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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2), 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, Volume 1 (of 2)
+
+Author: Alphonse Daudet
+
+Commentator: Brander Matthews
+
+Translator: George Burnham Ives
+
+Release Date: February 22, 2007 [EBook #20646]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NABOB, VOLUME 1 (OF 2) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "'_Take away your flowers, my dear._'"]
+
+
+
+
+THE NABOB
+
+
+
+
+BY
+
+ALPHONSE DAUDET
+
+
+
+TRANSLATED BY
+
+GEORGE BURNHAM IVES
+
+
+
+WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
+
+BRANDER MATTHEWS
+
+
+
+IN TWO VOLUMES
+
+VOL. I.
+
+
+
+BOSTON
+LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
+1902
+
+
+_Copyright, 1898_,
+By Little, Brown, and Company.
+
+_All rights reserved._
+
+
+University Press:
+John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+PUBLISHER'S NOTE TO FRENCH EDITION
+
+
+We have been informed that at the time of the publication of _The
+Nabob_ in serial form, the government of Tunis was offended at the
+introduction therein of individuals whom the author dressed in names
+and costumes peculiar to that country. We are authorized by M. Alphonse
+Daudet to declare that those scenes in the book which relate to Tunis
+are entirely imaginary, and that he never intended to introduce any of
+the functionaries of that state.
+
+
+
+
+ALPHONSE DAUDET.
+
+
+Alphonse Daudet is one of the most richly gifted of modern French
+novelists and one of the most artistic; he is perhaps the most
+delightful; and he is certainly the most fortunate. In his own country
+earlier than any of his contemporaries he saw his stories attain to the
+very wide circulation that brings both celebrity and wealth. Beyond the
+borders of his own language he swiftly won a popularity both with the
+broad public and with the professed critics of literature, second only
+to that of Victor Hugo and still surpassing that of Balzac, who is only
+of late beginning to receive from us the attention he has so long
+deserved.
+
+Daudet has had the rare luck of pleasing partisans of almost every
+school; the realists have joyed in his work and so have the romanticists;
+his writings have found favor in the eyes of the frank impressionists
+and also at the hands of the severer custodians of academic standards.
+Mr. Henry James has declared that Daudet is "at the head of his
+profession" and has called him "an admirable genius." Mr. Robert Louis
+Stevenson thought Daudet "incomparably" the best of the present French
+novelists and asserted that "Kings in Exile" comes "very near to being
+a masterpiece." M. Jules Lemaitre tells us that Daudet "trails all
+hearts after him,--because he has charm, as indefinable in a work of
+art as in a woman's face." M. Ferdinand Brunetiere, who has scant
+relish for latter-day methods in literature, admits ungrudgingly that
+"there are certain corners of the great city and certain aspects of
+Parisian manners, there are some physiognomies that perhaps no one has
+been able to render so well as Daudet, with that infinitely subtle and
+patient art which succeeds in giving even to inanimate things the
+appearance of life."
+
+
+I.
+
+The documents are abundant for an analysis of Daudet such as
+Sainte-Beuve would have undertaken with avidity; they are more abundant
+indeed than for any other contemporary French man of letters even in
+these days of unhesitating self-revelation; and they are also of an
+absolutely impregnable authenticity. M. Ernest Daudet has written a
+whole volume to tell us all about his brother's boyhood and youth and
+early manhood and first steps in literature. M. Leon Daudet has written
+another solid tome to tell us all about his father's literary
+principles and family life and later years and death. Daudet himself
+put forth a pair of pleasant books of personal gossip about himself,
+narrating his relations with his fellow authors and recording the
+circumstances under which he came to compose each of his earlier
+stories. Montaigne--whose "Essays" was Daudet's bedside book and who
+may be accepted not unfairly as an authority upon egotism--assures us
+that "there is no description so difficult, nor doubtless of so great
+utility, as that of one's self." And Daudet's own interest in himself
+is not unlike Montaigne's,--it is open, innocent and illuminating.
+
+Cuvier may have been able to reconstruct an extinct monster from the
+inspection of a single bone; but it is a harder task to revive the
+figure of a man, even by the aid of these family testimonies, this
+self-analysis, the diligence of countless interviewers of all
+nationalities, and indiscretion of a friend like Edmond de Goncourt
+(who seems to have acted on the theory that it is the whole duty of man
+to take notes of the talk of his fellows for prompt publication). Yet
+we have ample material to enable us to trace Daudet's heredity, and to
+estimate the influence of his environment in the days of his youth, and
+to allow for the effect which certain of his own physical peculiarities
+must have had upon his exercise of his art. His near-sightedness, for
+example,--would not Sainte-Beuve have seized upon this as significant?
+Would he not have seen in this a possible source of Daudet's mastery of
+description? And the spasms of pain borne bravely and uncomplainingly,
+the long agony of his later years, what mark has this left on his work,
+how far is it responsible for a modification of his attitude,--for the
+change from the careless gaiety of "Tartarin of Tarascon" to the sombre
+satire of "Port-Tarascon"? What caused the joyous story-teller of the
+"Letters from my Mill" to develop into the bitter iconoclast of the
+"Immortal."
+
+These questions are insistent; and yet, after all, what matters the
+answer to any of them? The fact remains that Daudet had his share of
+that incommunicable quality which we are agreed to call genius. This
+once admitted, we may do our best to weigh it and to resolve it into
+its elements, it is at bottom the vital spark that resists all
+examination, however scientific we may seek to be. We can test for this
+and for that, but in the final analysis genius is inexplicable. It is
+what it is, because it is. It might have been different, no doubt, but
+it is not. It is its own excuse for being; and, for all that we can say
+to the contrary, it is its own cause, sufficient unto itself. Even if
+we had Sainte-Beuve's scalpel, we could not surprise the secret.
