness of pose. Finally, after a thousand
interminable windings, the cab suddenly came to a halt, jolted on again
with difficulty amid cries and abuse, then, tossed about, the luggage on
top threatening its equilibrium, it ended by coming to a full stop, held
prisoner, as it were, at anchor.

“_Bon Dieu!_ what a mass of people!” murmured the Crenmitz, terrified.

Felicia came out of her stupor.

“Where are we?”

Under a colourless, smoky sky, blotted out by a fine network of rain and
stretched like gauze over everything, there lay an immense space filled
by an ocean of humanity surging from all the streets that led to it,
and motionless around a lofty column of bronze, which dominated this sea
like the gigantic mast of a sunken vessel. Cavalry in squadrons,
with swords drawn, guns in batteries stood at intervals along an open
passage, awaiting him who was to come by, perhaps in order to try to
retake him, to carry him off by force from the formidable enemy who was
bearing him away. Alas! all the cavalry charges, all the guns could be
of no avail here. The prisoner was departing, firmly guarded, defended
by a triple wall of hardwood, metal, and velvet, impervious to
grape-shot; and it was not from those soldiers that he could hope for
his deliverance.

“Get away from this. I will not stay here,” said Felicia, furious,
plucking at the wet box-coat of the driver, and seized by a wild dread
at the thought of the nightmare which was pursuing her, of _that_
which she could hear coming in a frightful rumbling, still distant,
but growing nearer from minute to minute. At the first movement of the
wheels, however, the cries and shouts broke out anew. Thinking that he
would be allowed to cross the square, the driver had penetrated with
great difficulty to the front ranks of the crowd; it now closed behind
him and refused to allow him to go forward. There they had to remain,
to endure those odours of common people and of alcohol, those curious
glances, already fired by the prospect of an exceptional spectacle. They
stared rudely at the beautiful traveller who was starting off with
so many trunks, and a dog of such size for her defender. Crenmitz was
horribly afraid; Felicia, for her part, could think of only one thing,
and that was that _he_ was about to pass before her eyes, that she would
be in the front rank to see him.

Suddenly a great shout “Here it comes!” Then silence fell on the whole
square at last at the end of three weary hours of waiting.

It came.

Felicia’s first impulse was to lower the blind on her side, on the side
past which the procession was about to pass. But at the rolling of the
drums close at hand, seized by the nervous wrath at her inability to
escape the obsession of the thing, perhaps also infected by the morbid
curiosity around her, she suddenly let the blind fly up, and her pale
and passionate little face showed itself at the window, supported by her
two clinched hands.

“There! since you will have it: I am watching you.”

As a funeral it was as fine a thing as can be seen, the supreme honours
rendered in all their vain splendour, as sonorous, as hollow as the
rhythmic accompaniment on the muffled drums. First the white surplices
of the clergy, amid the mourning drapery of the first five carriages;
next, drawn by six black horses, veritable horses of Erebus, there
advanced the funeral car, all beplumed, fringed and embroidered in
silver, with big tears, heraldic coronets surmounting gigantic M’s,
prophetic initials which seemed those of Death himself, _La Mort_ made
a duchess decorated with the eight waving plumes. So many canopies and
massive hangings hid the vulgar body of the hearse, as it trembled and
quivered at each step from top to bottom as though crushed beneath the
majesty of its dead burden. On the coffin, the sword, the coat, the
embroidered hat, parade undress--which had never been worn--shone with
gold and mother-of-pearl in the darkened little tent formed by the
hangings and among the bright tints of fresh flowers telling of spring
in spite of the sullenness of the sky. At a distance of ten paces came
the household servants of the duke; then, behind, in majestic isolation,
the cloaked officer bearing the emblems of honour--a veritable display
of all the orders of the whole world--crosses, multicoloured ribbons,
which covered to overflowing the cushion of black velvet with silver
fringe.

The master of ceremonies came next, in front of the representatives of
the Legislative Assembly--a dozen deputies chosen by lot, among them
the tall figure of the Nabob, wearing the official costume for the first
time, as if ironical Fortune had desired to give to the representative
on probation a foretaste of all parliamentary joys. The friends of the
dead man, who followed, formed a rather small group, singularly well
chosen to exhibit in its crudity the superficiality and the void of that
existence of a great personage reduced to the intimacy of a theatrical
manager thrice bankrupt, of a picture-dealer grown wealthy through
usuary, of a nobleman of tarnished reputation, and of a few men about
town without distinction. Up to this point everybody was walking on foot
and bareheaded; among the parliamentary representatives there were only
a few black skull-caps, which had been put on timidly as they approached
the populous districts. After them the carriages began.

At the death of a great warrior it is the custom for the funeral convoy
to be followed by the favourite horse of the hero, his battle charger,
regulating to the slow step of the procession that dancing step excited
by the smell of powder and the pageantry of standards. In this case,
Mora’s great brougham, that “C-spring” which used to bear him to
fashionable or political gatherings, took the place of that companion
in victory, its panels draped with black, its lamps veiled in long
streamers of light crape, floating to the ground with undulating
feminine grace. These veiled lamps constituted a new fashion for
funerals--the supreme “chic” of mourning; and it well became this dandy
to give a last lesson in elegance to the Parisians, who flocked to his
obsequies as to a “Longchamps” of death.

Three more masters of ceremony; then came the impassive official
procession, always the same for marriages, deaths, baptisms, openings
of Parliament, or receptions of sovereigns, the interminable cortege of
glittering carriages, with large windows and showy liveries bedizened
with gilt, which passed through the midst of the dazzled people, to
whom they recalled fairy-tales, Cinderella chariots, while evoking those
“Oh’s!” of admiration that mount and die away with the rockets on the
evenings of firework displays. And in the crowd there was always to be
found some good-natured policeman, some learned little grocer sauntering
round on the lookout for public ceremonies, ready to name in a loud
voice all the people in the carriages, as they defiled past, with their
regulation escorts of dragoons, cuirassiers, or Paris guards.

First the representatives of the Emperor, the Empress and all the
Imperial family; after these, in the hierarchic order, cunningly
elaborated, and the least infraction of which might have been the cause
of grave conflicts between the various departments of the State--the
members of the Privy Council, the Marshals, the Admirals, the High
Chancellor of the Legion of Honour; then the Senate, the Legislative
Assembly, the Council of State, the whole organization of the law and of
the university, the costumes, the ermine, the headgear of which took
you back to the days of old Paris--an air of something stately and
antiquated, out of date in our sceptical epoch of the workman’s blouse
and the dress-coat.

Felicia, to avoid her thoughts, voluntarily fixed her eyes upon this
monotonous defile, exasperating in its length; and little by little a
torpor stole over her, as if on a rainy day she had been turning over
the leaves of an album of engravings, a history of official costumes
from the most remote times down to our own day. All these people, seen
in profile, still and upright, behind the large glass panes of the
carriage windows, had indeed the appearance of personages in coloured
plates, sitting well forward on the edge of the seats in order that
the spectators should miss nothing of their golden embroideries, their
palm-leaves, their galloons, their braids--puppets given over to the
curiosity of the crowd--and exposing themselves to it with an air of
indifference and detachment.

Indifference! That was the most special characteristic of this funeral.
It was to be felt everywhere, on people’s faces and in their hearts, as
well among these functionaries of whom the greater part had only known
the duke by sight, as in the ranks on foot between his hearse and his
brougham, his closest friends, or those who had been in daily attendance
upon him. The fat minister, Vice-President of the Council, seemed
indifferent, and even glad, as he held in his powerful fist the strings
of the pall and seemed to draw it forward, in more haste than the horses
and the hearse to conduct to his six feet of earth the enemy of twenty
years’ standing, the eternal rival, the obstacle to all his ambitions.
The other three dignitaries did not advance with the same vigour, and
the long cords floated loosely in their weary or careless hands with
significant slackness. The priests were indifferent by profession.
Indifferent were the servants of his household, whom he never called
anything but “_chose_,” and whom he treated really like “things.”
 Indifferent was M. Louis, for whom it was the last day of servitude, a
slave become emancipated, rich enough to enjoy his ransom. Even among
the intimate friends of the dead man this glacial cold had penetrated.
Yet some of them had been deeply attached to him. But Cardailhac was too
busy superintending the order and the progress of the procession to give
way to the least emotion, which would, besides, have been foreign to his
nature. Old Monpavon, stricken to the heart, would have considered the
least bending of his linen cuirass and of his tall figure a piece of
deplorably bad taste, totally unworthy of his illustrious friend. His
eyes remained as dry and glittering as ever, since the undertakers
provide the tears for great mournings, embroidered in silver on black
cloth. Some one was weeping, however, away yonder among the members of
the committee; but he was expending his compassion very naively upon
himself. Poor Nabob! softened by that music and splendour, it seemed to
him that he was burying all his ambitions of glory and dignity. And his
was but one more variety of indifference.

Among the public, the enjoyment of a fine spectacle, the pleasure of
turning a week-day into a Sunday, dominated every other sentiment.
Along the line of the boulevards, the spectators on the balconies almost
seemed disposed to applaud; here, in the populous districts, irreverence
was still more frankly manifest. Jests, blackguardly wit at the expense
of the dead man and his doings, known to all Paris, laughter raised by
the tall hats of the rabbis, the pass-word of the council experts, all
were heard in the air between two rolls of the drum. Poverty, forced
labour, with its feet in the wet, wearing its blouse, its apron, its
cap raised from habit, with sneering chuckle watched this inhabitant of
another sphere pass by, this brilliant duke, severed now from all his
honours, who perhaps while living had never paid a visit to that end of
the town. But there it is. To arrive up yonder, where everybody has to
go, the common route must be taken, the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, the Rue
de la Roquette as far as that great gate where the _octroi_ is collected
and the infinite begins. And well! it does one good to see that lordly
persons like Mora, dukes, ministers, follow the same road towards
the same destination. This equality in death consoles for many of the
injustices of life. To-morrow bread will seem less dear, wine better,
the workman’s tool less heavy, when he will be able to say to himself
as he rises in the morning, “That old Mora, he has come to it like the
rest!”

The procession still went on, more fatiguing even than lugubrious. Now
it consisted of choral societies, deputations from the army and the
navy, officers of all descriptions, pressing on in a troop in advance
of a long file of empty vehicles--mourning-coaches, private
carriages--present for reasons of etiquette. Then the troops followed
in their turn, and into the sordid suburb, that long Rue de la Roquette,
already swarming with people as far as eye could reach, there plunged
a whole army, foot-soldiers, dragoons, lancers, carabineers, heavy guns
with their great mouths in the air, ready to bark, making pavement
and windows tremble, but not able to drown the rolling of the drums--a
sinister and savage rolling which suggested to Felicia’s imagination
some funeral of an African chief, at which thousands of sacrificed
victims accompany the soul of a prince so that it shall not pass alone
into the kingdom of spirits, and made her fancy that perhaps this
pompous and interminable retinue was about to descend and disappear in
the superhuman grave large enough to receive the whole of it.

“_Now and in the hour of our death. Amen_,” Crenmitz murmured, while the
cab swayed from side to side in the lighted square, and high in space
the golden statue of Liberty seemed to be taking a magic flight; and the
old dancer’s prayer was perhaps the one note of sincere feeling called
forth on the immense line of the funeral procession.

All the speeches are over; three long speeches as icy as the vault
into which the dead man has just descended, three official declamations
which, above all, have provided the orators with an opportunity of
giving loud voice to their own devotion to the interests of the dynasty.
Fifteen times the guns have roused the many echoes of the cemetery,
shaken the wreaths of jet and everlasting flowers--the light _ex-voto_
offerings suspended at the corners of the monuments--and while a reddish
mist floats and rolls with a smell of gunpowder across the city of the
dead, ascends and mingles slowly with the smoke of factories in the
plebeian district, the innumerable assembly disperses also, scattered
through the steep streets, down the lofty steps all white among the
foliage, with a confused murmur, a rippling as of waves over rocks.
Purple robes, black robes, blue and green coats, shoulder-knots of gold,
slender swords, of whose safety the wearers assure themselves with
their hands as they walk, all hasten to regain their carriages. People
exchange low bows, discreet smiles, while the mourning-coaches tear down
the carriage-ways at a gallop, revealing long lines of black coachmen,
with backs bent, hats tilted forward, the box-coats flying in the wind
made by their rapid motion.

The general impression is one of thankfulness to have reached the end
of a long and fatiguing performance, a legitimate eagerness to quit the
administrative harness and ceremonial costumes, to unbuckle sashes, to
loosen stand-up collars and neckbands, to slacken the tension of facial
muscles, which had been subject to long restraint.

Heavy and short, dragging along his swollen legs with difficulty,
Hemerlingue was hastening towards the exit, declining the offers which
were made to him of a seat in this or that carriage, since he knew well
that his own alone was of size adequate to cope with his proportions.

“Baron, Baron, this way. There is room for you.”

“No, thank you. I want to walk to straighten my legs.”

And to avoid these invitations, which were beginning to embarrass him,
he took an almost deserted pathway, one that proved too deserted indeed,
for hardly had he taken a step along it before he regretted it. Ever
since entering the cemetery he had had but one preoccupation--the fear
of finding himself face to face with Jansoulet, whose violence of temper
he knew, and who might well forget the sacredness of the place, and even
in Pere Lachaise renew the scandal of the Rue Royale. Two or three times
during the ceremony he had seen the great head of his old chum emerge
from among the crowd of insignificant types which largely composed the
company and move in his direction, as though seeking him and desiring
a meeting. Down there, in the main road, there would, at any rate,
have been people about in case of trouble, while here--Brr--It was this
anxiety that made him quicken his short step, his panting breaths, but
in vain. As he looked round, in his fear of being followed, the strong,
erect shoulders of the Nabob appeared at the entrance to the path.
Impossible for the big man to slip away through one of the narrow
passages left between the tombs, which are placed so close together that
there is not even space to kneel. The damp, rich soil slipped and gave
way beneath his feet. He decided to walk on with an air of indifference,
hoping that perhaps the other might not recognise him. But a hoarse and
powerful voice cried behind him:

“Lazarus!”

His name--the name of this rich man--was Lazarus. He made no reply, but
tried to catch up a group of officers who were moving on, very far in
front of him.

“Lazarus! Oh, Lazarus!”

Just as in old times on the quay of Marseilles. Under the influence of
old habit he was tempted to stop; then the remembrance of his infamies,
of all the ill he had done the Nabob, that he was still occupied in
doing him, came back to him suddenly with a horrible fear so strong
that it amounted to a paroxysm, when an iron hand laid hold of him
unceremoniously. A sweat of terror broke out over all his flabby limbs,
his face became still more yellow, his eyes blinked in anticipation of
the formidable blow which he expected to come, while his fat arms were
instinctively raised to ward it off.

“Oh, don’t be afraid. I wish you no harm,” said Jansoulet sadly. “Only I
have come to beg you to do no more to me.”

He stooped to breathe. The banker, bewildered and frightened, opened
wide his round owl’s eyes in presence of this suffocating emotion.

“Listen, Lazarus; it is you who are the stronger in this war we
have been waging on each other for so long. I am down; yes, down. My
shoulders have touched the ground. Now, be generous; spare your old
chum. Give me quarter; come, give me quarter.”

This southerner was trembling, defeated and softened by the emotional
display of the funeral ceremony. Hemerlingue, as he stood facing him,
was hardly more courageous. The gloomy music, the open grave, the
speeches, the cannonade of that lofty philosophy of inevitable death,
all these things had worked on the feelings of this fat baron. The voice
of his old comrade completed the awakening of whatever there remained of
human in that packet of gelatine.

His old chum! It was the first time for ten years--since their
quarrel--that he had seen him so near. How many things were recalled to
him by those sun-tanned features, those broad shoulders, so ill adapted
for the wearing of embroidered coats! The thin woollen rug full of
holes, in which they used to wrap themselves both to sleep on the bridge
of the _Sinai_, the food shared in brotherly fashion, the wanderings
through the burned-up country round Marseilles, where they used to steal
big onions and eat them raw by the side of some ditch, the dreams, the
schemings, the pence put into a common fund, and, when fortune had begun
to smile on them, the fun they had had together, those excellent quiet
little suppers over which they would tell each other everything, with
their elbows on the table.

How can one ever reach the point of seriously quarrelling when one knows
the other so well, when they have lived together like two twins at the
breast of the lean and strong nurse, Poverty, sharing her sour milk and
her rough caresses! These thoughts passed through Hemerlingue’s mind
like a flash of lightning. Almost instinctively he let his heavy hand
fall into the one which the Nabob was holding out to him. Something of
the primitive animal was roused in them, something stronger than their
enmity, and these two men, each of whom for ten years had been trying
to bring the other to ruin and disgrace, fell to talking without any
reserve.

Generally, between friends newly met, after the first effusions are
over, a silence comes as if they had no more to tell each other, while
it is in reality the abundance of things, their precipitate rush, that
prevents them from finding utterance. The two chums had touched that
condition; but Jansoulet kept a tight grasp on the banker’s arm, fearing
to see him escape and resist the kindly impulse he had just roused.

“You are not in a hurry, are you? We can take a little walk, if you
like. It has stopped raining, the air is pleasant; one feels twenty
years younger.”

“Yes, it is pleasant,” said Hemerlingue; “only I cannot walk for long;
my legs are heavy.”

“True, your poor legs. See, there is a bench over there. Let us go and
sit down. Lean on me, old friend.”

And the Nabob, with brotherly aid, led him to one of those benches
dotted here and there among the tombs, on which those inconsolable
mourners rest who make the cemetery their usual walk and abode. He
settled him in his seat, gazed upon him tenderly, pitied him for his
infirmity, and, following what was quite a natural channel in such a
spot, they came to talking of their health, of the old age that was
approaching. This one was dropsical, the other subject to apoplectic
fits. Both were in the habit of dosing themselves with the Jenkins
pearls, a dangerous remedy--witness Mora, so quickly carried off.

“My poor duke!” said Jansoulet.

“A great loss to the country,” remarked the banker with an air of
conviction.

And the Nabob added naively:

“For me above all, for me; for, if he had lived--Ah! what luck you have,
what luck you have!”

Fearing to have wounded him, he went on quickly:

“And then, too, you are clever, so very clever.”

The baron looked at him with a wink so droll, that his little black
eyelashes disappeared amid his yellow fat.

“No,” said he, “it is not I who am clever. It is Marie.”

“Marie?”

“Yes, the baroness. Since her baptism she has given up her name of
Yamina for that of Marie. She is a real sort of woman. She knows more
than I do myself about banking and Paris and business. It is she who
manages everything at home.”

“You are very fortunate,” sighed Jansoulet. His air of gloom told a long
story of qualities missing in Mlle. Afchin. Then, after a silence, the
baron resumed:

“She has a great grudge against you, Marie, you know. She will not be
pleased when she hears that we have been talking together.”

A frown passed over his heavy brow, as though he were regretting their
reconciliation, at the thought of the scene which he would have with his
wife. Jansoulet stammered:

“I have done her no harm, however.”

“Come, come, neither of you has been very nice to her. Think of the
affront put upon her when we called after our marriage. Your wife
sending word to us that she was not in the habit of receiving quondam
slaves. As though our friendship ought not to have been stronger than a
prejudice. Women don’t forget things of that kind.”

“But no responsibility lay with me for that, old friend. You know how
proud those Afchins are.”

He was not proud himself, poor man. His mien was so woebegone, so
supplicating under his friend’s frown, that he moved him to pity.
Decidedly, the cemetery had softened the baron.

“Listen, Bernard; there is only one thing that counts. If you want us to
be friends, as formerly, and this reconciliation not to be wasted, you
will have to get my wife to consent. Without her nothing can be done.
When Mlle. Afchin shut her door in our faces you let her have her way,
did you not? In the same way, on my side, if Marie said to me when I go
home, ‘I will not let you be friends,’ all my protestations now would
not prevent me from throwing you overboard. For there is no such thing
as friendship in face of such difficulties. Peace at one’s fireside is
better than everything else.”

“But in that case, what is to be done?” asked the Nabob, frightened.

“I am going to tell you. The baroness is at home every Saturday. Come
with your wife and pay her a visit the day after to-morrow. You will
find the best society in Paris at the house. The past shall not be
mentioned. The ladies will gossip together of chiffons and frocks, talk
of the things women do talk about. And then the whole matter will be
settled. We shall become friends as we used to be; and since you are in
difficulties, well, we will find some way of getting you out of them.”

“Do you think so? The fact is I am in terrible straits,” said the other,
shaking his head.

Hemerlingue’s cunning eyes disappeared again beneath the folds of his
cheeks like two flies in butter.

“Well, yes; I have played a strong game. But you don’t lack shrewdness,
all the same. The loan of the fifteen millions to the Bey--it was a good
stroke, that. Ah! you are bold enough; only you hold your cards badly.
One can see your game.”

Till now they had been talking in low tones, impressed by the silence
of the great necropolis; but little by little human interests asserted
themselves in a louder key even there where their nothingness lay
exposed on all those flat stones covered with dates and figures, as if
death was only an affair of time and calculation--the desired solution
of a problem.

Hemerlingue enjoyed the sight of his friend reduced to such humility,
and gave him advice on his affairs, with which he seemed to be fully
acquainted. According to him the Nabob could still get out of his
difficulties very well. Everything depended on the validation, on the
turning up of a card. The question was to make sure that it should be a
good one. But Jansoulet had no more confidence. In losing Mora, he had
lost everything.

“You lose Mora, but you regain me; so things are equalized,” said the
banker tranquilly.

“No, do you see it is impossible. It is too late. Le Merquier has
completed the report. It is a dreadful one, I believe.”

“Well, if he has completed his report, he will have to prepare another.”

“How is that to be done?”

The baron looked at him with surprise.

“Ah, you are losing your senses. Why, by paying him a hundred, two
hundred, three hundred thousand francs, if necessary.

“How can you think of such a thing? Le Merquier, that man of integrity!
‘My conscience,’ as they call him.”

This time Hemerlingue’s laugh burst forth with an extraordinary
heartiness, and must have reached the inmost recesses of the
neighbouring mausoleums, little accustomed to such disrespect.

“‘My conscience’ a man of integrity! Ah! you amuse me. You don’t know,
then, that he is in my pay, conscience and all, and that--” He paused,
and looked behind him, somewhat startled by a sound which he had heard.
“Listen.”

It was the echo of his laughter sent back to them from the depths of a
vault, as if the idea of Le Merquier having a conscience moved even the
dead to mirth.

“Suppose we walk a little,” said he, “it begins to be chilly on this
bench.”

