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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Nabob, by Alphonse Daudet
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Nabob
+
+Author: Alphonse Daudet
+
+Translator: W. Blaydes
+
+Release Date: March 21, 2006 [EBook #2077]
+Last Updated: October 1, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NABOB ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; and John Bickers
+
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Nabob, by Alphonse Daudet
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Nabob, by Alphonse Daudet
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Nabob, by Alphonse Daudet
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Nabob
+
+Author: Alphonse Daudet
+
+Translator: W. Blaydes
+
+Release Date: March 21, 2006 [EBook #2077]
+Last Updated: October 1, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NABOB ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny, John Bickers, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE NABOB
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      by Alphonse Daudet
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Translated By W. Blaydes
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_INTR"> INTRODUCTION </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> <big><b>THE NABOB</b></big> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> DOCTOR JENKIN&rsquo;S PATIENTS </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> A LUNCHEON IN THE PLACE VENDOME </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> MEMOIRS OF AN OFFICE PORTER A MERE GLANCE AT
+        THE TERRITORIAL BANK </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> A DEBUT IN SOCIETY </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> THE JOYEUSE FAMILY </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> FELICIA RUYS </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> JANSOULET AT HOME </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> THE BETHLEHEM SOCIETY </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> BONNE MAMAN </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> MEMOIRS OF AN OFFICE PORTER SERVANTS </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> THE FESTIVITIES IN HONOUR OF THE BEY </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> A CORSICAN ELECTION </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> A DAY OF SPLEEN </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> THE EXHIBITION </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> MEMOIRS OF AN OFFICE PORTER IN THE ANTCHAMBER
+        </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> A PUBLIC MAN </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> THE APPARITION </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> THE JENKINS PEARLS </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> THE FUNERAL </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> LA BARONNE HEMERLINGUE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> THE SITTING </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> DRAMAS OF PARIS </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> MEMOIRS OF AN OFFICE PORTER THE LAST LEAVES
+        </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> AT BORDIGHERA </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> THE FIRST NIGHT OF &ldquo;REVOLT&rdquo; </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_INTR" id="link2H_INTR">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      INTRODUCTION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Admirers&rdquo;? The word is much too cold. &ldquo;Lovers&rdquo; would serve better, but is
+      perhaps too expansive to be used of a self-contained race. &ldquo;Friends&rdquo; 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&mdash;not
+      an imitator, indeed, but a kindred spirit&mdash;or that others found in
+      him a refined, a volatilized &ldquo;Mark Twain,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s is in the light of the sun itself&mdash;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 <i>Sapho</i> laid upon their Puritan consciences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is likely that a majority of these friends were won by the two great
+      Tartarin books and by the chief novels, <i>Fromont</i>, <i>Jack</i>, <i>The
+      Nabob</i>, <i>Kings in Exile</i>, and <i>Numa</i>, aided by the artistic
+      sketches and short stories contained in <i>Letters from my Mill</i> and <i>Monday
+      Tales (Contes du Lundi)</i>. The strong but overwrought <i>Evangelist</i>,
+      <i>Sapho</i>&mdash;which of course belongs with the chief novels from the
+      Continental but not from the insular point of view&mdash;and the books of
+      Daudet&rsquo;s decadence, <i>The Immortal</i>, and the rest, cost him few
+      friendships, but scarcely gained him many. His delightful essays in
+      autobiography, whether in fiction, <i>Le Petit Chose (Little
+      What&rsquo;s-his-Name)</i>, or in <i>Thirty Years of Paris</i> and <i>Souvenirs
+      of a Man of Letters</i>, 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&rsquo;s acquaintance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>The Lives of Men of Genius</i>. A <i>protege</i> 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&rsquo;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&mdash;in short, the final stimulus he needed. From the date of
+      his first great success&mdash;<i>Fromont, Jr., and Risler, Sr.</i>&mdash;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&mdash;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&rsquo;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 <i>The
+      Nabob</i> and other memorable novels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If this were a general essay and not an introduction, it would be proper
+      to say something of Daudet&rsquo;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&mdash;features of
+      his work shortly to be discussed&mdash;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, <i>Le Petit Chose</i>,
+      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 <i>Tartarin de Tarascon</i>,
+      begun shortly after <i>Le Petit Chose</i>, 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, <i>Lettres de mon Moulin</i> and <i>Contes du Lundi</i>,
+      together with <i>Artists&rsquo; Wives (Les Femmes d&rsquo;Artistes)</i> and parts at
+      least of <i>Robert Helmont</i>, would almost of themselves suffice to put
+      Daudet high in the ranks of the writers who charm without leaving upon
+      one&rsquo;s mind the slightest suspicion that they are weak. It is true that
+      Daudet&rsquo;s stories do not attain the tremendous impressiveness that Balzac&rsquo;s
+      occasionally do, as, for example, in <i>La Grande Breteche</i>, nor has
+      his clear-cut art the almost disconcerting firmness, the surgeon-like
+      quality of Maupassant&rsquo;s; but the author of the ironical <i>Elixir of
+      Father Gaucher</i> and of the pathetic <i>Last Class</i>, to name no
+      others, could certainly claim with Musset that his glass was his own, and
+      had no reason to concede its smallness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As we have seen, the production of <i>Fromont jeune et Risler aine</i>
+      marked the beginning of Daudet&rsquo;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&mdash;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, <i>Jack</i>, was not so popular. Still, it showed artistic
+      improvement, although, as in its predecessor, that bias towards the
+      sentimental, which was to be Daudet&rsquo;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&rsquo;s predilection for it&mdash;not so much
+      because of the strong and early study made of the artisan class, or of the
+      mordantly satirical exposure of D&rsquo;Argenton and his literary &ldquo;dead-beats&rdquo; (<i>rates</i>),
+      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&rsquo;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 <i>Jack</i> brings us to
+      the finer, more pathetic <i>Nabob</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether <i>The Nabob</i> is Daudet&rsquo;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&rsquo;s admirers. It is not so subtle a
+      study of character as <i>Numa Roumestan</i>, nor is it a drama the scene
+      of which is set somewhat in a corner removed from the world&rsquo;s scrutiny and
+      full comprehension, as is more or less the case with <i>Kings in Exile</i>.
+      It is comparatively unamenable to the moral, or, if one will, the
+      puritanical, objections so naturally brought against <i>Sapho</i>. It
+      obviously represents Daudet&rsquo;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&rsquo;s novels; it is fuller of striking scenes;
+      and as a picture of life in the picturesque Second Empire it is of unique
+      importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>Les Chatiments</i> we scorn and vituperate its
+      charlatan head or pity him profoundly as we see him ill and helpless in
+      Zola&rsquo;s <i>Debacle</i>, 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 <i>Coup d&rsquo;Etat</i> 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&rsquo;s observation, not of his reading&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>The Nabob</i> 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&mdash;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&rsquo;s visit to Monpavon at his toilet, the <i>dejeuner</i> at the
+      Nabob&rsquo;s, the inspection of the OEuvre de Bethleem&mdash;which would have
+      delighted Dickens&mdash;the collapse of the fetes of the Bey, the Nabob&rsquo;s
+      thrashing Moessard, the death of Mora, Felicia&rsquo;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&rsquo;s apoplectic seizure in the theatre&mdash;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&mdash;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&rsquo;s eye,
+      like that of a genuine but not supereminent poet, was chiefly attracted by
+      colour, movement, effective pose&mdash;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 <i>The Nabob</i> scarcely suggests strolling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>The
+      Nabob</i> 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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s word in such matters one soon finds one&rsquo;s self in a maze of
+      conjectures and contradictions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two characters drawn from life in a special sense&mdash;for Daudet,
+      like most other writers of fiction, had human life in general constantly
+      before him&mdash;are Jansoulet and Mora, precisely the most effective
+      personages in the book, and scarcely surpassed in the whole range of
+      Daudet&rsquo;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&rsquo;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 <i>Coup d&rsquo;Etat</i> that set his weaker
+      half-brother on the throne, the dandy, the libertine, the leader of
+      fashion, the cynical statesman&mdash;in short, the &ldquo;Richelieu-Brummel&rdquo; 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
+      <i>protege&rsquo;s</i> masterpiece. In fact, it is easy to agree with those
+      critics who think that Daudet&rsquo;s kindly nature caused him to soften many
+      features of Morny&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&mdash;De Gery,
+      the Joyeuse family, and the rest&mdash;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,
+      &ldquo;justification by contrast.&rdquo; Nor could a French analogue of Dickens easily
+      resist the temptation to give us a fatuous Passajon, an ebullient Pere
+      Joyeuse&mdash;who seems to have been partly modelled on a real person&mdash;an
+      exemplary &ldquo;Bonne Maman,&rdquo; 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 <i>The Nabob</i>
+      is open to the charge that applies to all the greater novels save <i>Sapho</i>&mdash;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, <i>Numa Roumestan</i>,
+      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&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naturally an elaborate novel like <i>The Nabob</i> 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 <i>Caisse
+      Territoriale</i> 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&rsquo;s sitting down to play <i>ecarte</i> with
+      Mora, to the story of how he gorged himself with the duke&rsquo;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&mdash;the
+      moment when Jansoulet, in the midst of the speech on which his fate
+      depends, catches sight of his old mother&rsquo;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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Nabob</i> was followed by <i>Kings in Exile</i>; then came <i>Numa
+      Roumestan</i> and <i>The Evangelist</i>; then, on the eve of Daudet&rsquo;s
+      breakdown, <i>Sapho</i>; and the greatest of his humorous masterpieces, <i>Tartarin
+      in the Alps</i>. 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&mdash;his
+      experiences as a colonist in <i>Port-Tarascon</i> need scarcely be
+      considered&mdash;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 <i>Kings in Exile</i>, it is difficult to see how even the
+      art with which the tragedy of Queen Frederique&rsquo;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 <i>Kings in Exile</i> is, it is not so effective a
+      book as <i>The Nabob</i>, nor such a unique and marvellous work of art as
+      <i>Numa Roumestan</i>, due allowance being made for the intrusion of
+      sentimentality into the latter. Daudet thought <i>Numa</i> the &ldquo;least
+      incomplete&rdquo; 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 <i>Numa</i> represents the highest achievement of Daudet in
+      dramatic fiction or else in the art of characterization, <i>The Evangelist</i>
+      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. <i>Sapho</i>, 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
+      <i>femme collante</i>, the mistress who cannot be shaken off&mdash;or
+      rather of the man whom she ruins, for it is Gaussin, not Sapho, that is
+      the main subject of Daudet&rsquo;s acute analysis&mdash;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 <i>Sapho</i>
+      as its author&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;Daudet is simply Daudet.&rdquo; As for the second
+      question, a whole school of critics is inclined to answer it and all
+      similar queries with the curt statement, &ldquo;That concerns posterity, not
+      us.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      W. P. TRENT. <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Le Petit Chose.&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;Figaro.&rdquo; His early volumes of
+      verse, &ldquo;Les Amoureuses&rdquo; of 1858 and &ldquo;La Double Conversion&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;Le Chaperon Rouge,&rdquo; 1863, was not very remarkable,
+      and Daudet turned to the stage. His principal dramatic efforts of this
+      period were &ldquo;Le Dernier Idole,&rdquo; 1862, and &ldquo;L&rsquo;OEillet Blanc,&rdquo; 1865.
+      Alphonse Daudet&rsquo;s earliest important work, however, was &ldquo;Le Petit Chose,&rdquo;
+       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 &ldquo;Lettres de mon Moulin.&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;The Prodigious Feats of Tartarin of Tarascon,&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;Fromont Jeune
+      et Risler Aine,&rdquo; 1874, enjoyed a notable success; it was followed in 1876
+      by &ldquo;Jack,&rdquo; in 1878 by &ldquo;Le Nabob,&rdquo; in 1879 by &ldquo;Les Rois en Exil,&rdquo; in 1881
+      by &ldquo;Numa Roumestan,&rdquo; in 1883 by &ldquo;L&rsquo;Evangeliste,&rdquo; and in 1884 by &ldquo;Sapho.&rdquo;
+       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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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 &ldquo;L&rsquo;Immortel&rdquo; of 1888. He wrote romances, of
+      little power, the best being &ldquo;Rose et Ninette&rdquo; of 1892, but his
+      imaginative work steadily declined in value. He published in 1887 his
+      reminiscences, &ldquo;Trente Ans de Paris,&rdquo; and later on his &ldquo;Souvenirs d&rsquo;un
+      Homme de Lettres.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EDMUND GOSSE, LL.D. <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE NABOB
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      by Alphonse Daudet
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      DOCTOR JENKIN&rsquo;S PATIENTS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&rsquo;s
+      voice asked timidly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall you be home for luncheon, Robert?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      &ldquo;good-morning&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Mrs. Jenkins.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;No, do not expect me this morning. I lunch in the Place
+      Vendome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! yes, the Nabob,&rdquo; said the handsome Mrs. Jenkins with a very marked
+      note of respect for this personage out of the <i>Thousand and One Nights</i>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be sure you do not forget what you promised me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I promised shall be done, Mrs. Jenkins. And now, go in quickly and
+      shut your window. The fog is cold this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s brougham commencing its daily round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First, to Mora House. This was a magnificent palace on the Quai d&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is quite useless for me to come early; others always arrive before
+      me,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;good-morning, my lads,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is with him?&rdquo; asked the doctor, indicating the chamber of the duke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sound of voices, a ray of light. Jenkins had just entered the duke&rsquo;s
+      presence; he never waited, he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let the frill be very fine on the ruff, and put no frills on the sleeves.&mdash;Good-morning,
+      Jenkins. I am with you directly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Jenkins, how are we this morning?&rdquo; said his excellency,
+      approaching, while the costumier was picking up his fashion-plates,
+      scattered over all the easy chairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you, my dear duke? I thought you a little pale last evening at the
+      Varietes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who was your companion, doctor, last night? That huge, bronzed Tartar
+      who was laughing so loudly in the front of your box.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was the Nabob, <i>Monsieur le Duc</i>. The famous Jansoulet, about
+      whom people are talking so much just now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know him. That is to say, I attend him professionally.&mdash;Thank you,
+      my dear duke, I have finished. All is right in that region.&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Tunis?&rdquo; interrupted the duke, who was by nature very little
+      sentimental and humanitarian. &ldquo;In that case, why this name of Nabob?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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&rdquo;&mdash;here the doctor assumed a modest air&mdash;&ldquo;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&mdash;the <i>Messenger</i>, I think&mdash;calls &lsquo;the great
+      philanthropic idea of the century.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He must be very rich, this M. Jansoulet,&rdquo; said he, coldly. &ldquo;He finances
+      Cardailhac&rsquo;s theatre; Monpavon gets him to pay his debts; Bois l&rsquo;Hery
+      starts a stable for him; old Schwalbach a picture gallery. It means money,
+      all that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jenkins laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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. <i>Mon Dieu</i>! I do
+      not say that if I should meet him elsewhere than in my own house, at the
+      theatre, in a drawing-room&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As it just happens, Mrs. Jenkins is proposing to give a small party next
+      month. If you would do us the honour&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment the usher on duty opened the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said the duke, &ldquo;I am coming. But I should like first to
+      finish the matter of this costume. Let us see&mdash;friend, what&rsquo;s your
+      name&mdash;what are we deciding upon for these ruffs? Au revoir, doctor.
+      There is nothing to be done, is there, except to continue the pills?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Continue the pills,&rdquo; 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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the club,&rdquo; said Jenkins to his coachman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! It is you, doctor? The devil take it! What is the time then? I&rsquo;m
+      not visible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not even for the doctor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, for nobody. Question of etiquette, <i>mon cher</i>. No matter, come
+      in all the same. You&rsquo;ll warm your feet for a moment while Francis finishes
+      doing my hair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s china.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>pills</i>. 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 &ldquo;ps, ps, ps,&rdquo; muttered between the teeth, expressions like
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s its name?&rdquo; &ldquo;Who was it?&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jenkins, finding the sitting rather long, had risen to take his departure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adieu, I must be off. We shall see you at the Nabob&rsquo;s?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I intend to be there for luncheon. Promised to bring him&mdash;what&rsquo;s
+      his name. Who was it? What? You know, for our big affair&mdash;ps, ps, ps.
+      Were it not for that, should gladly stay away. Real menagerie, that
+      house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Irishman, despite his benevolence, agreed that the society was rather
+      mixed at his friend&rsquo;s. But then! One could hardly blame him for it. The
+      poor fellow, he knew no better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Neither knows nor is willing to learn,&rdquo; remarked Monpavon with
+      bitterness. &ldquo;Instead of consulting people of experience&mdash;ps, ps, ps&mdash;first
+      sponger that comes along. Have you seen the horses that Bois l&rsquo;Hery has
+      persuaded him to buy? Absolute rubbish those animals. And he paid twenty
+      thousand francs for them. We may wager that Bois l&rsquo;Hery got them for six
+      thousand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, for shame&mdash;a nobleman!&rdquo; said Jenkins, with the indignation of a
+      lofty soul refusing to believe in baseness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Monpavon continued, without seeming to hear:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All that because the horses came from Mora&rsquo;s stable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true that the dear Nabob&rsquo;s heart is very full of the duke. I am
+      about to make him very happy, therefore, when I inform him&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor paused, embarrassed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you inform him of what, Jenkins?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s patients all had that eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come now, <i>mon cher</i>, 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Jenkins&rsquo;s air of astonishment did not make him pause. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;How could he have supposed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose nothing,&rdquo; said the old nobleman, calmer but still cold. &ldquo;I
+      merely desired to have a very clear explanation with you on this subject.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Irishman extended a widely opened hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear marquis, explanations are always clear between men of honour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Honour is a big word, Jenkins. Let us say people of deportment&mdash;that
+      suffices.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s demonstrative shake of the
+      hand, and passed back with dignity behind his curtain, while the other
+      left, in haste to resume his round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doctor, I beseech you, let me be fit to go to the ball this evening!&rdquo; the
+      young woman would say, prostrate on her lounge, and whose voice was
+      reduced to a breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall go, my dear child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she went; and never had she looked more beautiful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doctor, at all costs, though it should kill me, to-morrow morning I must
+      be at the Cabinet Council.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was there, and carried away from it in a triumph of eloquence and of
+      ambitious diplomacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Afterward&mdash;oh, afterward, if you please! But no matter! To their last
+      day Jenkins&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a thousand peregrinations in the Chaussee d&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mme. Constance is at mass,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and Mademoiselle is in the studio
+      quite alone. We have been at work since six o&rsquo;clock this morning,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, it is you,&rdquo; said she brusquely, as though awaked from a dream. &ldquo;The
+      bell was rung, then? I did not hear it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, how the doctor&rsquo;s voice became humble and condescending as he answered
+      her:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jenkins remarked in a fatherly way that she did wrong to tire herself
+      thus, and taking her wrist with ecclesiastical precautions:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, I am sure you are feverish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the contact of his hand with her own, Felicia made a movement almost of
+      repulsion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;work!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Embarrassed by the admiring gaze which she felt fixed upon her, Felicia
+      resumed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Apropos, I have seen him, you know, your Nabob. Some one pointed him out
+      to me last Friday at the opera.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were at the opera on Friday?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. The duke had sent me his box.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jenkins changed colour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He! Why, he is hideous! You cannot have looked at him carefully.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;s bust. What a disagreeable face
+      you had, Jenkins, in those days!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For ten years of life,&rdquo; muttered Jenkins in a gloomy voice, &ldquo;I would not
+      have that time over again. But you it amuses to behold suffering.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know quite well that nothing amuses me,&rdquo; said she, shrugging her
+      shoulders with a supreme impertinence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So it is understood. I must bring him to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, the Nabob. It was you who this very moment&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes,&rdquo; remarked the strange person whose caprices were short-lived.
+      &ldquo;Bring him if you like. I don&rsquo;t care, otherwise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before going on to the Nabob&rsquo;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;68 Rue Saint-Ferdinand, at the Ternes,&rdquo; he said, as he sprang into his
+      carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo; blocks with broken hinges hanging, an immense
+      ossuary of a whole demolished region of the town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Studios upstairs, on the fifth floor,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;But,&rdquo; he added, with an engaging smile, &ldquo;the stories are not
+      lofty.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the fourth floor, behind a door with a copper plate bearing the
+      announcement &ldquo;M. Joyeuse, Expert in Bookkeeping,&rdquo; the doctor heard a sound
+      of fresh laughter, of young people&rsquo;s chatter, and of romping steps, which
+      accompanied him to the floor above, to the photographic establishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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, &ldquo;Enter without knocking.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-morning, Andre,&rdquo; said the doctor, stretching out his loyal hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M. Jenkins!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;s sake; but your mother
+      has wept. And here I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the good Jenkins feigned not to perceive anything of this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I follow this occupation in order to earn a living. It is bread and
+      butter in the meantime.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In what meantime? While you are waiting for literary glory?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He glanced disdainfully at the scribbling scattered over the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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 <i>alter ego</i>. 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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the other so curtly that Jenkins was somewhat put out of
+      countenance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just so. I was prepared for this refusal when I came here. But I am come
+      nevertheless. I have taken for motto, &lsquo;To do good without hope,&rsquo; 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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Andre answered nothing, but his silence spoke for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take care. You know what that decision will involve, a definitive
+      estrangement, but you have always wanted that. I need not tell you,&rdquo;
+       continued Jenkins, &ldquo;that to break with me is to break off relations also
+      with your mother. She and I are one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man turned pale, hesitated a moment, then said with effort:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And will you at least say why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a negative sign; he would not say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adieu,&rdquo; said he, half turning his head on the threshold. &ldquo;And never apply
+      to us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never,&rdquo; replied his stepson in a firm voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This time, when the doctor had said to Joey, &ldquo;Place Vendome,&rdquo; the horse,
+      as though he had understood that they were going to the Nabob&rsquo;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. &ldquo;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!&rdquo; Jenkins gave vent
+      to his anger in a long monologue of this character, then suddenly rousing
+      himself, exclaimed, &ldquo;Ah, bah!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A LUNCHEON IN THE PLACE VENDOME
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There were scarcely more than a score of persons that morning in the
+      Nabob&rsquo;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 <i>parvenu</i> 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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;well-informed
+      people said his health had nothing to do with it&mdash;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&mdash;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 &ldquo;Monsieur le Marquis,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw the duke yesterday. He was talking a great deal about you in
+      connection with that matter. You know, that thing&mdash;that business.