+
+Yet an inquiry into the successive stages of Daudet's career, a
+consideration of his ancestry, of his parentage, of his birth, of the
+circumstances of his boyhood, of his youthful adventures,--these things
+are interesting in themselves and they are not without instruction.
+They reveal to us the reasons for the transformation that goes so far
+to explain Daudet's peculiar position,--the transformation of a young
+Provencal poet into a brilliant Parisian veritist. Daudet was a
+Provencal who became a Parisian,--and in this translation we may find
+the key to his character as a writer of fiction.
+
+He was from Provence as Maupassant was from Normandy; and Daudet had
+the Southern expansiveness and abundance, just as Maupassant had the
+Northern reserve and caution. If an author is ever to bring forth fruit
+after his kind he must have roots in the soil of his nativity. Daudet
+was no orchid, beautiful and scentless; his writings have always the
+full flavor of the southern soil. He was able to set Tartarin before us
+so sympathetically and to make Numa Roumestan so convincing because he
+recognized in himself the possibility of a like exuberance. He could
+never take the rigorously impassive attitude which Flaubert taught
+Maupassant to assume. Daudet not only feels for his characters, but he
+is quite willing that we should be aware of his compassion.
+
+He is not only incapable of the girding enmity which Taine detected and
+detested in Thackeray's treatment of Becky Sharp, but he is also devoid
+of the callous detachment with which Flaubert dissected Emma Bovary
+under the microscope. Daudet is never flagrantly hostile toward one of
+his creatures; and, however contemptible or despicable the characters
+he has called into being, he is scrupulously fair to them. Sidonie and
+Felicia Ruys severally throw themselves away, but Daudet is never
+intolerant. He is inexorable, but he is not insulting. I cannot but
+think that it is Provence whence Daudet derived the precious birthright
+of sympathy, and that it is Provence again which bestowed on him the
+rarer gift of sentiment. It is by his possession of sympathy and of
+sentiment that he has escaped the aridity which suffocates us in the
+works of so many other Parisian novelists. The South endowed him with
+warmth and heartiness and vivacity; and what he learnt from Paris was
+the power of self-restraint and the duty of finish.
+
+He was born in Provence and he died in Paris; he began as a poet and he
+ended as a veritist; and in each case there was logical evolution and
+not contradiction. The Parisian did not cease to be a Provencal; and
+the novelist was a lyrist still. Poet though he was, he had an intense
+liking for the actual, the visible, the tangible. He so hungered after
+truth that he was ready sometimes to stay his stomach with facts in its
+stead,--mere fact being but the outward husk, whereas truth is the rich
+kernel concealed within. His son tells us that Daudet might have taken
+as a motto the title of Goethe's autobiography, "Dichtung und
+Wahrheit,"--Poetry and Truth. And this it is that has set Daudet apart
+and that has caused his vogue with readers of all sorts and
+conditions,--this unique combination of imagination and verity. "His
+originality," M. Jules Lemaitre has acutely remarked, "is closely to
+unite observation and fantasy, to extract from the truth all that it
+contains of the improbable and the surprising, to satisfy at the same
+time the readers of M. Cherbuliez and the readers of M. Zola, to write
+novels which are at the same time realistic and romantic, and which
+seem romantic only because they are very sincerely and very profoundly
+realistic."
+
+
+II.
+
+Alphonse Daudet was born in 1840, and it was at Nimes that he first
+began to observe mankind; and he has described his birthplace and his
+boyhood in "Little What's-his-name," a novel even richer in
+autobiographical revelation than is "David Copperfield." His father was
+a manufacturer whose business was not prosperous and who was forced at
+last to remove with the whole family to Lyons in the vain hope of doing
+better in the larger town. After reading the account of this parent's
+peculiarities in M. Ernest Daudet's book, we are not surprised that the
+affairs of the family did not improve, but went from bad to worse.
+Alphonse Daudet suffered bitterly in these years of desperate struggle,
+but he gained an understanding of the conditions of mercantile life, to
+be serviceable later in the composition of "Fromont and Risler."
+
+When he was sixteen he secured a place as _pion_ in a boarding school
+in the Cevennes,--_pion_ is a poor devil of a youth hired to keep watch
+on the boys. How painful this position was to the young poet can be
+read indirectly in "Little What's-his-name," but more explicitly in the
+history of that story, printed now in "Thirty Years of Paris." From
+this remote prison he was rescued by his elder brother, Ernest, who was
+trying to make his way in Paris and who sent for Alphonse as soon as he
+had been engaged to help an old gentleman in writing his memoirs. The
+younger brother has described his arrival in Paris, and his first
+dress-coat and his earliest literary acquaintances. Ernest's salary was
+seventy-five francs a month, and on this the two brothers managed to
+live; no doubt fifteen dollars went further in Paris in 1857 than they
+will in 1899.