Then, as they walked among the tombs, he went on to explain to him with
a certain pedantic fatuity, that in France bribes played as important a
part as in the East. Only one had to be a little more delicate about
it here. You veiled your bribes. “Thus, take this Le Merquier, for
instance. Instead of offering him your money openly, in a big purse, as
you would to a local pasha, you go about it indirectly. The man is
fond of pictures. He is constantly having dealings with Schwalbach, who
employs him as a decoy for his Catholic clients. Well, you offer him
some picture--a souvenir to hang on a panel in his study. The whole
point is to make the price quite clear. But you will see. I will take
you round to call on him myself. I will show you how the thing is
worked.”

And delighted at the amazement of the Nabob, who, to flatter him,
exaggerated his surprise still further, and opened his eyes wide with an
air of admiration, the banker enlarged the scope of his lesson--made of
it a veritable course of Parisian and worldly philosophy.

“See, old comrade, what one has to look after in Paris, above everything
else, is the keeping up of appearances. They are the only things that
count--appearances! Now you have not sufficient care for them. You go
about town, your waistcoat unbuttoned, a good-humoured fellow, talking
of your affairs, just what you are by nature. You stroll around just
as you would in the bazaars of Tunis. That is how you have come to get
bowled over, my good Bernard.”

He paused to take breath, feeling quite exhausted. In an hour he had
walked farther and spoken more than he was accustomed to do in the
course of a whole year. They noticed, as they stopped, that their walk
and conversation had led them back in the direction of Mora’s grave,
which was situated just above a little exposed plateau, whence looking
over a thousand closely packed roofs, they could see Montmartre, the
Buttes Chaumont, their rounded outline in the distance looking like high
waves. In the hollows lights were already beginning to twinkle, like
ships’ lanterns, through the violet mists that were rising; chimneys
seemed to leap upward like masts, or steamer funnels discharging their
smoke. Those three undulations, with the tide of Pere Lachaise, were
clearly suggestive of waves of the sea, following each other at equal
intervals. The sky was bright, as often happens in the evening of a
rainy day, an immense sky, shaded with tints of dawn, against which
the family tomb of Mora exhibited in relief four allegorical figures,
imploring, meditative, thoughtful, whose attitudes were made more
imposing by the dying light. Of the speeches, of the official
condolences, nothing remained. The soil trodden down all around, masons
at work washing the dirt from the plaster threshold, were all that was
left to recall the recent burial.

Suddenly the door of the ducal tomb shut with a clash of all its
metallic weight. Thenceforth the late Minister of State was to remain
alone, utterly alone, in the shadow of its night, deeper than that which
then was creeping up from the bottom of the garden, invading the winding
paths, the stone stairways, the bases of the columns, pyramids and tombs
of every kind, whose summits were reached more slowly by the shroud.
Navvies, all white with that chalky whiteness of dried bones, were
passing by, carrying their tools and wallets. Furtive mourners, dragging
themselves away regretfully from tears and prayer, glided along the
margins of the clumps of trees, seeming to skirt them as with the silent
flight of night-birds, while from the extremities of Pere Lachaise
voices rose--melancholy calls announcing the closing time. The day of
the cemetery was at its end. The city of the dead, handed over once
more to Nature, was becoming an immense wood with open spaces marked by
crosses. Down in a valley, the window-panes of a custodian’s house were
lighted up. A shudder seemed to run through the air, losing itself in
murmurings along the dim paths.

“Let us go,” the two old comrades said to each other, gradually coming
to feel the impression of that twilight, which seemed colder than
elsewhere; but before moving off, Hemerlingue, pursuing his train of
thought, pointed to the monument winged at the four corners by the
draperies and the outstretched hands of its sculptured figures.

“Look here,” said he. “That was the man who understood the art of
keeping up appearances.”

Jansoulet took his arm to aid him in the descent.

“Ah, yes, he was clever. But you are the most clever of all,” he
answered with his terrible Gascon intonation.

Hemerlingue made no protest.

“It is to my wife that I owe it. So I strongly recommend you to make
your peace with her, because unless you do----”

“Oh, don’t be afraid. We shall come on Saturday. But you will take me to
see Le Merquier.”

And while the two silhouettes, the one tall and square, the other
massive and short, were passing out of sight among the twinings of the
great labyrinth, while the voice of Jansoulet guiding his friend, “This
way, old fellow--lean hard on my arm,” died away by insensible degrees,
a stray beam of the setting sun fell upon and illuminated behind them
in the little plateau, an expressive and colossal bust, with great brow
beneath long swept-back hair, and powerful and ironic lip--the bust of
Balzac watching them.



LA BARONNE HEMERLINGUE

Just at the end of the long vault, under which were the offices of
Hemerlingue and Sons, the black tunnel which Joyeuse had for ten years
adorned and illuminated with his dreams, a monumental staircase with a
wrought-iron balustrade, a staircase of mediaeval time, led towards the
left to the reception rooms of the baroness, which looked out on the
court-yard just above the cashier’s office, so that in summer, when the
windows were open, the ring of the gold, the crash of the piles of
money scattered on the counters, softened a little by the rich and lofty
hangings at the windows, made a mercantile accompaniment to the buzzing
conversation of fashionable Catholicism.

The entrance struck at once the note of this house, as of her who did
the honours of it. A mixture of a vague scent of the sacristy, with
the excitement of the Bourse, and the most refined fashion, these
heterogeneous elements, met and crossed each other’s path there, but
remained as much apart as the noble faubourg, under whose patronage
the striking conversion of the Moslem had taken place, was from the
financial quarters where Hemerlingue had his life and his friends.
The Levantine colony--pretty numerous in Paris--was composed in great
measure of German Jews, bankers or brokers who had made colossal
fortunes in the East, and still did business here, not to lose the
habit. The colony showed itself regularly on the baroness’s visiting
day. Tunisians on a visit to Paris never failed to call on the wife of
the great banker; and old Colonel Brahim, _charge d’affaires_ of
the Bey, with his flabby mouth and bloodshot eyes, had his nap every
Saturday in the corner of the same divan.

“One seems to smell scorching in your drawing-room, my child,” said the
old Princess de Dions smilingly to the newly named Marie, whom M. Le
Merquier and she had led to the font. But the presence of all these
heretics--Jews, Moslems, and even renegades--of these great over-dressed
blotched women, loaded with gold and ornaments, veritable bundles
of clothes, did not hinder the Faubourg Saint-Germain from visiting,
surrounding, and looking after the young convert, the plaything of these
noble ladies, a very obedient puppet, whom they showed, whom they took
out, and whose evangelical simplicities, so piquant by contrast with
her past, they quoted everywhere. Perhaps deep down in the heart of her
amiable patronesses a hope lay of meeting in this circle of returned
Orientals some new subject for conversion, an occasion for filling the
aristocratic Chapel of Missions again with the touching spectacle of one
of those adult baptisms which carry one back to the first days of the
Faith, far away on the banks of the Jordan; baptisms soon to be followed
by a first communion, a confirmation, when baptismal vows are renewed;
occasions when a godmother may accompany her godchild, guide the young
soul, share in the naive transports of a newly awakened belief, and
may also display a choice of toilettes, delicately graduated to the
importance of the sentiment of the ceremony. But not every day does it
happen that one of the leaders of finance brings to Paris an Armenian
slave as his wife.

A slave! That was the blot in the past of this woman from the East,
bought in the bazaar of Adrianople for the Emperor of Morocco, then
sold, when he died and his harem was dispersed, to the young Bey Ahmed.
Hemerlingue had married her when she passed from this new seraglio,
but she could not be received at Tunis, where no woman--Moor, Turk or
European--would consent to treat a former slave as an equal, on account
of a prejudice like that which separates the creoles from the best
disguised quadroons. Even in Paris the Hemerlingues found this
invincible prejudice among the small foreign colonies, constituted,
as they were, of little circles full of susceptibilities and local
traditions. Yamina thus passed two or three years in a complete solitude
whose leisure and spiteful feelings she well knew how to utilize,
for she was an ambitious woman endowed with extraordinary will and
persistence. She learned French thoroughly, said farewell to her
embroidered vests and pantaloons of red silk, accustomed her figure and
her walk to European toilettes, to the inconvenience of long dresses,
and then, one night at the opera, showed the astonished Parisians
the spectacle, a little uncivilized still, but delicate, elegant, and
original, of a Mohammedan in a costume of _Leonard’s_.

The sacrifice of her religion soon followed that of her costume. Mme.
Hemerlingue had long abandoned the practices of Mohammedan religion,
when M. le Merquier, their friend and mentor in Paris, showed them that
the baroness’s public conversion would open to her the doors of
that section of the Parisian world whose access became more and
more difficult as society became more democratic. Once the Faubourg
Saint-Germain was conquered, all the others would follow. And, in fact,
when, after the announcement of the baptism, they learned that the
greatest ladies in France could be seen at the Baroness Hemerlingue’s
Saturdays, Mmes. Gugenheim, Furenberg, Caraiscaki, Maurice Trott--all
wives of millionaires celebrated on the markets of Tunis--gave up their
prejudices and begged to be invited to the former slave’s receptions.
Mme. Jansoulet alone--newly arrived with a stock of cumbersome Oriental
ideas in her mind, like her ostrich eggs, her narghile pipe, and the
Tunisian _bric-a-brac_ in her rooms--protested against what she called
an impropriety, a cowardice, and declared that she would never set her
foot at _her_ house. Soon a little retrograde movement was felt round
the Gugenheims, the Caraiscaki, and the other people, as happens at
Paris every time when some irregular position, endeavouring to establish
itself, brings on regrets and defections. They had gone too far to draw
back, but they resolved to make the value of their good-will, of their
sacrificed prejudices, felt, and the Baroness Marie well understood the
shade of meaning in the protecting tone of the Levantines, treating her
as “My dear child,” “My dear good girl,” with an almost contemptuous
pride. Thenceforward her hatred of the Jansoulets knew no bounds--the
complicated ferocious hatred of the seraglio, with strangling and the
sack at the end, perhaps more difficult to arrive at in Paris than
on the banks of the lake of El Bahaira, but for which she had already
prepared the stout sack and the cord.

One can imagine, knowing all this, what was the surprise and agitation
of this corner of exotic society, when the news spread, not only that
the great Afchin--as these ladies called her--had consented to see the
baroness, but that she would pay her first visit on her next Saturday.
Neither the Fuernbergs nor the Trotts would wish to miss such an
occasion. On her side, the baroness did everything in her power to give
the utmost brilliancy to this solemn reparation. She wrote, she visited,
and succeeded so well, that in spite of the lateness of the season, Mme.
Jansoulet, on arriving at four o’clock at the Faubourg Saint-Honore,
would have seen drawn up before the great arched doorway, side by side
with the discreet russet livery of the Princess de Dion, and of
many authentic _blasons_, the pretentious and fictitious arms, the
multicoloured wheels of a crowd of plutocrat equipages, and the tall
powdered lackeys of the Caraiscaki.

Above, in the reception rooms, was another strange and resplendent
crowd. In the first two rooms there was a going and coming, a continual
passage of rustling silks up to the boudoir where the baroness sat,
sharing her attentions and cajoleries between two very distinct camps.
On one side were dark toilettes, modest in appearance, whose refinement
was appreciable only to observant eyes; on the other, a wild burst of
vivid colour, opulent figures, rich diamonds, floating scarfs, exotic
fashions, in which one felt a regret for a warmer climate, and more
luxurious life. Here were sharp taps with the fan, discreet whispers
from the few men present, some of the _bien pensant_ youth, silent,
immovable, sucking the handles of their canes, two or three figures,
upright behind the broad backs of their wives, speaking with their heads
bent forward, as if they were offering contraband goods for sale; and
in a corner the fine patriarchal beard and violet cassock of an orthodox
Armenian bishop.

The baroness, in attempting to harmonize these fashionable diversities,
to keep her rooms full until the famous interview, moved about
continually, took part in ten different conversations, raising
her harmonious and velvety voice to the twittering diapason which
distinguishes Oriental women, caressing and coaxing, the mind supple
as the body, touching on all subjects, and mixing in the requisite
proportions fashion and charity sermons, theatres and bazaars, the
dressmaker and the confessor. The mistress of the house united a great
personal charm with this acquired science--a science visible even in her
black and very simple dress, which brought out her nun-like pallor, her
houri-like eyes, her shining and plaited hair drawn back from a narrow,
child-like forehead, a forehead of which the small mouth accentuated
the mystery, hiding from the inquisitive the former _favourite’s_ whole
varied past, she who had no age, who knew not herself the date of her
birth, and never remembered to have been a child.

Evidently if the absolute power of evil--rare indeed among women,
influenced as they are by their impressionable physical nature by so
many different currents--could take possession of a soul, it would be
in that of this slave, moulded by basenesses, revolted but patient, and
complete mistress of herself, like all those whom the habit of veiling
the eyes has accustomed to lie safely and unscrupulously.

At this moment no one could have suspected the anguish she suffered;
to see her kneeling before the princess, an old, good, straightforward
soul, of whom the Fuernberg was always saying, “Call that a
princess--that!”

“I beg of you, godmamma, don’t go away yet.”

She surrounded her with all sorts of cajoleries, of graces, of little
airs, without telling her, to be sure, that she wanted to keep her till
the arrival of the Jansoulets, to add to her triumph.

“But,” said the princess, pointing out to her the majestic Armenian,
silent and grave, his tasselled hat on his knees, “I must take this poor
bishop to the _Grand Saint-Christophe_, to buy some medals. He would
never get on without me.”

“No, no, I wish--you must--a few minutes more.” And the baroness threw a
furtive look on the ancient and sumptuous clock in a corner of the room.

Five o’clock already, and the great Afchin not arrived. The Levantines
began to laugh behind their fans. Happily tea was just being served,
also Spanish wines, and a crowd of delicious Turkish cakes which were
only to be had in that house, whose receipts, brought away with her by
the favourite, had been preserved in the harem, like some secrets of
confectionery on our convents. That made a diversion. Hemerlingue, who
on Saturdays came out of his office from time to time to make his bow to
the ladies, was drinking a glass of Madeira near the little table while
talking to Maurice Trott, once the dresser of Said-Pasha, when his wife
approached him, gently and quietly. He knew what anger this impenetrable
calm must cover, and asked her, in a low tone, timidly:

“No one?”

“No one. You see to what an insult you expose me.”

She smiled, her eyes half closed, taking with the end of her nail a
crumb of cake from his long black whiskers, but her little transparent
nostrils trembled with a terrible eloquence.

“Oh, she will come,” said the banker, his mouth full. “I am sure she
will come.”

The noise of dresses, of a train rustling in the next room made the
baroness turn quickly. But, to the great joy of the “bundles,” looking
on from their corners, it was not the lady they were expecting.

This tall, elegant blonde, with worn features and irreproachable
toilette, was not like Mlle. Afchin. She was worthy in every way to bear
a name as celebrated as that of Dr. Jenkins. In the last two or three
months the beautiful Mme. Jenkins had greatly changed, become much
older. In the life of a woman who has long remained young there comes a
time when the years, which have passed over her head without leaving a
wrinkle, trace their passage all at once brutally in indelible marks.
People no longer say, on seeing her, “How beautiful she is!” but “How
beautiful she must have been!” And this cruel way of speaking in the
past, of throwing back to a distant period that which was but yesterday
a visible fact, marks a beginning of old age and of retirement, a change
of all her triumphs into memories. Was it the disappointment of
seeing the doctor’s wife arrive, instead of Mme. Jansoulet, or did the
discredit which the Duke de Mora’s death had thrown on the fashionable
physician fall on her who bore his name? There was a little of each
of these reasons, and perhaps of another, in the cool greeting of the
baroness. A slight greeting on the ends of her lips, some hurried words,
and she returned to the noble battalion nibbling vigorously away. The
room had become animated under the effects of wine. People no longer
whispered; they talked. The lamps brought in added a new brilliance to
the gathering, but announced that it was near its close; some indeed,
not interested in the great event, having already taken their leave. And
still the Jansoulets did not come.

All at once a heavy, hurried step. The Nabob appeared, alone, buttoned
up in his black coat, correctly dressed, but with his face upset, his
eyes haggard, still trembling from the terrible scene which he had left.

She would not come.

In the morning he had told the maids to dress madame for three o’clock,
as he did each time he took out the Levantine with him, when it was
necessary to move this indolent person, who, not being able to accept
even any responsibility whatever, left others to think, decide, act for
her, going willingly where she was desired to go, once she was
started. And it was on this amiability that he counted to take her to
Hemerlingue’s. But when, after _dejeuner_, Jansoulet dressed, superb,
perspiring with the effort to put on gloves, asked if madame would soon
be ready, he was told that she was not going out. The matter was grave,
so grave, that putting on one side all the intermediaries of valets and
maids, which they made use of in their conjugal dialogues, he ran up the
stairs four steps at once like a gust of wind, and entered the draperied
rooms of the Levantine.

She was still in bed, dressed in that great open tunic of silk of
two colours, which the Moors call a _djebba_, and in a little cap
embroidered with gold, from which escaped her heavy long black hair, all
entangled round her moon-shaped face, flushed from her recent meal. The
sleeves of her _djebba_ pushed back showed two enormous shapeless arms,
loaded with bracelets, with long chains wandering through a heap of
little mirrors, of red beads, of scent-boxes, of microscopic pipes, of
cigarette cases--the childish toyshop collection of a Moorish woman at
her rising.

The room, filled with the heavy opium-scented smoke of Turkish tobacco,
was in similar disorder. Negresses went and came, slowly removing their
mistress’s coffee, the favourite gazelle was licking the dregs of a cup
which its delicate muzzle had overturned on the carpet, while seated at
the foot of the bed with a touching familiarity, the melancholy Cabassu
was reading aloud to madame a drama in verse which Cardailhac was
shortly going to produce. The Levantine was stupefied with this reading,
absolutely astounded.

“My dear,” said she to Jansoulet, in her thick Flemish accent, “I don’t
know what our manager is thinking of. I am just reading this _Revolt_,
which he is so mad about. But it is impossible. There is nothing
dramatic about it.”

“Don’t talk to me of the theatre,” said Jansoulet, furious, in spite of
his respect for the daughter of the Afchins. “What, you are not dressed
yet? Weren’t you told that we were going out?”

They had told her, but she had begun to read this stupid piece. And with
her sleepy air:

“We will go out to-morrow.”

“To-morrow! Impossible. We are expected to-day. A most important visit.”

“But where?”

He hesitated a second.

“To Hemerlingue’s.”

She raised her great eyes, thinking he was making game of her. Then he
told her of his meeting with the baron at the funeral of de Mora and the
understanding they had come to.

“Go there, if you like,” said she coldly. “But you little know me if you
believe that I, an Afchin, will ever set foot in that slave’s house.”

Cabassu, prudently seeing what was likely to happen, had fled into a
neighbouring room, carrying with him the five acts of _The Revolt_ under
his arm.

“Come,” said the Nabob to his wife, “I see that you do not know the
terrible position I am in. Listen.”

Without thinking of the maids or the negresses, with the sovereign
indifference of an Oriental for his household, he proceeded to picture
his great distress, his fortune sequestered over seas, his credit
destroyed over here, his whole career in suspense before the judgment
of the Chamber, the influence of the Hemerlingues on the judge-advocate,
and the necessity of the sacrifice at the moment of all personal feeling
to such important interests. He spoke hotly, tried to convince her, to
carry her away. But she merely answered him, “I shall not go,” as if it
were only a matter of some unimportant walk, a little too long for her.

He said trembling:

“See, now, it is not possible that you should say that. Think that my
fortune is at stake, the future of our children, the name you bear.
Everything is at stake in what you cannot refuse to do.”

He could have spoken thus for hours and been always met by the same
firm, unshakable obstinacy--an Afchin could not visit a slave.

“Well, madame,” said he violently, “this slave is worth more than you.
She has increased tenfold her husband’s wealth by her intelligence,
while you, on the contrary----”

For the first time in the twelve years of their married life Jansoulet
dared to hold up his head before his wife. Was he ashamed of this crime
of _lese-majeste_, or did he understand that such a remark would place
an impassable gulf between them? He changed his tone, knelt down before
the bed, with that cheerful tenderness when one persuades children to be
reasonable.

“My little Martha, I beg of you--get up, dress yourself. It is for your
own sake I ask it, for your comfort, for your own welfare. What would
become of you if, for a caprice, a stupid whim, we should become poor?”

But the word--poor--represented absolutely nothing to the Levantine. One
could speak of it before her, as of death before little children.
She was not moved by it, not knowing what it was. She was perfectly
determined to keep in bed in her _djebba_; and to show her decision, she
lighted a new cigarette at her old one just finished; and while the poor
Nabob surrounded his “dear little wife” with excuses, with prayers, with
supplications, promising her a diadem of pearls a hundred times more
beautiful than her own, if she would come, she watched the heavy smoke
rising to the painted ceiling, wrapping herself up in it as in an
imperturbable calm. At last, in face of this refusal, this silence, this
barrier of headstrong obstinacy, Jansoulet unbridled his wrath and rose
up to his full height:

“Come,” said he, “I wish it.”

He turned to the negresses:

“Dress your mistress at once.”

And boor as he was at the bottom, the son of a southern nail-maker
asserting itself in this crisis which moved him so deeply, he threw back
the coverlids with a brutal and contemptuous gesture, knocking down the
innumerable toys they bore, and forcing the half-clad Levantine to
bound to her feet with a promptitude amazing in so massive a person. She
roared at the outrage, drew the folds of her dalmatic against her bust,
pushed her cap sideways on her dishevelled hair, and began to abuse her
husband.

“Never, understand me, never! You may drag me sooner to this----”

The filth flowed from her heavy lips as from a spout. Jansoulet could
have imagined himself in some frightful den of the port of Marseilles,
at some quarrel of prostitutes and bullies, or again at some open-air
dispute between Genoese, Maltese, and Provencal hags, gleaning on the
quays round the sacks of wheat, and abusing each other, crouched in the
whirlwinds of golden dust. She was indeed a Levantine of a seaport,
a spoiled child, who, in the evening, left alone, had heard from her
terrace or from her gondola the sailors revile each other in every
tongue of the Latin seas, and had remembered it all. The wretched man
looked at her, frightened, terrified at what she forced him to hear, at
her grotesque figure, foaming and gasping:

“No, I will not go--no, I will not go!”

And this was the mother of his children, a daughter of the Afchins!
Suddenly, at the thought that his fate was in the hands of this woman,
that it would only cost her a dress to put on to save him--and that time
was flying--that soon it would be too late, a criminal feeling rose to
his brain and distorted his features. He came straight to her, his hands
contracted, with such a terrible expression that the daughter of the
Afchins, frightened, rushed, calling towards the door by which the
_masseur_ had just gone out:

“Aristide!”

This cry, the words, this intimacy of his wife with a servant! Jansoulet
stopped, his rage suddenly calmed; then, with a gesture of disgust, he
flung himself out, slamming the doors, more eager to fly the misfortune
and the horror whose presence he divined in his own home, than to seek
elsewhere the help he had been promised.