+      What was the name of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You really mean it? He spoke of me to you?&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His excellency would have pleasure in seeing you take up the&mdash;ps,
+      ps, ps&mdash;the thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He told you so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask the governor if he did not&mdash;heard it like myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The person who was called the governor&mdash;Paganetti, to give him his
+      real name&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, <i>a la
+      Russe</i> 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, &ldquo;with not one
+      particle of superstition in his whole body,&rdquo; a characteristic which
+      permitted him to give very piquant details concerning the ladies of his
+      theatre to Brahim Bey&mdash;who listened to him as one turns over the
+      pages of a naughty book&mdash;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are quite pleased with M. Guizot. He is doing very well&mdash;very
+      well. It is a conquest for the Church.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seated next this pontiff, with a black neck-band, old Schwalbach, the
+      famous picture-dealer, displayed his prophet&rsquo;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&mdash;and
+      it was a sight to watch how the disdainful curve of his nose was
+      accentuated at each glance in that direction&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally, to fill the gaps among these figures I have sketched, the Turkish
+      crowd&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s or a
+      bath-attendant&rsquo;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 <i>table d&rsquo;hote</i> in
+      some big hotel in Smyrna or Calcutta, or of a luxurious dining-saloon on
+      board a transatlantic liner, the &ldquo;Pereire&rdquo; or the &ldquo;Sinai.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It might seem that this diversity among the guests&mdash;I was about to
+      say among the passengers&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the door of the dining-room opened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, here comes Jenkins!&rdquo; exclaimed the Nabob delightedly. &ldquo;Welcome,
+      welcome, doctor. How are you, my friend?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A smile to those around, a hearty shake of his host&rsquo;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 <i>table d&rsquo;hote</i>. 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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Jansoulet, you have read it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How, then! you do not know? You have not read what the <i>Messenger</i>
+      says about you this morning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Beneath the dark tan of his cheeks the Nabob blushed like a child, and,
+      his eyes shining with pleasure:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it possible&mdash;the <i>Messenger</i> has spoken of me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Through two columns. How is it that Moessard has not shown it to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; put in Moessard modestly, &ldquo;it was not worth the trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jansoulet insisted on reading the article, impatient to know what had been
+      said of him. Unfortunately Jenkins had left his copy at the duke&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let some one go fetch me a <i>Messenger</i> quickly,&rdquo; said the Nabob to
+      the servant behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moessard intervened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is needless. I must have the thing on me somewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And with the absence of ceremony of the tavern <i>habitue</i>, 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There you are.&rdquo; He passed it over to Jansoulet; but Jenkins besought him:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; read it aloud.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The company having echoed the request in chorus, Moessard took back his
+      proof and commenced to read in a loud voice, &ldquo;The Bethlehem Society and
+      Mr. Bernard Jansoulet,&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;the
+      long martyrology of childhood,&rdquo; &ldquo;the sordid traffic in the breast,&rdquo; &ldquo;the
+      beneficent nanny-goat as foster-mother,&rdquo; and finishing, after a pompous
+      description of the splendid establishment at Nanterre, with a eulogy of
+      Jenkins and a glorification of Jansoulet: &ldquo;O Bernard Jansoulet, benefactor
+      of childhood!&rdquo; 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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my friends, my dear friends, if you could know how happy I am! What
+      pride I feel!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;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.&rdquo; He threw back his head with an impulse of pride as he savoured the
+      odour of truffles diffused through the suffocating atmosphere. &ldquo;I have
+      known it, and the real thing too, and for a long time. I have been cold. I
+      have known hunger&mdash;genuine hunger, remember&mdash;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&mdash;and I am not yet fifty&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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. &ldquo;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, <i>pardi</i>! It is sufficiently
+      well known&mdash;Hemerlingue. Yes, gentlemen, the head of the great
+      banking house. &lsquo;Hemerlingue &amp; Co.&rsquo; had not in those days even the
+      wherewithal to buy a pennyworth of <i>clauvisses</i> 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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An electric shock passed round the table; there was a gleam in every eye,
+      even in those of the servants. Cardailhac said, &ldquo;Phew!&rdquo; Monpavon&rsquo;s nose
+      descended to common humanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&rdquo; he
+      added, with his kindly smile and in his hoarse, plebeian voice, &ldquo;when that
+      is done there will still be more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole company rose to its feet, galvanized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bravo! Ah, bravo!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Splendid!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Deuced clever&mdash;deuced clever!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, that is something worth talking about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man like him ought to be in the Chamber.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will be, <i>per Bacco</i>! I answer for it,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jansoulet, beaming, had risen in his turn, and, throwing down his
+      serviette: &ldquo;Let us go and have some coffee,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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. &ldquo;The Cross, on the 15th of August.&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;Bompain!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &ldquo;Now is our
+      chance.&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;What shall we do with him
+      now?&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While with his Italian accent and violent gestures the Corsican enumerates
+      the &ldquo;splendours&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, in short, how much would be required?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Millions,&rdquo; says Monpavon boldly, in the tone of a man who would have no
+      difficulty in addressing himself elsewhere. &ldquo;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.&rdquo; The Nabob
+      gives a start. And the little Paganetti, who feels the bait quiver on his
+      hook: &ldquo;Yes, deputy. You will be that whenever I choose. At a sign from me
+      all Corsica is at your disposal.&rdquo; Then he launches out into an astonishing
+      improvisation, counting the votes which he controls, the cantons which
+      will obey his call. &ldquo;You bring me your capital. I&mdash;I give you an
+      entire people.&rdquo; The cause is gained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bompain, Bompain!&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a good piece of business done,&rdquo; says the Nabob to himself. &ldquo;I can
+      drink my coffee now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us have a little talk, old friend. I must explain to you the
+      situation of affairs in connection with our theatre.&rdquo; 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 <i>Messenger</i>; the Nabob will find out what it
+      costs to have one&rsquo;s self called &ldquo;benefactor of childhood&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sh! He had found a pearl for monsieur&rsquo;s gallery, an Hobbema from the
+      collection of the Duc de Mora. But several people are after it. It will be
+      difficult&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must have it at any price,&rdquo; says the Nabob, hooked by the name of Mora.
+      &ldquo;You understand, Schwalbach. I must have this Hobbema. Twenty thousand
+      francs for you if you secure it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall do my utmost, M. Jansoulet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Oh, no; that is too much.&rdquo; Or again
+      it sinks forward with a comical resignation. &ldquo;Well, since it must be so.&rdquo;
+       And always Bompain&rsquo;s fez in some corner of the view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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 &ldquo;to the bottom and into the pile.&rdquo; To-day there must be a
+      terrible void in the drawers of the little chest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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. &ldquo;Ouf! that&rsquo;s over.&rdquo; But no. Opposite him, some one comes out
+      from a corner that is already dark, and approaches with a letter in his
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And at once, mechanically, the poor man made that eloquent, horse-dealer&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you desire, monsieur?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Taking the letter which the young man held out to him, he went to a window
+      in order to see to read it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Te! It is from mamma.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He said it with so happy an air; that word &ldquo;mamma&rdquo; 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 <i>parvenu</i>, felt himself filled
+      with sympathy for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Chateau de Saint-Romans.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Nabob broke off his reading.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ought to have recognised you, M. de Gery. You resemble your father. Sit
+      down, I beg of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;for he needed it badly, poor fellow,&rdquo; and
+      she signed herself, &ldquo;Thy mother who pines for thee, Francoise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, this emotion having passed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M. de Gery,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said the Nabob to him in a gentle voice, &ldquo;sit down there, next me,
+      and let us talk a little about mamma.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      MEMOIRS OF AN OFFICE PORTER A MERE GLANCE AT THE TERRITORIAL BANK
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s feasting, draws in his breath noisily, and in rude terms says to
+      me, with his Italian accent:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But this place stinks, <i>Moussiou</i> Passajon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The place did not stink, if you like the word. Only&mdash;shall I say it?&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo; 
+      arrears of salary, <i>plus</i> 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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&mdash;M.
+      de Monpavon, who, every time he comes, calls him laughingly
+      &ldquo;Fleur-de-Mazas,&rdquo; and M. de Bois l&rsquo;Hery, of the Trumpet Club, coarse as a
+      groom, who, for adieu, always greets him with, &ldquo;To your bedstead, bug!&rdquo;&mdash;to
+      our cashier, whom I have heard repeat a hundred times, tapping on his big
+      book, &ldquo;That he has in there enough to send him to the galleys when he
+      pleases.&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;Passajon, you are a blackguard. One word more,
+      and I discharge you!&rdquo; Stupor nailed me to the floor when I heard them.
+      Discharge me&mdash;<i>me!</i> and my four years&rsquo; arrears, and my seven
+      thousand francs of money lent!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;And as to that,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;summon these gentlemen to my
+      private room. I have important news to announce to them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon that, he went into his office, banging the doors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That devil of a man! In vain you may know him to the core&mdash;know him a
+      liar, a comedian&mdash;he manages always to get the better of you with his
+      stories. My account, mine!&mdash;mine! I was so affected by the thought
+      that my legs seemed to give way beneath me as I went to inform the staff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to the regulations, there are twelve of us employed at the
+      Territorial Bank, including the governor and the handsome Moessard,
+      manager of <i>Financial Truth</i>; but more than half of that number were
+      wanting. To begin with, since <i>Truth</i> ceased to be issued&mdash;it is
+      two years since its last appearance&mdash;M. Moessard has not once set
+      foot in the place. It seems he moves amid honours and riches, has a queen
+      for his mistress&mdash;a real queen&mdash;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&rsquo;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&mdash;one
+      who has not very hard work with us&mdash;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 &ldquo;word&rdquo; which opens the safe with the secret
+      lock, and I fancy that when my back is turned he forages a little among my
+      provisions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he saw us all collected in his private room, the manager said to us
+      with solemnity:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gentlemen and dear comrades, the time of trials is ended. The Territorial
+      Bank inaugurates a new phase.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon this he commenced to speak to us of a superb <i>combinazione</i>&mdash;it
+      is his favourite word and he pronounces it in such an insinuating manner&mdash;a
+      <i>combinazione</i> 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: &ldquo;Prepare your statements. All accounts will be settled not
+      later than to-morrow.&rdquo; 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 <i>combinazione</i>,
+      there used to be dancing, weeping for joy in the offices, and men would
+      embrace each other like shipwrecked sailors discovering a sail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &ldquo;Kill me,&rdquo; he would say,
+      &ldquo;kill me. I am a wretched impostor. The <i>combinazione</i> has failed. It
+      has failed, <i>Pechero!</i> the <i>combinazione</i>.&rdquo; 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&mdash;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You actually believe it, you?&rdquo; the cashier said to me. &ldquo;You will be
+      always innocent, then, my poor Passajon. Don&rsquo;t disturb yourself. It will
+      be the same with the Nabob as it was with Moessard&rsquo;s Queen.&rdquo; And he
+      returned to the manufacture of his shirt-fronts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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: &ldquo;Nothing fresh,&rdquo; or &ldquo;The
+      thing is in a good way.&rdquo; Whereupon everybody was contented. One would say
+      to another, &ldquo;It is making progress,&rdquo; 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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;thirty years of
+      academical services&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How I am come to it? Oh, <i>mon Dieu!</i> 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: &ldquo;Wanted, an office-porter, middle-aged, at the Territorial
+      Bank, 56, Boulevard Malesherbes. Good references.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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,
+      &ldquo;the air of a conscript father upon his curule-chair,&rdquo; 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&mdash;I believe it, <i>parbleu!</i> an antechamber in the
+      charge of a person with a striking face like mine is a bait for the
+      shareholder&mdash;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&mdash;our business
+      always has gone badly&mdash;the paper appeared only at irregular
+      intervals. But a little <i>combinazione</i> of the governor&rsquo;s enabled him
+      to save appearances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&mdash;we know the meaning which
+      that expression has in gaming&mdash;and they would not like all the stock
+      on their hands to become worthless save to sell for waste paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Small and great, that is the case of all of us who are connected with the
+      firm. From the landlord, to whom two years&rsquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &amp; Son, the great bankers of the Rue Saint-Honore, who,
+      every time he meets me, never fails to remark:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Passajon, my friend, don&rsquo;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&rsquo;s. I undertake to find some little corner for you there.
+      You will earn less, but you will be paid much more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;always the same&mdash;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 <i>Financial Truth</i>, 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&mdash;my
+      pen blushes to write it&mdash;what they call, I say, &ldquo;the drayman thrust.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;There are twenty francs carriage to
+      pay,&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;Twenty francs carriage! but I haven&rsquo;t
+      got it.&rdquo; &ldquo;Nor I either. What a nuisance!&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;Come, come, make haste.&rdquo;
+       (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. &ldquo;Gentlemen, I beg, will you permit me,&rdquo; ventures the
+      innocent victim, opening his purse. &ldquo;Ah, monsieur, indeed&mdash;&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fie! M. Passajon. At your age, such a trade! Eh! <i>mon Dieu!</i> 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 <i>concierge</i> a little bill of a hundred and
+      twenty-five francs for postage-stamps, a month&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A DEBUT IN SOCIETY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M. BERNARD JANSOULET!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The plebeian name, accentuated proudly by the liveried servants, and
+      announced in a resounding voice, sounded in Jenkins&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a thousand times, a thousand times kind. Mme. Jenkins will be so
+      glad, so proud.&mdash;Come, let me conduct you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; of raging shame, with head buried in the pillow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo; drawing-rooms, ancient, melancholy
+      dwellings with faded pier-glasses, where he used to go to make a fourth at
+      whist with venerable shadows. Jenkins&rsquo;s evening party was therefore a <i>debut</i>
+      for this provincial, of whom his very ignorance and his southern
+      adaptability made immediately an observer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the place where he stood, he watched the curious defile of Jenkins&rsquo;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 &ldquo;high life,&rdquo; 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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you&mdash;oh, thank you! How kind you are!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&mdash;some one had asked him
+      carelessly, without looking at him, what the Bourse was doing that day&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;&ldquo;The Seasons,&rdquo;
+       by Sebastien Ruys&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;much vitality coupled
+      with severe features&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somebody near him mentioned her name&mdash;Felicia Ruys. At once he
+      understood the rare attraction of this young girl, the continuer of her
+      father&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But see how pleasant she is with the Nabob! If the duke were to come in!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Duc de Mora is coming?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly. It is for him that the party is given; to bring about a
+      meeting between him and Jansoulet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you think that the duke and Mlle. Ruys&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the duchess?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah! it is not her first experience of that sort. Ah! there is Mme.
+      Jenkins going to sing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&mdash;it
+      was not, however, the same voice that he had heard just before:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know what they say&mdash;that the Jenkinses are not married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How absurd!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I assure you. It would seem that there is a veritable Mme. Jenkins
+      somewhere, but not the lady we know. Besides, have you noticed&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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. &ldquo;But Society is a hideous affair!&rdquo;
+       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: &ldquo;Come, it is not possible.&rdquo; And, as
+      though in reply to this exclamation, behind him the scandalous tongue
+      resumed in an easy tone: &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s marriage
+      with one of the favourites of the last Bey. &ldquo;A story with a woman at the
+      bottom of it, in short,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s great chagrin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was a tall, slender, frail person, with eyebrows that suggested a
+      bird&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s man of business, who accompanied the
+      baroness whenever the baron &ldquo;was somewhat indisposed,&rdquo; as on this evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>Enchanted Flute</i>, on her way home from her theatre,
+      had just entered, completely muffled in her hoods of lace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there was still no sign of the Minister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the double doors were flung wide open:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His excellency M. le Duc de Mora!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear duke, permit me to&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I called at your house, mademoiselle, on my way to the Bois.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was informed of it. You even went into the studio.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I saw the famous group&mdash;my group.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, there! Try. It is an apologue that I read in&mdash;You do not read
+      Rabelais, M. le Duc?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My faith, no. He is too coarse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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. &lsquo;Now,&rsquo; as
+      my author has it, &lsquo;it happened that the two met.&rsquo; 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>fete</i>, 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&rsquo;s pause:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how did the gods escape from that awkward situation?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By turning the two runners into stone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Upon my word,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;that is a solution which I do not at all accept.
+      I defy the gods ever to petrify my heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A fiery gleam shot for a moment from his eyes, extinguished immediately by
+      the thought that people were observing them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s attention to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;People will say that I am monopolizing you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;his honourable friend,
+      M. Bernard Jansoulet.&rdquo; His excellency bowed slightly, the <i>parvenu</i>
+      humbled himself lower than the earth, then they chatted for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s cloak of ermine, the dense
+      vanity of a newly rich man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor fellow! But they will devour him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really, do you believe that is so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;before his departure
+      for the East&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first impulse of the young man from the country, as he heard these
+      infamous calumnies, was to turn round and exclaim:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You lie!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>ecarte</i> with the
+      Duc de Mora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O magic of Fortune&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sky is clear, the pavement dry. If you like, my dear boy, we will
+      send the carriage away and return on foot,&rdquo; said Jansoulet to his
+      companion as they left Jenkins&rsquo;s house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was it possible, and how much of it was he to be obliged to believe?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;head of the family,&rdquo;
+       plunged him immediately into one of those internal combats in which
+      interest and conscience struggled for the mastery&mdash;the one brutal,
+      substantial, attacking vigorously with straight thrusts, the other
+      elusive, breaking away by subtle disengagements&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never had he felt it such a happiness to be alive; and this evening party
+      at Jenkins&rsquo;s, which had been his own first real entry into society as well
+      as de Gery&rsquo;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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Already?&rdquo; said the Nabob. &ldquo;I should not at all have minded walking a
+      little longer. What do you say?&rdquo; And while they strolled two or three
+      times around the square, he gave vent in spasmodic bursts to the immense
+      joy which filled him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How pleasant the air is! How one can breathe! Thunder of God! I would not
+      have missed this evening&rsquo;s party for a hundred thousand francs. What a
+      worthy soul that Jenkins is! Do you like Felicia Ruys&rsquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is too complicated for me. It frightens me,&rdquo; answered Paul de Gery in
+      a hollow voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, I understand,&rdquo; replied the other with an adorable fatuity. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is because it is not your first visit to Paris. You have lived
+      here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I? Never in my life. Who told you that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed! I thought&mdash;&rdquo; answered the young man; and immediately, a host
+      of reflections crowding into his mind:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, then, have you done to this Baron Hemerlingue? It is a hatred to
+      the death between you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To him as to the others,&rdquo; said he in a saddened voice, &ldquo;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&rsquo;s son&mdash;a child
+      by his first wife&mdash;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? &lsquo;Thief and son of a dog.&rsquo; As free in her
+      language as that, the odalisk&mdash;That is to say, that if I did not know
+      my Hemerlingue to be as cowardly as he is fat&mdash;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&mdash;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&rdquo;&mdash;one
+      would have said that he was replying to the secret thought of his young
+      companion&mdash;&ldquo;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, <i>nom d&rsquo;un sort</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>protege</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE JOYEUSE FAMILY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Every morning of the year, at exactly eight o&rsquo;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father, don&rsquo;t forget my music.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father, my crochet wool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father, bring us some rolls.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the voice of the father calling from below:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yaia, bring me down my portfolio, please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There you are, you see! He has forgotten his portfolio.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;father&rdquo; and
+      his young ladies had re-entered the case of photographs, where they
+      remained smiling and motionless until evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the Rue Saint-Ferdinand to the establishment of Hemerlingue &amp;
+      Son, his employers, M. Joyeuse had a good three-quarters of an hour&rsquo;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&rsquo;s arms,
+      dares not to move for fear of losing the intoxicating perfume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;those
+      young ladies,&rdquo; returned to them without ceasing, sometimes after long
+      circuits, for M. Joyeuse&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, for example, M. Joyeuse, as he went up the Faubourg Saint-Honore, on
+      the right-hand footwalk&mdash;he always took that one&mdash;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The child!&rdquo; the terrified old fellow would cry. &ldquo;Have a care of the
+      child!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo; 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: &ldquo;Papa, my dear
+      papa,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Remove your hand, sir!&rdquo; M. Joyeuse has already said twice over. The other
+      has only sneered. Now he wishes to kiss Elise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, rascal!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have just killed a man in an omnibus!&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s call, &ldquo;Saint-Philippe&mdash;Pantheon&mdash;Bastille&mdash;&rdquo;
+       to alight, feeling greatly confused, amid general stupefaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, one morning that our &ldquo;visionary&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;presents&mdash;New Year&rsquo;s Day.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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 &ldquo;Hemerlingue &amp; Son had shaved the Turk a little too close.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, yes, the bounty will be doubled,&rdquo; reflected the visionary, as
+      he walked; and already he saw himself, a month thence, mounting with his
+      comrades, for the New Year&rsquo;s visit, the little staircase that led to
+      Hemerlingue&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have three; no, I should say, four, M. le Baron. I always confuse them.
+      The eldest is such a sensible girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Further he wished to know their ages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That pet name of Yaia intensely amused M. le Baron, who inquired next what
+      were the resources of this interesting family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My salary, M. le Baron; nothing else. I had a little money put aside, but
+      my poor wife&rsquo;s illness, the education of the girls&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you are earning is not sufficient, my dear Joyeuse. I raise your
+      salary to a thousand francs a month.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, M. le Baron, it is too much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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. <i>Dieu!</i> 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&mdash;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 &ldquo;counting-house&rdquo; in letters of gold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall always be the same, it seems,&rdquo; said he to himself, laughing a
+      little and passing his hand over his forehead, on which the perspiration
+      stood in drops.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the other, the son, was always absent&mdash;asking for
+      M. Joyeuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What! Could the dream be continuing?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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 &ldquo;M.