+
+In those days of privation and ambition Daudet's longing was to make
+himself famous as a poet; and when at last, not yet twenty years old,
+he began his career as a man of letters it was by the publication of a
+volume of verse, just as his fellow-novelists, M. Paul Bourget and
+Signor Gabriele d'Annunzio have severally done. Immature as juvenile
+lyrics are likely to be, these early rhymes of Daudet's have a flavor
+of their own, a faintly recognizable note of individuality. He is more
+naturally a poet than most modern literators who possess the
+accomplishment of verse as part of their equipment for the literary
+life, but who lack a spontaneous impulse toward rhythm. It may even be
+suggested that his little poems are less artificial than most French
+verse; they are the result of a less obvious effort. He lisped in
+numbers; and with him it was rather prose that had to be consciously
+acquired. His lyric note, although not keen and not deep, is heard
+again and again in his novels, and it sustains some of the most
+graceful and tender of his short stories,--"The Death of the Dauphin,"
+for instance, and the "Sous-prefet in the Fields."
+
+Daudet extended poetry to include playmaking; and alone or with a
+friend he attempted more than one little piece in rhyme--tiny plays of
+a type familiar enough at the Odeon. He has told us how the news of the
+production of one of these poetic dramas came to him afar in Algiers
+whither he had been sent because of a weakness of the lungs,
+threatening to become worse in the gray Parisian winter. Other plays of
+his, some of them far more important than this early effort, were
+produced in the next few years. The most ambitious of these was the
+"Woman of Arles," which he had elaborated from a touching short story
+and for which Bizet composed incidental music as beautiful and as
+overwhelming as that prepared by Mendelssohn for the "Midsummer Night's
+Dream."
+
+No one of Daudet's dramatic attempts was really successful; not the
+"Woman of Arles," which is less moving in the theatre than in its
+briefer narrative form, not even the latest of them all, the freshest
+and the most vigorous, the "Struggle for Life," with its sinister
+figure of Paul Astier taken over from the "Immortal." Apparently, with
+all his desire to write for the stage, Daudet must have been
+inadequately endowed with the dramaturgic faculty, that special gift of
+playmaking which many a poet lacks and many a novelist, but which the
+humblest playwright must needs have and which all the great dramatists
+have possessed abundantly in addition to their poetic power.
+
+Perhaps it was the unfavorable reception of his successive dramas which
+is responsible for the chief of Daudet's lapses from the kindliness
+with which he treats the characters that people his stories. He seems
+to have kept hot a grudge against the theatre: and he relieves his
+feelings by taking it out of the stage-folk he introduces into his
+novels. To actors and actresses he is intolerant and harsh. What is
+factitious and self-overvaluing in the Provencal type, he understood
+and he found it easy to pardon; but what was factitious and
+self-overvaluing in the player type, he would not understand and he
+refused to pardon. And here he shows in strong contrast with a
+successful dramatist, M. Ludovic Halevy, whose knowledge of the
+histrionic temperament is at least as wide as Daudet's and whose humor
+is as keen, but whose judgment is softened by the grateful memory of
+many victories won by the united effort of the author and the actor.
+
+Through his brother's influence, Alphonse Daudet was appointed by the
+Duke de Morny to a semi-sinecure; and he has recorded how he told his
+benefactor before accepting the place that he was a Legitimist and how
+the Duke smilingly retorted that the Empress was also. Although it was
+as a poet that Daudet made his bow in the world of letters, his first
+appearance as a dramatist was not long delayed thereafter; and he soon
+came forward also as a journalist,--or rather as a contributor to the
+papers. While many of the articles he prepared for the daily and weekly
+press were of ephemeral interest only, as the necessity of journalism
+demands, to be forgotten forty-eight hours after they were printed, not
+a few of them were sketches having more than a temporary value.
+Parisian newspapers are more hospitable to literature than are the
+newspapers of New York or of London; and a goodly proportion of the
+young Southerner's journalistic writing proved worthy of preservation.
+
+It has been preserved for us in three volumes of short stories and
+sketches, of fantasies and impressions. Not all the contents of the
+"Letters from my Mill," of the "Monday Tales" and of "Artists' Wives,"
+as we have these collections now, were written in these early years of
+Daudet's Parisian career, but many of them saw the light before 1870,
+and what has been added since conforms in method to the work of his
+'prentice days. No doubt the war with Prussia enlarged his outlook on
+life; and there is more depth in the satires this conflict suggested
+and more pathos in the pictures it evoked. The "Last Lesson," for
+example, that simple vision of the old French schoolmaster taking leave
+of his Alsatian pupils, has a symbolic breath not easy to match in the
+livelier tales written before the surrender at Sedan; and in the "Siege
+of Berlin" there is a vibrant patriotism far more poignant than we can
+discover in any of the playful apologues published before the war. He
+had had an inside view of the Second Empire, he could not help seeing
+its hollowness, and he revolted against the selfishness of its
+servants; no single chapter of M. Zola's splendid and terrible
+"Downfall" contains a more damning indictment of the leaders of the
+imperial army than is to be read in Daudet's "Game of Billiards."
+
+The short story, whether in prose or in verse, is a literary form in
+which the French have ever displayed an easy mastery; and from Daudet's
+three volumes it would not be difficult to select half-a-dozen little
+masterpieces. The Provencal tales lack only rhymes to stand confessed
+as poesy; and many a reader may prefer these first flights before
+Daudet set his Pegasus to toil in the mill of realism. The "Pope's
+Mule," for instance, is not this a marvel of blended humor and fantasy?
+And the "Elixir of Father Gaucher," what could be more naively ironic?
+Like a true Southerner, Daudet delights in girding at the Church; and
+these tales bristle with jibes at ecclesiastical dignitaries; but his
+stroke is never malignant and there is no barb to his shaft nor poison
+on the tip.