A quarter of an hour later he made his appearance at the Hemerlingues’,
making a despairing gesture as he entered to the banker, and approached
the baroness stammering the ready-made phrase he had heard repeated so
often the night of his ball, “His wife, very unwell--most grieved not
to have been able to come--” She did not give him time to finish, rose
slowly, unwound herself like a long and slender snake from the pleated
folds of her tight dress, and said, without looking at him, “Oh, I
knew--I knew!” then changed her place and took no more notice of him. He
attempted to approach Hemerlingue, but the good man seemed absorbed in
his conversation with Maurice Trott. Then he went to sit down near Mme.
Jenkins, whose isolation seemed like his own. But, even while talking
to the poor woman, as languid as he was preoccupied, he was watching
the baroness doing the honours of this drawing-room, so comfortable when
compared with his own gilded halls.

It was time to leave. Mme. Hemerlingue went to the door with some of
the ladies, presented her forehead to the old princess, bent under the
benediction of the Armenian bishop, nodded with a smile to the young men
with the canes, found for each the fitting adieu with perfect ease; and
the wretched man could not prevent himself from comparing this Eastern
slave, so Parisian, so distinguished in the best society of the world,
with the other, the European brutalized by the East, stupefied with
Turkish tobacco, and swollen with idleness. His ambitions, his pride as
a husband, were extinguished and humiliated in this marriage of which
he saw the danger and the emptiness--a final cruelty of fate taking from
him even the refuge of personal happiness from all his public disasters.

Little by little the room was emptied. The Levantines disappeared one
after another, leaving each time an immense void in their place. Mme.
Jenkins was gone, and only two or three ladies remained whom Jansoulet
did not know, and behind whom the mistress of the house seemed to
shelter herself from him. But Hemerlingue was free, and the Nabob
rejoined him at the moment when he was furtively escaping to his offices
on the same floor opposite his rooms. Jansoulet went out with him,
forgetting in his trouble to salute the baroness, and once on the
antechamber staircase, Hemerlingue, cold and reserved while he was under
his wife’s eye, expanded a little.

“It is very annoying,” said he in a low voice, as if he feared to be
overheard, “that Mme. Jansoulet has not been willing to come.”

Jansoulet answered him by a movement of despair and savage helplessness.

“Annoying, annoying,” repeated the other in a whisper, and feeling for
his key in his pocket.

“Come, old fellow,” said the Nabob, taking his hand, “there’s no reason,
because our wives don’t agree--That doesn’t hinder us from remaining
friends. What a good chat the other day, eh?”

“No doubt” said the baron, disengaging himself, as he opened the door
noiselessly, showing the deep workroom, whose lamp burned solitarily
before the enormous empty chair. “Come, good-bye, I must go; I have my
mail to despatch.”

“_Ya didon, monci_” (But look here, sir) said the poor Nabob, trying to
joke, and using the _patois_ of the south to recall to his old chum all
the pleasant memories stirred up the other evening. “Our visit to Le
Merquier still holds good. The picture we were going to present to him,
you know. What day?”

“Ah, yes, Le Merquier--true--eh--well, soon. I will write to you.”

“Really? You know it is very important.”

“Yes, yes. I will write to you. Good-bye.”

And the big man shut his door in a hurry, as if he were afraid of his
wife coming.

Two days after, the Nabob received a note from Hemerlingue, almost
unreadable on account of the complicated scrawls, of abbreviations more
or less commercial, under which the ex-sutler hid his entire want of
spelling:

MY DEAR OLD COM_--I cannot accom_ you to Le Mer. _Too bus_ just now.
Besid_ y_ will be _bet_ alone to _tal_. Go _th bold_. You are _exp. A_
Cassette, _ev morn_ 8 to 10.

Yours _faith_

HEM.


Below as a postscript, a very small hand had written very legibly:

“A religious picture, as good as possible.”

What was he to think of this letter? Was there real good-will in it,
or polite evasion? In any case hesitation was no longer possible. Time
pressed. Jansoulet made a bold effort, then--for he was very frightened
of Le Merquier--and called on him one morning.

Our strange Paris, alike in its population and its aspects, seems a
specimen map of the whole world. In the Marais there are narrow streets,
with old sculptured worm-eaten doors, with overhanging gables
and balconies, which remind you of old Heidelberg. The Faubourg
Saint-Honore, lying round the Russian church with its white minarets and
golden domes, seems a part of Moscow. On Montmartre I know a picturesque
and crowded corner which is simply Algiers. Little, low, clean houses,
each with its brass plate and little front garden, are English streets
between Neuilly and the Champs-Elysees while all behind the apse of
Saint-Sulpice, the Rue Feron, the Rue Cassette, lying peaceably in the
shadow of its great towers, roughly paved, their doors each with its
knocker, seem lifted out of some provincial and religious town--Tours
or Orleans, for example--in the district of the cathedral or the palace,
where the great over-hanging trees in the gardens rock themselves to the
sound of the bells and the choir.

It was there, in the neighbourhood of the Catholic Club--of which he
had just been made honorary president--that M. Le Merquier lived. He was
_avocat_, deputy for Lyons, business man of all the great communities of
France; and Hemerlingue, moved by a deep-seated instinct, had intrusted
him with the affairs of his firm.

He arrived before nine o’clock at an old mansion of which the ground
floor was occupied by a religious bookshop, asleep in the odour of the
sacristy, and of the thick gray paper on which the stories of miracles
are printed for hawkers, and mounted the great whitewashed convent
stairway. Jansoulet was touched by this provincial and Catholic
atmosphere, in which revived the souvenirs of his past in the south,
impressions of infancy still intact, thanks to his long absence from
home; and since his arrival at Paris he had had neither the time nor the
occasion to call them in question. Fashionable hypocrisy had presented
itself to him in all its forms save that of religious integrity, and
he refused now to believe in the venality of a man who lived in such
surroundings. Introduced into the _avocat’s_ waiting-room--a vast
parlour with fine white muslin curtains, having for its sole ornament
a large and beautiful copy of Tintoretto’s Dead Christ--his doubt and
trouble changed into indignant conviction. It was not possible! He had
been deceived as to Le Merquier. There was surely some bold slander in
it, such as so easily spreads in Paris--or perhaps it was one of those
ferocious snares among which he had stumbled for six months. No, this
stern conscience, so well known in Parliament and the courts, this cold
and austere personage, could not be treated like those great swollen
pashas with loosened waist-belts and floating sleeves open to conceal
the bags of gold. He would only expose himself to a scandalous refusal,
to the legitimate revolt of outraged honour, if he attempted such means
of corruption.

The Nabob told himself all this, as he sat on the oak bench which ran
round the room, a bench polished with serge dresses and the rough cloth
of cassocks. In spite of the early hour several persons were waiting
there with him. A Dominican, ascetic and serene, walking up and down
with great strides; two sisters of charity, buried under their caps,
counting long rosaries which measured their time of waiting; priests
from Lyons, recognisable by the shape of their hats; others reserved and
severe in air, sitting at the great ebony table which filled the middle
of the room, and turning over some of those pious journals printed at
Fouvieres, just above Lyons, the _Echo of Purgatory_, the _Rose-bush
of Mary_, which give as a present to all yearly subscribers pontifical
indulgences and remissions of future sins. Some muttered words, a
stifled cough, the light whispered prayers of the sisters, recalled to
Jansoulet the distant and confused sensation of the hours of waiting in
the corner of his village church round the confessional on the eves of
the great festivals of the Church.

At last his turn came, and if a doubt as to M. Le Merquier had remained,
he doubted no longer when he saw this great office, simple and severe,
yet a little more ornate than the waiting-room, a fitting frame for
the austerity of the lawyer’s principles, and for his thin form, tall,
stooping, narrow-shouldered, squeezed into a black coat too short in
the sleeves, from which protruded two black fists, broad and flat,
two sticks of Indian ink with hieroglyphs of great veins. The clerical
deputy had, with the leaden hue of a Lyonnese grown mouldy between his
two rivers, a certain life of expression which he owed to his double
look--sometimes sparkling, but impenetrable behind the glass of his
spectacles; more often, vivid, mistrustful, and dark, above these same
glasses, surrounded by the shadow which a lifted eye and a stooping head
gives the eyebrow.

After a greeting almost cordial in comparison with the cold bow which
the two colleagues exchanged at the Chamber, an “I was expecting you” in
which perhaps an intention showed itself, the lawyer pointed the Nabob
into a seat near his desk, told the smug domestic in black not to come
till he was summoned, arranged a few papers, after which, sinking into
his arm-chair with the attitude of a man ready to listen, who becomes
all ears, his legs crossed, he rested his chin on his hand, with his
eyes fixed on a great rep curtain falling to the ground in front of him.

The moment was decisive, the situation embarrassing. Jansoulet did not
hesitate. It was one of the poor Nabob’s pretensions to know men as
well as Mora. And this instinct, which, said he, had never deceived
him, warned him that he was at that moment dealing with a rigid and
unshakable honesty, a conscience in hard stone, untouchable by pick-axe
or powder. “My conscience!” Suddenly he changed his programme, threw to
the winds the tricks and equivocations which embarrassed his open and
courageous disposition, and, head high and heart open, held to this
honest man a language he was born to understand.

“Do not be astonished, my dear colleague,”--his voice trembled, but soon
became firm in the conviction of his defence--“do not be astonished if
I am come to find you here instead of asking simply to be heard by
the third committee. The explanation which I have to make to you is so
delicate and confidential that it would have been impossible to make it
publicly before my colleagues.”

Maitre Le Merquier, above his spectacles, looked at the curtain with a
disturbed air. Evidently the conversation was taking an unexpected turn.

“I do not enter on the main question,” said the Nabob. “Your report, I
am assured, is impartial and loyal, such as your conscience has dictated
to you. Only there are some heart-breaking calumnies spread about me to
which I have not answered, and which have perhaps influenced the opinion
of the committee. It is on this subject that I wish to speak to you. I
know the confidence with which you are honoured by your colleagues, M.
Le Merquier, and that, when I shall have convinced you, your word will
be enough without forcing me to lay bare my distress to them all. You
know the accusation--the most terrible, the most ignoble. There are so
many people who might be deceived by it. My enemies have given names,
dates, addresses. Well, I bring you the proofs of my innocence. I lay
them bare before you--you only--for I have grave reasons for keeping the
whole affair secret.”

Then he showed the lawyer a certificate from the Consulate of Tunis,
that during twenty years he had only left the principality twice--the
first time to see his dying father at Bourg-Saint Andeol; the second,
to make, with the Bey, a visit of three days to his chateau of
Saint-Romans.

“How comes it, then, that with a document so conclusive in my hands
I have not brought my accusers before the courts to contradict and
confound them? Alas, monsieur, there are cruel responsibilities in
families. I have a brother, a poor fellow, weak and spoiled, who has for
long wallowed in the mud of Paris, who has left there his intelligence
and his honour. Has he descended to that degree of baseness which I, in
his name, am accused of? I have not dared to find out. All I can say
is, that my poor father, who knew more than any one in the family of
it, whispered to me in dying, ‘Bernard, it is your elder brother who has
killed me. I die of shame, my child.’”

He paused, compelled by his suppressed emotion; then:

“My father is dead, Maitre Le Merquier, but my mother still lives, and
it is for her sake, for her peace, that I have held back, that I hold
back still, before the scandal of my justification. Up to now, in fact,
the mud thrown at me has not touched her; it only comes from a certain
class, in a special press, a thousand leagues away from the poor woman.
But law courts, a trial--it would be proclaiming our misfortune from
one end of France to the other, the articles of the official paper
reproduced by all the journals, even those of the little district where
my mother lives. The calumny, my defence, her two children covered
with shame by the one stroke, the name--the only pride of the old
peasant--forever disgraced. It would be too much for her. It would be
enough to kill her. And truly, I find it enough, too. That is why I
have had the courage to be silent, to weary, if I could, my enemies by
silence. But I need some one to answer for me in the Chamber. It must
not have the right to expel me for reasons which would dishonour me, and
since it has chosen you as the chairman of the committee, I am come to
tell you everything, as to a confessor, to a priest, begging you not to
divulge anything of this conversation, even in the interests of my case.
I only ask you, my dear colleague, absolute silence; for the rest, I
rely on your justice and your loyalty.”

He rose, ready to go, and Le Merquier did not move, still asking the
green curtain in front of him, as if seeking inspiration for his answer
there. At last he said:

“It shall be as you desire, my dear colleague. This confidence shall
remain between us. You have told me nothing, I have heard nothing.”

The Nabob, still heated with his burst of confidence, which demanded,
it seemed to him, a cordial response, a pressure of the hand, was seized
with a strange uneasiness. This coolness, this absent look, so unnerved
him that he was at the door with the awkward bow of one who feels
himself importunate, when the other stopped him.

“Wait, then, my dear colleague. What a hurry you are in to leave me! A
few moments, I beg of you. I am too happy to have a chat with a man like
you. Besides, we have more than one common bond. Our friend Hemerlingue
has told me that you, too, are much interested in pictures.”

Jansoulet trembled. The two words--“Hemerlingue,” “pictures”--meeting
in the same phrase so unexpectedly, restored all his doubts, all his
perplexities. He did not give himself away yet, however, and let Le
Merquier advance, word by word, testing the ground for his stumbling
advances. People had told him often of the collection of his honourable
colleague. “Would it be indiscreet to ask the favour of being admitted,
to--”

“On the contrary, I should feel much honoured,” said the Nabob, tickled
in the most sensible--since the most costly--point of his vanity; and
looking round him at the walls of the room, he added with the tone of a
connoisseur, “You have some fine things, too.”

“Oh,” said the other modestly, “just a few canvases. Painting is so dear
now, it is a taste so difficult to satisfy, a true passion _de luxe_--a
passion for a Nabob,” said he, smiling, with a furtive look over his
glasses.

They were two prudent players, face to face; but Jansoulet was a little
astray in this new situation, where he who only knew how to be bold, had
to be on his guard.

“When I think,” murmured the lawyer, “that I have been ten years
covering these walls, and that I have still this panel to fill.”

In fact, at the most conspicuous place on the wall there was an empty
place, emptied rather, for a great gold-headed nail near the ceiling
showed the visible, almost clumsy, trace of a snare laid for the poor
simpleton, who let himself be taken in it so foolishly.

“My dear M. Le Merquier,” said he with his engaging, good-natured voice,
“I have a Virgin of Tintoretto’s just the size of your panel.”

Impossible to read anything in the eyes of the lawyer, this time hidden
under their overhanging brows.

“Permit me to hang it there, opposite your table. That will help you to
think sometimes of me.”

“And to soften the severities of my report, too, sir?” cried Le
Merquier, formidable and upright, his hand on the bell. “I have seen
many shameless things in my life, but never anything like this. Such
offers to me, in my own house!”

“But, my dear colleague, I swear to you----”

“Show him out,” said the lawyer to the hang-dog servant who had just
entered; and from the middle of his office, whose door remained open,
before all the waiting-room, where the paternosters were silent, he
pursued Jansoulet--who slunk off murmuring excuses to the door--with
these terrible words:

“You have outraged the honour of the Chamber in my person, sir. Our
colleagues shall be informed of it this very day; and, this crime coming
after your others, you will learn to your cost that Paris is not the
East, and that here we do not make shameless traffic of the human
conscience.”

Then, after having chased the seller from the temple, the just man
closed his door, and approaching the mysterious green curtain, said in a
tone that sounded soft amidst his pretended anger:

“Is that what you wanted, Baroness Marie?”



THE SITTING

That morning there were no guests to lunch at 32 Place Vendome, so
that towards one o’clock might have been seen the majestic form of M.
Barreau, gleaming white at the gate, among four or five of his scullions
in their cook’s caps, and as many stable-boys in Scotch caps--an
imposing group, which gave to the house the aspect of an hotel where the
staff was taking the air between the arrivals of the trains. To complete
the resemblance, a cab drew up before the door and the driver took down
an old leather trunk, while a tall old woman, her upright figure wrapped
in a little green shawl, jumped lightly to the footpath, a basket on
her arm, looked at the number with great attention, then approached the
servants to ask if it was there that M. Bernard Jansoulet lived.

“It is here,” was the answer; “but he is not in.”

“That does not matter,” said the old lady simply.

She returned to the driver, who put her trunk in the porch, and paid
him, returning her purse to her pocket at once with a gesture that said
much for the caution of the provincial.

Since Jansoulet had been deputy for Corsica, the domestics had seen
so many strange and exotic figures at his house, that they were not
surprised at this sunburnt woman, with eyes glowing like coals, a
true Corsican under her severe coif, but different from the ordinary
provincial in the ease and tranquility of her manners.

“What, the master is not here?” said she, with an intonation which
seemed better fitted for farm people in her part of the country, than
for the insolent servants of a great Parisian mansion.

“No, the master is not here.”

“And the children?”

“They are at lessons. You cannot see them.”

“And madame?”

“She is asleep. No one sees her before three o’clock.”

It seemed to astonish the good woman a little that any one could stay
in bed so late; but the tact which guides a refined nature, even without
education, prevented her from saying anything before the servants, and
she asked for Paul de Gery.

“He is abroad.”

“Bompain Jean-Baptiste, then.”

“He is with monsieur at the sitting.”

Her great gray eyebrows wrinkled.

“It does not matter; take up my trunk just the same.”

And with a little malicious twinkle of her eye, a proud revenge for
their insolent looks, she added: “I am his mother.”

The scullions and stable-boys drew back respectfully. M. Barreau raised
his cap:

“I thought I had seen madame somewhere.”

“And I too, my lad,” answered Mme. Jansoulet, who shivered still at the
remembrance of the Bey’s _fete_.

“My lad,” to M. Barreau, to a man of his importance! It raised her at
once to a very high place in the esteem of the others.

Well! grandeur and splendour hardly dazzled this courageous old lady.
She did not go into ecstasies over gilding and petty baubles, and as she
walked up the grand staircase behind her trunk, the baskets of flowers
on the landings, the lamps held by bronze statues, did not prevent her
from noticing that there was an inch of dust on the balustrade, and
holes in the carpet. She was taken to the rooms on the second floor
belonging to the Levantine and her children; and there, in an apartment
used as a linen-room, which seemed to be near the school-room (to judge
by the murmur of children’s voices), she waited alone, her basket on
her knees, for the return of her Bernard, perhaps the waking of her
daughter-in-law, or the great joy of embracing her grandchildren. What
she saw around her gave her an idea of the disorder of this house
left to the care of the servants, without the oversight and foreseeing
activity of a mistress. The linen was heaped in disorder, piles on
piles in great wide-open cupboards, fine linen sheets and table-cloths
crumpled up, the locks prevented from shutting by pieces of torn lace,
which no one took the trouble to mend. And yet there were many servants
about--negresses in yellow Madras muslin, who came to snatch here
a towel, there a table-cloth, walking among the scattered domestic
treasures, dragging with their great flat feet frills of fine lace
from a petticoat which some lady’s-maid had thrown down--thimble here,
scissors there--ready to pick up again in a few minutes.

Jansoulet’s mother was doubly wounded. The half-rustic artisan in her
was outraged in the tenderness, the respect, the sweet unreasonableness
the woman of the provinces feels towards a full linen cupboard--a
cupboard filled piece by piece, full of relics of past struggles, whose
contents grow finer little by little, the first token of comfort, of
wealth, in the house. Besides, she had held the distaff from morning
till night, and if the housewife in her was angry, the spinner could
have wept at the profanation. At last, unable to contain herself longer,
she rose, and actively, her little shawl displaced at each movement, she
set herself to pick up, straighten, and carefully fold this magnificent
linen, as she used to do in the fields of Saint-Romans, when she gave
herself the treat of a grand washing-day, with twenty washerwomen, the
clothes-baskets flowing over with floating whiteness, and the sheets
flapping in the morning wind on the clothes-lines. She was in the midst
of this occupation, forgetting her journey, forgetting Paris, even
the place where she was, when a stout, thick-set, bearded man, with
varnished boots and a velvet jacket, over the torso of a bull, came into
the linen-room.

“What! Cabassu!”

“You here, Mme. Francoise! What a surprise!” said the _masseur_, staring
like a bronze figure.

“Yes, my brave Cabassu, it is I. I have just arrived; and as you see, I
am at work already. It made my heart bleed to see all this muddle.”

“You came up for the sitting, then?”

“What sitting?”

“Why, the grand sitting of the legislative body. It’s do-day.”

“Dear me, no. What has that got to do with me? I should understand
nothing at all about it. No, I came because I wanted to know my little
Jansoulets, and then, I was beginning to feel uneasy. I have written
several times without getting an answer. I was afraid that there was a
child sick, that Bernard’s business was going wrong--all sorts of ideas.
At last I got seriously worried, and came away at once. They are well
here, they tell me.”

“Yes, Mme. Francoise. Thank God, every one is quite well.”

“And Bernard. His business--is that going on as he wants it to?”

“Well, you know one has always one’s little worries in life--still,
I don’t think he should complain. But, now I think of it, you must be
hungry. I will go and make them bring you something.”

He was going to ring, more at home and at ease than the old mother
herself. She stopped him.

“No, no, I don’t want anything. I have still something left in my
basket.” And she put two figs and a crust of bread on the edge of the
table. Then, while she was eating: “And you, lad, your business? You
look very much sprucer than you did the last time you were at Bourg. How
smart you are! What do you do in the house?”

“Professor of massage,” said Aristide gravely.

“Professor--you?” said she with respectful astonishment; but she did
not dare ask him what he taught, and Cabassu, who felt such questions a
little embarrassing, hastened to change the subject.

“Shall I go and find the children? Haven’t they told them that their
grandmother is here?”

“I didn’t want to disturb them at their work. But I believe it must be
over now--listen!”

Behind the door they could hear the shuffling impatience of the children
anxious to be out in the open air, and the old woman enjoyed this state
of things, doubling her maternal desire, and hindering her from doing
anything to hasten its pleasure. At last the door opened. The tutor came
out first--a priest with a pointed nose and great cheek-bones, whom we
have met before at the great _dejeuners_. On bad terms with his bishop,
he had left the diocese where he had been engaged, and in the precarious
position of an unattached priest--for the clergy have their Bohemians
too--he was glad to teach the little Jansoulets, recently turned out of
the Bourdaloue College. With his arrogant, solemn air, overweighted with
responsibilities, which would have become the prelates charged with the
education of the dauphins of France, he preceded three curled and gloved
little gentlemen in short jackets, with leather knapsacks, and great red
stockings reaching half-way up their little thin legs, in complete suits
of cyclist dress, ready to mount.

“My children,” said Cabassu, “that is Mme. Jansoulet, your grandmother,
who has come to Paris expressly to see you.”