+      Joyeuse, how many daughters have you?&rdquo; he said this:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A wave of blood mounted to the accountant&rsquo;s face, fell back, returned
+      again, bringing each time a confused whizzing into his ears, into his
+      brain a tumult of thoughts and images.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His daughters!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What was to become of them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Employment is so hard to find at that period of the year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poverty appeared before his eyes and also the vision of an unfortunate man
+      falling at Hemerlingue&rsquo;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&rsquo;s intimation that he could withdraw, went down with tottering step
+      to resume his work in the counting-house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;Let us wait till to-morrow.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In every house where M. Joyeuse presented himself, he beheld faces
+      suddenly grow cold as soon as he explained the object of his visit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! You are no longer with Hemerlingue &amp; Son? How is that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &ldquo;Call on us again after the holidays.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;the man who
+      seeks a place&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;I told you
+      so,&rdquo; or &ldquo;I have no doubt of it, sir.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;If Hemerlingue would only&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;All that depends on Hemerlingue.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Passajon to him&mdash;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&rsquo;s&mdash;&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Nabob is in the concern.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To do nothing! What a fine way of making life seem longer!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;Is business good to-day?&rdquo; And M. Joyeuse had replied,
+      obeying only an instinct without any knowledge, &ldquo;Fairly well for the
+      season.&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;artistic days.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s Day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>debris</i>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s gifts. Sumptuous in the district of the Madeleine,
+      well-to-do towards the Boulevard Saint-Denis, of more &ldquo;popular&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;La Valence&rdquo; amid the fog, the tumult, the excessive haste
+      which Paris displays at the ending of its year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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, &ldquo;a member of the nobility,&rdquo;
+       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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      True family life exists in humble homes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;night
+      scenes pierced with shining dots&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &ldquo;On behalf of
+      M. le Baron.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;no chimera, that&mdash;gives
+      them all a start and arrests him at the very moment when he was about to
+      speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whoever could it be, coming at this hour? They had lived in retirement
+      since the mother&rsquo;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&mdash;she had been in the family as long as the
+      lamp&mdash;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&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, indeed, sir, yes, indeed,&rdquo; stammered the father, quite overcome by
+      this unlooked-for piece of good luck. &ldquo;Assuredly I can undertake, in a few
+      months, to qualify you for such auditing work. Where shall we have our
+      lessons?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, at your own house, if you are agreeable,&rdquo; said the young man, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Always quick to take offence, where his daughters were concerned, M.
+      Joyeuse replied that &ldquo;the young girls were accustomed to retire early
+      every evening,&rdquo; and the words were spoken in a brief, dry tone which very
+      clearly signified: &ldquo;Let us talk of our lessons, young man, if you please.&rdquo;
+       Days were then fixed, free hours in the evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for the terms, they would be whatever monsieur desired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Monsieur mentioned a sum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The accountant became quite red. It was the amount he used to earn at
+      Hemerlingue&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, that is too much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is your first month&rsquo;s salary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, monsieur&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man insisted. He was a stranger. It was only fair that he should
+      pay in advance. Evidently, Passajon has told his secret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Joyeuse understood, and in a low voice said, &ldquo;Thank you, oh, thank
+      you,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s
+      presents. Oh, the mercy of Providence!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Till Wednesday, then, M. Joyeuse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Till Wednesday, monsieur&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;De Gery&mdash;Paul de Gery.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      FELICIA RUYS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;received&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;I was at Felicia&rsquo;s to-day.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Felicia gave a jump that made them all start, and with flashing eyes and
+      nostrils that quivered, said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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. <i>Parbleu!</i>
+      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
+      &lsquo;irregulars.&rsquo; 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&mdash;all these society
+      adventurers&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little old lady, pink and powdered, put in gently from her place:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Felicia, take care!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she continued, without listening:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you call Monpavon, doctor? And Bois l&rsquo;Hery? And de Mora himself?
+      And&mdash;&rdquo; She was going to say &ldquo;and the Nabob?&rdquo; but stopped herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how many others! Oh, truly, you may well speak of Bohemia with
+      contempt. But your fashionable doctor&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &ldquo;Ah, feather-brain, feather-brain!&rdquo; And his glance,
+      anxious and beseeching, sought the Nabob, as though to demand his pardon
+      for all these paradoxical impertinences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is right, Jenkins,&rdquo; said he at last, &ldquo;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&mdash;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is useless,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t go there. Don&rsquo;t move anything. That is the little one&rsquo;s corner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;the famous dancer,&rdquo; and who lived in peaceful
+      retirement at Fontainebleau.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The arrival of the &ldquo;little demon&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Constance Crenmitz was the one feminine element in Felicia&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the dancer again&mdash;in what neglect must she not have lived,
+      this little Ruys&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Much work, on the contrary, was done in Mme. Belin&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&mdash;a severe and hard prescription at that
+      period when fashion expanded women&rsquo;s figures with an infinity of flounces&mdash;the
+      regulation coiffure, two plaits tied rather low, at the neck, after the
+      manner of the Roman peasants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strange to say, the regularity of the classes, their calm exactitude,
+      suited Felicia&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s pupils to
+      long for the trailing rustle of a long skirt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;her father most likely of all&mdash;uttered a risky
+      jest, the Irishman would contract his eyebrows, give a little click of the
+      tongue, or perhaps distract Felicia&rsquo;s attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the last period of her father&rsquo;s life, Felicia&mdash;a great artist
+      and still a mere child&mdash;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These things were the occasion of terrible arguments, of discussions from
+      which the father came out beaten, conquered by his daughter&rsquo;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 <i>Joueur de Boules</i>, 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo; visit, as also her son; but the
+      doctor&rsquo;s age, his semi-paternal intimacy, allowed him to have with him,
+      even in his wife&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dinner was very gay, and Jenkins pleasant and cordial as usual.
+      Afterwards they went into the doctor&rsquo;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&mdash;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&rsquo;s table! and then art, and the life of the studio&mdash;She
+      was not an <i>ingenue</i>. 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&mdash;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Above all, not a word. It would kill your father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter with her?&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s patients. His
+      last words were:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jenkins, I beg you to look after my daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were so ironically mournful that Jenkins could not prevent himself
+      from turning pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few of the sculptor&rsquo;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&rsquo;s sake, let them leave her in peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sale did not take place, however, thanks to the godmother, the
+      excellent Crenmitz, who suddenly made her appearance, calm and gentle as
+      usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Ah, godmother, how good you are to me! Yes, yes, don&rsquo;t leave me
+      any more. Stay with me always. Life frightens and disgusts me. I see so
+      much hypocrisy in it, so much falsehood.&rdquo; And the old woman arranged for
+      herself a silken and embroidered nest in this house so like a traveller&rsquo;s
+      camp laden with treasures from every land, and the suggested dual life
+      began for these two different natures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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. &ldquo;Chaff,&rdquo;
+       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 <i>a
+      la Dorat</i>, 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s <i>bourgeoises</i>,
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Paris is full of such fallen stars, extinguished by the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not nice of you,&rdquo; Constance would remark to her, &ldquo;to be so hard on
+      the poor doctor. After all, there was nothing offensive in his suggestion.
+      An old friend of your father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He, any one&rsquo;s friend! Ah, the hypocrite!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us be humane, let us be kind. To do good without hope of reward! That
+      is the whole point.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Constance used to laugh till the tears came, in spite of herself. The
+      resemblance was so perfect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the same, you are too hard. You will end by driving him away
+      altogether.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Little fear of that,&rdquo; a shake of the girl&rsquo;s head would reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One morning, Jenkins having called in the course of his round, found
+      Constance alone and doing nothing in the antechamber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, doctor, I am on guard,&rdquo; she remarked tranquilly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, seeing that the Irishman made a step towards the studio:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, don&rsquo;t go in. She told me very particularly not to let any one go
+      in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg you not. You would get me a scolding.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jenkins was about to take his leave when a burst of laughter from Felicia,
+      coming through the curtains, made him prick up his ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is not alone, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, the Nabob is with her. They are having a sitting for the portrait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why this mystery? It is a very singular thing.&rdquo; He commenced to walk
+      backward and forward, evidently very angry, but containing his wrath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last he burst forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was an unheard-of impropriety to let a girl thus shut herself in with a
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was surprised that one so serious, so devoted as Constance&mdash;What
+      did it look like?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, it is impossible! I cannot tolerate this,&rdquo; exclaimed the
+      Irishman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is that? Who has taken the liberty?&rdquo; and the Nabob, on his platform,
+      with his collar turned down, petrified, monumental.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;He knew upon the
+      best authority that certain decorations were to be bestowed on the 16th of
+      March.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately the face of the Nabob, that for a moment had been frowning,
+      relaxed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! can it be true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He abandoned his pose. The thing was worth the trouble, <i>que diable!</i>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quick, let us start, my dear doctor. I follow you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;Well, I am waiting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jansoulet apologized for being obliged to interrupt the sitting; but a
+      visit of the most extreme importance&mdash;She smiled in pity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t mention it, don&rsquo;t mention it. At the point which we have reached I
+      can work without you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; said the doctor, &ldquo;the work is almost completed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He added with the air of a connoisseur:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a fine piece of work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, counting upon covering his retreat with this compliment, he made for
+      the door with shoulders drooped; but Felicia detained him abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stay, you. I have something to say to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw clearly from her look that he would have to yield, on pain of an
+      explosion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will excuse me, <i>cher ami</i>? Mademoiselle has a word for me. My
+      brougham is at the door. Get in. I will be with you immediately.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the right of a despairing and incurable passion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;love&rdquo;&mdash;she uttered the
+      word in a very low voice, as though it were shameful&mdash;&ldquo;or you shall
+      never see me again, even though I should have to kill myself in order to
+      escape you once and for all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A child caught in mischief could not bend its head more humbly than did
+      Jenkins, as he replied:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true. I was in the wrong. A moment of madness, of blindness&mdash;But
+      why do you amuse yourself by torturing my heart as you do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think of you often, however.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whether you think of me or not, I am there, I see what goes on, and your
+      coquetry hurts me terribly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A touch of red mounted to her cheeks at this reproach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A coquette, I? And with whom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With that,&rdquo; said the Irishman, indicating the ape-like and powerful bust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She tried to laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Nabob? What folly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;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.&rdquo; He dropped his voice as
+      though breath had failed him. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want&mdash;I want him to marry me. There!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo; households. Or, indeed, the
+      lover, the man who keeps a mistress&mdash;that is to say, slavery and
+      infamy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come,&rdquo; said Jenkins. &ldquo;And what of me, am I not here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anything rather than you,&rdquo; she exclaimed, stiffening. &ldquo;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&rsquo;s models and mistresses? What mistresses, <i>mon Dieu</i>! And
+      Jenkins for sole guardian. Oh, when I think, when I think!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And from that far-off memory things surged up that stirred her to a deeper
+      wrath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes, <i>parbleu</i>! I am a daughter of adventure, and this
+      adventurer is, of a truth, the fit husband for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must wait at least till he is a widower,&rdquo; replied Jenkins calmly.
+      &ldquo;And, in that case, you run the risk of having a long time to wait, for
+      his Levantine seems to enjoy excellent health.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Felicia Ruys turned pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is married?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Married? certainly, and father of a bevy of children. The whole camp of
+      them landed a couple of days ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a minute she remained overwhelmed, looking into space, her cheeks
+      quivering. Opposite her, the Nabob&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      JANSOULET AT HOME
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Jansoulet saw nothing of all this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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: &ldquo;I married a Demoiselle Afchin!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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 <i>patio</i> 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 &ldquo;professor of massage,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s theatre that she went for
+      preference. There, the Nabob found himself in his own house. From the
+      chief superintendent to the humblest <i>ouvreuse</i>, 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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t disturb yourselves,&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;She is astonishing!&rdquo; for he himself understood
+      nothing about literature, and there, at least, he could discover once
+      again the superiority of Mlle. Afchin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She had the instinct of the stage,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&mdash;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&rsquo; 
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>naivete</i> 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&rsquo; 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 &ldquo;consolations lavished&rdquo; 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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;at seven years
+      old!&mdash;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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A thousand irons in the fire: the Territorial Bank, the installation of
+      the picture gallery, drives to Tattersall&rsquo;s with Bois l&rsquo;Hery, some <i>bibelot</i>
+      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 <i>bourgeois gentilhomme</i> 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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>Bottin</i> 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:
+      &ldquo;Sir, you do not know me. Neither have I the honour of knowing you. But we
+      shall soon make each other&rsquo;s acquaintance. Be kind enough to sit down and
+      let us have a chat.&rdquo; The merchant at bay, on the verge of bankruptcy&mdash;sometimes
+      it is true&mdash;who comes to entreat you to save his honour, with a
+      pistol ready to shoot himself, bulging out the pocket of his overcoat&mdash;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, &ldquo;platform,
+      front seats, reserved seats.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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: &ldquo;But that is Paris, my dear boy. Don&rsquo;t get
+      frightened or interfere with my plans. I know what I am doing and what I
+      want.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &ldquo;When the
+      day arrives, the island will rise and vote for you as one man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>polenta</i>, 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE BETHLEHEM SOCIETY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;baas&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s time; now it looked on sad ones,
+      for the infirmary was installed in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The thing seemed altogether false. Excellent in itself, Jenkins&rsquo;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&rsquo;t yet speak, most of them indeed were never to
+      speak at all: &ldquo;Please, we will not suck the goats.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The director had been moved at first by the spectacle of so many victims.
+      This Pondevez, a waif of the life of the &ldquo;Quarter,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s appetites
+      soon returned. This humane impulse went near costing him his place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nurses at Bethlehem!&rdquo; said Jenkins, furious, when he came to pay his
+      weekly visit. &ldquo;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&rsquo;s money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the same, <i>mon cher maitre</i>,&rdquo; the student tried to reply,
+      passing his hands through his long red beard, &ldquo;all the same, they will not
+      take this nourishment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo; milk, cows&rsquo; milk in case of absolute
+      necessity. I can make no further concession in the matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He added, with an assumption of his apostle&rsquo;s air: &ldquo;We are here for the
+      demonstration of a philanthropic idea. It must be made to triumph, even at
+      the price of some sacrifices.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>brasseries</i>.
+      Mme. Polge, to whom Jenkins always referred as &ldquo;our intelligent
+      superintendent,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s
+      venerable ringlets, taking a hand in this lady&rsquo;s favourite game.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;I mark the king, Mme. Polge&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What an astonishing thing,&rdquo; remarked Pondevez, &ldquo;the conveyance is not
+      empty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is good!&mdash;necessary!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; said he suddenly to Mme. Polge, whose long face had grown still
+      longer between her ringlets, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>neglige</i>
+      than usual, but of which the simplicity excluded all idea of
+      premeditation. The Departmental Secretary may come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And here he is.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, M. Jenkins, what an honour! What a surprise!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the first place, gentlemen, the apartment of principal importance in
+      the house, the nursery,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s
+      coat of arms&mdash;an enormous lyre barred with a roll of music&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      &ldquo;dry-nurses,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can he be doing? He is mad,&rdquo; said Jenkins to himself in
+      consternation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come nearer, gentlemen, and observe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suck, will you suck then, you little rogue!&rdquo; 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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, the rascal, is he not cunning?&mdash;it is his thumb that he is
+      sucking instead of the goat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Positively de-e-elighted,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Mme. Polge, and how are our little nurslings getting on?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you see, M. le Docteur,&rdquo; she replies, pointing to the beds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This tall Mme. Polge is funereal in her green dress, the ideal of
+      dry-nurses. She completes the picture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But where has Monsieur the Departmental Secretary gone? He has stopped
+      before a cot which he examines sadly, as he stands nodding his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Bigre de bigre!</i>&rdquo; says Pompon in a low voice to Mme. Polge. &ldquo;It is
+      the Wallachian.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little blue placard hung over the cot, as in the foundling hospitals,
+      states the child&rsquo;s nationality: &ldquo;Moldo, Wallachian.&rdquo; What a piece of
+      ill-luck that Monsieur the Secretary&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he ill?&rdquo; asked Monsieur the Secretary softly of the director, who has
+      come up to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not the least in the world,&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;Well, old fellow?&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How pale he is!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the reflection. We are all of us green here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, that is so,&rdquo; remarks Jenkins, &ldquo;it is the reflection of the
+      lake. Come and look, Monsieur the Secretary.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inspection of the establishment must be continued very quickly in
+      order to destroy this unfortunate impression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo; 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 &ldquo;our intelligent
+      superintendent,&rdquo; 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
+      <i>Official Journal</i> in a decree which flames in advance before his
+      eyes and makes him glance every now and then at his buttonhole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Monsieur the Director begins to be uneasy, makes an inquiry. Jenkins rolls
+      furious eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us go on,&rdquo; says the director, rather anxious this time. &ldquo;I know what
+      it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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: &ldquo;Children
+      kept separate&mdash;Contagion&mdash;Skin-diseases.&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;They are char-ar-ming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;To
+      Be-Be-Bethlehem!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      As he read these words on the front page of the <i>Official Journal</i>,
+      on the morning of the 16th, the poor Nabob felt dazed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was it possible?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jenkins decorated, and not he!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;It is already done!&rdquo;
+       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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; 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,
+      &ldquo;have you seen? I am not in the <i>Official</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &ldquo;It is a great disappointment to me. I was looking forward
+      to it too confidently.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The door opened upon these words, and Jenkins rushed in, out of breath,
+      stammering, extraordinarily agitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is an infamy, a frightful infamy! The thing cannot be, it shall not
+      be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are my cross and my brevet. They are yours, friend. I could not
+      keep them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At bottom the words did not signify much. Jansoulet adorning himself with
+      Jenkins&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be very careful you do no such thing. To begin with, it would be to
+      injure my chances for another time&mdash;who knows, perhaps on the 15th of
+      August, which will soon be here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, as to that,&rdquo; said Jenkins, jumping at this idea, and stretching out
+      his arm as in the <i>Oath</i> of David, &ldquo;I solemnly swear it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know what I am doing, my dear Paul?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am just calculating&rdquo;&mdash;and his mocking glance thoroughly
+      characteristic of his race, rallied the good nature of his smile&mdash;&ldquo;I
+      am just calculating that I have spend four hundred and thirty thousand
+      francs to get a decoration for Jenkins.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Four hundred and thirty thousand francs! And that was not the end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BONNE MAMAN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Paul de Gery went three times a week in the evening to take his lesson in
+      bookkeeping in the Joyeuses&rsquo; 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
+      &ldquo;debtor and creditor,&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;the young ladies,&rdquo; so that at last the young man
+      ceased to mention them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, towards nine o&rsquo;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, <i>nee</i>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Paul having accepted, the good old fellow opened the door and called:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bonne Maman!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      De Gery, stupefied, looked at M. Joyeuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bonne Maman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From the honest fellow&rsquo;s tone as he spoke thus, one felt that to him this
+      grandparent&rsquo;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&rsquo;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 &ldquo;Bonne
+      Maman&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Thank you, Bonne Maman,&rdquo; in which
+      he would have put all his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly, a cheerful knock at the door made everybody start.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, here comes M. Andre. Elise, a cup quickly. Jaia, the little cakes.&rdquo;
+       At the same time, Mlle. Henriette, the third of M. Joyeuse&rsquo;s daughters,
+      who had inherited from her mother, <i>nee</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My fifth act is finished,&rdquo; cried the newcomer as he entered, then he
+      stopped short. &ldquo;Ah, pardon,&rdquo; and his face assumed a rather discomfited
+      expression in the presence of the stranger. M. Joyeuse introduced them to
+      each other: &ldquo;M. Paul de Gery&mdash;M. Andre Maranne,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So your play is finished?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Finished, M. Joyeuse, and I hope to read it to you one of these
+      evenings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, M. Andre. Oh, yes,&rdquo; said all the girls in chorus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s business
+      was for them all an affair of <i>amour propre</i>, 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, &ldquo;When <i>Revolt</i> is produced!&rdquo;
+       That was the title of his play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is surprising all the same,&rdquo; said the fourth of M. Joyeuse&rsquo;s
+      daughters, twelve years old, with her hair in a pigtail, &ldquo;it is surprising
+      that with such a good balcony so little business should result.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, if he were established on the Boulevard des Italiens,&rdquo; remarks M.
+      Joyeuse thoughtfully, and he is launched forth!&mdash;riding his chimera
+      till it is brought to the ground suddenly with a gesture and these words
+      uttered sadly: &ldquo;Closed on account of bankruptcy.&rdquo; 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&mdash;That exalted society which
+      was so much sought by her mother, is Mlle. Henriette&rsquo;s fixed idea, and she
+      is astonished that the thought of receiving &ldquo;le high-life&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;swell&rdquo; visit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, quite a great lady!&rdquo; interrupts Bonne Maman. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was for me,&rdquo; said Andre, a little embarrassed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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. &lsquo;Come up then, madame, come up,&rsquo; and finally she
+      entered. There is so much magnetism in eyes that are kindly disposed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tea having been served, while the gentlemen finished their cups and talked&mdash;old
+      Joyeuse was always very long over everything he did, by reason of his
+      sudden expeditions to the moon&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some women have hated me, other women have loved me. She who has hurt me
+      most never either loved or hated me.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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
+      &ldquo;char-ar-ming, very nice indeed&rsquo;s&rdquo; 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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, here comes Minerva. Hail, beautiful Minerva! Put down your helmet and
+      let us have a chat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the
+      charm of the unforeseen&mdash;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&rsquo;s hand was heavy on his instrument, Felicia, deprived of the one
+      moral support of her intellectual being, became unsociable,
+      unapproachable, a tormenting mocker&mdash;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 <i>ennui</i> in a kind of
+      caged wild-beast&rsquo;s howl, which she called &ldquo;the cry of the jackal in the
+      desert,&rdquo; and which used to make the good Crenmitz turn pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s contemplation only the
+      despair of a believer reduced to the adoring of images alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;it was the family circle presided over by Bonne Maman.
+      Oh! she at least was not bored, she never uttered the cry of the &ldquo;jackal
+      in the desert.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &ldquo;A boy to inherit
+      the name and two little girls&mdash;so as to be able to dress them alike.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that&rsquo;s right,&rdquo; Bonne Maman would say, &ldquo;you shall dress them alike.