+
+Scarcely inferior to the war-stories or to the Provencal sketches are
+certain vignettes of the capital, swift silhouettes of Paris, glimpsed
+by an unforgetting eye, the "Last Book," for one, in which an unlovely
+character is treated with kindly contempt; and for another, the
+"Book-keeper," the most Dickens-like of Daudet's shorter pieces, yet
+having a literary modesty Dickens never attained. The alleged imitation
+of the British novelist by the French may be left for later
+consideration; but it is possible now to note that in the earlier
+descriptive chapters of the "Letters from my Mill" one may detect a
+certain similarity of treatment and attitude, not to Dickens but to two
+of the masters on whom Dickens modelled himself, Goldsmith and Irving.
+The scene in the diligence, when the baker gently pokes fun at the poor
+fellow whose wife is intermittent in her fidelity, is quite in the
+manner of the "Sketch Book."
+
+There is the same freshness and fertility in the collection called
+"Artists' Wives" as in the "Letters from my Mill," and the "Monday
+Tales," but not the same playfulness and fun. They are severe studies,
+all of them; and they all illustrate the truth of Bagehot's saying that
+a man's mother might be his misfortune, but his wife was his fault. It
+is a rosary of marital infelicities that Daudet has strung for us in
+this volume, and in every one of them the husband is expiating his
+blunder. With ingenious variety the author rings the changes on one
+theme, on the sufferings of the ill-mated poet or painter or sculptor,
+despoiled of the sympathy he craves, and shackled even in the exercise
+of his art. And the picture is not out of drawing, for Daudet can see
+the wife's side of the case also; he can appreciate her bewilderment at
+the ugly duckling whom it is so difficult for her to keep in the nest.
+The women have made shipwreck of their lives too, and they are
+companions in misery, if not helpmeets in understanding. This is
+perhaps the saddest of all Daudet's books, the least relieved by humor,
+the most devoid of the gaiety which illumines the "Letters from my
+Mill" and the first and second "Tartarin" volumes. But it is also one
+of the most veracious; it is life itself firmly grasped and honestly
+presented.
+
+It is not matrimonial incongruity at large in all its shifting aspects
+that Daudet here considers; it is only the married unhappiness of the
+artist, whatever his mode of expression, and whichever of the muses he
+has chosen to serve; it is only the wedded life of the man incessantly
+in search of the ideal, and never relaxing in the strain of his
+struggle with the inflexible material from which he must shape his
+vision of existence. Not only in this book, but in many another has
+Daudet shown that he perceives the needs of the artistic temperament,
+its demands, its limitations and its characteristics. There is a
+playwright in "Rose and Ninette;" there is a painter in the "Immortal;"
+there is an actor in "Fromont and Risler;" there are a sculptor, a
+poet, and a novelist on the roll of the heroine's lovers in "Sapho."
+Daudet handles them gently always, unless they happen to belong to the
+theatre. Toward the stage-folk he is pitiless; for all other artists he
+has abundant appreciation; he is not blind to their little weaknesses,
+but these he can forgive even though he refuses to forget; he is at
+home with them. He is never patronizing, as Thackeray is, who also
+knows them and loves them. Thackeray's attitude is that of a gentleman
+born to good society, but glad to visit Bohemia, because he can speak
+the language; Daudet's is that of a man of letters who thinks that his
+fellow-artists are really the best society.
+
+
+III.
+
+Not with pictures of artists at home did Daudet conquer his commanding
+position in literature, not with short stories, not with plays, not
+with verses. These had served to make him known to the inner circle of
+lovers of literature who are quick to appreciate whatever is at once
+new and true; but they did not help him to break through the crust and
+to reach the hearts of the broad body of readers who care little for
+the delicacies of the season, but must ever be fed on strong meat. When
+the latest of the three volumes of short stories was published, and
+when the "Woman of Arles" was produced, the transformation was
+complete: the poet had developed into a veritist, without ceasing to be
+a poet, and the Provencal had become a Parisian. His wander-years were
+at an end, and he had made a happy marriage. Lucky in the risky
+adventure of matrimony, as in so many others, he chanced upon a woman
+who was congenial, intelligent and devoted, and who became almost a
+collaborator in all his subsequent works.
+
+His art was ready for a larger effort; it was ripe for a richer
+fruitage. Already had he made more than one attempt at a long story,
+but this was before his powers had matured, and before he had come to a
+full knowledge of himself. "Little What's-his-name," as he himself has
+confessed, lacks perspective; it was composed too soon after the
+personal experiences out of which it was made,--before Time had put the
+scenes in proper proportion and before his hand was firm in its stroke.
+"Robert Helmont" is the journal of an observer who happens also to be a
+poet and a patriot; but it has scarcely substance enough to warrant
+calling it a story. Much of the material used in the making of these
+books was very good indeed; but the handling was a little uncertain,
+and the result is not quite satisfactory, charming as both of them are,
+with the seductive grace which is Daudet's birthright and his
+trademark. In his brief tales he had shown that he had the
+story-telling faculty, the ability to project character, the gift of
+arousing interest; but it remained for him to prove that he possessed
+also the main strength requisite to carry him through the long labor of
+a full-grown novel. It is not by gentle stories like "Robert Helmont"
+and "Little What's-his-name" that a novelist is promoted to the front
+rank; and after he had written these two books he remained where he was
+before, in the position of a promising young author.