They stopped in a row, astonished, examining this old wrinkled visage
between the folds of her cap, this strange dress of a simplicity
unknown to them; and their grandmother’s astonishment answered theirs,
complicated with a heart-breaking discomfiture and constraint in dealing
with these little gentlemen, as stiff and disdainful as any of the
nobles or ministers whom her son had brought to Saint-Romans. On the
bidding of their tutor “to salute their venerable grandmother,” they
came in turn to give her one of those little half-hearted shakes of
the hand of which they had distributed so many in the garrets they
had visited. The fact is that this good woman, with her agricultural
appearance and clean but very simple clothes, reminded them of the
charity visits of the College Bourdaloue. They felt between them the
same unknown quality, the same distance, which no remembrance, no
word of their parents had ever helped to bridge. The abbe felt this
constraint, and tried to dispel it--speaking with the tone of voice and
gestures customary to those who always think they are in the pulpit.

“Well, madame, the day has come, the great day when Jansoulet will
confound his enemies--_confundantur hostes mei, quia injuste iniquitatem
fecerunt in me_--because they have unjustly persecuted me.”

The old lady bent religiously before the Latin of the Church, but her
face expressed a vague expression of uneasiness at this idea of enemies
and of persecutions.

“These enemies are powerful and numerous, my noble lady, but let us
not be alarmed beyond measure. Let us have confidence in the decrees of
Heaven and in the justice of our cause. God is in the midst of it, it
shall not be overthrown--_in medio ejus non commovebitur_.”

A gigantic negro, resplendent with gold braid, interrupted him by
announcing that the bicycles were ready for the daily lesson on the
terrace of the Tuileries. Before setting out, the children again
shook solemnly their grandmother’s wrinkled and hardened hand. She
was watching them go, stupefied and oppressed, when all at once, by an
adorable spontaneous movement, the youngest turned back when he had got
to the door and, pushing the great negro aside, came to throw himself
head foremost, like a little buffalo, into Mme. Jansoulet’s skirts,
squeezing her to him, while holding out his smooth forehead, covered
with brown curls, with the grace of a child offering its kiss like a
flower. Perhaps this one, nearer the warmth of the nest, the cradling
knees of the nurses with their peasant songs, had felt the maternal
influence, of which the Levantine had deprived him, reach his heart.
The old woman trembled all over with the surprise of this instinctive
embrace.

“Oh! little one, little one,” said she, seizing the little silky, curly
head which reminded her so much of another and she kissed it wildly.
Then the child unloosed himself, and ran off without saying anything,
his head moist with hot tears.

Left alone with Cabassu, the mother, comforted by this embrace, asked
some explanation of the priest’s words. Had her son many enemies?

“Oh!” said Cabassu, “it is not astonishing, in his position.”

“But what is this great day--this sitting of which you all speak?”

“Well, then, it is to-day that we shall know whether Bernard will be
deputy or no.”

“What? He is not one now, then? And I have told them everywhere in the
country. I illuminated Saint-Romans a month ago. Then they have made me
tell a lie.”

The _masseur_ had a great deal of trouble in explaining to her the
parliamentary formalities of the verification of elections. She only
listened with one ear, walking up and down the linen-room feverishly.

“That’s where my Bernard is now, then?”

“Yes, madame.”

“And can women go to the Chamber? Then why is his wife not there? For
one does not need telling that it is an important matter for him. On a
day like this he needs to feel all those whom he loves at his side. See,
my lad, you must take me there, to this sitting. Is it far?”

“No, quite near. Only, it must have begun already. And then,” added he,
a little disconcerted, “it is the hour when madame wants me.”

“Ah! Do you teach her this thing you are professor of? What do you call
it?”

“Massage. We have learned it from the ancients. Yes, there she is
ringing for me, and some one will come to fetch me. Shall I tell her you
are here?”

“No, no; I prefer to go there at once.”

“But you have no admission ticket.”

“Bah! I will tell them I am Jansoulet’s mother, come to hear him
judged.” Poor mother, she spoke truer than she knew.

“Wait, Mme. Francoise. I will give you some one to show you the way, at
least.”

“Oh, you know, I have never been able to put up with servants. I have a
tongue. There are people in the streets. I shall find my way.”

He made a last attempt, without letting her see all his thought. “Take
care; his enemies are going to speak against him in the Chamber. You
will hear things to hurt you.”

Oh, the beautiful smile of belief and maternal pride with which she
answered: “Don’t I know better than them all what my child is worth?
Could anything make me mistaken in him? I should have to be very
ungrateful then. Get along with you!”

And shaking her head with its flapping cap wings, she set off fiercely
indignant.

With head erect and upright bearing the old woman strode along under the
great arcades which they had told her to follow, a little troubled by
the incessant noise of the carriages, and by the idleness of this walk,
unaccompanied by the faithful distaff which had never quitted her
for fifty years. All these ideas of enmities and persecutions, the
mysterious words of the priest, the guarded talk of Cabassu, frightened
and agitated her. She found in them the meaning of the presentiments
which had so overpowered her as to snatch her from her habits, her
duties, the care of the house and of her invalid. Besides, since Fortune
had thrown on her and her son this golden mantle with its heavy folds,
Mme. Jansoulet had never become accustomed to it, and was always waiting
for the sudden disappearance of these splendours. Who knows if the
break-up was not going to begin this time? And suddenly, through these
sombre thoughts, the remembrance of the scene that had just passed,
of the little one rubbing himself on her woollen gown, brought on her
wrinkled lips a tender smile, and she murmured in her peasant tongue:

“Oh, for the little one, at any rate.”


She crossed a magnificent square, immense, dazzling, two fountains
throwing up their water in a silvery spray, then a great stone bridge,
and at the end was a square building with statues on its front, a
railing with carriages drawn up before it, people going on, numbers of
policemen. It was there. She pushed through the crowd bravely and came
up to the high glass doors.

“Your card, my good woman?”

The “good woman” had no card, but she said quite simply to one of the
porters in red who were keeping the door:

“I am Bernard Jansoulet’s mother. I have come for the sitting of my
boy.”

It was indeed the sitting of her boy; for everywhere in this crowd
besieging the doors, filling the passages, the hall, the tribune, the
whole palace, the same name was repeated, accompanied with smiles and
anecdotes. A great scandal was expected, terrible revelations from the
chairman, which would no doubt lead to some violence from the barbarian
brought to bay, and they hurried to the spot as to a first night or a
celebrated trial. The old mother would hardly have been heard in the
middle of this crowd, if the stream of gold left by the Nabob wherever
he had passed, marking his royal progress, had not opened all the roads
to her. She went behind the attendant in this tangle of passages,
of folding-doors, of empty resounding halls, filled with a hum which
circulated with the air of the building, as if the walls, themselves
soaked with babble, were joining to the sound of all these voices the
echoes of the past. While crossing a corridor she saw a little dark man
gesticulating and crying to the servants:

“You will tell Moussiou Jansoulet that it is I, that I am the Mayor of
Sarlazaccio, that I have been condemned to five months’ imprisonment for
him. In God’s name, surely that is worth a card for the sitting.”

Five months’ imprisonment for her son! Why? Very much disturbed, she
arrived at last, her ears singing, at the top of the staircase, where
different inscriptions--“Tribune of the Senate, of the Diplomatic Body,
of the Deputies”--stood above little doors like boxes in a theatre. She
entered, and without seeing anything at first except four or five rows
of seats filled with people, and opposite, very far off, separated from
her by a vast clear space, other galleries similarly filled. She leaned
up against the wall, astonished to be there, exhausted, almost ashamed.
A current of hot air which came to her face, a chatter of rising voices,
drew her towards the slope of the gallery, towards the kind of gulf open
in the middle where her son must be. Oh! how she would like to see him.
So squeezing herself in, and using her elbows, pointed and hard as her
spindle, she glided and slipped between the wall and the seats, taking
no notice of the anger she aroused or the contempt of the well-dressed
women whose lace and fresh toilettes she crushed; for the assembly
was elegant and fashionable. Mme. Jansoulet recognised, by his stiff
shirt-front and aristocratic nose, the marquis who had visited them at
Saint-Romans, who so well suited his name, but he did not look at her.
She was stopped farther progress by the back of a man sitting down,
an enormous back which barred everything and forbade her go farther.
Happily, she could see nearly all the hall from here by leaning forward
a little; and these semi-circular benches filled with deputies, the
green hanging of the walls, the chair at the end, occupied by a bald man
with a severe air, gave her the idea, under the studious and gray light
from the roof, of a class about to begin, with all the chatter and
movement of thoughtless schoolboys.

One thing struck her--the way in which all looks turned to one side,
to the same point of attraction; and as she followed this current
of curiosity which carried away the entire assembly, hall as well as
galleries, she saw that what they were all looking at--was her son.

In the Jansoulet’s country there is still, in some old churches, at the
end of the choir, half-way up the crypt, a stone cell where lepers were
admitted to hear mass, showing their dark profiles to the curious and
fearful crowd, like wild beasts crouched against the loopholes in the
wall. Francoise well remembered having seen in the village where she had
been brought up the leper, the bugbear of her infancy, hearing mass from
his stone cage, lost in the shade and in isolation. Now, seeing her son
seated, his head in his hands, alone, up there away from the others,
this memory came to her mind. “One might think it was a leper,” murmured
the peasant. And, in fact, this poor Nabob was a leper, his millions
from the East weighing on him like some terrible and mysterious disease.
It happened that the bench on which he had chosen to sit had several
recent vacancies on account of holidays or deaths; so that while the
other deputies were talking to each other, laughing, making signs,
he sat silent, alone, the object of attention to all the Chamber; an
attention which his mother felt to be malevolent, ironic, which burned
into her heart. How was she to let him know that she was there, near
him, that one faithful heart beat not far from his? He would not turn to
the gallery. One would have said that he felt it hostile, that he feared
to look there. Suddenly, at the sound of the bell from the presidential
platform, a rustle ran through the assembly, every head leaned forward
with that fixed attention which makes the features unmovable, and a thin
man in spectacles, whose sudden rise among so many seated figures gave
him the authority of attitude at once, said, opening the paper he held
in his hand:

“Gentlemen, in the name of your third committee, I beg to move that
the election of the second division of the department of Corsica be
annulled.”

In the deep silence following this phrase, which Mme. Jansoulet did not
understand, the giant seated before her began to puff vigorously, and
all at once, in the front row of the gallery, a lovely face turned round
to address him a rapid sign of intelligence and approval. Forehead pale,
lips thin, eyebrows too black for the white framing of her hat, it all
produced in the eyes of the good old lady, without her knowing why, the
effect of the first flash of lightning in a storm and the apprehension
of the thunderbolt following the lightning.

Le Merquier was reading his report. The slow, dull monotonous voice,
the drawling, weak Lyonnese accent, while the long form of the lawyer
balanced itself in an almost animal movement of the head and shoulders,
made a singular contrast to the ferocious clearness of the brief. First,
a rapid account of the electoral irregularities. Never had universal
suffrage been treated with such primitive and barbarous contempt. At
Sarlazaccio, where Jansoulet’s rival seemed to have a majority, the
ballot-box was destroyed the night before it was counted. The same thing
almost happened at Levia, at Saint-Andre, at Avabessa. And it was the
mayors themselves who committed these crimes, who carried the urns home
with them, broke the seals, tore up the voting papers, under cover
of their municipal authority. There had been no respect for the law.
Everywhere fraud, intrigue, even violence. At Calcatoggio an armed
man sat during the election at the window of a tavern in front of
the _mairie_, holding a blunderbuss, and whenever one of Sebastiani’s
electors (Sebastiani was Jansoulet’s opponent) showed himself, the man
took aim: “If you come in, I will blow out your brains.” And when
one saw the inspectors of police, justices, inspectors of weights and
measures, not afraid to turn into canvassing agents, to frighten or
cajole a population too submissive before all these little tyrannical
local influences, was that not proof of a terrible state of things? Even
priests, saintly pastors, led astray by their zeal for the poor-box and
the restoration of an impoverished building, had preached a mission in
favour of Jansoulet’s election. But an influence still more powerful,
though less respectable, had been called into play for the good
cause--the influence of the banditti. “Yes, banditti, gentlemen; I am
not joking.” And then came a sketch in outline of Corsican banditti in
general, and of the Piedigriggio family in particular.

The Chamber listened attentively, with a certain uneasiness. For, after
all, it was an official candidate whose doings were thus described, and
these strange doings belonged to that privileged land, cradle of the
imperial family, so closely attached to the fortunes of the dynasty,
that an attack on Corsica seemed to strike at the sovereign. But when
people saw the new minister, successor and enemy of Mora, glad of the
blow to a _protege_ of his predecessor, smile complacently from
the Government bench at Le Merquier’s cruel banter, all constraint
disappeared at once, and the ministerial smile repeated on three hundred
mouths, grew into a scarcely restrained laugh--the laugh of crowds under
the rod which bursts out at the least approbation of the master. In the
galleries, not usually treated to the picturesque, but amused by these
stories of brigands, there was general joy, a radiant animation on all
these faces, pleased to look pretty without insulting the solemnity of
the spot. Little bright bonnets shook with all their flowers and plumes,
round gold-encircled arms leaned forward the better to hear. The grave
Le Merquier had imported into the sitting the distraction of a show,
the little spice of humour allowed in a charity concert to bribe the
uninitiated.

Impassable and cold in the midst of his success, he continued to read in
his gloomy voice, penetrating like the rain of Lyons:

“Now, gentlemen, one asks how a stranger, a Provencial returned from the
East, ignorant of the interests and needs of this island where he had
never been seen before the election, a true type of what the Corsican
disdainfully calls a ‘continental’--how has this man been able to excite
such an enthusiasm, such devotion carried to crime, to profanity.
His wealth will answer us, his fatal gold thrown in the face of the
electors, thrust by force into their pockets with a barefaced cynicism
of which we have a thousand proofs.” Then the interminable series of
denunciations: “I, the undersigned, Croce (Antoine), declare in the
interests of truth, that the Commissary of Police Nardi, calling on us
one evening, said: ‘Listen, Croce (Antoine), I swear by the fire of this
lamp that if you vote for Jansoulet you will have fifty francs
to-morrow morning.’” And this other: “I, the undersigned, Lavezzi
(Jacques-Alphonse), declare that I refused with contempt seventeen
francs offered me by the Mayor of Pozzonegro to vote against my
cousin Sebastiani.” It is probably that for three francs more Lavezzi
(Jacques-Alphonse) would have swallowed his contempt in silence. But the
Chamber did not look into things so closely.

Indignation seized on this incorruptible Chamber. It murmured, it
fidgeted on its padded seats of red velvet, it raised a positive
clamour. There were “Oh’s” of amazement, eyes lifted in astonishment,
brusque movements on the benches, as if in disgust at this spectacle of
human degradation. And remark that the greater part of these deputies
had used the same electoral methods, that these were the heroes of those
famous orgies when whole oxen were carried in triumph, ribanded and
decorated as at Gargantuan feasts. Just these men cried louder than
others, turned furiously towards the solitary seat where the poor leper
listened, still and downcast. Yet in the midst of the general uproar,
one voice was raised in his favour, but low, unpractised, less a voice
than a sympathetic murmur, through which was distinguished
vaguely: “Great services to the Corsican population--Considerable
works--Territorial Bank.”

He who mumbled thus was a little man in white gaiters, an albino
head, and thin hair in scattered locks. But the interruption of this
unfortunate friend only furnished Le Merquier with a rapid and natural
transition. A hideous smile parted his flabby lips. “The honourable M.
Sarigue mentions the Territorial Bank. We shall be able to answer him.”
 He seemed in fact to be very familiar with the Paganetti den. In a
few neat and lively phrases he threw the light on to the depths of the
gloomy cave, showed all the traps, the gulfs, the windings, the snares,
like a guide waving his torch above the _oubliettes_ of some sinister
dungeon. He spoke of the fictitious quarries, of the railways on paper,
of the chimeric liners disappearing in their own steam. The frightful
desert of the Taverna was not forgotten, nor the old Genoese castle, the
office of the steamship agency. But what amused the Chamber most was the
story of a swindling ceremony organized by the governor for the piercing
of a tunnel through Monte Rotondo, a gigantic undertaking always in
project, put off from year to year, demanding millions of money and
thousands of workmen, and which was begun in great pomp a week before
the election. His report gave the thing a comic air--the first blow of
the pickaxe given by the candidate in the enormous mountain covered by
ancient forests, the speech of the Prefect, the benediction of the flags
with the cries of “Long live Bernard Jansoulet!” and the two hundred
workmen beginning the task at once, working day and night for a week;
then, when the election was over, leaving the fragments of rock heaped
round the abandoned excavation for a laughing-stock--another asylum
for the terrible banditti. The game was over. After having extorted the
shareholders’ money for so long, the Territorial Bank this time was
used as a means to swindle the electors of their votes. “Furthermore,
gentlemen, another detail, with which perhaps I should have begun and
spared you the recital of this electoral pasquinade. I learn that a
judicial inquiry has been opened to-day into the affairs of the Corsican
Bank, and that a serious examination of its books will very probably
reveal one of those financial scandals--too frequent, alas! in our
days--and in which, for the honour of the Chamber, we would wish that
none of our members were concerned.”

With this sudden revelation, the speaker stopped a moment, like an actor
making his point; and in the heavy silence weighing on the assembly, the
noise of a closing door was heard. It was the Governor Paganetti leaving
the tribune, his face white, the eyes wide open, his mouth half opened,
like some Pierrot scenting in the air a formidable blow. Monpavon,
motionless, expanded his shirtfront. The big man puffed violently into
the flowers of his wife’s little white hat.

Jansoulet’s mother looked at her son.

“I have spoken of the honour of the Chamber, gentlemen. On that point
I have more to say.” Now Le Merquier was reading no longer. After the
chairman of the committees, the orator came on the scene, or rather
the judge. His face was expressionless, his eyes hidden; nothing lived,
nothing moved in all his body save the right arm--the long angular arm
with short sleeves--which rose and fell automatically, like a sword of
justice, making at the end of each sentence the cruel and inexorable
gesture of beheading. And truly it was an execution at which they were
present. The orator would leave on one side scandalous legends, the
mystery which brooded over this colossal fortune acquired in distant
lands, far from all control. But there were in the life of the candidate
certain points difficult to clear up, certain details. He hesitated,
seemed to select his words; then, before the impossibility of
formulating a direct accusation: “Do not let us lower the debate,
gentlemen. You have understood me. You know to what infamous stories I
allude--to what calumnies, I wish I could say; but truth forces me to
state that when M. Jansoulet called before your committee, was asked to
deny the accusations made against him, his explanations were so vague
that, though convinced of his innocence, a scrupulous regard for your
honour forced us to reject a candidature so besmirched. No, this man
must not sit among you. Besides, what would he do there? Living so long
in the East, he has unlearned the laws, the manners, and the usages of
his country. He believes in rough and ready justice, in fights in the
open street; he relies on the abuses of power, and worse still, on
the venality and crouching baseness of all men. He is the merchant who
thinks that everything can be bought at a price--even the votes of the
electors, even the conscience of his colleagues.”

One should have seen with what naive admiration these fat deputies,
enervated with good fortune, listened to this ascetic, this man
of another age, like some Saint-Jerome who had left his Thebaid to
overwhelm with his vigorous eloquence, in a full assembly of the
Roman Empire, the shameless luxury of the prevaricators and of the
_concussionaires_. How well they understood now this grand surname of
“My conscience” which the courts had given him. In the galleries the
enthusiasm rose higher still. Lovely heads leaned to see him, to drink
in his words. Applause went round, bending the bouquets here and there,
like the wind in a wheat-field. A woman’s voice cried with a little
foreign accent, “Bravo! Bravo!”

And the mother?

Standing upright, immovable, concentrated in her desire to understand
something of this legal phraseology, of these mysterious allusions, she
was there like deaf-mutes who only understand what is said before them
by the movement of the lips and the expression of the faces. But it was
enough for her to watch her son and Le Merquier to understand what harm
one was doing to the other, what perfidious and poisoned meaning fell
from this long discourse on the unfortunate man whom one might have
believed asleep, except for the trembling of his strong shoulders and
the clinching of his hands in his hair, while hiding his face. Oh,
if she could have said to him: “Don’t be afraid, my son. If they all
misconstrue you, your mother loves you. Let us come away together. What
need have we of them?” And for one moment she could believe that what
she was saying to him thus in her heart he had understood by some
mysterious intuition. He had just raised and shaken his grizzled head,
where the childish curve of his lips quivered under a possibility of
tears. But instead of leaving his seat, he spoke from it, his great
hands pounded the wood of the desk. The other had finished, now it was
his time to answer:

“Gentlemen,” said he.

He stopped at once, frightened by the sound of his voice, hoarse,
frightfully low and vulgar, which he heard for the first time in public.
He must find the words for his defence, tormented as he was by the
twitchings of his face, the intonations which he could not express. And
if the anguish of the poor man was touching, the old mother up there,
leaning, gasping, moving her lips nervously as if to help him find
words, reflected the picture of his torture. Though he could not see
her, intentionally turned away from her gallery, as he evidently was,
this maternal inspiration, the ardent magnetism of those black eyes,
ended by giving him life, and suddenly his words and gestures flowed
freely:

“First of all, gentlemen, I must say that I do not defend the methods of
my election. If you believe that electoral morals have not been always
the same in Corsica, that all the irregularities committed are due to
the corrupting influence of my gold and not to the uncultivated and
passionate temperament of its people, reject me--it will be justice
and I will not murmur. But in this debate other matters have been dealt
with, accusations have been made which involve my personal honour, and
those, and those alone, I wish to answer.” His voice was growing firmer,
always broken, veiled, but with some soft cadences. He spoke rapidly of
his life, his first steps, his departure for the East. It sounded like
an eighteenth century tale of the Barbary corsairs sailing the Latin
seas, of Beys and of bold Provencals, as sunburned as crickets, who
used to end by marrying some sultana and “taking the turban,” in the
old expression of the Marseillais. “As for me,” said the Nabob, with his
good-humoured smile. “I had no need of taking the turban to grow rich. I
had only to take into this land of idleness the activity and flexibility
of a southern Frenchman; and in a few years I made one of those fortunes
which can only be made in those hot countries, where everything is
gigantic, prodigious, disproportionate, where flowers grow in a night,
and one tree produces a forest. The excuse of such fortunes is the
manner in which they are used; and I make bold to say that never has any
favourite of fortune tried harder to justify his wealth. I have not
been successful.” No! he had not succeeded. From all the gold he had
scattered he had only gathered contempt and hatred. Hatred! Who could
boast more of it than he? like a great ship in the dock when its keel
touches the bottom. He was too rich, and that stood for every vice,
and every crime pointed him out for anonymous vengeances, cruel and
incessant enmities.