+      In the meantime, let us attend to our participles a little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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: &ldquo;Louis, surnamed
+      le Hutin, 1314-1316; Philip V, surnamed the Long, 1316-1322. Ah, Bonne
+      Maman, it&rsquo;s no good; I shall never know them.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you never take any rest?&rdquo; said de Gery to her, as she counted under
+      her breath the stitches of her tapestry, &ldquo;three, four, five,&rdquo; to secure
+      the right variation in the shading of the colours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But this is a rest from work,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;You men cannot understand
+      how good needlework is for a woman&rsquo;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&mdash;of necessity and very quickly&mdash;the
+      equilibrium of one&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An affinity of nature, responsibilities and duties similar in character,
+      drew these two young people together, interested each of them in the
+      other&rsquo;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. &ldquo;Oh, no, not a sailor,&rdquo; Bonne Maman would
+      say, &ldquo;it will be much better for him to come to Paris with you.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Each day Paul de Gery came to appreciate Mlle. Aline better&mdash;he was
+      the only person in the house who so called her&mdash;and, strange
+      circumstance, it was Felicia who completed the cementing of their
+      intimacy. What relations could there exist between the artist&rsquo;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know her then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo; 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. &ldquo;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&mdash;&lsquo;three,
+      four, five&rsquo;&mdash;nothing now remains except old memories like dead
+      ashes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, as he was leaving the Joyeuses&rsquo; home, Paul met the neighbour,
+      M. Andre, on the landing, who was waiting for him and took his arm
+      feverishly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur de Gery,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;I have an explanation to ask from you. Will you come up to
+      my rooms for a moment?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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, &ldquo;M. de Gery, I am not yet a Cassandra.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And seeing the stupefaction of de Gery:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;we understand each other. I have known perfectly
+      well what it is that draws you to M. Joyeuse&rsquo;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,&rdquo; he repeated, excited by the peaceful calm of his
+      rival. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s and
+      had in any way authorized him thus to proclaim his rights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, monsieur, Mlle. Elise knows that I love her, and before your
+      frequent visits&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Elise? It is of Elise you are speaking?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And of whom, then, should I be speaking? The two others are too young.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He fully entered into the traditions of the family, this Andre. For him,
+      Bonne Maman&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A very brief explanation having calmed Andre Maranne&rsquo;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&rsquo;s only in order to speak of her
+      whom he loved with Bonne Maman, who had known her formerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is my case, too,&rdquo; said Andre. &ldquo;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 <i>Revolt</i> produced!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they talked of that famous drama, <i>Revolt</i>, 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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know her?&rdquo; asked Andre Maranne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes. Mme. Jenkins, the wife of the Irish doctor. I have had supper
+      at their house this winter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is my mother.&rdquo; And the young man added in a lower tone:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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 &ldquo;when he could have secured the production of <i>Revolt</i>,&rdquo; a
+      charming smile accompanying on the poet&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      MEMOIRS OF AN OFFICE PORTER SERVANTS
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Truly Fortune in Paris has bewildering turns of the wheel!
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>that</i> 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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;in a word, that indescribable quality
+      of assurance and greatness which is bestowed by immense wealth&mdash;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&rsquo;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&mdash;moved to some
+      emotion, but with dignity, you may trust Passajon for that&mdash;he looked
+      at me with a smile and said in an undertone to the young man who
+      accompanied him: &ldquo;What a fine head, like a&mdash;&rdquo; Then there came a word
+      which I did not catch very well, a word ending in <i>art</i>, something
+      like <i>leopard</i>. No, however, it cannot have been that. <i>Jean-Bart</i>,
+      perhaps, although even then I hardly see the connection. However that be,
+      in any case he did say, &ldquo;What a fine head,&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;Passajon, you remain with us.&rdquo; 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&rsquo; meetings, on the Bourse, the
+      boulevards, and everywhere: &ldquo;The Nabob is in the affair.&rdquo; That is to say,
+      gold is being poured out abundantly, the worst <i>combinazioni</i> are
+      excellent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He is so rich, that man!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the son at
+      Tunis, the father in Paris&mdash;to get the Nabob into disfavour. And then
+      it is true that fifteen millions is a big sum. And do not say, &ldquo;Passajon
+      is telling us some fine tales.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s correspondence. This person is his <i>valet de chambre</i>, 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had thought at first when M. Francis, Monpavon&rsquo;s <i>valet de chambre</i>,
+      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&rsquo; ball, an invitation written in a very
+      beautiful hand upon pink paper:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M. Noel rekwests M&mdash;&mdash; to be present at his evenin-party on the
+      25th instent. Super will be provided&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Fie on the pleasure
+     That fear may corrupt!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;clock
+      with Monpavon&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are welcome, M. Passajon,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, Lakdar, hang that up&mdash;and that,&rdquo; he added by way of a joke,
+      giving him a kick in a certain region of the back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>valets de chambre</i>
+      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&mdash;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&rsquo;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 <i>porter</i>
+      and <i>gin</i>, 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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The marquis&rsquo;s little groom, Tom Bois l&rsquo;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&rsquo;s banter with a terrible Belfast blow
+      of his fist right in the lad&rsquo;s face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A sausage with paws, I! A sausage with paws, I!&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s cook, a
+      former <i>chef</i> 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&rsquo;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 <i>ragout</i>. 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. &ldquo;M.
+      Barreau&rdquo; here, &ldquo;My dear M. Barreau&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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, &ldquo;A society without a hierarchy is like a house without a staircase.&rdquo;
+       The observation, however, seems to me one worth setting down in these
+      memoirs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;-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 &ldquo;Uncle&rdquo; which the younger among these delightful persons
+      saw fit to bestow upon me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&mdash;that goes without saying&mdash;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&rsquo;Hery the coachman&mdash;to
+      cite only one example&mdash;is much more observant of the proprieties than
+      Bois l&rsquo;Hery the master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &ldquo;I say, Francis, that old swindler of yours has
+      made a nice thing out of us again this week.&rdquo; And as the other drew
+      himself up with a dignified air, M. Noel began to laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No offence, old chap. The coffer is solid. You will never get to the
+      bottom of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was on this that he told us of the loan of fifteen millions, to
+      which I alluded above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are waiting for M. Louis.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M. Louis?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! you do not know M. Louis, the <i>valet de chambre</i> of the Duc de
+      Mora?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, gentlemen, give the ladies your hands.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is a <i>parvenu</i>,&rdquo; he muttered to me in a low voice. &ldquo;He owes his
+      fortune to his wife, to Mme. Paul.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It appears that this Mme. Paul is a housekeeper, who has been in the
+      duke&rsquo;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 <i>valet de chambre</i>. 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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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 <i>chef</i> 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&rsquo; 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In our establishment, my dear M. Barreau, the cook quite recently had an
+      affair, similar to yours, with the chief of his excellency&rsquo;s Cabinet, who
+      had permitted himself to make some comments upon the expenditure. The cook
+      went up to the duke&rsquo;s apartments upon the instant in his professional
+      costume, and with his hand on the strings of his apron, said, &lsquo;Let your
+      excellency choose between monsieur and myself.&rsquo; 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 <i>chef</i>
+      of our kitchen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you see,&rdquo; said M. Barreau, who rejoiced to hear this story, &ldquo;you see
+      what it is to serve in the house of a <i>grand seigneur</i>. But <i>parvenus</i>
+      are <i>parvenus</i>&mdash;what will you have?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that is all Jansoulet is,&rdquo; added M. Francis, tugging at his cuffs. &ldquo;A
+      man who used to be a street porter at Marseilles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Noel took offence at this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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 <i>parvenus</i> like us who lend millions to kings, and
+      whom <i>grand seigneurs</i> like Mora do not blush to admit to their
+      tables.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, in the country,&rdquo; chuckled M. Francis, with a sneer that showed his
+      old tooth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true,&rdquo; remarked the personage, speaking with the slightest possible
+      movement of his mouth and continuing to take his wine in little sips, &ldquo;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&rsquo;s his name&mdash;I forget, what is it?&mdash;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: &lsquo;Oh, you know, it
+      is not that I am suspicious of them. They are perfectly safe. It was I
+      myself who gathered them.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;<i>Sapristi!</i>&rsquo; said Monpavon, laughing, &lsquo;then, my dear Auguste, allow
+      me to be excused from tasting them.&rsquo; Marigny, less familiar, glanced at
+      his plate out of the corner of his eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;But, yes, Monpavon, I assure you. They look extremely good, these
+      mushrooms. I am truly sorry that I have no appetite left.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The duke remained very serious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Come, M. Jansoulet, I sincerely hope that you are not going to offer me
+      this affront, you also. Mushrooms selected by myself.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Oh, Excellency, the very idea of such a thing! Why, I would eat them
+      with my eyes closed.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;Hery, with his Parisian street-boy&rsquo;s accent, related to us
+      concerning the household of his employers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marquis and Marquise de Bois l&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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 <i>launcher</i>.
+      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&rsquo;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 <i>chaud-froid
+      de volailles</i>. 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: &ldquo;Ah, well, and what then? What can they do to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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, &ldquo;Monsieur le Marquis de Bois l&rsquo;Hery.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No, look you, the things that are to be learned at a servants&rsquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What will you have?&rdquo; replied M. Francis with a despondent air. &ldquo;Play is
+      devouring us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      <i>valet de chambre</i> 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&rsquo; 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 &ldquo;shut the door&rdquo; or &ldquo;harness the horses.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;kss,
+      kss&mdash;we shall have a good laugh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But come on then, you set of idiots! What are you sticking here for?
+      Don&rsquo;t you know it is over?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE FESTIVITIES IN HONOUR OF THE BEY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I am rich, mamma,&rdquo; Jansoulet used to say, as quite a small boy, to
+      his mother whom he adored, &ldquo;I shall give you Saint-Romans of Bellaignes.&rdquo;
+       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. &ldquo;It is the palace of Queen Jeanne
+      that you have given me, my dear Bernard,&rdquo; she wrote to her son. &ldquo;I shall
+      never live there.&rdquo; She never did live there, as a matter of fact, having
+      stayed at the steward&rsquo;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&mdash;who had never
+      been able to accustom herself to this colossal fortune, come too late,
+      from too far, and like a thunder-clap&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, too, what universal and indefatigable supervision! Through the mists
+      of early morning the farm-servants heard her rough and husky voice:
+      &ldquo;Olivier, Peyrol, Audibert. Come on! It is four o&rsquo;clock.&rdquo; 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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;less active, less
+      noisy, dragging rather than walking, leaning against the walls and
+      railings&mdash;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&rsquo;s cry&mdash;a blotch of
+      humanity in the splendid horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, this was the first-born, Bernard&rsquo;s brother, the darling child of his
+      father and mother, the glorious hope of the nail-maker&rsquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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 &ldquo;hand,&rdquo; 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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;I will come,&rdquo;
+       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&mdash;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&rsquo;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&mdash;perhaps
+      for good&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;t seen all these years. Besides,
+      all these gentlemen are our friends. This is the Marquis de Monpavon, the
+      Marquis de Bois d&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Bey again!&rdquo; said the old woman, astounded. &ldquo;I thought he was dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jansoulet and his guests could not help laughing at this comical terror,
+      accentuated by her southern intonation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is another, mamma. There is always a Bey&mdash;thank goodness. But
+      don&rsquo;t be afraid. You won&rsquo;t have so much bother this time. Our friend
+      Cardailhac has undertaken everything. We are going to have magnificent
+      celebrations. In the meantime, quick&mdash;dinner and our rooms. Our
+      Parisians are worn out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everything is ready, my son,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s country folk, too
+      artless to be purse-proud. One pride alone she had&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is something to work on,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;First of all, you give me <i>carte-blanche</i>, don&rsquo;t you, Nabob? <i>Carte-blanche</i>,
+      old fellow, and make that fat Hemerlingue burst with envy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;And already the manager&rsquo;s hand sketched programmes,
+      announcements; while Bois l&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      De Gery had left them early. He had sought refuge beside the old mother&mdash;who
+      had known him as a boy, him and his brothers&mdash;in the humble parlour
+      of the brightly decorated, white-curtained house, where the Nabob&rsquo;s mother
+      tried to perpetuate her humble past with the help of a few relics saved
+      from its wreck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;never in
+      her life having leaned back or sat in an arm-chair&mdash;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&rsquo;s three sons, whom she did not
+      know and so much longed to know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A heavy step on the staircase, a loud, sweet voice saying, very softly,
+      &ldquo;It is I; don&rsquo;t move,&rdquo; and Jansoulet appeared. He knew his mother&rsquo;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.
+      &ldquo;Oh, stay, my dear Paul; we don&rsquo;t mind you,&rdquo; and once more a child in his
+      mother&rsquo;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: &ldquo;Why
+      haven&rsquo;t my grandchildren come?&rdquo; But he spoke of them himself. &ldquo;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&mdash;there, like
+      that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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: &ldquo;Is it&mdash;?&rdquo; &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I make him sleep there. He
+      might need me in the night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would like to see him, to embrace him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, then.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;Good-night, my brother.&rdquo; 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,
+      &ldquo;Pecaire,&rdquo; the local word which expressed all pity and all tenderness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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, &ldquo;There&rsquo;s something to work on here,&rdquo;
+       happy to scatter gold at random like handfuls of seed, to have a stage of
+      forty leagues to stir about&mdash;the whole of Provence, of which this
+      rabid Parisian was a native and whose picturesque resources he knew to the
+      core.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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 <i>fetes</i> 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&rsquo;s
+      visit had left the castle, devastated as by a cyclone, and said in her <i>patois</i>
+      as she feverishly wet the linen on her distaff: &ldquo;May lightning strike
+      them, this Bey and all the Beys!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the day came, the great day which is still spoken of in all the
+      country-side. Towards three o&rsquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;a living wall for the procession. Above all
+      a great white sun which scintillated in every direction&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is beautiful,&rdquo; he said, paling; and behind him his mother murmured,
+      &ldquo;It is too beautiful for man. It is as if God were coming.&rdquo; She was pale,
+      too, but with an unutterable fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s
+      son myrrh and the triple crown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Jansoulet was being warmly congratulated by every one, Cardailhac, who
+      had not been seen since morning, suddenly appeared, triumphant and
+      perspiring. &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t I tell you there was something to work on! Eh? Isn&rsquo;t
+      it fine? What a scene! I bet our Parisians would pay dear to be at such a
+      first performance as this!&rdquo; And lowering his voice, on account of the
+      mother who was quite near, &ldquo;Have you seen our country girls? No? Examine
+      them more closely&mdash;the first, the one in front, who is to present the
+      bouquet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, it is Amy Ferat!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;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&mdash;farm side.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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, <i>Grand Soleil de la Provence</i>. 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&rsquo;s visit&mdash;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&rsquo;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&mdash;an art Provence has borrowed
+      from the Moors and perfected. How could the Bey not be pleased!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the wind had fallen suddenly
+      like a loose sail&mdash;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&rsquo;s voices, and the cry of the
+      water-seller, that necessary accompaniment of all open-air festivals in
+      the Midi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Open your window, general, it is stifling,&rdquo; 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&mdash;waiting for the Bey, for the
+      storm, waiting for something, in short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &ldquo;Gentlemen, the train is signalled. It
+      will be here in eight minutes.&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;Look over there!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;What a storm
+      we shall have directly!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Salam Alek.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Stop,
+      stop, there!&rdquo; 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,
+      &ldquo;Saint-Romans station, your Highness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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, &ldquo;But, your Highness, are
+      you not going to&mdash;&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;Go home, swindler. The feet go where the heart
+      guides. Mine will never enter the house of the man who has cheated my
+      country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jansoulet tried to say something. The Bey made a sign: &ldquo;Go on.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &ldquo;Court intrigues&mdash;infamous plot.&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;Blackguards!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You forget yourself, Jansoulet, you forget yourself.&rdquo; You guess who it
+      was that uttered those words, and, taking the Nabob&rsquo;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. &ldquo;Hurrah, hurrah for the Bey!&rdquo;
+       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, &ldquo;That will do! That&rsquo;s enough!&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;Hurrah for the Bey!&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s and ten y&rsquo;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: &ldquo;Mamma, mamma&mdash;I see him!&rdquo; He saw him! They
+      all saw him, for that matter! Now even, they will all swear to you they
+      saw him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;a living garland&mdash;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, &ldquo;Long live our noble Bey!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;At last!&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;Long liv&rsquo; 
+      th&rsquo; B&rsquo;Y &lsquo;HMED!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&mdash;that is the wind-up,&rdquo; 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:
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly a noise of footsteps, of precipitate knocks at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; said Noel, coming in half dressed, &ldquo;it is a very urgent telegram
+      that has been sent from the post-office by special messenger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A telegram! What can there be now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;to the signature. MORA! Is it
+      possible? The duke&mdash;the duke to him! Yes, it is indeed&mdash;M-O-R-A.
+      And above it: &ldquo;Popolasca is dead. Election coming in Corsica. You are
+      official candidate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my duke, my noble duke!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was so full of emotion that he could not sign his name. Suddenly:
+      &ldquo;Where is the man who brought this telegram?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, M. Jansoulet,&rdquo; replied a jolly south-country voice from the
+      corridor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was lucky, that postman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in,&rdquo; said the Nabob. And giving him the receipt, he took in a heap
+      from his pockets&mdash;ever full&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A CORSICAN ELECTION
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Pozzonegro&mdash;near Sartene.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;now on mules, now on asses, or
+      even on the backs of men for crossing the torrents&mdash;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&rsquo;s fortune&mdash;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 &ldquo;Government official&rdquo;
+       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&mdash;which
+      a huge nut-tree shades as though the shadows were not already thick enough&mdash;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>sango del
+      seminaro</i>, 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &ldquo;The police, they go away; <i>ma</i> the
+      <i>banditti</i> they stay.&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;job,&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;Come, my
+      dear fellow, you know I am an old Corsican myself,&rdquo; and then the other&rsquo;s
+      quiet replies, broken, like his tobacco, by the irritating noise of his
+      scissors. The &ldquo;dear fellow&rdquo; does not seem to have much confidence, and
+      until the coin is ringing upon the table I fancy there will not be any
+      advance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>combinazioni</i>.
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, indeed, what truth is there in the fabulous works undertaken by the
+      Territorial Bank?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      None.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;We begin here, and we go right over there, as far
+      as you like.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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&mdash;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: &ldquo;Paganetti&rsquo;s Agency. Maritime Company.
+      Inquiry Office.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Taverna,&rdquo; two hours&rsquo; 
+      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&mdash;true type of a Corsican poacher or smuggler,
+      his thick, red pipe in his mouth, his gun in a bandoleer&mdash;I went to
+      Taverna. After a fearful progress across cracked rocks and bogs, past
+      abysses of unsoundable depths&mdash;on the very edges of which my mule
+      maliciously walked as though to mark them out with her shoes&mdash;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: &ldquo;Territorial Bank. Carr&mdash;&mdash;bre&mdash;&mdash;54.&rdquo;
+       The wind, the sun, the rain, have wiped out the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s spots, red slabs with
+      brown veins, and at the bottom, in the brambles, enormous blocks of the
+      marble, called in the trade &ldquo;black-heart&rdquo; (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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This man, who in himself is the whole staff of the Territorial Bank in
+      Corsica, is Paganetti&rsquo;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&rsquo; 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 <i>pelone</i>. He told
+      me, however, without intending it, what the Corsicans understand by the
+      word &ldquo;railway,&rdquo; 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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, sir, no need of a railway here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it would be most valuable, most useful; it would facilitate
+      communications.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t say no; but with the police we have enough here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The policemen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This <i>quid pro quo</i> went on for some five minutes before I discovered
+      that here the secret police service is called &ldquo;the railway.&rdquo; 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,
+      &ldquo;Where is your brother Ambrosini? What is your uncle Barbicaglia doing?&rdquo;
+       They will answer with a little wink, &ldquo;He has a place on the railway,&rdquo; and
+      every one knows what that means. Among the people, the peasants, who have
+      never seen a railway and don&rsquo;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 &ldquo;Line
+      from Ajaccio to Bastia, passing by Bonifacio, Porto Vecchio, etc.,&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;old materials&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in this case, where have gone, where are going now, the enormous sums
+      M. Jansoulet has spent during the last five months&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PAUL DE GERY.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Or again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;The greatest ill you can wish your
+      enemy is an election in his house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Moussiou Jansoulet&rsquo;s&rdquo; 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&mdash;except for the boxes of cigars which sank in
+      their pockets as though they all meant to open a &ldquo;Civette&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s articles, which were sent to Corsica
+      in bales of thousands of copies, with portraits, biographies, pamphlets&mdash;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s
+      accountant and well up in the doings on the Bourse. What troubled him
+      most, however, was the Nabob&rsquo;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 <i>raki</i>
+      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 &ldquo;Not now, not now,
+      I beg of you.&rdquo; In the end the young man had recourse to drastic measures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One morning, towards five o&rsquo;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&rsquo;Hery&rsquo;s horses were unsound, Schwalbach&rsquo;s gallery was a swindle,
+      Moessard&rsquo;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&rsquo;s attention the accounts of
+      the Territorial Bank as the real danger of the situation. Attracted by the
+      Nabob&rsquo;s name, as chairman of the company, hundreds of shareholders had
+      fallen into the infamous trap&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will find the memorandum of which I speak,&rdquo; said Paul de Gery, at the
+      end of his letter, &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What an obvious and disenchanting to-morrow to the mad life he was
+      leading!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lost himself for a moment in dreary thought; then he gave his shoulders
+      a vigorous shake, a movement frequent with him&mdash;it was like a peddler
+      shifting his pack&mdash;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&rsquo;s room, who was already up, standing at his desk sorting papers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;First of all, my friend,&rdquo; said Jansoulet, softly shutting the door for
+      their interview, &ldquo;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&mdash;of clearing myself to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Paul assured him that he had no other reasons for going, but that those
+      were surely sufficient, since it was a matter of conscience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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&rsquo;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&mdash;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&rsquo;s jaws. While waiting for me to go to defend
+      myself at his tribunals&mdash;and how I know it, justice of the Orient!&mdash;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&mdash;I have only you
+      in the whole world. My wife&mdash;you have seen her, you know what help,
+      what support she is to her husband. My children&mdash;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&mdash;if
+      you only knew! At the club, at the play, wherever I go I seem to see the
+      little viper&rsquo;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 <i>Salon</i>. 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A DAY OF SPLEEN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Five o&rsquo;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look, my fairy! this is indeed the weather I wanted to-day. See them
+      draggling along! Aren&rsquo;t they hideous? Aren&rsquo;t they dirty? What mire! It is
+      everywhere&mdash;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&mdash;a statue a hundred
+      feet high, that should be called &lsquo;My weariness.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why are you so miserable, dearest?&rdquo; 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.