+
+The promise was fulfilled by the publication of "Fromont and
+Risler,"--not the best of his novels, but the earliest in which his
+full force was displayed. Daudet has told us how this was planned
+originally as a play, how the failure of the "Woman of Arles" led him
+to relinquish the dramatic form, and how the supposed necessities of
+the stage warped the logical structure of the story, turning upon the
+intrigues of the young wife the interest which should have been
+concentrated upon the partnership, the business rivalry, the mercantile
+integrity, whence the novel derived its novelty. The falsifying habit
+of thrusting marital infidelity into the foreground of fiction when the
+theme itself seems almost to exclude any dwelling on amorous
+misadventure, Daudet yielded to only this once; and this is one reason
+why a truer view of Parisian life can be found in his pages than in
+those of any of his competitors, and why his works are far less
+monotonous than theirs.
+
+He is not squeamish, as every reader of "Sapho" can bear witness; but
+he does not wantonly choose a vulgar adultery as the staple of his
+stories. French fiction, ever since the tale of "Tristan and Yseult"
+was first told, has tended to be a poem of love triumphant over every
+obstacle, even over honor; and Daudet is a Frenchman with French ideas
+about woman and love and marriage; he is not without his share of
+Gallic salt; but he is too keen an observer not to see that there are
+other things in life than illicit wooings,--business, for example, and
+politics, and religion,--important factors all of them in our
+complicated modern existence. At the root of him Daudet had a steadfast
+desire to see life as a whole and to tell the truth about it
+unhesitatingly; and this is a characteristic he shares only with the
+great masters of fiction,--essentially veracious, every one of them.
+
+Probably Dickens, frequently as he wrenched the facts of life into
+conformity with his rather primitive artistic code, believed that he
+also was telling the truth. It is in Daudet's paper explaining how he
+came to write "Fromont and Risler" that he discusses the accusation
+that he was an imitator of Dickens,--an accusation which seems absurd
+enough now that the careers of both writers are closed, and that we can
+compare their complete works. Daudet records that the charge was
+brought against him very early, long before he had read Dickens, and he
+explains that any likeness that may exist is due not to copying but to
+kinship of spirit. "I have deep in my heart," he says, "the same love
+Dickens has for the maimed and the poor, for the children brought up in
+all the deprivation of great cities." This pity for the disinherited,
+for those that have had no chance in life, is not the only similarity
+between the British novelist and the French; there is also the peculiar
+combination of sentiment and humor. Daudet is not so bold as Dickens,
+not so robust, not so over-mastering; but he is far more discreet, far
+truer to nature, far finer in his art; he does not let his humor carry
+him into caricature, nor his sentiment slop over into sentimentality.
+
+Even the minor French novelists strive for beauty of form, and would
+be ashamed of the fortuitous scaffolding that satisfies the British
+story-tellers. A eulogist of Dickens, Mr. George Gissing, has recently
+remarked acutely that "Daudet has a great advantage in his mastery of
+construction. Where, as in 'Fromont and Risler,' he constructs too
+well, that is to say, on the stage model, we see what a gain it was
+to him to have before his eyes the Paris stage of the Second Empire,
+instead of that of London in the earlier Victorian time." Where Dickens
+emulated the farces and the melodramas of forgotten British
+playwrights, Daudet was influenced rather by the virile dramas of Dumas
+_fils_ and Augier. But in "Fromont and Risler," not only is the plot a
+trifle stagy, but the heroine herself seems almost a refugee of the
+footlights; exquisitely presented as Sidonie is, she fails quite to
+captivate or convince, perhaps because her sisters have been seen so
+often before in this play and in that. And now and again even in his
+later novels we discover that Daudet has needlessly achieved the adroit
+arrangement of events so useful in the theatre and not requisite in the
+library. In "The Nabob," for example, it is the "long arm of
+coincidence" that brings Paul de Gery to the inn on the Riviera, and to
+the very next room therein at the exact moment when Jenkins catches up
+with the fleeing Felicia.
+
+Yet these lapses into the arbitrary are infrequent after all; and as
+"Fromont and Risler" was followed first by one and then by another
+novel, the evil influence of theatrical conventionalism disappears.
+Daudet occasionally permits himself an underplot; but he acts always on
+the principle he once formulated to his son: "every book is an
+organism; if it has not its organs in place, it dies, and its corpse is
+a scandal." Sometimes, as in "Fromont and Risler," he starts at the
+moment when the plot thickens, returning soon to make clear the
+antecedents of the characters first shown in action; and sometimes, as
+in "Sapho," he begins right at the beginning and goes straight through
+to the end. But, whatever his method, there is never any doubt as to
+the theme; and the essential unity is always apparent. This severity of
+design in no way limits the variety of the successive acts of his
+drama.
+
+While a novel of Balzac's is often no more than an analysis of
+character, and while a novel of Zola's is a massive epic of human
+endeavor, a novel of Daudet's is a gallery of pictures, brushed in with
+the sweep and certainty of a master-hand,--portraits, landscapes with
+figures, marines, battlepieces pieces, bits of _genre_, views of Paris.
+And the views of Paris outnumber the others, and almost outvalue them
+also. Mr. Henry James has noted that "The Nabob" is "full of episodes
+which are above all pages of execution, triumphs of translation. The
+author has drawn up a list of the Parisian solemnities, and painted the
+portrait, or given a summary, of each of them. The opening day at the
+Salon, a funeral at Pere la Chaise, a debate in the Chamber of
+Deputies, the _premiere_ of a new play at a favorite theatre, furnish
+him with so many opportunities for his gymnastics of observation." And
+"The Nabob" is only a little more richly decorated than the "Immortal,"
+and "Numa Roumestan," and "Kings in Exile."