“Ah, gentlemen,” cried the poor Nabob, lifting his clinched hands, “I
have known poverty, I have struggled face to face with it, and it is a
dreadful struggle, I swear. But to struggle against wealth, to defend
one’s happiness, honour--rest--to have no shelter but piles of gold
which fall and crush you, is something more hideous, more heart-breaking
still. Never, in the darkest days of my distress, have I had the pains,
the anguish, the sleepless nights with which fortune has loaded me--this
horrible fortune which I hate and which stifles me. They call me the
Nabob, in Paris. It is not the Nabob they should say, but the Pariah--a
social pariah holding out wide arms to a society which will have none of
him.”

Written down, the words may appear cold; but there, before the assembly,
the defence of this man was stamped with an eloquent and grandiose
sincerity, which at first, coming from this rustic, this upstart,
without culture or education, with the voice of a boatman, first
astonished and then singularly moved his hearers just on account of
its wild, uncultivated style, foreign to every notion of parliamentary
etiquette. Already marks of favour had agitated members, used to the
flood of gray and monotonous administrative speech. But at this cry
of rage and despair against wealth, uttered by the wretch whom it
was enfolding, rolling, drowning in its floods of gold, while he was
struggling and calling for help from the depths of his Pactolus, the
whole Chamber rose with loud applause, and outstretched hands, as if to
give the unfortunate Nabob more testimonies of esteem, of which he was
so desirous, and at the same time to save him from shipwreck. Jansoulet
felt it; and warmed by this sympathy, he went on, with head erect and
confident look:

“You have just been told, gentlemen, that I was unworthy of sitting
among you. And he who said it was the last from whom I should have
expected it, for he alone knew the sad secret of my life, he alone could
speak for me, justify me, and convince you. He has not done it. Well,
I will try, whatever it may cost me. Outrageously calumniated before my
country, I owe it to myself and my children this public justification,
and I will make it.”

With a brusque movement he turned towards the tribune where he knew his
enemy was watching him, and suddenly stopped, full of fear. There,
in front of him, behind the pale, malignant head of the baroness, his
mother, his mother whom he believed to be two hundred leagues away
from the terrible storm, was looking at him, leaning against the wall,
bending down her saintly face, flooded with tears, but proud and beaming
nevertheless with her Bernard’s great success. For it was really a
success of sincere human emotion, which a few more words would change
into a triumph. Cries of “Go on, go on!” came from all sides of the
Chamber to reassure and encourage him. But Jansoulet did not speak. He
had only to say: “Calumny has wilfully confused two names. I am called
Bernard Jansoulet, the other Jansoulet Louis.” Not a word more was
needed.

But in the presence of his mother, still ignorant of his brother’s
dishonour, he could not say it. Respect--family ties forbade it. He
could hear his father’s voice: “I die of shame, my child.” Would not she
die of shame too, if he spoke? He turned from the maternal smile with a
sublime look of renunciation, then in a low voice, utterly discouraged,
he said:

“Excuse me, gentlemen; this explanation is beyond my power. Order an
investigation of my whole life, open as it is to all, alas! since any
one can interpret all my actions. I swear to you that you will find
nothing there which unfits me to sit among the representatives of my
country.”

In the face of this defeat, which seemed to everybody the sudden
crumbling of an edifice of effrontery, the astonishment and
disillusionment were immense. There was a moment of excitement on the
benches, the tumult of a vote taken on the spot, which the Nabob saw
vaguely through the glass doors, as the condemned man looks down from
the scaffold on the howling crowd. Then, after that terrible pause which
precedes a supreme moment, the president made, amid deep silence, the
simple pronouncement:

“The election of M. Bernard Jansoulet is annulled.”

Never had a man’s life been cut off with less solemnity or disturbance.

Up there in her gallery, Jansoulet’s mother understood nothing, except
that the seats were emptying near her, that people were rising and going
away. Soon there was no one else there save the fat man and the lady
in the white hat, who leaned over the barrier, watching Bernard with
curiosity, who seemed also to be going away, for he was putting up
great bundles of papers in his portfolio quite calmly. When they were
in order, he rose and left his place. Ah! the life of public men had
sometimes cruel situations. Gravely, slowly, under the gaze of the whole
assembly, he must descend those steps which he had mounted at the cost
of so much trouble and money, to whose feet an inexorable fatality was
precipitating him.

The Hemerlingues were waiting for this, following to its last stage this
humiliating exit, which crushes the unseated member with some of the
shame and fear of a dismissal. Then, when the Nabob had disappeared,
they looked at each other with a silent laugh, and left the gallery
before the old woman had dared to ask them anything, warned by her
instinct of their secret hostility. Left alone, she gave all her
attention to a new speech, persuaded that her son’s affairs were still
in question. They spoke of an election, of a scrutiny, and the poor
mother leaning forward in her red hood, wrinkling her great eyebrows,
would have religiously listened to the whole of the report of the
Sarigue election, if the attendant who had introduced her had not come
to say that it was finished and she had better go away. She seemed very
much surprised.

“Indeed! Is it over?” said she, rising almost regretfully.

And quietly, timidly:

“Has he--has he won?”

It was innocent, so touching that the attendant did not even dream of
smiling.

“Unfortunately, no, madame. M. Jansoulet has not won. But why did he
stop in that way? If it is true that he never came to Paris, and that
another Jansoulet did everything they accuse him of, why did he not say
so?”

The old mother, turning pale, leaned on the balustrade of the staircase.
She had understood.

Bernard’s brusque interruption on seeing her, the sacrifice he had made
to her so simply--that noble glance as of a dying animal, came to her
mind, and the shame of the elder, the favourite child, mingled itself
with Bernard’s disaster--a double-edged maternal sorrow, which tore her
whichever way she turned. Yes, yes, it was on her account he would not
speak. But she would not accept such a sacrifice. He must come back at
once and explain himself before the deputies.

“My son, where is my son?”

“Below, madame, in his carriage. It was he who sent me to look for you.”

She ran before the attendant, walking quickly, talking aloud, pushing
aside out of her way the little black and bearded men who were
gesticulating in the passages. After the waiting-hall she crossed a
great round antechamber where servants in respectful rows made a living
wainscotting to the high, blank wall. From there she could see through
the glass doors, the outside railing, the crowd in waiting, and among
the other vehicles, the Nabob’s carriage waiting. As she passed, the
peasant recognised in one of the groups her enormous neighbour of the
gallery, with the pale man in spectacles who had attacked her son, who
was receiving all sorts of felicitation for his discourse. At the
name of Jansoulet, pronounced among mocking and satisfied sneers, she
stopped.

“At any rate,” said a handsome man with a bad feminine face, “he has not
proved where our accusations were false.”

The old woman, hearing that, wrenched herself through the crowd, and
facing Moessard said:

“What he did not say I will. I am his mother, and it is my duty to
speak.”

She stopped to seize Le Merquier by the sleeve, who was escaping:

“Wicked man, you must listen, first of all. What have you got against my
child? Don’t you know who he is? Wait a little till I tell you.”

And turning to the journalist:

“I had two sons, sir.”

Moessard was no longer there. She returned to Le Merquier: “Two sons,
sir.” Le Merquier had disappeared.

“Oh, listen to me, some one, I beg,” said the poor mother, throwing her
hands and her voice round her to assemble and retain her hearers; but
all fled, melted away, disappeared--deputies, reporters, unknown and
mocking faces to whom she wished at any cost to tell her story, careless
of the indifference where her sorrows and her joys fell, her pride and
maternal tenderness expressed in a tornado of feeling. And while she was
thus exciting herself and struggling--distracted, her bonnet awry--at
once grotesque and sublime, as are all the children of nature when
brought into civilization, taking to witness the honesty of her son
and the injustice of men, even the liveried servants, whose disdainful
impassibility was more cruel than all, Jansoulet appeared suddenly
beside her.

“Take my arm, mother. You must not stop there.”

He said it in a tone so firm and calm that all the laughter ceased, and
the old woman, suddenly quieted, sustained by this solid hold, still
trembling a little with anger, left the palace between two respectful
rows. A dignified and rustic couple, the millions of the son gilding the
countrified air of the mother, like the rags of a saint enshrined in a
golden _chasse_--they disappeared in the bright sunlight outside, in the
splendour of their glittering carriage--a ferocious irony in their deep
distress, a striking symbol of the terrible misery of the rich.

They sat well back, for both feared to be seen, and hardly spoke at
first. But when the vehicle was well on its way, and he had behind
him the sad Calvary where his honour hung gibbeted, Jansoulet, utterly
overcome, laid his head on his mother’s shoulder, hid it in the old
green shawl, and there, with the burning tears flowing, all his great
body shaken by sobs, he returned to the cry of his childhood: “Mother.”



DRAMAS OF PARIS

     Que l’heure est donc breve,
     Qu’on passe en aimant!
     C’est moins qu’un moment,
     Un peu plus qu’un reve.

In the semi-obscurity of a great drawing-room filled with flowers, the
seats of the furniture covered with holland, the chandeliers draped with
muslin, the windows open, and the venetians lowered, Mme. Jenkins is
seated at the piano reading the new song of the fashionable musician;
some melodic phrases accompanying exquisite verse, a melancholy _Lied_,
unequally divided, which seems written for the tender gravities of her
voice and the disturbed state of her soul.

     Le temps nous enleve
     Notre enchantement

sighs the poor woman, moved by the sound of her own voice, and while
the notes float away in the court-yard of the house, where the fountain
falls drop by drop among a bed of rhododendrons, the singer breaks off,
her hands holding the chord, her eyes fixed on the music, but her look
far away. The doctor is absent. The care of his health and business has
exiled him from Paris for some days, and the thoughts of the beautiful
Mme. Jenkins have taken that grave turn, as often happens in solitude,
that analytical tendency which sometimes makes even momentary
separations fatal in the most united households. United they had not
been for sometime. They only saw each other at meal-times, before
the servants, hardly speaking unless he, the man of unctuous manners,
allowed himself to make some disobliging or brutal remark on her son,
or on her age, which she began to show, or on some dress which did not
become her. Always gentle and serene, she stifled her tears, accepted
everything, feigned not to understand; not that she loved him still
after so much cruelty and contempt, but it was the story, as their
coachman Joe told it, “of an old clinger who was determined to make him
marry her.” Up to then a terrible obstacle--the life of the legitimate
wife--had prolonged a dishonourable situation. Now that the obstacle
no longer existed she wished to put an end to the situation, because
of Andre, who from one day to another might be forced to despise his
mother, because of the world which they had deceived for ten years--a
world she never entered but with a beating heart, for fear of the
treatment she would receive after a discovery. To her allusions, to
her prayers, Jenkins had answered at first by phrases, grand gestures:
“Could you distrust me? Is not our engagement sacred?”

He pointed out the difficulty of keeping an act of this importance
secret. Then he shut himself up in a malignant silence, full of cold
anger and violent determinations. The death of the duke, the fall of an
absurd vanity, had struck a final blow at the household; for disaster,
which often brings hearts ready to understand one another nearer,
finishes and completes disunions. And it was indeed a disaster. The
popularity of the Jenkins pearls suddenly stopped, the situation of the
foreign doctor and charlatan, ably defined by Bouchereau in the Journal
of the Academy, and people of fashion looked at each other in fright,
paler from terror than from the arsenic they had imbibed. Already the
Irishman had felt the effect of those counter blasts which make Parisian
infatuations so dangerous.

It was for that reason, no doubt, that Jenkins had judged it wise to
disappear for some time, leaving madame to continue to frequent the
houses still open to them, to gauge and hold public opinion in respect.
It was a hard task for the poor woman, who found everywhere the cool and
distant welcome which she had received at the Hemerlingues. But she did
not complain; thus earning her marriage, she was putting between them as
a last resource the sad tie of pity and common trials. And as she knew
that she was welcomed in the world on account of her talent, of the
artistic distraction she lent to their private parties, she was always
ready to lay on the piano her fan and long gloves, to play some fragment
of her vast repertory. She worked constantly, passing her afternoons
in turning over new music, choosing by preference sad and complicated
harmonies, the modern music which no longer contents itself with being
an art, but becomes a science, and answers better to our nerves, to our
restlessness, than to sentiment.

Daylight flooded the room as a maid brought a card to her mistress;
“Heurteux, business agent.”

The gentleman was there, he insisted on seeing madame.

“You have told him the doctor is travelling?”

He had been told, but it was to madame he wished to speak.

“To me?”

Disturbed, she examined this rough, crumpled card, this unknown name:
“Heurteux.” What could it be?

“Well, show him in.”

Heurteux, business agent, coming from broad daylight into the
semi-obscurity of the room, was blinking with an uncertain air, trying
to see. She, on the other hand, saw very distinctly a stiff figure, with
iron-gray whiskers and protruding jaw, one of those hangers-on of the
law whom one meets round the law courts, born fifty years old, with a
bitter mouth, an envious air, and a morocco portfolio under the arm. He
sat down on the edge of the chair which she pointed out to him, turned
his head to make sure that the servant had gone out, then opened his
portfolio methodically to search for a paper. Seeing that he did not
speak, she began in a tone of impatience:

“I ought to warn you, sir, that my husband is absent, and that I am not
acquainted with his business.”

Without any astonishment, his hand in his papers, the man answered:
“I know that _M. Jenkins_ is absent, madame”--he emphasized more
particularly the two words “M. Jenkins”--“especially as I come on his
behalf.”

She looked at him frightened. “On his behalf?”

“Alas! yes, madame. The doctor’s situation, as you are no doubt aware,
is one, for the moment, of very great embarrassment. Unfortunate
dealings on the Stock Exchange, the failure of a great financial
enterprise in which his money is invested, the _OEuvre de Bethleem_
which weighs heavily on him, all these reverses coming at once have
forced him to a grave resolution. He is selling his mansion, his horses,
everything that he possesses, and has given me a power of attorney for
that purpose.”

He had at last found what he was looking for--one of those stamped
folded papers, interlined and riddled with references, where the
impassible law makes itself responsible for so many lies. Mme. Jenkins
was going to say: “But I was here. I would have carried out all his
wishes, all his orders--” when she suddenly understood by the coolness
of her visitor, his easy, almost insolent attitude, that she was
included in this clearing up, in the getting rid of the costly mansion
and useless riches, and that her departure would be the signal for the
sale.

She rose suddenly. The man, still seated, went on: “What I have still to
say, madame”--oh, she knew it, she could have dictated to him, what he
had still to say--“is so painful, so delicate. M. Jenkins is leaving
Paris for a long time, and in the fear of exposing you to the hazards
and adventures of the new life he is undertaking, of taking you
away from a son you cherish, and in whose interest perhaps you had
better----”

She heard no more, saw no more, and while he was spinning out his
gossamer phrases, given over to despair, she heard the song over and
over in her mind, as the last image seen pursues a drowning man:

     Le temps nous enleve
     Notre enchantement.

All at once her pride returned. “Let us put a stop to this, sir. All
your turns and phrases are only an additional insult. The fact is that I
am driven out--turned into the street like a servant.”

“Oh, madame, madame! The situation is cruel enough, don’t let us make it
worse by hard words. In the evolution of his _modus vivendi_ M. Jenkins
has to separate from you, but he does so with the greatest pain to
himself; and the proposals which I am charged to make are a proof of his
sentiments for you. First, as to furniture and clothes, I am authorized
to let you take--”

“That will do,” said she. She flew to the bell. “I am going out.
Quick--my hat, my mantle, anything, never mind what. I am in a hurry.”

And while they went to fetch her what she wanted she said:

“Everything here belongs to M. Jenkins. Let him dispose of it as he
likes. I want nothing from him. Don’t insist; it is useless.”

The man did not insist. His mission fulfilled, the rest mattered little
to him.

Steadily, coldly, she arranged her hat carefully before the glass, the
maid fastening her veil, and arranging on her shoulders the folds of her
mantle, then she looked round her and considered for a moment whether
she was forgetting anything precious to her. No, nothing--her son’s
letters were in her pocket, she never allowed them to be away from her.

“Madame does not wish for the carriage?”

“No.” And she left the house.

It was about five o’clock. At that moment Bernard Jansoulet was crossing
the doorway of the legislative chamber, his mother on his arm; but
poignant as was the drama enacted there, this one surpassed it--more
sudden, unforeseen, and without any stage effects. A drama between four
walls, improvised in Paris day by day. Perhaps it is this which gives
that vibration to the air of the city, that tremor which forces the
nerves into activity. The weather was magnificent. The streets of the
wealthy quarter, large and straight as avenues, shone in the declining
light, embellished with open windows, flowery balconies, and patches
of green seen on the boulevards, light and soft among the narrow, hard
prospects of stone. Mme. Jenkins hurried in this direction, walking
aimlessly, in a dull stupor. What a horrible crash! Five minutes ago
rich, surrounded by all the respect and comfort of easy circumstances.
Now--nothing. Not even a roof to sleep under, not even a name. The
street!

Where was she to go? What would become of her?

At first she had thought of her son. But, to acknowledge her fault, to
blush before her own child, to weep while taking from him the right to
console her, was more than she could do. No, there was nothing for her
but death. To die as soon as possible, to escape shame by a complete
disappearance, to unravel in this way an inextricable situation. But
where to die! How? There are so many ways of departure! And she called
them all up mentally while she walked. Life flowed around her, its
luxury at this time of the year in full flower, round the Madeleine
and its market, in a space marked off by the perfume of carnations and
roses. On the wide footpath were well-dressed women whose skirts mingled
their rustle with the trembling of the young leaves; there was some of
the pleasure here of a meeting in a drawing-room, an air of acquaintance
among the passers-by, of smiles and discreet greetings in passing. And
all at once Mme. Jenkins, anxious lest her features might betray her,
fearing what might be thought if any one saw her rushing on so blindly,
slackened her pace to the aimless gait of an afternoon walk, stopping
here and there. The light materials of the dresses spoke of summer,
of the country; a thin skirt for the sandy paths of the parks,
gauze-trimmed hats for the seaside, fans, sunshades. Her fixed eyes
fastened on these trifles without seeing them; but in a vague and pale
reflection in the clear windows she saw her image, lying motionless on
the bed of some hotel, the leaden sleep of a poison in her head; or,
down there, beyond the walls, among the slime of some sunken boat. Which
of the two was better?

She hesitated, considered, compared; then, her decision made, started
off with the resolved air of a woman tearing herself regretfully
from the temptations of the window. As she moved away, the Marquis de
Monpavon, proud and well-dressed, a flower in his coat, saluted her at
a distance with that sweep of the hat so dear to women’s vanity, the
well-bred brow, with the hat lifted high above the erect head. She
answered him with her pretty Parisian’s greeting, expressed in an
imperceptible inclination of the body and a smile; and seeing this
exchange of politeness in the midst of the spring gaiety, one would
never think that the same sinister idea was guiding the two, meeting by
chance on the road they were traversing in opposite directions, but to
the same end.

The prediction of Mora’s valet had come true for the marquis: “We
may die or lose power; then there will be a reckoning, and it will be
terrible.” It was terrible. The former receiver-general had obtained
with difficulty a delay of a fortnight to make up his deficiencies,
taking the last chance that Jansoulet, with his election confirmed, and
with full control over his millions again, would come to the rescue once
more. The decision of the Assembly had just taken from him this last
hope. As soon as he knew it, he returned to the club calmly, and went
up to his room, where Francis was waiting impatiently for him with
an important paper just arrived. It was a notification to the Sieur
Louis-Marie-Agenor de Monpavon to appear the next day in the office
of the Juge d’Instruction. Was it addressed to the censor of the
Territorial Bank or to the former receiver-general? In any case, the
bold formula of a judicial assignation in the first instance, instead of
a private invitation, spoke sufficiently of the gravity of the situation
and the firm resolution of Justice.

In view of such an extremity, foreseen and expected for long, he
had made his plans. A Monpavon in the criminal courts!--a Monpavon,
librarian in a convict prison! Never! He put all his affairs in order,
tore up his papers, emptied his pockets carefully, and took something
from his toilet-table, so calmly and naturally, that when he said
to Francis, as he was going out, “Am going to the baths--That dirty
Chamber--Filthy dust”--the servant took him at his word. And the marquis
was not lying. His exciting post up there in the dust of the tribune had
tired him as much as two nights in the train; and his decision to die
associated itself with his desire to take a bath, the old Sybarite
thought of going to sleep in the bath, like what’s his name, and other
famous personages of antiquity. And in justice, it must be said that not
one of these Stoics went to his death more quietly than he.

With a white camellia in his buttonhole, above his rosette of the Legion
of Honour, he was going up the Boulevard des Capucines with a light
step, when the sight of Mme. Jenkins troubled his serenity for a moment.
She had a youthful air, a light in her eyes, something so piquant that
he stopped to look at her. Tall and beautiful, with her long dress of
black gauze, her shoulders wrapped in a lace mantle, her hat trimmed
with a garland of autumn leaves, she disappeared in the midst of other
elegant women in the balmy atmosphere; and the thought that his eyes
were going to close forever on this delightful sight, whose pleasures he
knew so well, saddened Monpavon a little, and took the spring from his
step. But a few paces farther on, a meeting of another kind gave him
back all his courage.

Some one, threadbare, shamefaced, dazzled by the light, was coming down
the Boulevard. It was old Marestang, former senator, former minister,
so deeply compromised in the affairs of the “Malta Biscuits,” that,
in spite of his age, his services, and the great scandal of such a
proceeding, he had been condemned to two years of prison, struck off
the roll of the Legion of Honour, of which he had been one of the
dignitaries. The affair was long ago; the poor wretch had just been let
out of prison before his sentence had expired, lost, ruined, not having
even the means to gild his trouble, for he had had to pay what he owed.
Standing on the curb, he was waiting with bent head till the crowds of
carriages should allow him to pass, embarrassed by this stoppage at the
fullest spot of the boulevards between the passers-by and the sea of
open carriages filled with familiar figures. Monpavon walking near him,
caught his timid, uneasy look, imploring a recognition and hiding from
it at the same time. The idea that one day he could humiliate himself
thus, gave him a shudder of revolt. “Oh! that is not possible!” And
straightening himself up and throwing out his chest, he kept on his way,
firmer and more resolute than before.

M. de Monpavon walks to his death! He goes there by the long line of
the boulevards, all on fire in the direction of the Madeleine, where
he treads the elastic asphalt once more as a lounger, nose in the air,
hands crossed behind. He has time; there is no hurry; he is master of
the rendezvous. At each instant he smiles before him, waves a greeting
from the ends of his fingers or makes the more formal bow we have
just seen. Everything revives him, charms him, the noise of the
watering-carts, the awnings of the _cafes_, pulled down to the middle
of the foot-paths. The approach of death gives him the feelings of a
convalescent accessible to all the delicacy, the hidden poesy of an
exquisite hour of summer in the midst of Parisian life--of an exquisite
hour--his last, and which he will prolong till night. No doubt it is
for that reason that he passes the sumptuous establishment where he
ordinarily takes his bath. He does not stop either at the Chinese Baths.
He is too well known here. All Paris would know of it the same evening.
There would be a scandal of bad taste, much coarse rumour about his
death in the clubs and drawing-rooms. And the old sensualist, the
well-bred man, wishes to spare himself this shame, to plunge and be
swallowed up in the vague anonymity of suicide, like those soldiers who,
after great battles, neither wounded, dead, or living, are simply
put down as “missing.” That is why he has nothing on him which can be
recognised, or furnish a hint to the inquiries of the police, why he
seeks in this immense Paris the distant quarter where will open for him
the terrible but oblivious confusion of the pauper’s grave. Already,
since Monpavon has been walking, the aspect of the boulevard
has changed. The crowd has become more compact, more active, and
preoccupied, the houses smaller, marked with signs of commerce. When the
gates of Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin are passed, with their overflow
from the faubourgs, the provincial physiognomy of the town accentuates
itself. The old beau no longer knows any one, and can congratulate
himself on being unknown.