+      &ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t you everything to make you happy?&rdquo; 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&mdash;oh! yes, the very greatest, as this very day&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A week ago, Felicia&rsquo;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&rsquo;s long silences and suddenly bursts out in a bitter word or in an
+      &ldquo;Ugh!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s thoughts, now without a visible object, stray in the
+      emptiness of her heart and in the hollowness of her life&mdash;that of the
+      woman who leaves the quiet groove&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some one comes into the studio with a heavier tread than the mouse-like
+      step of Constance&mdash;the little servant, doubtless; and, without
+      looking round, Felicia says roughly, &ldquo;Go away! I don&rsquo;t want any one in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have liked to speak to you very much, all the same,&rdquo; says a
+      friendly voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She starts, sits up. Mollified and almost smiling at this unexpected
+      visitor, she says:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&mdash;you, young Minerva! How did you get in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very easily. All the doors are open.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not surprised. Constance is crazy, since this morning, over her
+      dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I saw. The anteroom is full of flowers. Who is coming?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! a stupid dinner&mdash;an official dinner. I don&rsquo;t know how I could&mdash;Sit
+      down here, near me. I am so glad to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;business, a
+      journey. Besides, if he hadn&rsquo;t been there, he had often spoken of her&mdash;oh,
+      very often, almost every day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really? And with whom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was going to say &ldquo;With Aline Joyeuse,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With an excellent fellow to whom you have given very unnecessary pain.
+      Come, why have you not finished the poor Nabob&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the Nabob&rsquo;s name she was slightly troubled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the accident? You know, we didn&rsquo;t believe in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it good?&rdquo; she said artlessly. &ldquo;Still a few touches here and there&mdash;&rdquo;
+       She had taken the chisel and the little sponge and pushed the stand into
+      what remained of the daylight. &ldquo;It could be done in a few hours. But it
+      couldn&rsquo;t go to the exhibition. To-day is the 22nd; all the exhibits have
+      been in a long time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah! With influence&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She frowned, and her bad expression came back, her mouth turning down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s true. The <i>protege</i> of the Duc de Mora. Oh! you have no need
+      to apologize. I know what people say, and I don&rsquo;t care <i>that</i>&mdash;&rdquo;
+       and she threw a little ball of clay at the wall, where it stuck, flat.
+      &ldquo;Perhaps men, by dint of supposing the thing which is not&mdash;But let us
+      leave these infamies alone,&rdquo; she said, holding up her aristocratic head.
+      &ldquo;I really want to please you, Minerva. Your friend shall go to the <i>Salon</i>
+      this year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at my <i>kuchen</i>, 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t bother him. You can give him some at dinner,&rdquo; said Felicia quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At dinner?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The dancer was so astonished that she almost upset her pretty pastries,
+      which looked as light and airy and delicious as herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he is staying to dine with us. Oh! I beg it of you,&rdquo; she added, with
+      a particular insistence as she saw he was going to refuse, &ldquo;I beg you to
+      stay. Don&rsquo;t say no. You will be rendering me a real service by staying
+      to-night. Come&mdash;I didn&rsquo;t hesitate a few minutes ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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!&mdash;a dinner at which she would have
+      other guests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Felicia, my child, you can&rsquo;t really think of such a thing. Ah, well!
+      And the&mdash;the other who will be coming directly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to write to him to stay at home, <i>parbleu</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You unlucky being, it is too late.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all. It is striking six o&rsquo;clock. The dinner was for half past
+      seven. You must have this sent to him quickly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was writing hastily at a corner of the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a strange girl, <i>mon Dieu! mon Dieu!</i>&rdquo; murmured the dancer in
+      bewilderment, while Felicia, delighted, transfigured, was joyously sealing
+      her letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There! my excuse is made. Headaches have not been invented for Kadour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, the letter having been despatched:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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 <i>kuchen</i>,
+      and we shall have the pleasure of seeing you in a pretty toilette which
+      makes you look younger than I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was more than was required to cause the dancer to forgive this new
+      caprice of her dear demon, and the crime of <i>lese-majeste</i> 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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evidently the dinner&mdash;a repast for a veritable <i>gourmet</i>,
+      superintended by the Austrian lady in its least details&mdash;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, &ldquo;Why! what is become of
+      the mustard-pot?&rdquo; &ldquo;What has happened to this fork?&rdquo; This embarrassed de
+      Gery a little on account of the young mistress of the house, who for her
+      part took no notice of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But something made Paul feel still more ill at ease&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>bourgeois</i>
+      ideas. &ldquo;For you are a terrible <i>bourgeois</i>, 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my child, what are you going to have M. Paul think, that you were
+      born under a bridge?&rdquo; said the good Crenmitz, who could not accustom
+      herself to the exaggeration of certain metaphors, and always took
+      everything literally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet,&rdquo; the young man hazarded timidly, &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She mused a moment before replying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;to laugh at a wound to one&rsquo;s self-love, to be only a
+      contented mother on the day when the public should see you as a worn-out,
+      exhausted artist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And before this tender vision the girl&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She, without looking at him, continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not so erratic as I appear; don&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Why did he not say to her, at this:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beauteous lady-warrior, lay down your arms, resume the flowing robe and
+      the graces of the woman&rsquo;s sphere. I love you! Marry me, I implore you, and
+      win happiness both for yourself and for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, there it is! He was afraid lest the other&mdash;you know him, the man
+      who was to have come to dinner that evening and who remained between them
+      despite his absence&mdash;should hear him speak thus and be in a position
+      to jest at or to pity him for that fine outburst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In any case, I firmly swear one thing,&rdquo; she resumed, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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 <i>Gisella</i>, in the
+      <i>Peri</i>, 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now she is off!&rdquo; said Felicia in a low voice to de Gery. &ldquo;Watch! It is
+      worth your while; you are going to see the Crenmitz dance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus it went on for some minutes, at the end of which they knew, by
+      hearing her shorter breathing, that she was becoming fatigued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough! enough! Sit down now,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While they watched her, dozing on her easy chair:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor little fairy!&rdquo; said Felicia, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And suddenly, with a joyous effusion of feeling:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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 <i>bourgeois</i>, all the same,&rdquo; she added,
+      laughing, &ldquo;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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still just as much,&rdquo; she said with irritation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took a few paces in the studio; then, having come back to the table, he
+      asked quietly, astonished to feel himself so calm:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was the Duc de Mora who was to have dined here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I was bored&mdash;a day of spleen. Days of that kind are bad for
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was the duchess to have come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The duchess? No. I don&rsquo;t know her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And tossing over to him the sketch which she had just finished:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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, &lsquo;What will she think of this?&rsquo; 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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you give me this sketch?&rdquo; he said in a low, quivering voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most willingly. She is nice&mdash;isn&rsquo;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&mdash;failing her&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the beautiful sphinx, tamed, raised to him, moist and laughing, her
+      great eyes, in which an enigma had ceased to be indecipherable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE EXHIBITION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;SUPERB!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A tremendous success! Barye has never done anything so good before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the bust of the Nabob! What a marvel. How happy Constance Crenmitz
+      is! Look at her trotting about!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! That little old lady in the ermine cape is the Crenmitz? I thought
+      she had been dead twenty years ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether it be the good Crenmitz or another, you will always see it at
+      every opening of the <i>Salon</i>, 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, no boxes, no stalls, no reserved seats, and it is this that gives to
+      this <i>premiere</i> 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&rsquo;Hery, confronts
+      the more than modest toilette of some artist&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are wings poised in giant flight, a sphere supported by four
+      allegorical figures whose attitude of turning suggests some vague
+      waltz-measure&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although Felicia&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bey, who had been in Paris since a few days before, and was the lion
+      of all the <i>premieres</i>, had desired to see the opening of the
+      exhibition. He was &ldquo;an enlightened prince, a friend of art,&rdquo; 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 <i>sleughi</i> all over, the true <i>sleughi</i>,
+      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,
+      &ldquo;He has got him!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;The Dog and the Fox,&rdquo; related in
+      the descriptive catalogue with these words inscribed beneath, &ldquo;Now it
+      happened that they met,&rdquo; and the indication, &ldquo;The property of the Duc de
+      Mora,&rdquo; the fat Hemerlingue, perspiring and puffing by his Highness&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, indeed, monseigneur, another masterpiece. If your Highness will
+      deign to step this way I will conduct you to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>haiks</i>.
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,
+      &ldquo;Bou-Said!&rdquo; (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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jansoulet?&rdquo; said he in his guttural voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Highness: Bernard Jansoulet, the new deputy for Corsica.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This time the Bey turned to Hemerlingue, with a frown on his brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Deputy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, monseigneur, since this morning; but nothing is yet settled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the banker, raising his voice, added with a stutter:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No French Chamber will ever admit that adventurer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the moment when the white <i>haiks</i> 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,
+      &ldquo;Elected by an overwhelming majority&rdquo;; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;You must go and greet Felicia.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After Mme. Jenkins, it is the turn of the Nabob to rush up, and taking the
+      artist&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;a few little reserves,&rdquo;
+       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 &ldquo;that so-and-so, the famous critic, does not look very pleased.&rdquo;
+       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 &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve done very well,
+      little one!&rdquo; which took her back to the past, to the little corner
+      reserved for her in the old days in her father&rsquo;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&rsquo;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 <i>bourgeoise</i>
+      life, well sheltered against <i>ennui</i>, that spiritless <i>ennui</i>,
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aline!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Felicia!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;you glad
+      dances of boarding-school days, where are you?&mdash;to retrace some steps
+      of one&rsquo;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 <i>pere</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How happy you must be! For my part, I have seen nothing yet; but I hear
+      everybody saying it is so beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Happy above all to see you again, little Aline. It is so long&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should think so, you naughty girl! Whose the fault?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what have you been doing, darling, all this time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I, always the same thing&mdash;or, nothing to speak of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, we know what you call doing nothing, you brave little thing!
+      Giving your life to other people, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know each other, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I know M. Paul! I should think so, indeed. We talk of you very often.
+      He has never told you, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never. He must be a terribly sly fellow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &ldquo;How can you
+      think of such a thing? At my age&mdash;a &lsquo;grandmamma&rsquo;!&rdquo; and finally seized
+      her father&rsquo;s arm in order to escape some friendly teasing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;what nonsense! A
+      harlot&rsquo;s daughter you are, my dear; you must be a harlot too if you want
+      to become anything at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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 &ldquo;Mora&rdquo; was
+      everywhere whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she saw the duke before her, she shuddered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes, the symbol,&rdquo; 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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,
+      &ldquo;Deputy! I am a Deputy!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deputy!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed to himself as he thought of the baron&rsquo;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&rsquo;Hery
+      &ldquo;my good fellow,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Penetrating the crowd which surrounded him, Moessard&mdash;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&mdash;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are taking me with you, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry, <i>mon cher</i>, but I have not a place to offer you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No place in a carriage that was as big as a house, and which five of them
+      had come in!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moessard gazed at him in stupefaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had, however, a few words to say to you which are very urgent. With
+      regard to the subject of my note&mdash;you received it, did you not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly; and M. de Gery should have sent you a reply this very morning.
+      What you ask is impossible. Twenty thousand francs! <i>Tonnerre de Dieu!</i>
+      You go at a fine rate!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still, it seems to me that my services&mdash;&rdquo; stammered the beauty-man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They exchanged these words as they walked, pushed forward by the surging
+      wave of the people going out. Moessard stopped:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is your last word?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is my last word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well! We shall see,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>Salon</i>,
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside, great rays of sunshine traversing the rain, attaching to its
+      limpid beads those sharp and brilliant blades which justify the proverbial
+      saying, &ldquo;It rains halberds&rdquo;; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M. Jansoulet&rsquo;s carriage!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>tout Paris</i> 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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My congratulations, my dear deputy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was said in a loud voice, and every one could hear it: &ldquo;My dear
+      deputy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>summum</i> 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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      MEMOIRS OF AN OFFICE PORTER IN THE ANTCHAMBER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;<i>bing</i>&rdquo;
+       of his halberd on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The masters, indeed, seemed in less joyous mood than we. So early as nine
+      o&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will kill him!&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I will kill him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other endeavoured to soothe him; then madame came in, and the subject
+      of their conversation was changed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s tail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the same, the Nabob&rsquo;s irritation had struck me, and seeing the <i>valet
+      de chambre</i> go by, descending the staircase four steps at a time, I
+      caught him on the wing and whispered in his ear:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter, then, with your governor, M. Noel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the article in the <i>Messenger</i>,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s, what made the work still more difficult for me was the number
+      of foreigners&mdash;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: &ldquo;Paganetti de Porto Vecchio, Bastelica di Bonifacio, Paianatchi
+      de Barbicaglia.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;shall
+      I confess it?&mdash;from pitying this rich <i>parvenu</i> when I learned,
+      in the course of the evening, what cruel thorns lay concealed in his bed
+      of roses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you notice, M. Passajon,&rdquo; said that worthy henchman, as he stood
+      opposite me, halberd in hand, &ldquo;do you notice how few ladies we have?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! all alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The guest would murmur his excuses. &ldquo;Mn-mn-mn&mdash;his wife a trifle
+      indisposed. Certainly very sorry.&rdquo; Then another would arrive, and the same
+      question call forth the same reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By its constant repetition this phrase &ldquo;All alone?&rdquo; had eventually become
+      a jest in the vestibule; lackeys and footmen threw it at each other
+      whenever there entered a new guest &ldquo;all alone!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must be the article in the <i>Messenger</i>,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have read it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is horrible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think the thing possible?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no idea. In any case, I preferred not to bring my wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have done the same. A man can go everywhere without compromising
+      himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly. While a woman&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they would go in, opera hat under arm, with that conquering air of
+      married men when they are unaccompanied by their wives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s arm with an air that seems to say, &ldquo;How happy I am!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my boys, if you could see it! it has a gloom, a melancholy. The men
+      don&rsquo;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, <i>pere</i> Passajon, a glass of Chateau-Larose; it will
+      pick you up a bit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Uncle, you are
+      babbling.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>marquise au champagne</i>, 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the third attack of the kind which the <i>Messenger</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Jansoulet received it in the morning with his chocolate; and at the
+      same hour his friends and his enemies&mdash;for a man like the Nabob could
+      be regarded with indifference by none&mdash;would be reading, commenting,
+      tracing for themselves the relation to him a line of conduct designed to
+      save them from becoming compromised. Today&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he would have done very well,&rdquo; remarked M. Noel, entering at these
+      last words, very much excited. &ldquo;There is not a line of truth in that
+      rascal&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There you acted very unwisely,&rdquo; observed M. Francis upon this&mdash;Monpavon&rsquo;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.
+      &ldquo;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, <i>mon cher</i>, he is not sufficiently firmly
+      established to be able to disregard attacks of this kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought myself able here to put in a word in my turn:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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: &lsquo;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!&rsquo; 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what does this article say?&rdquo; asked M. Barreau. &ldquo;Who is present that
+      has read it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nobody answered. Several had tried to buy it, but in Paris scandal sells
+      like bread. At ten o&rsquo;clock in the morning there was not a single copy of
+      the <i>Messenger</i> left in the office. Then it occurred to one of my
+      nieces&mdash;a sharp girl, if ever there was one&mdash;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here it is!&rdquo; exclaimed the charming child with an air of triumph, as she
+      drew out a <i>Messenger</i> crumpled in the folding like a paper that has
+      just been read.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is another!&rdquo; cried Tom Bois l&rsquo;Hery, who was making a search on his
+      own account. A third overcoat, a third <i>Messenger</i>. 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, <i>pere</i> Passajon, read it aloud to us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the general desire, and I assented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don&rsquo;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 &ldquo;The Boat of Flowers&rdquo;&mdash;a sufficiently complicated
+      story, with Chinese names, about a very rich mandarin, who had at one time
+      in the past kept a &ldquo;boat of flowers&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;boat of flowers&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;Ah&rsquo;s!&rdquo; and
+      &ldquo;Oh&rsquo;s!&rdquo; some saying, &ldquo;I suspected it!&rdquo; others, &ldquo;It is impossible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me,&rdquo; added Francis, formerly a trumpeter in the Ninth Lancers&mdash;the
+      regiment of Mora and of Monpavon&mdash;&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are an infamous liar!&rdquo; said M. Noel, beside himself with rage&mdash;&ldquo;a
+      thief and a liar like your master. Jansoulet has never been in Paris
+      before now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are wanting in manners, <i>mon cher</i>. 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never! never!&rdquo; vociferated M. Noel. &ldquo;I should rather go and knock the
+      rascally brigand&rsquo;s head off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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, <i>mon cher</i>? 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&mdash;and don&rsquo;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&rsquo;s, and I answer for it that you will not secure that declaration.
+      You set yourselves up to struggle against Paris, <i>mon bon</i>, 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That Francis has left me with a cold shudder down my back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A PUBLIC MAN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As an exception, however, that day Jenkins&rsquo;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 <i>attache</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>attache</i>&mdash;&ldquo;Yes,
+      M. le Ministre,&rdquo; &ldquo;No, M. le Ministre&rdquo;; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is impossible,&rdquo; suddenly said the Minister of State, rising. &ldquo;Take
+      that away, Lartigues; you must return to-morrow. I cannot write. I am too
+      cold. See, doctor; feel my hands&mdash;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&rsquo;t it too absurd, in this weather!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not surprised,&rdquo; muttered the Irishman, in a sullen, curt tone,
+      rarely heard from that honeyed personage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door had closed upon the young <i>attache</i>, 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 <i>attache</i> was certainly not
+      frozen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, now, my dear duke, what sort of life have you been living lately?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew from the gossip of the antechamber&mdash;in the case of his
+      regular clients the doctor did not disdain this&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are mistaken, doctor,&rdquo; replied his excellency tranquilly. &ldquo;I have
+      made no changes in my habits.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, M. le Duc, you have done wrong,&rdquo; remarked the Irishman
+      abruptly, furious at having made no discovery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, Jenkins, you know very well that I don&rsquo;t like phrases. I am not all
+      right, then? What is the matter with me? What is the reason of this
+      chilliness?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is anaemia, exhaustion&mdash;a sinking of the oil in the lamp.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What must I do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing. An absolute rest. Eat, sleep, nothing besides. If you could go
+      and spend a few weeks at Grandbois.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mora shrugged his shoulders:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the Chamber&mdash;and the Council&mdash;and&mdash;? Nonsense! how is
+      it possible?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In any case, M. le Duc, you must put the brake on; as somebody said,
+      renounce absolutely&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear doctor, I must at any price&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The servant still stood waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it? Ah, yes; this card. Take the visitor to the gallery. I shall
+      be there directly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jenkins, <i>mon bon</i>, 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And on the little letter in his hand, his fingers, warm once more and
+      feverish, clinched themselves with a thrill of eager desire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take care, M. le Duc,&rdquo; said Jenkins, very pale and with compressed lips.
+      &ldquo;I have no wish to alarm you unnecessarily with regard to the feeble state
+      of your health, but it becomes my duty&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mora gave a smile of pretty arrogance:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He started:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The duchess!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do I hear? You have not gone out? But do scold him, doctor. He is
+      wrong, isn&rsquo;t he, to have so many fancies about himself? Look at him&mdash;a
+      picture of health!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&mdash;you see,&rdquo; said the duke, laughing, to the Irishman. &ldquo;You will
+      not come in, duchess?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I am going to carry you off, on the contrary. My uncle d&rsquo;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&mdash;nearly as much so as you are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us go and have a look at them,&rdquo; said the minister. &ldquo;Wait for me,
+      Jenkins. I shall be back in a moment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;No one will
+      dare.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jenkins dared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! it is you, Jansoulet. How is it you are here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His excellency told me to come and wait for him in his room,&rdquo; 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&mdash;the set speech&mdash;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 <i>ecarte</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jenkins and Jansoulet, sufficiently embarrassed by each other&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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
+      <i>Messenger</i> 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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my poor Jansoulet, I hope Paris is making you pay dearly enough for
+      your welcome. What brawling and hate and spite one finds!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, M. le Duc, if you knew&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know. I have read it,&rdquo; said the minister, moving closer to the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sincerely hope that your excellency does not believe these infamies.