+
+These pictures, these carefully wrought masterpieces of rendering are
+not lugged in, each for its own sake; they are not outside of the
+narrative; they are actually part of the substance of the story. Daudet
+excels in describing, and every artist is prone to abound in the sense
+of his superiority. As the French saying puts it, a man has always the
+defects of his qualities; yet Daudet rarely obtrudes his descriptions,
+and he generally uses them to explain character and to set off or bring
+out the moods of his personages. They are so swift that I am tempted to
+call them flash-lights; but photographic is just what they are not, for
+they are artistic in their vigorous suppression of the unessentials;
+they are never gray or cold or hard; they vibrate with color and tingle
+with emotion.
+
+And just as a painter keeps filling his sketch-books with graphic hints
+for elaboration later, so Daudet was indefatigable in note-taking. He
+explains his method in his paper of "Fromont and Risler;" how he had
+for a score of years made a practice of jotting down in little
+note-books not only his remarks and his thoughts, but also a rapid
+record of what he had heard with his ears ever on the alert, and what
+he had seen with those tireless eyes of his. Yet he never let the dust
+of these note-books choke the life out of him. Every one of his novels
+was founded on fact,--plot, incidents, characters and scenery.
+
+He used his imagination to help him to see; he used it also to peer
+into and behind the mere facts. All that he needed to invent was a
+connecting link now and again; and it may as well be admitted at once
+that these mere inventions are sometimes the least satisfactory part of
+his stories. The two young men in "The Nabob," for instance, whom Mr.
+Henry James found it difficult to tell apart, the sculptor-painter in
+the "Immortal," the occasional other characters which we discover to be
+made up, lack the individuality and the vitality of figures taken from
+real life by a sympathetic effort of interpretative imagination.
+Delobelle, Gardinois, "all the personages of 'Fromont' have lived,"
+Daudet declares; and he adds a regret that in depicting old Gardinois
+he gave pain to one he loved, but he "could not suppress this type of
+egotist, aged and terrible."
+
+Since the beginning of the art of story-telling, the narrators must
+have gone to actuality to get suggestions for their character-drawing;
+and nothing is commoner than the accusation that this or that novelist
+has stolen his characters ready-made,--filching them from nature's
+shop-window, without so much as a by-your-leave. Daudet is bold in
+committing these larcenies from life and frank in confessing them,--far
+franker than Dickens, who tried to squirm out of the charge that he had
+put Landor and Leigh Hunt unfairly into fiction. Perhaps Dickens was
+bolder than Daudet, if it is true that he drew Micawber from his own
+father, and Mrs. Nickleby from his own mother. Daudet was taxed with
+ingratitude that he had used as the model of Mora, the Duke de Morny,
+who had befriended him; and he defended himself by declaring that he
+thought the duke would find no fault with the way Mora had been
+presented. But a great artist has never copied his models slavishly; he
+has utilized them in the effort to realize to his own satisfaction what
+he has already imagined. Daudet maintained to his son that those who
+were without imagination cannot even observe accurately. Invention
+alone, mere invention, an inferior form of mental exercise, suffices to
+provide a pretty fair romantic tale, remote from the facts of every-day
+life, but only true imagination can sustain a realistic novel where
+every reader's experience qualifies him to check off the author's
+progress, step by step.
+
+
+IV.
+
+It would take too long--although the task would be amusing--to call the
+roll of Daudet's novels written after "Fromont and Risler" had revealed
+to him his own powers, and to discuss what fact of Parisian history had
+been the starting point of each of them and what notabilities of Paris
+had sat for each of the chief characters. Mr. Henry James, for
+instance, has seen it suggested that Felicia Ruys is intended as a
+portrait of Mme. Sarah-Bernhardt; M. Zola, on the other hand, denies
+that Felicia Ruys is Mme. Sarah-Bernhardt and hints that she is rather
+Mme. Judith Gautier. Daudet himself refers to the equally absurd report
+that Gambetta was the original of Numa Roumestan,--a report over which
+the alleged subject and the real author laughed together. Daudet's own
+attitude toward his creations is a little ambiguous or at least a
+little inconsistent; in one paper he asserts that every character of
+his has had a living original, and in another he admits that Elysee
+Meraut, for example, is only in part a certain Therion.
+
+The admission is more nearly exact than the assertion. Every novelist
+whose work is to endure even for a generation must draw from life,
+sometimes generalizing broadly and sometimes keeping close to the
+single individual, but always free to modify the mere fact as he may
+have observed it to conform with the larger truth of the fable he shall
+devise. Most story-tellers tend to generalize, and their fictions lack
+the sharpness of outline we find in nature. Daudet prefers to retain as
+much of the actual individual as he dares without endangering the web
+of his composition; and often the transformation is very slight,--Mora,
+for instance, who is probably a close copy of Morny, but who stands on
+his own feet in "The Nabob," and lives his own life as independently as
+though he was a sheer imagination. More rarely the result is not so
+satisfactory; J. Tom Levis, for example, for whose authenticity the
+author vouches, but who seems out of place in "Kings in Exile," like a
+fantastic invention, such as Balzac sometimes permitted himself as a
+relief from his rigorous realism.
+
+For incident as well as for character Daudet goes to real life. The
+escape of Colette from under the eyes of her father-in-law,--that
+actually happened; but none the less does it fit into "Kings in Exile."
+And Colette's cutting off her hair in grief at her husband's
+death,--that actually happened also; but it belongs artistically in the
+"Immortal." On the other hand, the fact which served as the foundation
+of the "Immortal"--the taking in of a _savant_ by a lot of forged
+manuscripts--has been falsified by changing the _savant_ from a
+mathematician (who might easily be deceived about a matter of
+autographs) to a historian (whose duty it is to apply all known tests
+of genuineness to papers purporting to shed new light on the past).