The shopkeepers looking curiously after him, with his fine linen, his
well-cut coat, and good figure, take him for some famous actor strolling
on the boulevard--witness of his first triumphs--before the play begins.
The wind freshens, the twilight softens the distances, and while the
long road behind him still glitters, it grows darker now at every
step--like the past, with its retrospections to him who looks back and
regrets. It seems to Monpavon that he is walking into blackness. He
shivers a little, but does not falter, and continues to walk with erect
head and chest thrown out.

M. de Monpavon walks to his death! Now he is entering the complicated
labyrinth of noisy streets, where the clatter of the omnibus mingles
with the thousand humming trades of the working city, where the heat
of the factory chimneys loses itself in the fever of a whole people
struggling against hunger. The air trembles, the gutters steam, the
houses shake at the passing of the wagons, of the heavy drays rumbling
round the narrow streets. On a sudden the marquis stops; he has found
what he wanted. Between the black shop of a charcoal-seller and the
establishment of a packing-case maker, whose pine boards leaning on the
walls give him a little shiver, there is a wide door, surmounted by its
sign, the word BATHS on a dirty lantern. He enters, crosses a little
damp garden where a jet of water weeps in a rockery. Here is the gloomy
corner he was looking for. Who would ever believe that the Marquis de
Monpavon had come there to cut his throat? The house is at the end, low,
with green blinds and a glass door, with a sham air of a villa. He asks
for a bath, and while it is being prepared he smokes his cigar at the
window, with the noise of the water behind him, looks at the flower-bed
of sparse lilac, and the high walls which inclose it.

At the side there is a great yard, the court-yard of a fire station,
with a gymnasium, whose masts and swings, vaguely seen from below, look
like gibbets. A bugle-call sounds in the yard, and its call takes the
marquis thirty years back, reminds him of his campaigns in Algeria, the
high ramparts of Constantine, the arrival of Mora at the regiment, and
the duels, and the little parties. Ah! how well life began then! What a
pity that those cursed cards--ps--ps--ps--Well, it’s something to have
saved appearances.

“Your bath is ready, sir,” said the attendant.


At that moment, breathless and pale, Mme. Jenkins was entering Andre’s
studio, where an instinct stronger than her will had brought her--the
wish to embrace her child before she died. When she opened the door (he
had given her a key) she was relieved to find that he was not there, and
that she would have time to calm her excitement, increased as it was by
the long walk to which she was so little accustomed. No one was there.
But on the table was the little note which he always left when he went
out, so that his mother, whose visits were becoming shorter and less
frequent on account of the tyranny of Jenkins, could tell where he was,
and wait for him or rejoin him easily. The two had not ceased to love
each other deeply, tenderly, in spite of the cruelty of life which
forced into the relations of mother and son the clandestine precautions
of an intrigue.

“I am at my rehearsal,” said the note to-day, “I shall be back at
seven.”

This attention of the son, whom she had not seen for three weeks, yet
who persisted in expecting her all the same, brought to the mother’s
eyes the flood of tears which was suffocating her. She felt as if she
had just entered a new world. This little room was so pure, so quiet, so
elevated. It kept the last rays of the setting sun on its windows,
and seemed, with its bare walls, hewn from a corner of the sky. It was
adorned only with one great portrait, hers, nothing but hers, smiling
in the place of honour, and again, down there, on the table in a gilt
frame. This humble little lodging, so light when all Paris was becoming
dark, made an extraordinary impression on her, in spite of the poverty
of its sparse furniture, scattered in two rooms, its common chintz, and
its chimney garnished with two great bunches of hyacinths--those flowers
which are hawked round the streets in barrowsful. What a good and worthy
life she could have led by the side of her Andre! And in her mind’s eye
she had arranged her bed in one corner, her piano in another, she saw
herself giving lessons, and caring for the home to which she was adding
her share of ease and courageous gaiety. How was it that she had not
seen that her duty, the pride of her widowhood, was there? By what
blindness, what unworthy weakness?

It was a great fault, no doubt, but one for which many excuses might be
found in her easy and tender disposition, and the clever knavery of her
accomplice, always talking of marriage, hiding from her that he himself
was no longer free, and when at last obliged to confess it, painting
such a picture of his dull life, of his despair, of his love, that the
poor creature, so deeply compromised already, and incapable of one
of those heroic efforts which raise the sufferer above the false
situations, had given way at last, had accepted this double existence,
so brilliant and so miserable, built on a lie which had lasted
ten years. Ten years of intoxicating success and unspeakable
unhappiness--ten years of singing, with the fear of exposure between
each verse--where the least remark on irregular unions wounded her like
an allusion--where the expression of her face had softened to the air of
mild humility, of a guilty woman begging for pardon. Then the certainty
that she would be deserted had come to spoil even these borrowed joys,
had tarnished her luxury; and what misery, what sufferings borne in
silence, what incessant humiliations, even to this last, the most
terrible of all!

While she is thus sadly reviewing her life in the cool of the evening
and the calm of the deserted house, a gust of happy laughter rose from
the rooms beneath; and recalling the confidences of Andre, his last
letter telling the great news, she tried to distinguish among all these
fresh and limpid voices that of her daughter Elise, her son’s betrothed,
whom she did not know, whom she would never know. This reflection added
to the misery of her last moments, and loaded them with so much remorse
and regret that, in spite of her will to be brave, she wept.

Night comes on little by little. Large shadows cover the sloping
windows, where the immense depth of the sky seems to lose its colour,
and to deepen into obscurity. The roofs seem to draw close together for
the night, like soldiers preparing for the attack. The bells count the
hours gravely, while the martins fly round their hidden nests, and the
wind makes its accustomed invasion of the rubbish of the old wood-yard.
To-night it sighs with the sound of the river, a shiver of the fog; it
sighs of the river, to remind the unfortunate woman that it is there
she must go. She shivers beforehand in her lace mantle. Why did she come
here to reawaken her desire for a life impossible after the avowal she
was forced to make? Hasty steps shake the staircase; the door opens
precipitately; it is Andre. He is singing, happy, in a great hurry, for
they are waiting dinner for him below. But, as he is striking the match,
he feels that someone is in the room--a moving shadow among the shadows
at rest.

“Who is there?”

Something answers him like a stifled laugh or a sob. He believes that
it is one of his little neighbours, a plot of the children to amuse
themselves. He draws near. Two hands, two arms, seize and surround him.

“It is I.”

And with a feverish voice, hurrying as if to assure herself, she tells
him that she is setting out on a long journey, and that before going--

“A journey! And where are you going?”

“Oh, I do not know. We are going over there, a long way, on business in
his own part of the world.”

“What! You will not be here for my play? It is in three days. And then,
immediately after, my marriage. Come now, he cannot hinder you from
coming to my marriage?”

She makes excuses, imagines reasons, but her hands burning between her
son’s, and her altered voice, tell Andre that she is not speaking the
truth. He is going to strike a light; she prevents him.

“No, no; it is useless. We are better without it. Besides, I have so
much to get ready still. I must go away.”

They are both standing up, ready for the separation, but Andre will not
let her go without telling him what is the matter, what tragic care
is hollowing that fair face where the eyes--was it an effect of the
dusk?--shone with a strange light.

“Nothing; no, nothing, I assure you. Only the idea of not being able to
take part in your happiness, your triumph. At any rate, you know I love
you; you don’t mistrust your mother, do you? I have never been a day
without thinking of you: do the same--keep me in your heart. And now
kiss me and let me go quickly. I have waited too long.”

Another minute and she would have the strength for what she had to do.
She darts forward.

“No, you shall not go. I feel that something extraordinary is happening
in your life which you do not want to tell. You are in some great
trouble, I am sure. This man has done some infamous thing.”

“No, no. Let me go! Let me go!”

But he held her fast.

“Tell me, what is it? Tell me.”

Then, whispering in her ear, with a voice tender and low as a kiss:

“He has left you, hasn’t he?”

The wretched woman shivers, hesitates.

“Ask me nothing. I will say nothing. Adieu!”

He pressed her to his heart:

“What could you tell me that I do not know already, poor mother? You did
not guess, then, why I left six months ago?”

“You know?”

“I know everything. And what has happened to you to-day I have foreseen
for long, and hoped for.”

“Oh, wretch, wretch that I am, why did I come?”

“Because it is your home, because you owe me ten years of my mother. You
see now that I must keep you.”

He said all this on his knees, before the sofa on which she had let
herself fall, in a flood of tears, and the last painful sobs of her
wounded pride. She wept thus for long, her child at her feet. And now
the Joyeuse family, anxious because Andre did not come down, hurried
up in a troop to look for him. It was an invasion of innocent faces,
transparent gaiety, floating curls, modest dress, and over all the
group shone the big lamp, the good old lamp with the vast shade which
M. Joyeuse solemnly carried, as high, as straight as he could, with the
gesture of a caryatid. Suddenly they stopped before this pale and sad
lady, who looked, touched to the depths, at all this smiling grace,
above all at Elise, a little behind the others, whose conscious air in
this indiscreet visit points her out as the _fiancee_.

“Elise, embrace our mother and thank her. She has come to live with her
children.”

There she is, caught in all these caressing arms, pressed against four
little feminine hearts which have missed the shelter of a mother’s love
for so long; there she is introduced, and so gently, into the luminous
circle of the family lamp, widened to allow her to take her place there,
to dry her eyes, to warm and brighten her spirit at this steady flame,
even in this little studio near the roof, where just now the terrible
storm blew so wildly.


He who breathes his last over there, lying in his blood-stained bath,
has never known this sacred flame. Egoistical and hard, he has lived up
to the last for show, throwing out his chest in a bubble of vanity. And
this vanity was what was best in him. It alone had held him firm and
upright so long; it alone clinched his teeth on the groans of his
last agony. In the damp garden the water drips sadly. The bugle of the
firemen sounds the curfew. “Go and look at No. 7,” says the mistress,
“he will never have done with his bath.” The attendant goes, and utters
a cry of fright, of horror: “Oh, madame, he is dead! But it is not the
same man.” They go, but nobody can recognise the fine gentleman who
entered a short time ago, in this death’s-head puppet, the head leaning
on the edge of the bath, a face where the blood mingles with paint and
powder, all the limbs lying in the supreme lassitude of a part played
to the end--to the death of the actor. Two cuts of the razor across the
magnificent chest, and all the factitious majesty has burst and resolved
itself into this nameless horror, this heap of mud, of blood, of spoiled
and dead flesh, where, unrecognisable, lies the man of appearances, the
Marquis Louis-Marie-Agenor de Monpavon.



MEMOIRS OF AN OFFICE PORTER THE LAST LEAVES

I put down in haste and with an agitated pen the terrible events of
which I have been the plaything for the last few days. This time it
is all up with the Territorial and with my ambitious dreams. Disputed
bills, men in possession, visits of the police, all our books in the
hands of the courts, the governor fled, Bois l’Hery, the director, in
prison, another--Monpavon--disappeared. My brain reels in the midst of
these catastrophes. And if I had obeyed the warnings of reason, I should
have been quietly six months ago at Montbars cultivating my vineyard,
with no other care than that of seeing the clusters grow round and
golden in the good Burgundian sun, and to gather from the leaves, after
the dew, the little gray snails, so excellent when they are fried.
I should have built for myself with my savings, at the end of the
vineyard, on the height--I can see the place at this moment--a tower in
rough stone, like M. Chalmette’s, so convenient for an afternoon nap,
while the quails are chirping round the place. But always misled by
deceiving illusions, I wished to enrich myself, speculate, meddle in
finance, chain my fortune to the car of the conquerors of the day; and
now here I am back again in the saddest pages of my history, clerk in
a bankrupt establishment, my duty to answer a horde of creditors, of
shareholders drunk with fury, who load my white hairs with the worst
outrages, and would like to make me responsible for the ruin of the
Nabob and the flight of the governor; as if I myself was not as cruelly
struck by the loss of my four years of arrears, and my seven thousand
francs which I had confided to that scoundrel of Paganetti de
Porto-Vecchio.

But it is my fate to empty the cup of humiliation and degradation to the
dregs. Have I not been made to appear before a Juge d’Instruction--I,
Passajon, former apparitor of the faculty, with thirty years of faithful
service, and the ribbon of Officer of the Academy? Oh! when I saw
myself going up that staircase of the Palace of Justice, so big, so
conspicuous, without a rail to hold by, I felt my head turning and my
legs sinking under me. I was forced to reflect there, crossing these
halls, black with lawyers and judges, studded with great green doors
behind which one heard the imposing noise of the hearings; and up
higher, in the corridor of the Juges d’Instruction, during my hour’s
waiting on a bench, where the prison vermin crawled on my legs, while I
listened to a lot of thieves, pickpockets, and loose women talking and
laughing with the gendarmes, and the butts of the rifles echo in the
passages, and the dull roll of prison vans. I understood then the danger
of “combinations,” and that it was not always good to ridicule M. Gogo.

What reassured me, however, was that never having taken any part in the
deliberations of the Territorial, I had no share in their dealings and
intrigues. But explain this to me: Once in the judge’s office, before
that man in a velvet cap looking at me across his table with his little
eyes like hooks, I felt so pierced through, searched, turned over to
the very depth of my being, that, in spite of my innocence, I wanted to
confess. Confess what? I don’t know. But that is the effect which the
law had. This devil of a man spent five minutes looking at me without
speaking, all the while turning over a book filled with writing not
unknown to me, and suddenly he said, in a mocking and severe tone:

“Well, M. Passajon, how long is it since the affair of the drayman?”

The memory of a certain little misdeed, in which I had taken part in my
days of distress, was already so distant that I did not understand at
once; but some words of the judge showed me how completely he knew the
history of our bank. This terrible man knew everything, down to the
least details, the most secret things. Who could have informed him so
thoroughly?

It was all very short, very dry, and, when I wished to enlighten justice
with some wise observations, a certain insolent fashion of saying,
“Don’t make phrases,” so much the more wounding at my age and with my
reputation of a good talker; also we were not alone in his office. A
clerk seated near me was writing down my deposition, and behind I heard
the noise of great leaves turning. The judge asked me all sorts of
questions about the Nabob--the time when he had made his payments, the
place where we kept our books; and all at once, addressing himself to
the person whom I could not see: “Show us the cash-book, _M. l’Expert_.”

A little man in a white tie brought the great register to the table. It
was M. Joyeuse, the former cashier of Hemerlingue & Sons. But I had not
time to offer him my respects.

“Who has done that?” asked the judge, opening the book where a page was
torn out. “Don’t lie, now.”

I did not lie; I knew nothing of it, never having had to do with the
books. However, I thought it my duty to mention M. de Gery, the Nabob’s
secretary, who often came at night into the office and shut himself up
for hours casting balances. Then little Father Joyeuse turned red with
anger.

“That is an absurdity, M. le Juge d’Instruction. M. de Gery is the
young man of whom I have spoken to you. He came to the Territorial as a
superintendent, and thought too much of this poor M. Jansoulet to
remove the receipts for his payments; that is the proof of his blind but
thorough honesty. Besides, M. de Gery, who has been detained in Tunis,
is on his way back, and will furnish before long all the explanation
necessary.”

I felt that my zeal was about to compromise me.

“Take care, Passajon,” said the judge. “You are only here as a witness;
but if you attempt to mislead justice, you may return a prisoner”
 (he, the monster, had, indeed, the manner of desiring it). “Come now,
consider; who tore out this page?”

Then I very fortunately remembered that some days before he left Paris
the governor had me made bring the books to his house, where they were
all night. The clerk took a note of my declaration, after which the
judge dismissed me with a sign, warning me to be ready when I was
wanted. Then, on the threshold, he called me back: “Stay, M. Passajon,
take this away. I don’t want it any more.”

He held out the papers he had been consulting while he was questioning
me; and judge of my confusion when I saw on the cover the word
“Memoirs,” written in my best round-hand. I, myself, had provided
material to Justice--important details which the suddenness of our
catastrophe had prevented me from saving from the police search of our
office.

My first idea on returning home was to tear up these indiscreet papers;
but on reflection, and after having assured myself that the Memoirs
contained nothing that would compromise me, I have decided to go on with
them, with the certainty of getting some profit out of them one day or
another. There are plenty of novelists at Paris who have no imagination
and can only put true stories in their books, who would be glad to buy
a little book of incidents. That is how I shall avenge myself on this
society of well-to-do swindlers, with which I have been mixed up to my
shame and misfortune.

Besides, I must occupy my leisure time. There is nothing to do at the
bank, which is completely deserted since the judicial inquiry began,
except to arrange the bills of all colours. I have again undertaken the
writing for the cook on the second floor, Mlle. Seraphine, from whom
I accept in return some little refreshment, which I keep in the
strong-box, once more become a provision safe. The wife of the governor
is also very good to me, and stuffs my pockets each time I go to see her
in her great rooms on the Chaussee d’Antin. There nothing has changed;
the same luxury, the same comfort, also a three-months’-old baby--the
seventh--and a superb nurse, whose Norman cap is the admiration of the
Bois de Boulogne. It seems that once started on the rails of fortune,
people need a certain time to slacken their speed or stop. Besides, this
thief of a Paganetti had, in case of accident, settled everything on his
wife. Perhaps that is why this rag-bag of an Italian woman has such an
unshakable admiration for him. He has fled, he is in hiding; but she
remains convinced that her husband is a little Saint-John of innocence,
the victim of his goodness and credulity. One ought to hear her. “You
know him, you Moussiou Passajon. You know if he is scrupulous. But as
true as there is a God, if my husband had committed such crimes as he is
accused of, I myself--you hear me--I myself would put a blunderbuss in
his hands, and would say to him, ‘Here, Tchecco, blow out your brains!’”
 and by the way in which she opens the nostrils of her little turned-up
nose, her round eyes, black as jet, one feels that this little Corsican
would have acted as she spoke. He must be very clever, this infernal
governor, to deceive even his wife, to act a part even at home, where
the cleverest let themselves be seen as they really are.

In the meantime all these rogues have good dinners; even Bois l’Hery
has his meals sent in to the prison from the Cafe Anglais, and poor old
Passajon is reduced to live on scraps picked up in the kitchen. Still
we must not grumble too much. There are others more wretched than we
are--witness M. Francis, who came in this morning to the Territorial,
thin, pale, with dirty linen and frayed cuffs, which he still pulled
down by force of habit.

I was at the moment grilling some bacon before the fire in the
board-room, my plate laid on the corner of a marqueterie table, with a
newspaper underneath to preserve it. I invited Monpavon’s valet to share
my frugal meal; but since he has waited on a marquis he had come to
think that he formed part of the nobility, and he declined with a
dignified air, perfectly ridiculous with his hollow cheeks. He began by
telling me that he still had no news of his master; that they had
sent him away from the club, all the papers under seal, and a horde of
creditors like locusts on the marquis’s small wardrobe. “So that I am
a little short,” added M. Francis. That is to say, that he had not the
worth of a radish in his pockets, that he had been sleeping for two days
on the benches in the streets, awakened at each instant by the police,
obliged to rise, to pretend to be drunk so as to seek another shelter.
As to eating, I believe he had not done so for a long time, for he
looked at the food with such hungry eyes as to wring one’s heart, and
when I insisted on putting before him a slice of bacon and a glass of
wine, he fell on it like a wolf. All at once the blood came back to his
cheeks and, still eating, he began to chatter.

“You know, _pere_ Passajon,” said he to me between two mouthfuls, “I
know where he is. I have seen him.”

He winked his eye knowingly. I looked at him in wonder. “Who is it you
have seen, M. Francis?”

“The marquis, my master--over there in the little white house behind
Notre-Dame.” (He did not use the word morgue, it is too low.) “I was
sure I should find him there. I went there first thing next morning.
There he was. Oh, well disguised, I tell you. Only his valet could
recognise him. The hair gray, the teeth gone, the wrinkles showing his
sixty-five years, which he used to hide so well. On the marble slab,
with the tap running above, I seemed to see him at his dressing-table.”

“And you said nothing?”

“No. I knew his intentions on the subject for long. I let him go away
discreetly, without awakening attention, as he wished. But, all the
same, he might have given me a crust of bread before he went, after a
service of twenty years.”

And on a sudden, striking the table with his fist with rage:

“When I think that if I had liked I might have been with Mora, instead
of going to Monpavon, that I might have had Louis’s place. What luck he
has had! How many bags of gold he laid his hands on when his duke died!
And the wardrobe--hundreds of shirts, a dressing-gown of blue fox fur
worth more than twenty thousand francs. Like Noel, too, he must have
made his pile! He had to hurry, too, for he knew that it would stop
soon. Now there is nothing to be got in the Place Vendome. An old
policeman of a mother who manages everything. Saint-Romans is to be
sold, the pictures are to be sold, half the house to be let. It is a
real break-up.”

I must confess that I could not help showing my satisfaction, for
this wretched Jansoulet is the cause of all our misfortunes. A man who
boasted of being so rich, who said so everywhere. The public bit at
it like a fish who sees the scales shine through the net. He has lost
millions, I admit, but why did he make us believe he had more? They have
arrested Bois l’Hery; they should have arrested _him_. Ah! if we had had
another expert, I am sure it would have been done. Besides, as I said to
Francis, you had only to look at this upstart of a Jansoulet to see what
he was worth. What a head--like a bandit!

“And so common,” said the ex-valet.

“No principles.”

“An absolute want of form. Well, there he is on his beam-ends, and then
Jenkins, too, and plenty of others with them.”

“What! the doctor too? Ah! so much the worse. Such a polite and amiable
man.”

“Yes, still another breaking-up of his establishment. Horses, carriages,
furniture. The yard of the house is full of bills, and it sounds as
empty as if some one were dead. The place at Nanterre is on sale. There
were half a dozen of the ‘little Bethlehems’ left whom they packed up in
a cab. It is a break-up, I tell you, _pere_ Passajon, a ruin which
we, old as we are, may not see the end of, but it will be complete.
Everything is rotten, it must all come down!”