+      Besides, I have here&mdash;I bring the proof.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With his strong hairy hands, trembling with emotion, he hunted among the
+      papers in an enormous shagreen portfolio which he had under his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind that&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The duke could not restrain a smile at the bewilderment of the Nabob,
+      stupefied to find him so well informed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Minister of State has to know everything. But don&rsquo;t worry. Your
+      election will be declared valid all the same. And once declared valid&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jansoulet heaved a sigh of relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Le Merquier? The devil!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Le Merquier, Hemerlingue&rsquo;s agent, the dirty hypocrite who converted
+      the baroness, no doubt because his religion forbade him to have a
+      Mohammedan for a mistress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come, Jansoulet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, M. le Duc? One can&rsquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He wiped away the big drops of sweat that trickled down his cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well, I will look after this validation myself,&rdquo; said the minister
+      sharply. &ldquo;I will write to what&rsquo;s-his-name to hurry up with his report; and
+      even if I have to be carried to the Chamber&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your excellency is unwell?&rdquo; asked Jansoulet, in a tone of interest which,
+      I swear to you, had no affectation about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;a little weakness. I am rather anaemic&mdash;wanting blood; but
+      Jenkins is going to put me right. Aren&rsquo;t you, Jenkins?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Irishman, who had not been listening, made a vague gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Tonnerre!</i> And here am I with only too much of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Nabob loosened his cravat about his neck, swollen like an apoplexy
+      by his emotion and the heat of the room. &ldquo;If I could only transfer a
+      little to you, M. le Duc!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be an excellent thing for both,&rdquo; said the Minister of State with
+      pale irony. &ldquo;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&rsquo;t read them, if you cannot conceal the
+      emotion which they cause you. Don&rsquo;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 &lsquo;De tes fils,
+      Norma.&rsquo; I have tried everything to get him away from there&mdash;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&mdash;&lsquo;<i>The Cobbler and the
+      Financier</i>.&rsquo; &lsquo;The Duke and the Clarinet.&rsquo; 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, &lsquo;Come, let us
+      go and worry the Duc de Mora.&rsquo; 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 <i>Messenger</i>, 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&rsquo;clock at the office, and I must send you back to the Chamber.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then turning to Jenkins:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know what I asked of you, doctor&mdash;pearls for the day after
+      to-morrow; and let them be extra strong!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jenkins started, shook himself as at the sudden awakening from a dream:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, my dear duke. You shall be given some stamina&mdash;oh, yes;
+      stamina, breath enough to win the great Derby stakes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s
+      letter which he had reopened and was reading rapturously shook in his
+      hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A deputy is in a very singular situation during the period which follows
+      his election and precedes&mdash;as they say in parliamentary jargon&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This situation, at best so trying to the nerves, was complicated in the
+      Nabob&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;bull&rdquo; and &ldquo;bear&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>buffet</i>, that large bright room opening on the
+      gardens of the president&rsquo;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 <i>Messenger</i> a mocking, offensive
+      paragraph exhibiting him to his electors as a wine-bibber of the most
+      notorious order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those terrible electors added to his embarrassments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;O Pe! O Tche!&rdquo; 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
+      &ldquo;Moussiou&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;that he was wanted immediately in Bureau No. 8.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo; 
+      houses, the usual accompaniments of an election in those days, Jansoulet
+      used to shudder on his own account. &ldquo;Why, I did all that myself,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&rsquo;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. &ldquo;The enemy is there. Attention!&rdquo; 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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the meaning of this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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 &ldquo;burning
+      questions that come again to the surface&rdquo; and &ldquo;individualities without
+      mandate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s, and to say in
+      nasal voice, &ldquo;The administration, gentlemen,&rdquo; or &ldquo;The Government of the
+      Emperor,&rdquo; but incapable of anything further.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a concise, clear, and rapid summary of their fortnight&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+      &ldquo;Calm yourself, my dear colleague.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Jansoulet issued from the legislative assembly, reconducted to his
+      carriage by his grateful colleague, it was about six o&rsquo;clock. The splendid
+      weather&mdash;a beautiful sunset over the Seine, which lay stretching away
+      like molten gold on the Trocadero side&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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 <i>Place</i>. As they
+      passed, people turned to look after them, saying, &ldquo;Those are deputies.&rdquo;
+       And Jansoulet felt the delight of a child, a plebeian joy, compounded of
+      ignorance and naive vanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask for the <i>Messenger</i>, evening edition.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;late news, the success of
+      the day or its scandal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &ldquo;Must not a
+      public man be above these weaknesses? I am strong enough now to read
+      everything.&rdquo; He retraced his steps and took a newspaper like his
+      colleagues. He opened it, very calmly, right at the place usually occupied
+      by Moessard&rsquo;s articles. As it happened, there was one. Still the same
+      title: &ldquo;<i>Chinoiseries</i>,&rdquo; and an <i>M.</i> for signature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! ah!&rdquo; said the public man, firm and cold as marble, with a fine smile
+      of disdain. Mora&rsquo;s lesson still rung in his ears, and, had he forgotten
+      it, the air from <i>Norma</i> 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 &ldquo;Bateau de fleurs.&rdquo; How well he aimed his blows, this Moessard, how
+      well he knew the really sensitive spots in that heart, so frankly exposed!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be quiet, Jansoulet; be quiet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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 <i>poudre de riz</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Nabob raised his head and stifled a cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hep! hep, then!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The horse, a high trotter with slim legs, just such a horse as a <i>cocotte</i>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A carriage forcibly stopped in the Rue Royale, and in broad daylight&mdash;only
+      this Tartar would have dared such a stroke as that!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get down!&rdquo; said he to Moessard, whose face had turned green and yellow
+      when he saw him. &ldquo;Get down immediately!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you let go my horse, you bloated idiot! Whip up Suzanne; it is the
+      Nabob.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come down, or, by God, I will upset the whole thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jump&mdash;but jump, I tell you! Don&rsquo;t you see he will have us over? What
+      a grip!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the woman looked at the Hercules with interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bernard Jansoulet, Deputy for Corsica.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A public man!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE APPARITION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      If you want simple and sincere feeling, if you would see overflowing
+      affection, tenderness, laughter&mdash;the laughter born of great happiness
+      which, at a tiny movement of the lips, is brought to the verge of tears&mdash;and
+      the beautiful wild joy of youth illumined by bright eyes transparent to
+      the very depths of the souls behind them&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Accepted! it is accepted! Oh, what good luck! Henriette, Elise, do come
+      here! M. Maranne&rsquo;s play is accepted!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Andre heard the news yesterday. Cardailhac, the manager of the <i>Nouveautes</i>,
+      sent for him to inform him that his play was to be produced immediately&mdash;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&rsquo;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 <i>deshabille</i>, 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 <i>Revolt</i> 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, &ldquo;Make the experiment, in any case. What is the risk?&rdquo; 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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M. Joyeuse,&rdquo; said he thickly, &ldquo;I have a very serious communication to
+      make to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Joyeuse expresses astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A communication? Ah, <i>mon Dieu</i>, you alarm me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And lowering his voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are the girls in the way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Bonne Maman knows what I mean. Mlle. Elise also must have some
+      suspicion of it. It is only the children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon a great silence; after which, the lover begins his little story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>Ansart
+      et Rendu</i> 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&rsquo;s hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it possible? How has it happened? What an extraordinary event! Who
+      could ever have suspected such a thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;one cannot
+      hide anything from him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she says this she throws her arms round the little man&rsquo;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&rsquo;s apartment. &ldquo;How is
+      business going, M. Maranne?&rdquo; the spirits had inquired, and he himself had
+      replied in Maranne&rsquo;s absence: &ldquo;Fairly well, for the season, Sir Spirit.&rdquo;
+       The little man repeats, &ldquo;Fairly well for the season,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the first stress of emotion they talk more seriously. It is certain
+      that Mme. Joyeuse, <i>nee</i> 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&mdash;qualities
+      that in themselves constitute fine dowries, without involving any heavy
+      registration fees at the notary&rsquo;s. The new household will be installed on
+      the floor above. The photography will be continued, unless <i>Revolt</i>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only one question preoccupies M. Joyeuse: &ldquo;Will Andre&rsquo;s parents consent to
+      this marriage? How will Dr. Jenkins, so rich, so celebrated, take it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us not speak of that man,&rdquo; said Andre, turning pale; &ldquo;he is a wretch
+      to whom I owe nothing&mdash;who is nothing to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stops, embarrassed by this explosion of anger, which he was unable to
+      restrain and cannot explain, and goes on more gently:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;s name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s: a whole programme of delights in honour of the
+      acceptance of <i>Revolt</i>, and of another piece of good news which they
+      will hear later.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, really&mdash;what is it, then?&rdquo; ask the two little girls, with an
+      innocent air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if you fancy they don&rsquo;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 <i>le
+      pere</i> Joyeuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s all right&mdash;that&rsquo;s all right, children; go and dress, in any
+      case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there begins another refrain:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What frock must I put on, Bonne Maman&mdash;the gray?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bonne Maman, there is a string off my hat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bonne Maman, my child, have I no more starched cravats left?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Toilettes having been completed, the <i>dejeuner</i> finished, taken on
+      the thumb, as they say&mdash;and you can imagine what quantity these young
+      ladies&rsquo; thumbs would carry&mdash;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose we don&rsquo;t open the door?&rdquo; propose the children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And what a relief, with a cry of delight, they see their friend Paul come
+      in!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quick! quick! Come and let us tell you the good news.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;short lines,&rdquo; as he called verse, wished to send the
+      manuscript to the Levantine and her <i>masseur</i>, 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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bonne Maman alone preserved her usual peaceful air; but one noticed, in
+      the eager alacrity with which she forestalled her sister&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s sudden
+      paleness, did not hear the distressed cry that escaped her lips:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are going away?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s protection, however, gave him some reassurance; and then, the
+      journey in question was absolutely necessary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the Territorial?&rdquo; asked the old accountant, ever returning to the
+      subject in his mind. &ldquo;How are things standing there? I see Jansoulet&rsquo;s
+      name still at the head of the board. You cannot get him out, then, from
+      that Ali-Baba&rsquo;s cave? Take care&mdash;take care!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&rdquo; added M. Joyeuse,
+      whose brow had contracted a frown, &ldquo;I am even surprised that Hemerlingue,
+      in his hatred for you, has not secretly brought up a few shares.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hemerlingue, the heartless monster! Wretch! That wicked man!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The greatest rascal, after all, in this affair, is you, sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, papa, papa! what are you saying?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh, what? Ah, forgive me, my dear Andre. I was fancying myself in the
+      examining magistrate&rsquo;s private room, face to face with that rogue. It is
+      my confounded brain that is always running away with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>Revolt</i> took advantage of the diversion to ask
+      whether they were not soon going to start. It was late&mdash;the good
+      places would be taken in the Bois.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the Bois de Boulogne, on Sunday!&rdquo; exclaimed Paul de Gery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, our Bois is not yours,&rdquo; replied Aline with a smile. &ldquo;Come with us,
+      and you will see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s hand!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His first work! That was what the <i>Revolt</i> 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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s
+      household, beaten by the winds but envied by the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were right; I did not know the Bois,&rdquo; said Paul in a low voice to
+      Aline, who was leaning on his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, <i>pere</i> Kontzen&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s miraculous pearls, had not already betrayed them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;that was all that remained of the apparition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You saw?&rdquo; said Paul; speaking first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Felicia!&rdquo; 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&mdash;a fine country, they said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know what I am thinking of?&rdquo; he said, taking Aline&rsquo;s hand. &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had regained her composure, and looking de Gery full in the face with
+      a serious tenderness, she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pointed to her father and her sisters, who were beckoning to them in
+      the distance and hastening to come up with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and I myself?&rdquo; answered Paul quickly. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&rdquo; exclaimed the dear
+      creature, beaming with joy, &ldquo;there is my portrait&mdash;I give it to you!
+      And all my soul with it, too, and forever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE JENKINS PEARLS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s cheeks flush, while in the
+      curved mirrors of his brougham he studied his appearance, his courtier&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;What is there going on?&rdquo;
+       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&mdash;after ascending the steps&mdash;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a misfortune!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! it is terrible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so suddenly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such were the remarks that people were exchanging as they met.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An idea flashed into Jansoulet&rsquo;s mind:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is the duke ill?&rdquo; he inquired of a servant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, monsieur, he is dying! He will not live through the night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;I am ruined! I
+      am ruined!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;The day after a visit to Saint-James Villa,&rdquo;
+       was muttered in the antechamber, and Jenkins&rsquo;s handsome face preserved its
+      serenity. He had spoken to two or three people, in the course of his
+      morning rounds, of the duke&rsquo;s indisposition, and that so lightly that
+      nobody had paid much attention to the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mora himself, notwithstanding his extreme weakness, although he felt his
+      head absolutely blank, and, as he said, &ldquo;not an idea anywhere,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s toilet necessaries were carried to him&mdash;a whole
+      apparatus of crystal and silver contrasting with the yellow pallor of the
+      invalid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, Jenkins, the duke is very ill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid so,&rdquo; said the Irishman, in a low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what is the matter with him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What he wanted, <i>parbleu</i>!&rdquo; answered the other in a fury. &ldquo;One
+      cannot be young at his age with impunity. This intrigue will cost him
+      dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor duke! poor duke! Ah, my friend, I am most unhappy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take care, Jenkins,&rdquo; said Monpavon coldly, disengaging his hands, &ldquo;you
+      are assuming a terrible responsibility. What! is the duke as bad as that?&mdash;ps&mdash;ps&mdash;ps&mdash;Will
+      you see nobody? You have arranged no consultation?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Irishman raised his hands as if to say, &ldquo;What good can it do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other insisted. It was absolutely necessary that Brisset, Jousseline,
+      Bouchereau, all the great physicians should be called in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you will frighten him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      De Monpavon expanded his chest, the one pride of the old broken-down
+      charger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Mon Cher</i>, if you had seen Mora and me in the trenches of
+      Constantine&mdash;ps&mdash;ps. Never looked away. We don&rsquo;t know fear. Give
+      notice to your colleagues. I undertake to inform him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>valet de
+      chambre</i>, knew of the visit of those three personages introduced
+      mysteriously into the Minister of State&rsquo;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&rsquo; dance, one of those <i>bals blancs</i> which the ingenuity of the
+      idle world had begun to make fashionable in Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;form&rdquo;; while Louis,
+      in the background, stood leaning against the door leading to the duchess&rsquo;s
+      apartment, the spectre of a silent domestic in whom detached indifference
+      is a duty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The most agitated, nervous man present was Jenkins. Full of obsequious
+      attentions for his &ldquo;illustrious colleagues,&rdquo; 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&mdash;the Fagon of Louis XIV&mdash;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 <i>bric-a-brac</i> the triviality of
+      which contrasted strangely with the importance of the discussion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Solemn moment! Anguish of the accused awaiting the decision of his judges&mdash;life,
+      death, reprieve, or pardon!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      <i>Varietes</i>, asking news of the Chamber, how matters stood with regard
+      to the Nabob&rsquo;s election&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, gentlemen, what says the faculty?&rdquo; demanded the sick man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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 &ldquo;dealer in
+      cantharides&rdquo; to retail his drugs on the other side of the Channel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you know&mdash;no humbug! From you to me, truth. What do they say? I
+      am in a very bad way, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Monpavon prefaced his reply with a significant silence; then brutally,
+      cynically, for fear of breaking down as he spoke:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Done for, my poor Augustus!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The duke received the sentence full in the face without flinching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he said simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He pulled his mustache with a mechanical gesture, but his features
+      remained motionless. And immediately he made up his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to die!&rdquo; and depart with
+      nails broken and bleeding from that supreme wrench. But here there was
+      nothing of the kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To possess all, and to lose all. What a catastrophe!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the first silence of that dreadful moment, while he heard the sound of
+      the music coming faintly from the duchess&rsquo;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 &ldquo;Come!&rdquo; And he answered simply, &ldquo;I am ready.&rdquo; The true exit of a
+      man of the world, unforeseen, rapid, and discreet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Man of the world! Mora was nothing if not that. Passing through life
+      masked, gloved, breast-plated&mdash;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 <i>role</i>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With eyes fixed on the time, so short, which still remained to him&mdash;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&mdash;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you guarantee that I shall wake to-morrow morning? I feel strong at
+      this moment; let me take advantage of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us wait a little. I have something to finish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Burn everything,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;not here. There are too many of them. Some one might
+      come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Monpavon took up the writing-table, which was not heavy, and signed to the
+      <i>valet de chambre</i> to go before him with a light. But Jenkins sprang
+      forward:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stay here, Louis; the duke may want you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no fire anywhere. What is to be done with all this?&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Ma foi</i>, so much the worse! Since we cannot burn them, we will
+      drown them. Hold the light, Jenkins.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And they entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were love-letters and of every kind, from the note of the
+      adventuress, &ldquo;<i>I saw you pass yesterday in the Bois, M. le Duc</i>,&rdquo; 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&mdash;put a
+      name on each of them: &ldquo;That is Mme. Moor. Hallo! Mme. d&rsquo;Athis!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is that?&rdquo; asked Monpavon, noticing the unfamiliar handwriting and the
+      Irishman&rsquo;s nervous excitement. &ldquo;Ah, doctor, if you want to read them all,
+      we shall never have finished.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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: &ldquo;Oh, oh! here is something that does not
+      look much like a <i>billet-doux. &lsquo;Mon Duc, to the rescue&mdash;I am
+      sinking! The Court of Exchequer has once more stuck its nose into my
+      affairs.&lsquo;</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you reading there?&rdquo; exclaimed Monpavon abruptly, snatching the
+      letter from his hands. And immediately, thanks to Mora&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes; take them. But for God&rsquo;s sake, let me sleep&mdash;let me
+      sleep!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sleep which Mora craved for so insistently&mdash;the lethargy, to be
+      more accurate&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the afternoon of the Thursday, towards three o&rsquo;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do they say about it in Paris?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo; lodges and on the tops of omnibuses, in every place where
+      the unfolded public newspapers commented on this startling rumour of the
+      day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;I am ruined!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;bankruptcy, poverty, and still worse; for when these
+      incalculable riches collapse they always bury a little of a man&rsquo;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&mdash;that is to say, eight hundred thousand francs&mdash;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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I am ruined! I am ruined!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>in extremis</i>, that personal
+      anxieties dominated every other preoccupation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+      &ldquo;It is not surprising, with such a life as he has lived!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From time to time one of the <i>habitues</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The agony has begun,&rdquo; he said mournfully. &ldquo;It is only a matter of hours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And as Jansoulet came towards him, he said to him emphatically:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my friend, what a man! What courage! He has forgotten nobody. Only
+      just now he was speaking to me of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;The poor Nabob,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;how does the affair of his election stand?&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And that was all. The duke had added no further word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For my part, I&rsquo;ve had enough of it. I shall leave service.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall stay on with the duchess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And these projects, these arrangements some hours in advance of death,
+      condemned the noble duke still more surely than the faculty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Nabob understood then that it was time for him to go, but, first, he
+      wished to inscribe his name in the visitors&rsquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has anybody heard news of Mora? It appears he is very ill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense! He will get over it, you will see. Men like him get all the
+      luck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Suppose I called to inquire.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doing the right thing, <i>mon cher</i>,&rdquo; remarked Monpavon, appearing
+      suddenly at his side. &ldquo;Mora is an epicurean, brought up in the ideas of
+      how do you say&mdash;you know&mdash;what is it you call it? Eighteenth
+      century. Very bad for the masses, if a man in his position&mdash;ps&mdash;ps&mdash;ps&mdash;Ah,
+      he is the master who sets us all an example&mdash;ps&mdash;ps&mdash;irreproachable
+      manners!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, it is all over?&rdquo; said Jansoulet, overwhelmed. &ldquo;There is no longer
+      any hope?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Monpavon signed to him to listen. A carriage rolled heavily along the
+      avenue on the quay. The visitors&rsquo; bell rang sharply several times in
+      succession. The marquis counted aloud: &ldquo;One, two, three, four.&rdquo; At the
+      fifth he rose:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more hope now. Here comes the other,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us be off, Nabob. Nothing more to be done here,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Good-bye old fellow!&rdquo; The
+      gesture and the tone were polite, irreproachable, but the voice trembled a
+      little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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 <i>Messenger</i>, three-quarters filled by an
+      article against certain adventurers tolerated in the clubs, and who cause
+      the ruin of the most honourable families.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alas! what Jansoulet had won hardly represented enough to meet the first
+      Schwalbach bills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he dead?&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;always
+      the platform even after death&mdash;a rigid, haughty form, a motionless
+      and aged profile, metamorphosed by the beard&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;it
+      weighed&mdash;the newspapers of the period mentioned the figure. But who
+      remembers it to-day?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE FUNERAL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you will be a sultana, but I&mdash;I shall be dead and I shall never
+      see you again.&rdquo; And the good Crenmitz in despair huddled herself into a
+      corner of the cab so that she would not be seen weeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felicia was leaving Paris. She was trying to escape the horrible sadness,
+      the sinister disgust into which Mora&rsquo;s death had thrown her. What a
+      terrible blow for the proud girl! <i>Ennui</i>, pique, had thrown her into
+      this man&rsquo;s arms; she had given him pride&mdash;modesty&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;one of
+      those journeys so distant that they take even one&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bey&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But go on, driver, go on, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot, madame. It is the funeral procession.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s funeral procession defiling past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t stop here. Go round,&rdquo; she cried to the cabman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;a capricious and irregular drive&mdash;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&mdash;a
+      dull and heavy sound, like that of earth falling on a coffin-lid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Bon Dieu!</i> what a mass of people!&rdquo; murmured the Crenmitz,
+      terrified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felicia came out of her stupor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get away from this. I will not stay here,&rdquo; 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 <i>that</i> 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 <i>he</i> was about to pass before her eyes, that she would be in the
+      front rank to see him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly a great shout &ldquo;Here it comes!&rdquo; Then silence fell on the whole
+      square at last at the end of three weary hours of waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felicia&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There! since you will have it: I am watching you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s, prophetic initials
+      which seemed those of Death himself, <i>La Mort</i> 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&mdash;which had never been worn&mdash;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&mdash;a veritable display of all the
+      orders of the whole world&mdash;crosses, multicoloured ribbons, which
+      covered to overflowing the cushion of black velvet with silver fringe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The master of ceremonies came next, in front of the representatives of the
+      Legislative Assembly&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s
+      great brougham, that &ldquo;C-spring&rdquo; 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&mdash;the supreme &ldquo;chic&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;Longchamps&rdquo; of
+      death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Oh&rsquo;s!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;an air of something stately and antiquated, out of date in
+      our sceptical epoch of the workman&rsquo;s blouse and the dress-coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;puppets given over to the curiosity of the crowd&mdash;and
+      exposing themselves to it with an air of indifference and detachment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indifference! That was the most special characteristic of this funeral. It
+      was to be felt everywhere, on people&rsquo;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&rsquo; 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 &ldquo;<i>chose</i>,&rdquo;
+       and whom he treated really like &ldquo;things.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>octroi</i> 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&rsquo;s tool less heavy,
+      when he will be able to say to himself as he rises in the morning, &ldquo;That
+      old Mora, he has come to it like the rest!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;mourning-coaches, private carriages&mdash;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&mdash;a sinister and savage
+      rolling which suggested to Felicia&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Now and in the hour of our death. Amen</i>,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s prayer was perhaps the one note of sincere feeling called
+      forth on the immense line of the funeral procession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the light <i>ex-voto</i> offerings
+      suspended at the corners of the monuments&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Baron, Baron, this way. There is room for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, thank you. I want to walk to straighten my legs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;Brr&mdash;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lazarus!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His name&mdash;the name of this rich man&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lazarus! Oh, Lazarus!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t be afraid. I wish you no harm,&rdquo; said Jansoulet sadly. &ldquo;Only I
+      have come to beg you to do no more to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stooped to breathe. The banker, bewildered and frightened, opened wide
+      his round owl&rsquo;s eyes in presence of this suffocating emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His old chum! It was the first time for ten years&mdash;since their
+      quarrel&mdash;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
+      <i>Sinai</i>, 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s arm, fearing to see him
+      escape and resist the kindly impulse he had just roused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it is pleasant,&rdquo; said Hemerlingue; &ldquo;only I cannot walk for long; my
+      legs are heavy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True, your poor legs. See, there is a bench over there. Let us go and sit
+      down. Lean on me, old friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;witness
+      Mora, so quickly carried off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor duke!&rdquo; said Jansoulet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A great loss to the country,&rdquo; remarked the banker with an air of
+      conviction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Nabob added naively:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For me above all, for me; for, if he had lived&mdash;Ah! what luck you
+      have, what luck you have!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fearing to have wounded him, he went on quickly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then, too, you are clever, so very clever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The baron looked at him with a wink so droll, that his little black
+      eyelashes disappeared amid his yellow fat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;it is not I who am clever. It is Marie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very fortunate,&rdquo; sighed Jansoulet. His air of gloom told a long
+      story of qualities missing in Mlle. Afchin. Then, after a silence, the
+      baron resumed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has a great grudge against you, Marie, you know. She will not be
+      pleased when she hears that we have been talking together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have done her no harm, however.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;t forget things of that kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But no responsibility lay with me for that, old friend. You know how
+      proud those Afchins are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not proud himself, poor man. His mien was so woebegone, so
+      supplicating under his friend&rsquo;s frown, that he moved him to pity.