+This borrowing from the newspaper has its evident advantages, but it
+has its dangers also, even in the hands of a poet as adroit as Daudet
+and as imaginative. Perhaps the story of his which is most artistic in
+its telling, most shapely, most harmonious in its modulations of a
+single theme to the inevitable end, developed without haste and without
+rest, is "Sapho;" and "Sapho" is the novel of Daudet's in which there
+seems to be the least of this stencilling of actual fact, in which the
+generalization is the broadest, and in which the observation is least
+restricted to single individuals.
+
+But in "Sapho" the theme itself is narrow, narrower than in "Numa
+Roumestan," and far narrower than in either "The Nabob" or "Kings in
+Exile;" and this is why "Sapho," fine as it is, and subtle, is perhaps
+less satisfactory. No other French novelist of the final half of the
+nineteenth century, not Flaubert, not Goncourt, not M. Zola, not
+Maupassant, has four novels as solid as these, as varied in incident,
+as full of life, as rich in character, as true. They form the
+quadrilateral wherein Daudet's fame is secure.
+
+"Sapho" is a daughter of the "Lady of the Camellias," and a
+grand-daughter of "Manon Lescaut,"--Frenchwomen, all of them, and of a
+class French authors have greatly affected. But Daudet's book is not a
+specimen of what Lowell called "that _corps-de-ballet_ literature in
+which the most animal of the passions is made more temptingly naked by
+a veil of French gauze." It is at bottom a moral book, much as "Tom
+Jones" is moral. Fielding's novel is English, robust, hearty, brutal in
+a way, and its morality is none too lofty. Daudet's is French, softer,
+more enervating, and with an almost complacent dwelling on the sins of
+the flesh. But neither Fielding nor Daudet is guilty of sentimentality,
+the one unforgivable crime in art. In his treatment of the relation of
+the sexes Daudet was above all things truthful; his veracity is
+inexorable. He shows how man is selfish in love and woman also, and how
+the egotism of the one is not as the egotism of the other. He shows how
+Fanny Legrand slangs her lover with the foul language of the gutter
+whence she sprang, and how Jean when he strikes back, refrains from
+foul blows. He shows how Jean, weak of will as he was, gets rid of the
+millstone about his neck, only because of the weariness of the woman to
+whom he has bound himself. He shows us the various aspects of the love
+which is not founded on esteem, the Hettema couple, De Potter and Rose,
+Dechelette and Alice Dore, all to set off the sorry idyl of Fanny and
+Jean.
+
+In "Numa Roumestan" there is a larger vision of life than in "Sapho,"
+even if there is no deeper insight. The construction is almost as
+severe; and the movement is unbroken from beginning to end, without
+excursus or digression. The central figure is masterly,--the kindly and
+selfish Southerner, easy-going and soft-spoken, an orator who is so
+eloquent that he can even convince himself, a politician who thinks
+only when he is talking, a husband who loves his wife as profoundly as
+he can love anybody except himself, and who loves his wife more than
+his temporary mistress, even during the days of his dalliance. Numa is
+a native of the South of France, as was Daudet himself; and it is out
+of the fulness of knowledge that the author evolves the character,
+brushing in the portrait with bold strokes and unceasingly adding
+caressing touches till the man actually lives and moves before our
+eyes. The veracity of the picture is destroyed by no final
+inconsistency. What Numa is, Numa will be. Daudet never descends at the
+end of his novels like a god from the machine to change character in
+the twinkling of an eye, and to convert bad men to good thoughts and
+good deeds.
+
+He can give us goodness when he chooses, a human goodness, not
+offensively perfect, not preaching, not mawkish, but high-minded and
+engaging. There are two such types in "Kings in Exile," the Queen and
+Elysee Meraut, essentially honest both of them, thinking little of
+self, and sustained by lofty purpose. Naturalistic novelists generally
+(and M. Zola in particular), live in a black world peopled mainly by
+fools and knaves; from this blunder Daudet is saved by his Southern
+temperament, by his lyric fervor, and, at bottom, by his wisdom. He
+knows better; he knows that while a weak creature like Christian II. is
+common, a resolute soul like Frederique is not so very rare. He knows
+that the contrast and the clash of these characters is interesting
+matter for the novelist. And no novelist has had a happier inspiration
+than that which gave us "Kings in Exile," a splendid subject,
+splendidly handled, and lending itself perfectly to the display of
+Daudet's best qualities, his poetry, his ability to seize the actual,
+and his power of dealing with material such as the elder Dumas would
+have delighted in with a restraint and a logic the younger Dumas would
+have admired. Plot and counter-plot, bravery, treachery, death,--these
+are elements for a romanticist farrago; and in Daudet's hands they are
+woven into a tapestry almost as stiff as life itself. The stuff is
+romantic enough, but the treatment is unhesitatingly realistic; and
+"Kings in Exile," better than any other novel of Daudet's, explains his
+vogue with readers of the most divergent tastes.