He was a sinister figure, this old steward of the Empire, thin, stubbly,
covered with mud, and shouting like a Jeremiah, “It is the downfall!”
 with a toothless mouth, black and wide open. I felt afraid and ashamed
of him, with a great desire to see him outside, and I thought: “Oh, M.
Chalmette! Oh, my little vineyard of Montbars!”


_Same date_.--Great news. Mme. Gaganetti came this afternoon to bring me
mysteriously a letter from the governor. He is in London, going to begin
a magnificent thing. Fine offices in the best part of the town, a superb
list of shareholders. He offers me the chance of joining him, “happy to
repair thus the damage he has caused me,” says he. I shall have twice my
wages at the Territorial, be lodged comfortably, five shares in the new
bank, and all my arrears paid. All I need is a little money to go
there and to pay a few small debts round here. Good luck! My fortune
is assured. I shall write to the notary of Montbars to mortgage my
vineyard.



AT BORDIGHERA

As M. Joyeuse had told the Juge d’Instruction, Paul de Gery returned
from Tunis after three weeks’ absence. Three interminable weeks spent
in struggling among intrigues, and traps secretly laid by the powerful
hatred of the Hemerlingues--in wandering from hall to hall, from
ministry to ministry through the immense palace of the Bardo, which
gathered within one enclosure, bristling with culverins, all the
departments of the State, as much under the master’s eye as his stables
and harem. On his arrival, Paul had learned that the Chamber of Justice
was preparing secretly Jansoulet’s trial--a derisive trial, lost
beforehand; and the closed offices of the Nabob on the Marine Quay, the
seals on his strong boxes, his ships moored to the Goulette, a guard
round his palace, seemed to speak of a sort of civil death, of a
disputed succession of which the spoils would not long remain to be
shared.

There was not a defender, nor a friend, in this voracious crowd; the
French colony itself appeared satisfied with the fall of a courtier who
had so long monopolized the roads to favour. To attempt to snatch this
prey from the Bey, excepting by a striking triumph at the Assembly, was
not to be thought of. All that de Gery could hope for was to save some
shreds of his fortune, and this only if he hurried, for he was expecting
day by day to learn of his friend’s complete ruin.

He set himself to work, therefore, hurried on his business with
an activity which nothing could discourage, neither Oriental
discursiveness--that refined fair-spoken politeness, under which is
hidden ferocity--nor coolly indifferent smiles, nor averted looks,
invoking divine fatalism when human lies fail. The self-possession of
this southerner, in whom was condensed, as it were, all the exuberance
of his compatriots, served him as well as his perfect knowledge of
French law, of which the Code of Tunis is only a disfigured copy.

By his diplomacy and discretion, in spite of the intrigues of
Hemerlingue’s son--who was very influential at the Bardo--he succeeded
in withdrawing from confiscation the money lent by the Nabob some
months before, and to snatch ten millions out of fifteen from Mohammed’s
rapacity. The very morning of the day on which the money was to be paid
over, he received from Paris the news of the unseating of Jansoulet. He
hurried at once to the Palace to arrive there before the news, and on
his return with the ten millions in bills on Marseilles secure in his
pocket-book, he passed young Hemerlingue’s carriage, with his three
mules at full gallop. The thin owl’s face was radiant. De Gery
understood that if he remained many hours at Tunis his bills ran the
risk of being confiscated, so took his place at once on an Italian
packet which was sailing next morning for Genoa, passed the night on
board, and was only easy in his mind when he saw far behind him white
Tunis with her gulf and the rocks of Cape Carthage spread out before
her. On entering Genoa, the steamer while making for the quay passed
near a great yacht with the Tunisian flag flying. De Gery felt greatly
excited, and for a moment believed that she had come in pursuit of him,
and that on landing he might be seized by the Italian police like a
common thief. But the yacht was swinging peacefully at anchor, her
sailors cleaning the deck or repainting the red siren of her figurehead,
as if they were expecting someone of importance. Paul had not the
curiosity to ask who this personage was. He crossed the marble city, and
returned by the coast railway from Genoa to Marseilles--that marvellous
route where one passes suddenly from the blackness of the tunnels to the
dazzling light of the blue sea.

At Savona the train stopped, and the passengers were told that they
could go no farther, as one of the little bridges over the torrents
which rush from the mountains to the sea had been broken during the
night. They must wait for the engineer and the break-down gang, already
summoned by telegraph; wait perhaps a half day. It was early morning.
The Italian town was waking in one of those veiled dawns which forecast
great heat for the day. While the dispersed travellers took refuge in
the hotels, installed themselves in the _cafes_, and others visited the
town, de Gery, chafing at the delay, tried to think of some means of
saving these few hours. He thought of poor Jansoulet, to whom the money
he was bringing might save honour and life, of his dear Aline, her whose
remembrance had not quitted him a single day of his journey, no more
than the portrait which she had given him. Then he was inspired to hire
one of those four-horse _calesinos_ which run from Genoa to Nice, along
the Italian Corniche--an adorable trip which foreigners, lovers, and
winners at Monaco often enjoy. The driver guaranteed that he would be
at Nice early; and even if he arrived no earlier than the train, his
impatient spirit felt the comfort of movement, of feeling at each turn
of the wheel the distance from his desire decrease.

On a fine morning in June, when one is young and in love, it is a
delicious intoxication to tear behind four horses over the white
Corniche road. To the left, a hundred feet below, the sea sparkling with
foam, from the rounded rocks of the shore to those vapoury distances
where the blue of the waves and of the heavens mingle; red or white
sails are scattered over it like wings, steamers leaving behind them
their trail of smoke; and on the sands, fishermen no larger than birds,
in their anchored boats like nests. Then the road descends, follows a
rapid declivity along the rocks and sharp promontories. The fresh wind
from the waves shakes the little harness bells; while on the right, on
the side of the mountain, the rows of pine-trees, the green oaks with
roots capriciously leaving the arid soil, and olive-trees growing on
their terraces, up to a wide and white pebbly ravine, bordered with
grass, marking the passage of the waters. This is really a dried-up
water-course, which the loaded mules ascend with firm foot among the
shingle, and a washer-woman stoops near a microscopic pond--the few
drops that remained of the great inundation of winter. From time to time
one crosses the street of some village, or little town rather, grown
rusty through too much sun, of historic age, the houses closely packed
and joined by dark arcades--a network of vaulted courts which clamber
the hillside with glimpses of the upper daylight, here and there letting
one see crowds of children with aureoles of hair, baskets of brilliant
fruit, a woman coming down the road, her water-pot on her head and her
distaff on her arm. Then at a corner of the street, the blue sparkle of
the waves and the immensity of nature.

But as the day advanced, the sun rising in the heavens spread over
the sea--now escaped from its mists, still with the transparence
of quartz--thousands of rays striking the water like arrow-heads, a
dazzling sight made doubly so by the whiteness of the rocks and of
the soil, by a veritable African sirocco which raised the dust in
a whirlwind on the road. They were coming to the hottest and most
sheltered places of the Corniche--a true exotic temperature, scattering
dates, cactus, and aloes. Seeing these thin trunks, this fantastic
vegetation in the white hot air, feeling the blinding dust crackle under
the wheels like snow, de Gery, his eyes half closed, dreaming in this
leaden noon, thought he was once more on that fatiguing road from Tunis
to the Bardo, in a singular medley of Levantine carriages with brilliant
liveries, of long-necked camels, of caparisoned mules, of young donkeys,
of Arabs in rags, of half-naked negroes, of officials in full-dress with
their guard of honour. Should he find there, where the road ran through
the gardens of palm-trees, the strange and colossal architecture of the
Bey’s palace, its barred windows with closed lattices, its marble gates,
its balconies in carved wood painted in bright colours?--It was not the
Bardo, but the lovely country of Bordighera, divided, like all those
on the coast, into two parts--the sea town lying on the shore; and the
upper town, joined to it by a forest of motionless palm-trees, with
upright stem and falling crown--like green rockets, springing into the
blue with their thousand feathers.

The insupportable heat, the overtired horses, forced the traveller to
stop for a couple of hours at one of those great hotels which line the
road, and bring every November into this little town, so marvellously
sheltered, the luxurious life and cosmopolitan animation of an
aristocratic wintering place. But at this time of year there was no one
in the sea town of Bordighera but fishermen, invisible at this hour. The
villas and hotels seemed dead, their blinds and shutters closed.
They took Paul through long, cool, and silent passages to a great
drawing-room facing north, which seemed to be part of the suites let
for the season, whose doors communicated with the other rooms. White
curtains, a carpet, the comfort demanded by the English even when
travelling, and outside the windows, which the hotel-keeper opened
wide to tempt the traveller to a longer stay, a splendid view of the
mountain. An astonishing quiet reigned in this great deserted inn, with
neither manager, nor cook, nor waiters--the whole staff coming only
in the winter--and given up for domestic needs to a local spoil-sauce,
expert at a _stoffato_, a _risotto_; also to two stablemen, who clothed
themselves at meal-time with the dress-coat and white tie of office.
Happily, de Gery was only going to remain there for an hour or two, to
rest his eyes from the overpowering light, his head from the dolorous
grip of the sun.

From the divan where he lay, the admirable landscape, diversified with
light and trembling leaves, seemed to descend to his window by stages
of different greens, where scattered villas shone white, and among
them that of Maurice Trott, the banker, recognisable by its capricious
architecture and the height of its palms.

The Levantine house, whose gardens came up to the windows of the hotel,
had sheltered for some months an artistic celebrity, the sculptor
Brehat, who was dying of consumption, and owed the prolonging of his
existence to this princely hospitality. The neighbourhood of this dying
celebrity--of which the hotel-keeper was proud, and which he would have
liked to charge in the bill--the name of Brehat, which de Gery had so
often heard pronounced with admiration in Felicia Ruys’s studio, brought
back his thoughts to the beautiful face, with its pure lines, which he
had last seen in the Bois de Boulogue, leaning on Mora’s shoulder. What
had become of this unfortunate girl when this prop had failed her?
Would this lesson be of use to her in the future? And, by a strange
coincidence, while he was thinking thus of Felicia, a great white
greyhound was bounding up an alley of green trees on the slopes of the
neighbouring garden. It was like Kadour--the same short hair, the same
mouth, red, fierce, and delicate. Paul, before his open window, was
assailed in a moment by all sorts of visions, sad or charming. Perhaps
the beauty of the scene before his eyes made his thoughts wander. Under
the orange-trees and lemon-trees in rows, laden with their golden
fruit, stretched immense fields of violets in regular and packed beds,
separated by little irrigation canals, whose white stone cut up the
exuberant verdure.

An exquisite ordour of violets dried in the sun was rising--a hot
boudoir scent, enervating, enfeebling, which called up for de Gery
feminine visions--Aline, Felicia--permeating the fairy-like landscape,
in this blue-charged atmosphere, this heavenly day, which one might have
called the perfume become visible of so many open flowers. The creaking
of a door made him open his eyes. Some one had just gone into the next
room. He heard the rustle of a dress against the thin partition, a leaf
turned in a book which could not be very interesting, for a long sigh
turning into a yawn made him start. Was he still sleeping, dreaming? Had
he not heard the cry of the “jackal in the desert,” so much in keeping
with the burning temperature out of doors? No--nothing more. He fell
asleep again, and this time all the confused images which pursued him
fixed themselves in a dream--a very pleasant dream.

He was on his honeymoon with Aline. She was a delicious wife, her clear
eyes full of love and faith, which only knew, only looked at him. In
this very room, on the other side of the partition, she was sitting in
white morning dress, which smelt of violets and of the fine lace of her
trousseau. They were having breakfast--one of those solitary breakfasts
of a honeymoon, served in their bedroom, opposite the blue sea, and the
clear sky, which tinge with azure the glass in which one drinks, the
eyes where one sees one’s self, the future--life--the distant horizon.
Oh! how good it was; what a divine youth-giving light; how happy they
were!

And all at once, in the delight of their kisses, Aline became sad. Her
eyes filled with tears. She said to him: “Felicia is there. You will
love me no longer.” And he laughed, “Felicia here? What an idea!” “Yes,
yes; she is there.” Trembling she pointed to the next room, from
which came angry barks, and the voice of Felicia: “Here, Kadour! Here,
Kadour!” the low, concentrated, furious voice of some one who is hiding
and suddenly discovered.

Wide awake, the lover, disenchanted, found himself in his empty room,
before an empty table, his dream, fled through the window to the great
hillside. But he heard very distinctly in the next room the bark of a
dog, and hurried knocks on the door.

“Open the door! It is I--it is Jenkins.”

Paul sat up on his divan, stupefied. Jenkins here? How was that? To whom
was he speaking? What voice was going to answer him? No one answered. A
light step went to the door, and the lock creaked nervously.

“Here you are at last,” said the Irishman, entering.

And truly if he had not taken care to announce himself, Paul would
never have taken this brutal, violent, hoarse voice heard through the
partition for the doctor’s with his sugary manners.

“At last I have found you after a week of searching, of mad rushing from
Genoa to Nice, from Nice to Genoa. I knew that you had not gone, because
the yacht was in the harbour, and I was going to inspect all the inns on
the coast, when I remembered Brehat. I have just come from him. It was
he who told me you were here.”

But to whom was he speaking? Who was so singularly obstinate? At last a
beautiful, sad voice, which Paul well knew, made the hot afternoon air
vibrate.

“Well, yes, Jenkins, here I am. What is the matter?”

Through the wall Paul could see the disdainful mouth, turned down with
disgust.

“I have come to prevent you from going--from doing this foolish thing.”

“What foolish thing? I have some work at Tunis. I must go there.”

“But you don’t think, my dear child, that--”

“Oh, enough of your fatherly airs, Jenkins. We know what lies underneath
it. Speak to me as you did just now. I prefer the bull-dog to the
spaniel. I fear it less.”

“Well, I tell you that you must be mad to go over there alone, young and
beautiful as you are.”

“And am I not always alone? Would you like me to take Constance, at her
age?”

“Or me?”

“You!” She pronounced the word with an ironical laugh. “And what about
Paris? And your patients--deprive society of its Cagliostro? Never, on
any account.”

“I have, however, made up my mind to follow you wherever you go,” said
Jenkins resolutely.

There was an instant of silence. Paul asked himself if it was worthy
of him to listen to this conversation which was full of terrible
revelations. But in spite of his fatigue an invincible curiosity nailed
him to the spot. It seemed to him that the enigma which had so long been
perplexing and troubling him was going to be solved at last, to show the
woman sad or perverse, concealed by the fashionable artist. He remained
there, still holding his breath, needlessly, however; for the two,
believing themselves to be alone in the hotel, let their passions and
their voices rise without constraint.

“Well, what do you want of me?”

“I want you.”

“Jenkins!”

“Yes, yes, I know; you have forbidden me to say such words before you,
but other men than I have said them, and nearer still.”

“And if it were so, wretch! If I have not been able to protect myself
from disgust and boredom, if I have lost my pride, is it for you to say
a word? As if you were not the cause of it; as if you had not forever
saddened and darkened my life for me!”

And these burning and rapid words revealed to the terrified Paul de
Gery the horrible meaning of this apparently affectionate guardianship,
against which the mind, the thought, the dreams of the young girl had
had to struggle so long, and which had left her the incurable sadness of
precocious regret, the heart-break of a life hardly begun.

“I loved you! I love you still! Passion excuses everything,” answered
Jenkins in a hollow voice.

“Love me, then, if that amuses you. As for me, I hate you not only for
the wrong you have done me, all the beliefs and energy you have killed
in me, but because you represent what is most execrable, most hideous
under the sun--hypocrisy and lies. This society masquerade, this heap of
falsity, of grimaces, of cowardly and unclean conventions have sickened
me to such an extent, that I am running away exiling myself so as to see
them no longer; rather than them I would have the prison, the sewer, the
streets. And yet it is your deceit, O sublime Jenkins, which horrifies
me most. You have mingled our French hypocrisy, all smiles and
politeness, with your large English shakes of the hand, with your
cordial and demonstrative loyalty. They have all been caught by it. They
said, ‘The good Jenkins; the worthy, honest Jenkins.’ But I--I knew you,
and in spite of your fine motto on the envelopes of your letters,
on your seal, your sleeve-links, your hat-bands, the doors of your
carriage, I always saw the rascal you are.”

Her voice hissed through her teeth, clinched by an incredible ferocity
of expression, and Paul expected some furious revolt of Jenkins under so
many insults. But this hate and contempt of the woman he loved must have
given him more sorrow than anger, for he answered softly, in a tone of
wounded gentleness:

“Oh! you are cruel. If you knew the pain you are giving me! Hypocrite!
yes, it is true; but I was not born like that. One is forced into it by
the difficulties of life. When one has the wind against one, and wishes
to advance, one tacks. I have tacked. Lay the blame on my miserable
beginnings, my false entry into existence, and agree at least that one
thing in me has never lied--my passion! Nothing has been able to kill
it--neither your disdain, nor your abuse, nor all that I have read in
your eyes, which for so many years have not once smiled at me. It is
still my passion which gives me the strength, even after what I have
just heard, to tell you why I am here. Listen! You told me once that you
wanted a husband--some one who would watch over you during your work,
who would take over some of the duties of the poor Crenmitz. Those were
your own words, which wounded me then because I was not free. Now all
that is changed. Will you marry me, Felicia?”

“And your wife?” cried the young girl, while Paul was asking himself the
same question.

“My wife is dead.”

“Dead? Mme. Jenkins? Is it true?”

“You never knew her of whom I speak. The other was not my wife. When
I met her I was already married in Ireland--years before. A horrible
forced marriage. My dear, when I was twenty-five I was confronted with
this alternative: a debtor’s prison or Miss Strang, an ugly and gouty
old maid, sister of the usurer who had lent me five hundred pounds to
pay for my medical studies. I preferred the prison; but after weeks and
months I came to the end of my courage, and I married Miss Strang, who
brought me for dowry--my note of hand. You can guess what my life was
between these two monsters who adored each other. A jealous, impotent
wife. The brother spied on me, following me everywhere. I should have
gone away, but one thing kept me there. The usurer was said to be very
rich. I wished to have some return for my cowardice. You see, I tell you
all. Come now, I have been punished. Old Strang died insolvent; he used
to gamble, had ruined himself without saying a word. Then I put my wife
and her rheumatism in a hospital, and came to France. I had to begin
existence again, more struggles and misery. But I had experience on my
side, hatred and contempt for men, and my newly conquered liberty, for I
did not dream that the horrible weight of this cursed union was going to
hinder my getting on, at that distance. Happily, it is over--I am free.”

“Yes, Jenkins, free. But why do you not make your wife the poor creature
who has shared your life so long, so humble and devoted as she is?”

“Oh!” said he, with an outburst of sincerity, “between my two prisons
I would prefer the other, where I could be frankly indifferent. But the
atrocious comedy of conjugal love, of unwearying happiness, when for
so long I had loved you and thought of you alone! There is not such a
torture on earth. If I can guess, the poor woman must have uttered a cry
of relief and happiness at the separation. It is the only adieu I hoped
for from her.”

“But who forced you to such a thing?”

“Paris, society, the world. Married by its opinion, we were held by it.”

“And now you are held no longer?”

“Now something comes before all--it is the idea of losing you, of seeing
you no longer. Oh! when I learned of your flight, when I saw the bill
over your door TO LET, I felt sure that it was all up with poses and
grimaces, that I had nothing else to do but to set out, to run quickly
after my happiness, which you were taking away. You were leaving
Paris--I have left it. Everything of yours was being sold; everything of
mine will be sold.”

“And she?” said Felicia trembling. “She, the irreproachable companion,
the honest woman whom no one has ever suspected, where will she go?
What will she do? And it is her place you have just offered me. A stolen
place, think what a hell! Well, and your motto, good Jenkins, virtuous
Jenkins, what shall we do with it? ‘_Le bien sans esperance_,’ eh!”

At this sneer, cutting his face like a whip, the wretch answered
panting:

“That will do! Do not sneer at me so. It is too horrible now. Does it
not touch you, then, to be loved as I love you in sacrificing everything
to you--fortune, honour, respect? See, look at me. I have snatched my
mask off for you, I have snatched if off before all. And now, see, here
is the hypocrite.”

He heard the muffled noise of two knees falling on the floor. And
stammering, distracted with love, weak before her, he begged her
to consent to this marriage, to give him the right to follow her
everywhere, to defend her. Then the words failed him, stifled in a
passionate sob, so deep, so lacerating that it should have touched any
heart, above all among this splendid impassible scenery in this perfumed
heat. But Felicia was not touched. “Let us have done, Jenkins,” said
she brusquely. “What you ask is impossible. We have nothing to hide from
each other, and after your confidences just now, I wish to make one to
you, which humbles my pride, but your degradation makes you worthy. I
was Mora’s mistress.”

Paul knew this. And yet it was so sad to hear this beautiful, pure voice
laden with such a confession, in the midst of the intoxicating air, that
he felt his heart contract.

“I knew it,” answered Jenkins in a low voice, “I have the letters you
wrote to him.”

“My letters?”

“Oh, I will give them to you--here. I know them by heart. I have read
and reread them. It is that which hurts one, when one loves. But I
have suffered other tortures. When I think that it was I--” He stopped
himself. He choked. “I who had to furnish fuel for your flames, warm
this frozen lover, send him to you ardent and young--Ah! he has devoured
my pearls--I might refuse over and over again, he was always taking
them. At last I was mad. You wish to burn, wretched woman. Well, burn,
then!”


Paul rose to his feet in terror. Was he going to hear the confession
of a crime? But the shame of hearing more was not inflicted on him.
A violent knocking, this time on his own door, warned him that his
_calesino_ was ready.

“Is the French gentleman ready?”

In the next room there was silence, then a whisper.--There had been some
one near who had heard them.--Paul de Gery hurried downstairs. He must
get out of this room to escape the weight of so much infamy.

As the post-chaise swayed, he saw among the common white curtains, which
float at all the windows in the south, a pale figure with the hair of
a goddess, and great burning eyes fixed on him. But a glance at Aline’s
portrait quickly dispelled this disturbing vision, and forever cured
of his old love, he travelled until evening through the magic landscape
with the lovely bride of the _dejeuner_, who carried in the folds of her
modest robe and mantle all the violets of Bordighera.



THE FIRST NIGHT OF “REVOLT”

“Take your places for the first act!”

The cry of the stage-manager, standing with his hand raised to his
mouth to form a trumpet, at the foot of the staircase behind the scenes,
echoes under the roof, rises and rolls along, to be lost in the depths
of corridors full of the noise of doors banging, of hasty steps, of
desperate calls to the _coiffeur_ and the dressers; while there appear
one by one on the landings of the various floors, slow and majestic,
without moving their heads for fear of disturbing the least detail
of their make-up, all the personages of the first act of _Revolt_, in
elegant modern ball costumes, with the creaking of new shoes, the silken
rustle of the trains, the jingling of rich bracelets pushed up the arm
while gloves are being buttoned. All these people seem excited, nervous,
pale beneath their paint, and under the skilfully prepared satin-like
surface of the shoulders, tremors flutter like shadows. Dry-mouthed,
they speak little. The least nervous, while affecting to smile, have
in their eyes and voice the hesitation that marks an absent mind--that
apprehension of the battle behind the foot-lights which is ever one of
the most powerful attractions of the comedian’s art, its piquancy, its
freshness.