+      Decidedly, the cemetery had softened the baron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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, &lsquo;I
+      will not let you be friends,&rsquo; 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&rsquo;s fireside is better than
+      everything else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But in that case, what is to be done?&rdquo; asked the Nabob, frightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think so? The fact is I am in terrible straits,&rdquo; said the other,
+      shaking his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hemerlingue&rsquo;s cunning eyes disappeared again beneath the folds of his
+      cheeks like two flies in butter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, yes; I have played a strong game. But you don&rsquo;t lack shrewdness,
+      all the same. The loan of the fifteen millions to the Bey&mdash;it was a
+      good stroke, that. Ah! you are bold enough; only you hold your cards
+      badly. One can see your game.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the desired solution of a
+      problem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You lose Mora, but you regain me; so things are equalized,&rdquo; said the
+      banker tranquilly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, do you see it is impossible. It is too late. Le Merquier has
+      completed the report. It is a dreadful one, I believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if he has completed his report, he will have to prepare another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is that to be done?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The baron looked at him with surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you are losing your senses. Why, by paying him a hundred, two
+      hundred, three hundred thousand francs, if necessary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can you think of such a thing? Le Merquier, that man of integrity!
+      &lsquo;My conscience,&rsquo; as they call him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This time Hemerlingue&rsquo;s laugh burst forth with an extraordinary
+      heartiness, and must have reached the inmost recesses of the neighbouring
+      mausoleums, little accustomed to such disrespect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;My conscience&rsquo; a man of integrity! Ah! you amuse me. You don&rsquo;t know,
+      then, that he is in my pay, conscience and all, and that&mdash;&rdquo; He
+      paused, and looked behind him, somewhat startled by a sound which he had
+      heard. &ldquo;Listen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose we walk a little,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;it begins to be chilly on this
+      bench.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;made
+      of it a veritable course of Parisian and worldly philosophy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo; 
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&rsquo;s house were lighted up. A shudder seemed to
+      run through the air, losing itself in murmurings along the dim paths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us go,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;That was the man who understood the art of keeping
+      up appearances.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jansoulet took his arm to aid him in the descent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes, he was clever. But you are the most clever of all,&rdquo; he answered
+      with his terrible Gascon intonation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hemerlingue made no protest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is to my wife that I owe it. So I strongly recommend you to make your
+      peace with her, because unless you do&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t be afraid. We shall come on Saturday. But you will take me to
+      see Le Merquier.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;This way, old
+      fellow&mdash;lean hard on my arm,&rdquo; 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&mdash;the bust of Balzac
+      watching them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LA BARONNE HEMERLINGUE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&mdash;pretty numerous in Paris&mdash;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&rsquo;s visiting day. Tunisians on a
+      visit to Paris never failed to call on the wife of the great banker; and
+      old Colonel Brahim, <i>charge d&rsquo;affaires</i> of the Bey, with his flabby
+      mouth and bloodshot eyes, had his nap every Saturday in the corner of the
+      same divan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One seems to smell scorching in your drawing-room, my child,&rdquo; 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&mdash;Jews, Moslems, and even renegades&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;Moor, Turk or European&mdash;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 <i>Leonard&rsquo;s</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s Saturdays, Mmes.
+      Gugenheim, Furenberg, Caraiscaki, Maurice Trott&mdash;all wives of
+      millionaires celebrated on the markets of Tunis&mdash;gave up their
+      prejudices and begged to be invited to the former slave&rsquo;s receptions. Mme.
+      Jansoulet alone&mdash;newly arrived with a stock of cumbersome Oriental
+      ideas in her mind, like her ostrich eggs, her narghile pipe, and the
+      Tunisian <i>bric-a-brac</i> in her rooms&mdash;protested against what she
+      called an impropriety, a cowardice, and declared that she would never set
+      her foot at <i>her</i> 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
+      &ldquo;My dear child,&rdquo; &ldquo;My dear good girl,&rdquo; with an almost contemptuous pride.
+      Thenceforward her hatred of the Jansoulets knew no bounds&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;as these ladies called her&mdash;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&rsquo;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 <i>blasons</i>,
+      the pretentious and fictitious arms, the multicoloured wheels of a crowd
+      of plutocrat equipages, and the tall powdered lackeys of the Caraiscaki.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>bien pensant</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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 <i>favourite&rsquo;s</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evidently if the absolute power of evil&mdash;rare indeed among women,
+      influenced as they are by their impressionable physical nature by so many
+      different currents&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;Call that a princess&mdash;that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg of you, godmamma, don&rsquo;t go away yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said the princess, pointing out to her the majestic Armenian,
+      silent and grave, his tasselled hat on his knees, &ldquo;I must take this poor
+      bishop to the <i>Grand Saint-Christophe</i>, to buy some medals. He would
+      never get on without me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, I wish&mdash;you must&mdash;a few minutes more.&rdquo; And the baroness
+      threw a furtive look on the ancient and sumptuous clock in a corner of the
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Five o&rsquo;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one. You see to what an insult you expose me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, she will come,&rdquo; said the banker, his mouth full. &ldquo;I am sure she will
+      come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The noise of dresses, of a train rustling in the next room made the
+      baroness turn quickly. But, to the great joy of the &ldquo;bundles,&rdquo; looking on
+      from their corners, it was not the lady they were expecting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;How beautiful she is!&rdquo; but &ldquo;How beautiful she must have
+      been!&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s wife arrive,
+      instead of Mme. Jansoulet, or did the discredit which the Duke de Mora&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She would not come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the morning he had told the maids to dress madame for three o&rsquo;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&rsquo;s. But when,
+      after <i>dejeuner</i>, 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was still in bed, dressed in that great open tunic of silk of two
+      colours, which the Moors call a <i>djebba</i>, 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 <i>djebba</i> 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&mdash;the childish toyshop collection of a Moorish woman
+      at her rising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The room, filled with the heavy opium-scented smoke of Turkish tobacco,
+      was in similar disorder. Negresses went and came, slowly removing their
+      mistress&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; said she to Jansoulet, in her thick Flemish accent, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+      know what our manager is thinking of. I am just reading this <i>Revolt</i>,
+      which he is so mad about. But it is impossible. There is nothing dramatic
+      about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t talk to me of the theatre,&rdquo; said Jansoulet, furious, in spite of
+      his respect for the daughter of the Afchins. &ldquo;What, you are not dressed
+      yet? Weren&rsquo;t you told that we were going out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had told her, but she had begun to read this stupid piece. And with
+      her sleepy air:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will go out to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow! Impossible. We are expected to-day. A most important visit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He hesitated a second.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To Hemerlingue&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go there, if you like,&rdquo; said she coldly. &ldquo;But you little know me if you
+      believe that I, an Afchin, will ever set foot in that slave&rsquo;s house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cabassu, prudently seeing what was likely to happen, had fled into a
+      neighbouring room, carrying with him the five acts of <i>The Revolt</i>
+      under his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; said the Nabob to his wife, &ldquo;I see that you do not know the
+      terrible position I am in. Listen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;I shall not go,&rdquo; as if it were only a
+      matter of some unimportant walk, a little too long for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said trembling:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He could have spoken thus for hours and been always met by the same firm,
+      unshakable obstinacy&mdash;an Afchin could not visit a slave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, madame,&rdquo; said he violently, &ldquo;this slave is worth more than you. She
+      has increased tenfold her husband&rsquo;s wealth by her intelligence, while you,
+      on the contrary&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      <i>lese-majeste</i>, 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My little Martha, I beg of you&mdash;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the word&mdash;poor&mdash;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 <i>djebba</i>; and to show her
+      decision, she lighted a new cigarette at her old one just finished; and
+      while the poor Nabob surrounded his &ldquo;dear little wife&rdquo; 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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I wish it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to the negresses:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dress your mistress at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never, understand me, never! You may drag me sooner to this&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I will not go&mdash;no, I will not go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;and that
+      time was flying&mdash;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 <i>masseur</i>
+      had just gone out:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aristide!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A quarter of an hour later he made his appearance at the Hemerlingues&rsquo;,
+      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, &ldquo;His wife, very unwell&mdash;most grieved not
+      to have been able to come&mdash;&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;Oh, I
+      knew&mdash;I knew!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;a final cruelty of fate taking from him
+      even the refuge of personal happiness from all his public disasters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s eye, expanded
+      a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very annoying,&rdquo; said he in a low voice, as if he feared to be
+      overheard, &ldquo;that Mme. Jansoulet has not been willing to come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jansoulet answered him by a movement of despair and savage helplessness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Annoying, annoying,&rdquo; repeated the other in a whisper, and feeling for his
+      key in his pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, old fellow,&rdquo; said the Nabob, taking his hand, &ldquo;there&rsquo;s no reason,
+      because our wives don&rsquo;t agree&mdash;That doesn&rsquo;t hinder us from remaining
+      friends. What a good chat the other day, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt&rdquo; said the baron, disengaging himself, as he opened the door
+      noiselessly, showing the deep workroom, whose lamp burned solitarily
+      before the enormous empty chair. &ldquo;Come, good-bye, I must go; I have my
+      mail to despatch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Ya didon, monci</i>&rdquo; (But look here, sir) said the poor Nabob, trying
+      to joke, and using the <i>patois</i> of the south to recall to his old
+      chum all the pleasant memories stirred up the other evening. &ldquo;Our visit to
+      Le Merquier still holds good. The picture we were going to present to him,
+      you know. What day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes, Le Merquier&mdash;true&mdash;eh&mdash;well, soon. I will write
+      to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really? You know it is very important.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes. I will write to you. Good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the big man shut his door in a hurry, as if he were afraid of his wife
+      coming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR OLD COM<i>&mdash;I cannot accom</i> you to Le Mer. <i>Too bus</i>
+      just now. Besid<i> y</i> will be <i>bet</i> alone to <i>tal</i>. Go <i>th
+      bold</i>. You are <i>exp. A</i> Cassette, <i>ev morn</i> 8 to 10.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yours <i>faith</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HEM.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Below as a postscript, a very small hand had written very legibly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A religious picture, as good as possible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;for he was very
+      frightened of Le Merquier&mdash;and called on him one morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;Tours or Orleans, for example&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was there, in the neighbourhood of the Catholic Club&mdash;of which he
+      had just been made honorary president&mdash;that M. Le Merquier lived. He
+      was <i>avocat</i>, 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He arrived before nine o&rsquo;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
+      <i>avocat&rsquo;s</i> waiting-room&mdash;a vast parlour with fine white muslin
+      curtains, having for its sole ornament a large and beautiful copy of
+      Tintoretto&rsquo;s Dead Christ&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>Echo of Purgatory</i>, the <i>Rose-bush of Mary</i>,
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a greeting almost cordial in comparison with the cold bow which the
+      two colleagues exchanged at the Chamber, an &ldquo;I was expecting you&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment was decisive, the situation embarrassing. Jansoulet did not
+      hesitate. It was one of the poor Nabob&rsquo;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.
+      &ldquo;My conscience!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not be astonished, my dear colleague,&rdquo;&mdash;his voice trembled, but
+      soon became firm in the conviction of his defence&mdash;&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maitre Le Merquier, above his spectacles, looked at the curtain with a
+      disturbed air. Evidently the conversation was taking an unexpected turn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not enter on the main question,&rdquo; said the Nabob. &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;you only&mdash;for I have grave reasons for keeping the
+      whole affair secret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he showed the lawyer a certificate from the Consulate of Tunis, that
+      during twenty years he had only left the principality twice&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,
+      &lsquo;Bernard, it is your elder brother who has killed me. I die of shame, my
+      child.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused, compelled by his suppressed emotion; then:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;the only pride of the old peasant&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It shall be as you desire, my dear colleague. This confidence shall
+      remain between us. You have told me nothing, I have heard nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jansoulet trembled. The two words&mdash;&ldquo;Hemerlingue,&rdquo; &ldquo;pictures&rdquo;&mdash;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. &ldquo;Would it be indiscreet to ask the favour of being admitted, to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary, I should feel much honoured,&rdquo; said the Nabob, tickled in
+      the most sensible&mdash;since the most costly&mdash;point of his vanity;
+      and looking round him at the walls of the room, he added with the tone of
+      a connoisseur, &ldquo;You have some fine things, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said the other modestly, &ldquo;just a few canvases. Painting is so dear
+      now, it is a taste so difficult to satisfy, a true passion <i>de luxe</i>&mdash;a
+      passion for a Nabob,&rdquo; said he, smiling, with a furtive look over his
+      glasses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I think,&rdquo; murmured the lawyer, &ldquo;that I have been ten years covering
+      these walls, and that I have still this panel to fill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear M. Le Merquier,&rdquo; said he with his engaging, good-natured voice,
+      &ldquo;I have a Virgin of Tintoretto&rsquo;s just the size of your panel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Impossible to read anything in the eyes of the lawyer, this time hidden
+      under their overhanging brows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Permit me to hang it there, opposite your table. That will help you to
+      think sometimes of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And to soften the severities of my report, too, sir?&rdquo; cried Le Merquier,
+      formidable and upright, his hand on the bell. &ldquo;I have seen many shameless
+      things in my life, but never anything like this. Such offers to me, in my
+      own house!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my dear colleague, I swear to you&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Show him out,&rdquo; 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&mdash;who slunk off murmuring excuses to the door&mdash;with
+      these terrible words:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that what you wanted, Baroness Marie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE SITTING
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      That morning there were no guests to lunch at 32 Place Vendome, so that
+      towards one o&rsquo;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&rsquo;s caps, and as many stable-boys in Scotch caps&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is here,&rdquo; was the answer; &ldquo;but he is not in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That does not matter,&rdquo; said the old lady simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, the master is not here?&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, the master is not here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the children?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are at lessons. You cannot see them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And madame?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is asleep. No one sees her before three o&rsquo;clock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is abroad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bompain Jean-Baptiste, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is with monsieur at the sitting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her great gray eyebrows wrinkled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does not matter; take up my trunk just the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And with a little malicious twinkle of her eye, a proud revenge for their
+      insolent looks, she added: &ldquo;I am his mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The scullions and stable-boys drew back respectfully. M. Barreau raised
+      his cap:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought I had seen madame somewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I too, my lad,&rdquo; answered Mme. Jansoulet, who shivered still at the
+      remembrance of the Bey&rsquo;s <i>fete</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My lad,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&mdash;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&rsquo;s-maid had
+      thrown down&mdash;thimble here, scissors there&mdash;ready to pick up
+      again in a few minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jansoulet&rsquo;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! Cabassu!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You here, Mme. Francoise! What a surprise!&rdquo; said the <i>masseur</i>,
+      staring like a bronze figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You came up for the sitting, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What sitting?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, the grand sitting of the legislative body. It&rsquo;s do-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;s business was going wrong&mdash;all sorts of ideas. At last I got
+      seriously worried, and came away at once. They are well here, they tell
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Mme. Francoise. Thank God, every one is quite well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Bernard. His business&mdash;is that going on as he wants it to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you know one has always one&rsquo;s little worries in life&mdash;still, I
+      don&rsquo;t think he should complain. But, now I think of it, you must be
+      hungry. I will go and make them bring you something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was going to ring, more at home and at ease than the old mother
+      herself. She stopped him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, I don&rsquo;t want anything. I have still something left in my basket.&rdquo;
+       And she put two figs and a crust of bread on the edge of the table. Then,
+      while she was eating: &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Professor of massage,&rdquo; said Aristide gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Professor&mdash;you?&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I go and find the children? Haven&rsquo;t they told them that their
+      grandmother is here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t want to disturb them at their work. But I believe it must be
+      over now&mdash;listen!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;a priest with a pointed nose and great cheek-bones, whom
+      we have met before at the great <i>dejeuners</i>. 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&mdash;for the clergy have
+      their Bohemians too&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My children,&rdquo; said Cabassu, &ldquo;that is Mme. Jansoulet, your grandmother,
+      who has come to Paris expressly to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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 &ldquo;to salute their venerable grandmother,&rdquo; 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&mdash;speaking
+      with the tone of voice and gestures customary to those who always think
+      they are in the pulpit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, madame, the day has come, the great day when Jansoulet will
+      confound his enemies&mdash;<i>confundantur hostes mei, quia injuste
+      iniquitatem fecerunt in me</i>&mdash;because they have unjustly persecuted
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;<i>in medio ejus non commovebitur</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! little one, little one,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Left alone with Cabassu, the mother, comforted by this embrace, asked some
+      explanation of the priest&rsquo;s words. Had her son many enemies?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said Cabassu, &ldquo;it is not astonishing, in his position.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what is this great day&mdash;this sitting of which you all speak?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, it is to-day that we shall know whether Bernard will be
+      deputy or no.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>masseur</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s where my Bernard is now, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, madame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, quite near. Only, it must have begun already. And then,&rdquo; added he, a
+      little disconcerted, &ldquo;it is the hour when madame wants me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Do you teach her this thing you are professor of? What do you call
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; I prefer to go there at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you have no admission ticket.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah! I will tell them I am Jansoulet&rsquo;s mother, come to hear him judged.&rdquo;
+       Poor mother, she spoke truer than she knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait, Mme. Francoise. I will give you some one to show you the way, at
+      least.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a last attempt, without letting her see all his thought. &ldquo;Take
+      care; his enemies are going to speak against him in the Chamber. You will
+      hear things to hurt you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, the beautiful smile of belief and maternal pride with which she
+      answered: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And shaking her head with its flapping cap wings, she set off fiercely
+      indignant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, for the little one, at any rate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your card, my good woman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The &ldquo;good woman&rdquo; had no card, but she said quite simply to one of the
+      porters in red who were keeping the door:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am Bernard Jansoulet&rsquo;s mother. I have come for the sitting of my boy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will tell Moussiou Jansoulet that it is I, that I am the Mayor of
+      Sarlazaccio, that I have been condemned to five months&rsquo; imprisonment for
+      him. In God&rsquo;s name, surely that is worth a card for the sitting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Five months&rsquo; imprisonment for her son! Why? Very much disturbed, she
+      arrived at last, her ears singing, at the top of the staircase, where
+      different inscriptions&mdash;&ldquo;Tribune of the Senate, of the Diplomatic
+      Body, of the Deputies&rdquo;&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One thing struck her&mdash;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&mdash;was her son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the Jansoulet&rsquo;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. &ldquo;One might think it was a leper,&rdquo; 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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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 <i>mairie</i>, holding
+      a blunderbuss, and whenever one of Sebastiani&rsquo;s electors (Sebastiani was
+      Jansoulet&rsquo;s opponent) showed himself, the man took aim: &ldquo;If you come in, I
+      will blow out your brains.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s election. But an
+      influence still more powerful, though less respectable, had been called
+      into play for the good cause&mdash;the influence of the banditti. &ldquo;Yes,
+      banditti, gentlemen; I am not joking.&rdquo; And then came a sketch in outline
+      of Corsican banditti in general, and of the Piedigriggio family in
+      particular.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      <i>protege</i> of his predecessor, smile complacently from the Government
+      bench at Le Merquier&rsquo;s cruel banter, all constraint disappeared at once,
+      and the ministerial smile repeated on three hundred mouths, grew into a
+      scarcely restrained laugh&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Impassable and cold in the midst of his success, he continued to read in
+      his gloomy voice, penetrating like the rain of Lyons:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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 &lsquo;continental&rsquo;&mdash;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.&rdquo; Then the interminable series of
+      denunciations: &ldquo;I, the undersigned, Croce (Antoine), declare in the
+      interests of truth, that the Commissary of Police Nardi, calling on us one
+      evening, said: &lsquo;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.&rsquo;&rdquo; And this other: &ldquo;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.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indignation seized on this incorruptible Chamber. It murmured, it fidgeted
+      on its padded seats of red velvet, it raised a positive clamour. There
+      were &ldquo;Oh&rsquo;s&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;Great services to the
+      Corsican population&mdash;Considerable works&mdash;Territorial Bank.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;The honourable M. Sarigue mentions
+      the Territorial Bank. We shall be able to answer him.&rdquo; 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 <i>oubliettes</i> 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&mdash;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 &ldquo;Long live
+      Bernard Jansoulet!&rdquo; 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&mdash;another asylum for the terrible banditti. The game
+      was over. After having extorted the shareholders&rsquo; money for so long, the
+      Territorial Bank this time was used as a means to swindle the electors of
+      their votes. &ldquo;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&mdash;too frequent, alas!
+      in our days&mdash;and in which, for the honour of the Chamber, we would
+      wish that none of our members were concerned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s little white hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jansoulet&rsquo;s mother looked at her son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have spoken of the honour of the Chamber, gentlemen. On that point I
+      have more to say.&rdquo; 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&mdash;the long angular
+      arm with short sleeves&mdash;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: &ldquo;Do not let us lower the debate, gentlemen. You have
+      understood me. You know to what infamous stories I allude&mdash;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&mdash;even
+      the votes of the electors, even the conscience of his colleagues.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>concussionaires</i>. How well
+      they understood now this grand surname of &ldquo;My conscience&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s voice cried with a little foreign accent, &ldquo;Bravo! Bravo!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the mother?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;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?&rdquo;
+       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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gentlemen,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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.&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;taking the turban,&rdquo; in the old expression of the
+      Marseillais. &ldquo;As for me,&rdquo; said the Nabob, with his good-humoured smile. &ldquo;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.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, gentlemen,&rdquo; cried the poor Nabob, lifting his clinched hands, &ldquo;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&rsquo;s
+      happiness, honour&mdash;rest&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;a
+      social pariah holding out wide arms to a society which will have none of
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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 &ldquo;Go on, go on!&rdquo; came from all sides of the Chamber to reassure and
+      encourage him. But Jansoulet did not speak. He had only to say: &ldquo;Calumny
+      has wilfully confused two names. I am called Bernard Jansoulet, the other
+      Jansoulet Louis.&rdquo; Not a word more was needed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in the presence of his mother, still ignorant of his brother&rsquo;s
+      dishonour, he could not say it. Respect&mdash;family ties forbade it. He
+      could hear his father&rsquo;s voice: &ldquo;I die of shame, my child.&rdquo; 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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The election of M. Bernard Jansoulet is annulled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Never had a man&rsquo;s life been cut off with less solemnity or disturbance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Up there in her gallery, Jansoulet&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed! Is it over?&rdquo; said she, rising almost regretfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And quietly, timidly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has he&mdash;has he won?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was innocent, so touching that the attendant did not even dream of
+      smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old mother, turning pale, leaned on the balustrade of the staircase.
+      She had understood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bernard&rsquo;s brusque interruption on seeing her, the sacrifice he had made to
+      her so simply&mdash;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&rsquo;s disaster&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My son, where is my son?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Below, madame, in his carriage. It was he who sent me to look for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At any rate,&rdquo; said a handsome man with a bad feminine face, &ldquo;he has not
+      proved where our accusations were false.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old woman, hearing that, wrenched herself through the crowd, and
+      facing Moessard said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What he did not say I will. I am his mother, and it is my duty to speak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped to seize Le Merquier by the sleeve, who was escaping:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wicked man, you must listen, first of all. What have you got against my
+      child? Don&rsquo;t you know who he is? Wait a little till I tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And turning to the journalist:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had two sons, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Moessard was no longer there. She returned to Le Merquier: &ldquo;Two sons,
+      sir.&rdquo; Le Merquier had disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, listen to me, some one, I beg,&rdquo; said the poor mother, throwing her
+      hands and her voice round her to assemble and retain her hearers; but all
+      fled, melted away, disappeared&mdash;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&mdash;distracted, her bonnet awry&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take my arm, mother. You must not stop there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>chasse</i>&mdash;they disappeared in the bright sunlight
+      outside, in the splendour of their glittering carriage&mdash;a ferocious
+      irony in their deep distress, a striking symbol of the terrible misery of
+      the rich.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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: &ldquo;Mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      DRAMAS OF PARIS
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Que l&rsquo;heure est donc breve,
+     Qu&rsquo;on passe en aimant!
+     C&rsquo;est moins qu&rsquo;un moment,
+     Un peu plus qu&rsquo;un reve.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>Lied</i>,
+      unequally divided, which seems written for the tender gravities of her
+      voice and the disturbed state of her soul.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Le temps nous enleve
+     Notre enchantement
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;of an old clinger who was
+      determined to make him marry her.&rdquo; Up to then a terrible obstacle&mdash;the
+      life of the legitimate wife&mdash;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&mdash;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: &ldquo;Could you distrust me? Is not our engagement sacred?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Daylight flooded the room as a maid brought a card to her mistress;
+      &ldquo;Heurteux, business agent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The gentleman was there, he insisted on seeing madame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have told him the doctor is travelling?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been told, but it was to madame he wished to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Disturbed, she examined this rough, crumpled card, this unknown name:
+      &ldquo;Heurteux.&rdquo; What could it be?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, show him in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ought to warn you, sir, that my husband is absent, and that I am not
+      acquainted with his business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Without any astonishment, his hand in his papers, the man answered: &ldquo;I
+      know that <i>M. Jenkins</i> is absent, madame&rdquo;&mdash;he emphasized more
+      particularly the two words &ldquo;M. Jenkins&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;especially as I come on his
+      behalf.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him frightened. &ldquo;On his behalf?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas! yes, madame. The doctor&rsquo;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 <i>OEuvre de Bethleem</i> 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had at last found what he was looking for&mdash;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: &ldquo;But I was here. I would have carried out all his wishes,
+      all his orders&mdash;&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She rose suddenly. The man, still seated, went on: &ldquo;What I have still to
+      say, madame&rdquo;&mdash;oh, she knew it, she could have dictated to him, what
+      he had still to say&mdash;&ldquo;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&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Le temps nous enleve
+     Notre enchantement.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      All at once her pride returned. &ldquo;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&mdash;turned into the street like a servant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, madame, madame! The situation is cruel enough, don&rsquo;t let us make it
+      worse by hard words. In the evolution of his <i>modus vivendi</i> 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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will do,&rdquo; said she. She flew to the bell. &ldquo;I am going out. Quick&mdash;my
+      hat, my mantle, anything, never mind what. I am in a hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And while they went to fetch her what she wanted she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everything here belongs to M. Jenkins. Let him dispose of it as he likes.
+      I want nothing from him. Don&rsquo;t insist; it is useless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man did not insist. His mission fulfilled, the rest mattered little to
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;her son&rsquo;s
+      letters were in her pocket, she never allowed them to be away from her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame does not wish for the carriage?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo; And she left the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was about five o&rsquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;nothing. Not even a
+      roof to sleep under, not even a name. The street!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where was she to go? What would become of her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s vanity, the well-bred brow,
+      with the hat lifted high above the erect head. She answered him with her
+      pretty Parisian&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prediction of Mora&rsquo;s valet had come true for the marquis: &ldquo;We may die
+      or lose power; then there will be a reckoning, and it will be terrible.&rdquo;
+       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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In view of such an extremity, foreseen and expected for long, he had made
+      his plans. A Monpavon in the criminal courts!&mdash;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, &ldquo;Am going to the baths&mdash;That dirty Chamber&mdash;Filthy
+      dust&rdquo;&mdash;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Malta Biscuits,&rdquo; 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.
+      &ldquo;Oh! that is not possible!&rdquo; And straightening himself up and throwing out
+      his chest, he kept on his way, firmer and more resolute than before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>cafes</i>,
+      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&mdash;of
+      an exquisite hour&mdash;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 &ldquo;missing.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;witness of his first triumphs&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;ps&mdash;ps&mdash;ps&mdash;Well, it&rsquo;s
+      something to have saved appearances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your bath is ready, sir,&rdquo; said the attendant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment, breathless and pale, Mme. Jenkins was entering Andre&rsquo;s
+      studio, where an instinct stronger than her will had brought her&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am at my rehearsal,&rdquo; said the note to-day, &ldquo;I shall be back at seven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&mdash;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&rsquo;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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;ten years of
+      singing, with the fear of exposure between each verse&mdash;where the
+      least remark on irregular unions wounded her like an allusion&mdash;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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;a moving shadow among the shadows at rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A journey! And where are you going?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I do not know. We are going over there, a long way, on business in
+      his own part of the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She makes excuses, imagines reasons, but her hands burning between her
+      son&rsquo;s, and her altered voice, tell Andre that she is not speaking the
+      truth. He is going to strike a light; she prevents him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; it is useless. We are better without it. Besides, I have so much
+      to get ready still. I must go away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;was it an effect of the
+      dusk?&mdash;shone with a strange light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;t mistrust your mother, do you? I have never been a day
+      without thinking of you: do the same&mdash;keep me in your heart. And now
+      kiss me and let me go quickly. I have waited too long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Another minute and she would have the strength for what she had to do. She
+      darts forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no. Let me go! Let me go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he held her fast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me, what is it? Tell me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, whispering in her ear, with a voice tender and low as a kiss:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has left you, hasn&rsquo;t he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The wretched woman shivers, hesitates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask me nothing. I will say nothing. Adieu!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He pressed her to his heart:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What could you tell me that I do not know already, poor mother? You did
+      not guess, then, why I left six months ago?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know everything. And what has happened to you to-day I have foreseen
+      for long, and hoped for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, wretch, wretch that I am, why did I come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because it is your home, because you owe me ten years of my mother. You
+      see now that I must keep you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>fiancee</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Elise, embrace our mother and thank her. She has come to live with her
+      children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There she is, caught in all these caressing arms, pressed against four
+      little feminine hearts which have missed the shelter of a mother&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Go and look at No. 7,&rdquo; says the mistress, &ldquo;he will never have
+      done with his bath.&rdquo; The attendant goes, and utters a cry of fright, of
+      horror: &ldquo;Oh, madame, he is dead! But it is not the same man.&rdquo; They go, but
+      nobody can recognise the fine gentleman who entered a short time ago, in
+      this death&rsquo;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      MEMOIRS OF AN OFFICE PORTER THE LAST LEAVES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;Hery, the director, in prison, another&mdash;Monpavon&mdash;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&mdash;I can see the place at this moment&mdash;a
+      tower in rough stone, like M. Chalmette&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;Instruction&mdash;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&rsquo;Instruction, during my hour&rsquo;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 &ldquo;combinations,&rdquo; and that it was not
+      always good to ridicule M. Gogo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, M. Passajon, how long is it since the affair of the drayman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was all very short, very dry, and, when I wished to enlighten justice
+      with some wise observations, a certain insolent fashion of saying, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t
+      make phrases,&rdquo; 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&mdash;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: &ldquo;Show us the cash-book, <i>M. l&rsquo;Expert</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A little man in a white tie brought the great register to the table. It
+      was M. Joyeuse, the former cashier of Hemerlingue &amp; Sons. But I had
+      not time to offer him my respects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who has done that?&rdquo; asked the judge, opening the book where a page was
+      torn out. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t lie, now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is an absurdity, M. le Juge d&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I felt that my zeal was about to compromise me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take care, Passajon,&rdquo; said the judge. &ldquo;You are only here as a witness;
+      but if you attempt to mislead justice, you may return a prisoner&rdquo; (he, the
+      monster, had, indeed, the manner of desiring it). &ldquo;Come now, consider; who
+      tore out this page?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &ldquo;Stay, M. Passajon, take this away. I
+      don&rsquo;t want it any more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Memoirs,&rdquo;
+       written in my best round-hand. I, myself, had provided material to Justice&mdash;important
+      details which the suddenness of our catastrophe had prevented me from
+      saving from the police search of our office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;Antin. There nothing has changed; the same luxury,
+      the same comfort, also a three-months&rsquo;-old baby&mdash;the seventh&mdash;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. &ldquo;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&mdash;you hear me&mdash;I myself would put a blunderbuss in
+      his hands, and would say to him, &lsquo;Here, Tchecco, blow out your brains!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+       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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime all these rogues have good dinners; even Bois l&rsquo;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s small wardrobe. &ldquo;So that I am a little short,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know, <i>pere</i> Passajon,&rdquo; said he to me between two mouthfuls, &ldquo;I
+      know where he is. I have seen him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He winked his eye knowingly. I looked at him in wonder. &ldquo;Who is it you
+      have seen, M. Francis?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The marquis, my master&mdash;over there in the little white house behind
+      Notre-Dame.&rdquo; (He did not use the word morgue, it is too low.) &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you said nothing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And on a sudden, striking the table with his fist with rage:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;s place. What luck he has
+      had! How many bags of gold he laid his hands on when his duke died! And
+      the wardrobe&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;Hery; they should have arrested <i>him</i>. 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&mdash;like a bandit!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so common,&rdquo; said the ex-valet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No principles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An absolute want of form. Well, there he is on his beam-ends, and then
+      Jenkins, too, and plenty of others with them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! the doctor too? Ah! so much the worse. Such a polite and amiable
+      man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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 &lsquo;little Bethlehems&rsquo; left whom they packed up in a cab.
+      It is a break-up, I tell you, <i>pere</i> 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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a sinister figure, this old steward of the Empire, thin, stubbly,
+      covered with mud, and shouting like a Jeremiah, &ldquo;It is the downfall!&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;Oh, M. Chalmette!
+      Oh, my little vineyard of Montbars!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Same date</i>.&mdash;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,
+      &ldquo;happy to repair thus the damage he has caused me,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0027" id="link2H_4_0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      AT BORDIGHERA
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As M. Joyeuse had told the Juge d&rsquo;Instruction, Paul de Gery returned from
+      Tunis after three weeks&rsquo; absence. Three interminable weeks spent in
+      struggling among intrigues, and traps secretly laid by the powerful hatred
+      of the Hemerlingues&mdash;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&rsquo;s eye as his stables and harem. On his arrival,
+      Paul had learned that the Chamber of Justice was preparing secretly
+      Jansoulet&rsquo;s trial&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s complete ruin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He set himself to work, therefore, hurried on his business with an
+      activity which nothing could discourage, neither Oriental discursiveness&mdash;that
+      refined fair-spoken politeness, under which is hidden ferocity&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By his diplomacy and discretion, in spite of the intrigues of
+      Hemerlingue&rsquo;s son&mdash;who was very influential at the Bardo&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s carriage, with
+      his three mules at full gallop. The thin owl&rsquo;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&mdash;that marvellous route where one passes suddenly from the
+      blackness of the tunnels to the dazzling light of the blue sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>cafes</i>, 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 <i>calesinos</i> which run from Genoa to Nice, along the
+      Italian Corniche&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as the day advanced, the sun rising in the heavens spread over the sea&mdash;now
+      escaped from its mists, still with the transparence of quartz&mdash;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&mdash;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&rsquo;s palace, its barred windows with closed
+      lattices, its marble gates, its balconies in carved wood painted in bright
+      colours?&mdash;It was not the Bardo, but the lovely country of Bordighera,
+      divided, like all those on the coast, into two parts&mdash;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&mdash;like
+      green rockets, springing into the blue with their thousand feathers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the
+      whole staff coming only in the winter&mdash;and given up for domestic
+      needs to a local spoil-sauce, expert at a <i>stoffato</i>, a <i>risotto</i>;
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;of
+      which the hotel-keeper was proud, and which he would have liked to charge
+      in the bill&mdash;the name of Brehat, which de Gery had so often heard
+      pronounced with admiration in Felicia Ruys&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An exquisite ordour of violets dried in the sun was rising&mdash;a hot
+      boudoir scent, enervating, enfeebling, which called up for de Gery
+      feminine visions&mdash;Aline, Felicia&mdash;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 &ldquo;jackal in the desert,&rdquo; so much in keeping
+      with the burning temperature out of doors? No&mdash;nothing more. He fell
+      asleep again, and this time all the confused images which pursued him
+      fixed themselves in a dream&mdash;a very pleasant dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&rsquo;s self, the future&mdash;life&mdash;the
+      distant horizon. Oh! how good it was; what a divine youth-giving light;
+      how happy they were!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all at once, in the delight of their kisses, Aline became sad. Her
+      eyes filled with tears. She said to him: &ldquo;Felicia is there. You will love
+      me no longer.&rdquo; And he laughed, &ldquo;Felicia here? What an idea!&rdquo; &ldquo;Yes, yes;
+      she is there.&rdquo; Trembling she pointed to the next room, from which came
+      angry barks, and the voice of Felicia: &ldquo;Here, Kadour! Here, Kadour!&rdquo; the
+      low, concentrated, furious voice of some one who is hiding and suddenly
+      discovered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Open the door! It is I&mdash;it is Jenkins.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here you are at last,&rdquo; said the Irishman, entering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s with his sugary manners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, yes, Jenkins, here I am. What is the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Through the wall Paul could see the disdainful mouth, turned down with
+      disgust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have come to prevent you from going&mdash;from doing this foolish
+      thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What foolish thing? I have some work at Tunis. I must go there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you don&rsquo;t think, my dear child, that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I tell you that you must be mad to go over there alone, young and
+      beautiful as you are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And am I not always alone? Would you like me to take Constance, at her
+      age?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo; She pronounced the word with an ironical laugh. &ldquo;And what about
+      Paris? And your patients&mdash;deprive society of its Cagliostro? Never,
+      on any account.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have, however, made up my mind to follow you wherever you go,&rdquo; said
+      Jenkins resolutely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what do you want of me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jenkins!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I loved you! I love you still! Passion excuses everything,&rdquo; answered
+      Jenkins in a hollow voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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, &lsquo;The
+      good Jenkins; the worthy, honest Jenkins.&rsquo; But I&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;my passion! Nothing has been able to kill
+      it&mdash;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&mdash;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your wife?&rdquo; cried the young girl, while Paul was asking himself the
+      same question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My wife is dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dead? Mme. Jenkins? Is it true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You never knew her of whom I speak. The other was not my wife. When I met
+      her I was already married in Ireland&mdash;years before. A horrible forced
+      marriage. My dear, when I was twenty-five I was confronted with this
+      alternative: a debtor&rsquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;I am free.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said he, with an outburst of sincerity, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But who forced you to such a thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Paris, society, the world. Married by its opinion, we were held by it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now you are held no longer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now something comes before all&mdash;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&mdash;I
+      have left it. Everything of yours was being sold; everything of mine will
+      be sold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she?&rdquo; said Felicia trembling. &ldquo;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? &lsquo;<i>Le bien sans esperance</i>,&rsquo; eh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this sneer, cutting his face like a whip, the wretch answered panting:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Let us have done, Jenkins,&rdquo; said she brusquely. &ldquo;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&rsquo;s mistress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew it,&rdquo; answered Jenkins in a low voice, &ldquo;I have the letters you
+      wrote to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My letters?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I will give them to you&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo; He stopped
+      himself. He choked. &ldquo;I who had to furnish fuel for your flames, warm this
+      frozen lover, send him to you ardent and young&mdash;Ah! he has devoured
+      my pearls&mdash;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>calesino</i>
+      was ready.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is the French gentleman ready?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the next room there was silence, then a whisper.&mdash;There had been
+      some one near who had heard them.&mdash;Paul de Gery hurried downstairs.
+      He must get out of this room to escape the weight of so much infamy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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 <i>dejeuner</i>, who carried in the folds of her
+      modest robe and mantle all the violets of Bordighera.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0028" id="link2H_4_0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE FIRST NIGHT OF &ldquo;REVOLT&rdquo;
+     </h2>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;Take your places for the first act!&rdquo;
+     </h3>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>coiffeur</i> 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 <i>Revolt</i>, 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&mdash;that apprehension of the
+      battle behind the foot-lights which is ever one of the most powerful
+      attractions of the comedian&rsquo;s art, its piquancy, its freshness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>ingenue</i> 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&mdash;which entails the loss of his directorate&mdash;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&rsquo;s superstitions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;bent forward&mdash;turning round&mdash;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 <i>tout Paris</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;these last wearing a
+      grave air and frowning brow, sitting crosswise in their <i>fauteuils</i>
+      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 <i>decollete</i> 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, <i>ennui</i>, a
+      gloomy <i>ennui</i>, the <i>ennui</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;a charming family
+      group, like a bouquet wet with dew amid a display of artificial flowers.
+      And while all Paris was disdainfully asking, &ldquo;Who are those people there?&rdquo;
+       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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Sh! It
+      is I.&rdquo; Some one is seated in the shadow&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Manager of the Nouveautes,&rdquo;
+       and, since the Nabob&rsquo;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&mdash;and
+      moral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A moral play!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;Why, it is in
+      verse!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! this is nice&mdash;it is restful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Paris green.&rdquo; 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 <i>petits creves</i>, 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: &ldquo;This is nice&mdash;it is restful.&rdquo; 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&mdash;after
+      what heart-breaking labour, after what forced, idle and useless task.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>masseur</i> and her negress, was totally indifferent
+      to the ruin of the establishment; Bompain&mdash;the man in the fez&mdash;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&mdash;a signature&mdash;is, and thinks honour is the
+      greatest and best thing in the world. Her peasant&rsquo;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: &ldquo;<i>Te</i>, I will go
+      and see the bailiff.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s telegram, dated from Marseilles, announcing that he
+      was on his way back, bringing ten million francs. Ten millions!&mdash;that
+      is to say, bankruptcy averted, the possibility of recovering his position&mdash;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 <i>Revolt</i> 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&mdash;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, &ldquo;made him look nice,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! It is he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There he is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What impudence!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A delightful piece. It is fresh; it is good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That Nabob! What impudence!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, indeed, it is restful. One feels better for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is it that he has not yet been arrested?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite a young man, it seems. It is his first play.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bois l&rsquo;Hery at Mazas! It is impossible. Why, there is the marquise
+      opposite, in the balcony, with a new hat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does that prove? She is at her business as a stager of new fashions.
+      It is very pretty, that hat. In Desgrange&rsquo;s racing colours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Jenkins? What is Jenkins doing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At Tunis, with Felicia. Old Brahim has seen them both. It seems that the
+      Bey has begun to take the pearls.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The deuce he has!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Farther along, soft voices were murmuring:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, father, do, do go speak to him. See how lonely he looks, poor man!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, children, I do not know him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind. Just a bow. Something to show him that he is not utterly
+      deserted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>pere</i>
+      Joyeuse, the chairman of the board of the Territorial would probably have
+      shared the fate of the Marquis de Bois l&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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, &ldquo;He is drunk,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have I done? Why will Paris have no more of me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;this play <i>Revolt</i>.
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;those hundreds of faces
+      raised in mockery, that virtuous <i>tout Paris</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>mignons</i>, of the time of Agrippa,
+      calling each other among themselves: &ldquo;My heart&mdash;My dear girl.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And these were the people who were insulting him and crying: &ldquo;Away with
+      thee, thou art unworthy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unworthy&mdash;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&mdash;I paid a
+      hundred thousand francs at the club in order to save thee from shameful
+      expulsion!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thee I covered with jewels, hussy, letting thee pass for my mistress,
+      because that kind of thing makes a good impression in our world&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;who knows?&mdash;to spring into the
+      midst of it, kill one of them&mdash;ah! kill <i>one</i> of them&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! dear friend, dear&mdash;&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;Take me away.&rdquo; And, stumbling in his
+      walk, leaning on de Gery&rsquo;s arm, he only managed to cross the threshold of
+      his box before he fell prostrate in the corridor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bravo! Bravo!&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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 &ldquo;directly, after
+      the fifth act.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bleeding after bleeding, cuppings, mustard leaves&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Nabob, by Alphonse Daudet
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+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Nabob, by Alphonse Daudet
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Nabob
+
+Author: Alphonse Daudet
+
+Translator: W. Blaydes
+
+Release Date: March 21, 2006 [EBook #2077]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NABOB ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; and John Bickers
+
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Nabob, by Alphonse Daudet
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+**The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Nabob, by Alphonse Daudet**
+
+
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+The Nabob
+
+by Alphonse Daudet
+
+Translated by W. Blaydes
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+February, 2000  [Etext #2077]
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+**The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Nabob, by Alphonse Daudet**
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+
+
+
+Etext prepared by Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com
+and John Bickers, jbickers@ihug.co.nz
+
+
+
+
+
+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, a n"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.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Nabob, by Alphonse Daudet**
+
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