The stage is encumbered by the passage to and fro of machinists and
scene-builders hastening about, running into one another in the dim,
pallid light falling from above, which will give place directly, as soon
as the curtain rises, to the dazzling of the foot-lights. Cardailhac is
there in his dress-coat and white tie, his opera hat on one side, giving
a final glance to the arrangement of the scenery, hurrying the workmen,
complimenting the _ingenue_ who is waiting dressed and ready, beaming,
humming an air, looking superb. To see him no one would ever guess the
terrible worries which distract him. He is compromised by the fall of
the Nabob--which entails the loss of his directorate--and is risking his
all on the piece of this evening, obliged, if it be not a success, to
leave the cost of this marvellous scenery, these stuffs at a hundred
francs the yard, unpaid. It is a fourth bankruptcy that stares him in
the face. But, bah! our manager is confident. Success, like all the
monsters that feed on men, loves youth; and this unknown author, whose
name is appearing for the first time on a theatre bill, flatters the
gambler’s superstitions.

Andre Maranne feels less confident. As the hour for the production of
the piece approaches he loses faith in his work, terrified by the sight
of the house, at which he looks through the hole in the curtain as
through the narrow lens of a stereoscope.

A splendid house, crammed to the roof, notwithstanding the late period
of the spring and the fashionable taste for early departure to the
country; a house that Cardailhac, a declared enemy of nature and the
country, endeavouring always to keep Parisians in Paris till the latest
possible date, has succeeded in crowding and making as brilliant as in
midwinter. Fifteen hundred heads are swarming beneath the great central
chandelier, erect--bent forward--turning round--questioning amid a great
play of shadows and reflections; some massed in the obscure corners of
the floor, others in a bright light reflected through the open doors of
the boxes from the white walls of the corridor; the first-night public
which is always the same, that brigand-like _tout Paris_ which goes
everywhere, carrying those envied places by storm when a favour or a
claim by right of some official position fails to secure them.

In the stalls are low-cut waistcoats, clubmen, shining bald heads, wide
partings in scanty hair, light-coloured gloves, big opera-glasses raised
and directed towards various points. In the galleries a mixture of
different social sets and all kinds of dress, all the people well known
as figuring at this kind of solemnity, and the embarrassing promiscuity
which places the modest smile of the virtuous woman along-side of the
black-ringed eyes, the vermilion-painted lips of her who belongs to
another category. White hats, pink hats, diamonds and paint. Above, the
boxes present the same confusion; actresses and women of the demi-monde,
ministers, ambassadors, famous authors, critics--these last wearing a
grave air and frowning brow, sitting crosswise in their _fauteuils_ with
the impassive haughtiness of judges whom nothing can corrupt. The boxes
near the stage especially stand out in the general picture brilliantly
lighted, occupied by celebrities of the financial world, the women
_decollete_ and with bare arms, glittering with jewels like the Queen of
Sheba on her visit to the King of Judea. But on the left, one of these
large boxes, entirely empty, attracts attention by reason of its curious
decoration, lighted from the back by a Moorish lantern. Over the whole
assembly is an impalpable and floating dust, the flickering of the gas,
that odour that mingles with all the pleasures of Paris, its little
sputterings, sharp and quick like the breaths drawn by a consumptive,
accompanying the movement of opened fans. And then, too, _ennui_, a
gloomy _ennui_, the _ennui_ of seeing the same faces always in the
same places, with their defects or their poses, that uniformity of
fashionable gatherings which ends by establishing in Paris each winter
a spiteful and gossiping provincialism more petty than that of the
provinces themselves.

Maranne observed this ill-humour, this lassitude of the public, and
thinking of all the changes which the success of his play might bring
about in his simple life, he asked himself, full of a great anxiety,
what he could do to bring his ideas home to those thousands of people,
to pluck them away from their preoccupation, and to send through
this crowd a single current which should draw to himself those absent
glances, those minds of every different calibre, so difficult to move to
unison. Instinctively his eyes sought friendly faces, a box facing the
stage occupied by the Joyeuse family; Elise and the younger girls seated
in the front, Aline and the father in the row behind--a charming family
group, like a bouquet wet with dew amid a display of artificial flowers.
And while all Paris was disdainfully asking, “Who are those people
there?” the poet instrusted his fate to those little fairy hands, new
gloved for the occasion, which very soon would boldly give the signal
for applause.

The curtain is going up! Maranne has barely time to spring into the
wings; and suddenly he hears as from far, very far away, the first words
of his play, which rise, like a flight of timid birds, into the silence
and immensity of the theatre. A terrible moment. Where should he go?
What should he do? Remain there leaning against a wing, with straining
ear and beating heart? Encourage the actors when he himself stood in so
much need of encouragement? He prefers rather to look the peril in the
face; and by the little door communicating with the corridor behind the
boxes he slips out to a corner box, which he orders to be opened for him
softly. “Sh! It is I.” Some one is seated in the shadow--a woman, she
whom all Paris knows and who is hiding herself from the public gaze.
Andre sits down by her side, and so, close to one another, mother and
son tremblingly watch the progress of the play.

It astonished the audience at first. This Theatre des Nouveautes,
situated in the very heart of the boulevard, where its portico glitters
all illuminated among the great restaurants of the smart clubs; this
theatre, to which people were accustomed to come in parties after a
luxurious dinner to listen until supper-time to an act or two of some
suggestive piece, had become in the hands of its clever manager the most
fashionable of all Parisian entertainments, without any very precise
character of its own, and partaking something of all, from the
fairy-operetta which exhibits undressed women, to the serious modern
drama. Cardailhac was especially anxious to justify his title of
“Manager of the Nouveautes,” and, since the Nabob’s millions had been
at the back of the undertaking, had made a point of preparing for
the boulevardiers the most dazzling surprises. That of this evening
surpassed them all; the piece was in verse--and moral.

A moral play!

The old rogue had realized that the moment had arrived to try that
effect, and he was trying it. After the astonishment of the first
minutes, a few disappointed exclamations here and there in the boxes,
“Why, it is in verse!” the house began to feel the charm of this
invigorating and healthy piece, as if there had been sprinkled on it,
in its rarefied atmosphere, some fresh and pungent essence, an elixir of
life perfumed with thyme from the hillside.

“Ah! this is nice--it is restful.”

Such was the general sense, a thrill of ease, a spasm of pleasure
accompanying each line. That fat old Hemerlingue found it restful,
puffing in his stage-box on the ground floor as in a trough of cerise
satin. It was restful also to that tall Suzanne Bloch, her hair dressed
in the antique way, ringlets flowing over a diadem of gold; and
near her, Amy Ferat, all in white like a bride and with sprigs of
orange-blossom in her fluffy hair, it was restful to her also, you may
be sure.

A crowd of demi-mondaines were present, some very fat, with a dirty
greasiness acquired in a hundred seraglios, three chins, and an air of
stupidity; others absolutely green in spite of their paint, as if they
had been dipped in a bath of that arsenate of copper which is called
in the shops “Paris green.” These were wrinkled, faded to such a degree
that they hid in the back of their boxes, only allowing a portion of
a white arm to be seen, a rounded shoulder protruding. Then there were
young men about town, flabby and without backbone, those who at
that time used to be called _petits creves_, creatures worn out by
dissipation, with stooping necks and drooping lids, incapable of
standing erect or of articulating a single word perfectly. And all these
people exclaimed with one accord: “This is nice--it is restful.” The
handsome Moessard murmured it like a refrain beneath his little fair
mustache, while his queen in the stage-box translated it into the
barbarism of her foreign tongue. Positively they found it restful. They
did not say after what--after what heart-breaking labour, after what
forced, idle and useless task.

All these friendly murmurs, united and mingled, began to give to the
house an eventful appearance. Success was felt in the air, faces
became serene again, the women seemed the more beautiful for reflecting
enthusiasm, for being moved to glances that were as exciting as
applause. Andre, at his mother’s side, thrilled with such an unknown
pleasure, with that proud delight which a man feels when he stirs the
multitude, be he only a singer in a suburban back-yard, with a patriotic
refrain and two pathetic notes in his voice. Suddenly the whisperings
redoubled, were transformed into a tumult. People were chuckling and
fidgeting with excitement. What had happened? Some accident on the
stage? Andre, leaning terrified towards the actors as astonished as
himself, saw every opera-glass turned towards the big stage-box which
had remained empty until then, and which some one had just entered, who
sat down immediately with both his elbows on the velvet ledge, and
with his opera-glass drawn from its case, taking his place in gloomy
solitude.

In ten days the Nabob had aged twenty years. Violent southern natures
like his, if they are rich in enthusiasms, become also more utterly
prostrate than others. Since his unseating the unfortunate man had shut
himself up in his bedroom, with drawn curtains, no longer wishing even
to see the light of day nor to cross over the threshold beyond which
life was waiting for him, with the engagements he had undertaken,
the promises he had made, a mass of protested bills and writs. The
Levantine, gone off to some spa accompanied by her _masseur_ and her
negress, was totally indifferent to the ruin of the establishment;
Bompain--the man in the fez--in frightened bewilderment amid the demands
for money, not knowing how to approach his ill-starred master, who
persistently kept his bed and turned his face to the wall as soon as
business matters were mentioned. His old mother alone remained behind to
face the disaster, with the knowledge born of her narrow and straitened
experience as a village woman, who knows what a stamped document--a
signature--is, and thinks honour is the greatest and best thing in
the world. Her peasant’s cap made its appearance on every floor of
the mansion, examining bills, reforming the domestic arrangements, and
fearing neither outcries or humiliation. At all hours the good woman
might be seen striding about the Place Vendome, gesticulating, talking
to herself, and saying aloud: “_Te_, I will go and see the bailiff.”
 And never did she consult her son about anything save when it was
indispensable, and then only in a few discreet words, while avoiding
even a glance at him. To rouse Jansoulet from his torpor it had required
de Gery’s telegram, dated from Marseilles, announcing that he was on his
way back, bringing ten million francs. Ten millions!--that is to say,
bankruptcy averted, the possibility of recovering his position--of
starting life afresh. And behold our southerner rebounding from the
depth of his fall, intoxicated with joy, and full of hope. He ordered
the windows to be opened and newspapers to be brought to him. What a
magnificent opportunity was this first night of _Revolt_ to show himself
to the Parisians, who were believing him to have gone under, to enter
the great whirlpool once more through the swing door of his box at the
Nouveautes! His mother, warned by some instinct, did indeed try to hold
him back. Paris now terrified her. She would have liked to carry off her
child to some unknown corner of the Midi, to nurse him along with his
elder brother--stricken down both of them by the great city. But he was
the master. Resistance was impossible to that will of a man spoiled by
wealth. She helped him to dress for the occasion, “made him look nice,”
 as she said laughing, and watched him not without a certain pride as
he departed, dignified, full of new life, having almost got over the
prostration of the preceding days.

After his arrival at the theatre, Jansoulet quickly perceived the
commotion which his presence caused in the house. Accustomed to similar
curious ovations, he acknowledged them ordinarily without the least
embarrassment, with a frank display of his wide and good-natured smile;
but this time the manifestation was hostile, almost indignant.

“What! It is he?”

“There he is.”

“What impudence!”

Such exclamations from the stalls confusedly rose among many others. The
retirement in which he had taken refuge for some days past had left him
in ignorance of the public exasperation, of the homilies, the statements
broadcast in the newspapers, with the corrupting influence of his wealth
as their text--articles written for effect, hypocritical phraseology
by the aid of which opinion avenges itself from time to time on the
innocent for all its own concessions to the guilty. It was a terribly
embarrassing exhibition, which gave him at first more sorrow than anger.
Deeply moved, he hid his emotion behind his opera-glass, fixing his
attention on the least details of the stage arrangements, giving a
three-quarters view of his back to the house, but unable to escape the
scandalous observation of which he was the victim and which made his
ears buzz, his temples beat, the dulled lenses of his opera-glass
become full of those whirling multi-coloured circles which are the first
symptom of brain disorder.

When the curtain fell at the end of the first act he remained
motionless, in the same attitude of embarrassment; the whisperings, now
more distinct when they were no longer held in check by the dialogue on
the stage, the pertinacity of certain inquisitive people changing their
places in order to get a better view of him, obliged him to leave his
box and to beat a hurried retreat into the corridors, like a wild beast
escaping across a circus from the arena. Beneath the low ceiling in
the narrow circular passage of the theatre corridors, he found
himself suddenly in the midst of a dense crowd of emasculate youths,
journalists, tightly laced women wearing their hats, laughing as part
of their trade, their backs against the wall. From box-doors opened for
air, mixed and disjointed fragments of conversation were escaping:

“A delightful piece. It is fresh; it is good.”

“That Nabob! What impudence!”

“Yes, indeed, it is restful. One feels better for it.”

“How is it that he has not yet been arrested?”

“Quite a young man, it seems. It is his first play.”

“Bois l’Hery at Mazas! It is impossible. Why, there is the marquise
opposite, in the balcony, with a new hat.”

“What does that prove? She is at her business as a stager of new
fashions. It is very pretty, that hat. In Desgrange’s racing colours.”

“And Jenkins? What is Jenkins doing?”

“At Tunis, with Felicia. Old Brahim has seen them both. It seems that
the Bey has begun to take the pearls.”

“The deuce he has!”

Farther along, soft voices were murmuring:

“Yes, father, do, do go speak to him. See how lonely he looks, poor
man!”

“But, children, I do not know him.”

“Never mind. Just a bow. Something to show him that he is not utterly
deserted.”

Thereupon the little old gentleman, very red in the face and wearing
a white tie, stepped quickly in front of the Nabob, and ceremoniously
raised his hat to him with great respect. With what gratitude, what
a smile of eager good-will was that solitary greeting returned, that
greeting from a man whom Jansoulet did not know, whom he had never seen,
and who had yet exerted a weighty influence upon his destiny; for, but
for the _pere_ Joyeuse, the chairman of the board of the Territorial
would probably have shared the fate of the Marquis de Bois l’Hery. Thus
it is that in the tangle of modern society, that great web of interests,
ambitions, services accepted and rendered, all the various worlds are
connected, united beneath the surface, from the highest existences
to the most humble; this it is that explains the variegation, the
complexity of this study of manners, the collection of the scattered
threads of which the writer who is careful of truth is bound to make the
background of his story.

In ten minutes the Nabob had been subjected to every manifestation
of the terrible ostracism of that Paris world to which he had neither
relationship nor serious ties, and whose contempt isolated him more
surely than a visiting monarch is isolated by respect--the averted look,
the apparently aimless step aside, the hat suddenly put on and pulled
down over the eyes. Overcome by embarrassment and shame, he stumbled.
Some one said quite loudly, “He is drunk,” and all that the poor man
could manage to do was to return and shut himself up in the salon at the
back of his box. Ordinarily, this little retreat was crowded during
the intervals between the acts by stock-brokers and journalists. They
laughed and smoked and made a great noise; the manager would come to
greet his sleeping partner. But on this evening there was nobody. And
the absence of Cardailhac, with his keen nose for success, signified
fully to Jansoulet the measure of his disgrace.

“What have I done? Why will Paris have no more of me?”

Thus he questioned himself amid a solitude that was accentuated by the
noises around, the abrupt turning of keys in the doors of the boxes, the
thousand exclamations of an amused crowd. Then suddenly, the freshness
of his luxurious surroundings, the Moorish lantern casting strange
shadows on the brilliant silks of the divan and walls, reminded him of
the date of his arrival. Six months! Only six months since he came to
Paris! Completely done for and ruined in six months! He sank into a
kind of torpor, from which he was roused by the sound of applause
and enthusiastic bravos. It was decidedly a great success--this play
_Revolt_. There were some passages of strength and satire, and the
violent tirades, a trifle over-emphatic but written with youth and
sincerity, excited the audience after the idyllic calm of the opening.
Jansoulet in his turn wished to hear and see. This theatre belonged to
him after all. His place in that stage-box had cost him over a million
francs; the very least he could do was to occupy it.

So he seated himself in the front of his box. In the theatre the heat
was suffocating in spite of the fans which were vigorously at work,
throwing reflections from their bright spangles through the impalpable
atmosphere of silence. The house was listening religiously to an
indignant and lofty denunciation of the scamps who occupied exalted
positions, after having robbed their fellows in those depths from which
they were sprung. Certainly, Maranne when he wrote these fine lines
had been far from having the Nabob in his mind. But the public saw
an allusion in them; and while a triple salvo of applause greeted the
conclusion of the speech, all heads were turned towards the stage-box on
the left with an indignant, openly offensive movement. The poor wretch,
pilloried in his own theatre! A pillory which had cost him so dear!
This time he made no attempt to escape the insult, but settled himself
resolutely in his seat, with arms folded, and braved the crowd that was
staring at him--those hundreds of faces raised in mockery, that virtuous
_tout Paris_ which had seized upon him as a scapegoat and was driving
him into the wilderness, after having laden him with the burden of all
its own crimes.

A pretty gang, truly, for a manifestation of that kind! Opposite, the
box of a bankrupt banker, the wife and her lover sitting next each
other in the front row, the husband behind in the shadow, voluntarily
inconspicuous and solemn. Near them the frequent trio of a mother who
has married her daughter in accordance with the personal inclination
of her own heart, in order to make a son-in-law of her lover. Then
irregular households, courtesans exhibiting the price of shame, diamonds
like circlets of fire riveted around arms and neck. And those groups of
emasculate youths, with their open collars and painted eyebrows, whose
shirts of embroidered cambric and white satin corsets people used to
admire in the guest-chambers at Compiegne; those _mignons_, of the time
of Agrippa, calling each other among themselves: “My heart--My
dear girl.” An assemblage of all the scandals, all the turpitudes,
consciences sold or for sale, the vice of an epoch devoid of greatness
and without originality, intent on making trial of the caprices of every
other age.

And these were the people who were insulting him and crying: “Away with
thee, thou art unworthy!”

“Unworthy--I! But my worth is a hundred times greater than that of any
among you, wretches that you are! You make my millions a reproach to
me, but who has helped me to spend them? Thou, cowardly and treacherous
comrade, who hidest thy sick pasha-like obesity in the corner of thy
stage-box! I made thy fortune along with my own in the days when we
shared all things in brotherly community. Thou, pale marquis--I paid a
hundred thousand francs at the club in order to save thee from shameful
expulsion!

“Thee I covered with jewels, hussy, letting thee pass for my mistress,
because that kind of thing makes a good impression in our world--but
without ever asking thee anything in return. And thou, brazen-faced
journalist, who for brain hast all the dirty sediment of thy inkstand,
and on thy conscience as many spots as thy queen has on her skin, thou
thinkest that I have not paid thee thy price and that is why thy insults
are heaped on me. Yes, yes; stare at me, you vermin! I am proud. My
worth is above yours.”

All that he was thus saying to himself mentally, in an ungovernable
rage, visible in the quivering of his pale, thick lips. The unfortunate
man, who was nearly mad, was about perhaps to shout it aloud in the
silence, to denounce that insulting crowd--who knows?--to spring into
the midst of it, kill one of them--ah! kill _one_ of them--when he
felt a light tap on his shoulder, and a fair head came before his eyes,
serious and frank, two hands held out, which he grasped convulsively,
like a drowning man.

“Ah! dear friend, dear--” the poor man stammered. But he had not the
strength to say more. This emotion of joy coming suddenly in the midst
of his fury melted him into a sobbing torrent of tears, and stifled
words. His face became purple. He motioned “Take me away.” And,
stumbling in his walk, leaning on de Gery’s arm, he only managed to
cross the threshold of his box before he fell prostrate in the corridor.

“Bravo! Bravo!” cried the house in reply to the speech which the actor
had just finished; and there was a noise like a hailstorm, and stamping
of enthusiastic feet while the great lifeless body, raised with
difficulty by the scene-shifters, was carried through the brightly
lighted wings, crowded with people pressing in their curiosity round the
stage, excited by the atmosphere of success and who hardly noticed the
passage of the inert and vanquished man, borne on men’s arms like
some victim of a riot. They laid him on a couch in the room where the
properties were stored, Paul de Gery at his side, with a doctor and two
porters who eagerly lent all the assistance in their power. Cardailhac,
extremely busy over his play, had sent word that he should come to hear
the news “directly, after the fifth act.”

Bleeding after bleeding, cuppings, mustard leaves--nothing brought even
a quiver to the skin of the patient, insensible apparently to all the
remedies usually employed in cases of apoplexy. The whole being seemed
to be surrendering to death, to be preparing the way for the rigidity
of the corpse; and this in the most sinister place in the world, this
chaos, lighted by a lantern merely, amid which there lie about pell-mell
in the dust all the remains of former plays--gilt furniture, curtains
with gay fringes, coaches, boxes, card-tables, dismantled staircases
and balusters, among ropes and pulleys, a confusion of out-of-date
theatrical properties, thrown down, broken, and damaged. Bernard
Jansoulet, as he lay among this wreckage, his shirt opened over his
chest, pale and covered with blood, was indeed a man come to the
shipwreck of his life, bruised and tossed aside along with the pitiful
ruins of his artificial luxury dispersed and broken up, in the whirlpool
of Paris. Paul, with aching heart, contemplated the scene sadly, that
face with its short nose, preserving in its inertia the savage yet
kindly expression of an inoffensive creature that tried to defend itself
before it died and had not time to bite. He reproached himself bitterly
with his inability to be of any service to him. Where was that fine
project of leading Jansoulet across the bogs, of guarding him against
ambushes? All that he had been able to do had been to save a few
millions for him, and even these had come too late.


The windows had just been thrown open upon the curved balcony over
the boulevard, now at the height of its noisy and brilliant stir. The
theatre was surrounded by, as it were, a plinth of gas-jets, a zone of
fire which brought the gloomiest recesses into light, pricked out with
revolving lanterns, like stars journeying through a dark sky. The play
was over. People were coming out. The black and dense crowd on the steps
was dispersing over the white pavements, on its way to spread through
the town the news of a great success and the name of an unknown author
who to-morrow would be triumphant and famous. A splendid evening, so
that the windows of the restaurants were lighted up in gaiety and files
of carriages passed through the streets at a late hour. This tumult of
festivity which the poor Nabob had loved so keenly, which seemed to go
so well with the dizzy whirl of his existence, roused him to life for
a moment. His lips moved, and into his dilated eyes, turned towards
de Gery, there came before he died a pained expression, beseeching and
protesting, as though to call upon him as witness of one of the greatest
and most cruel acts of injustice that Paris has ever committed.





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