+
+In "The Nabob," the romantic element is slighter than in "Kings in
+Exile;" the subject is not so striking; and the movement of the story
+is less straightforward. But what a panorama of Paris it is that he
+unrolls before us in this story of a luckless adventurer in the city of
+luxury then under the control of the imperial band of brigands! No
+doubt the Joyeuse family is an obtrusion and an artistic blemish, since
+they do not logically belong in the scheme of the story; and yet they
+(and their fellows in other books of Daudet's) testify to his effort to
+get the truth and the whole truth into his picture of Paris life. Mora
+and Felicia Ruys and Jenkins, these are the obverse of the medal,
+exposed in the shop-windows that every passer-by can see. The Joyeuse
+girls and their father are the reverse, to be viewed only by those who
+take the trouble to look at the under side of things. They are samples
+of the simple, gentle, honest folk, of whom there must be countless
+thousands in France and even in its capital, but who fail to interest
+most French novelists just because they are not eccentric or wicked or
+ugly. Of a truth, Aline Joyeuse is as typically Parisian as Felicia
+Ruys herself; both are needed if the census is to be complete; and the
+omission of either is a source of error.
+
+There is irony in Daudet's handling of these humbler figures, but it is
+compassionate and almost affectionate. If he laughs at Father Joyeuse
+there is no harshness and no hostility in his mirth. For the Joyeuse
+daughters he has indulgence and pity; and his humor plays about them
+and leaves them scart-free. It never stings them or scorches or sears,
+as it does Astier-Rehu and Christian II. and the Prince of Axel, in
+spite of his desire to be fair toward all the creatures of his brain.
+
+Irony is only one of the manifestations of Daudet's humor. Wit he has
+also, and satire. And he is doubly fortunate in that he has both humor
+and the sense-of-humor--the positive and the negative. It is the
+sense-of-humor, so called, that many humorists are without, a
+deprivation which allows them to take themselves so seriously that they
+become a laughing-stock for the world. It is the sense-of-humor that
+makes the master of comedy, that helps him to see things in due
+proportion and perspective, that keeps him from exaggeration and
+emphasis, from sentimentality and melodrama and bathos. It is the
+sense-of-humor that prevents our making fools of ourselves; it is humor
+itself that softens our laughter at those who make themselves
+ridiculous. In his serious stories Daudet employs this negative humor
+chiefly, as though he had in memory La Bruyere's assertion that "he who
+makes us laugh rarely is able to win esteem for himself." His positive
+humor,--gay, exuberant, contagious,--finds its full field for display
+in some of the short stories, and more especially in the Tartarin
+series.
+
+Has any book of our time caused more laughter than "Tartarin of
+Tarascon"--unless it be "Tartarin on the Alps"? I can think only of one
+rival pair, "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn,"--for Mark Twain and
+Alphonse Daudet both achieved the almost impossible feat of writing a
+successful sequel to a successful book, of forcing fortune to a
+repetition of a happy accident. The abundant laughter the French
+humorist excited is like that evoked by the American humorist,--clean,
+hearty, healthy, self-respecting; it is in both cases what George Eliot
+in one of her letters called "the exquisite laughter that comes from a
+gratification of the reasoning faculty." Daudet and Mark Twain are
+imaginative realists; their most amusing extravagance is but an
+exaggeration of the real thing; and they never let factitious fantasy
+sweep their feet off the ground. Tartarin is as typical of Provence as
+Colonel Sellers--to take that figure of Mark Twain's which is most
+like--is typical of the Mississippi Valley.
+
+Tartarin is as true as Numa Roumestan; in fact they may almost be said
+to be sketched from the same model but in a very different temper. In
+"Numa Roumestan" we are shown the sober side of the Southern
+temperament, the sorrow it brings in the house though it displays joy
+in the street; and in "Tartarin" we behold only the immense comicality
+of the incessant incongruity between the word and the deed. Tartarin is
+Southern, it is true, and French; but he is very human also. There is a
+boaster and a liar in most of us, lying in wait for a chance to rush
+out and put us to shame. It is this universality of Daudet's satire
+that has given Tartarin its vogue on both sides of the Atlantic. The
+ingenuity of Tartarin's misadventures, the variety of them in Algiers
+and in Switzerland, the obvious reasonableness of them all, the
+delightful probability of these impossibilities, the frank gaiety and
+the unflagging high spirits,--these are precious qualities, all of
+them; but it is rather the essential humanness of Tartarin himself that
+has given him a reputation throughout the world. Very rarely indeed now
+or in the past has an author been lucky enough to add a single figure
+to the cosmopolitan gallery of fiction. Cervantes, De Foe, Swift, Le
+Sage, Dumas, have done it; Fielding and Hawthorne and Turgenef have
+not.
+
+It is no wonder that Daudet takes pride in this. The real joy of the
+novelist, he declares, is to create human beings, to put on their feet
+types of humanity who thereafter circulate through the world with the
+name, the gesture, the grimace he has given them and who are cited and
+talked about without reference to their creator and without even any
+mention of him. And whenever Daudet heard some puppet of politics or
+literature called a Tartarin, a shiver ran through him--"the shiver of
+pride of a father, hidden in the crowd that is applauding his son and
+wanting all the time to cry out 'That's my boy!'"
+
+
+V.
+
+The time has not yet come for a final estimate of Daudet's
+position,--if a time ever arrives when any estimate can be final. But
+already has a selection been made of the masterpieces which survive,
+and from which an author is judged by the next generation that will
+have time to criticise only the most famous of the works this
+generation leaves behind it. We can see also that much of Daudet's
+later writing is slight and not up to his own high standard, although
+even his briefest trifle had always something of his charm, of his
+magic, of his seductive grace. We can see how rare an endowment he has
+when we note that he is an acute observer of mankind, and yet without
+any taint of misanthropy, and that he combines fidelity of reproduction
+with poetic elevation.
+
+He is--to say once more what has already been said in these pages more
+than once--he is a lover of romance with an unfaltering respect for
+reality. We all meet with strange experiences once in our lives, with
+"things you could put in a story," as the phrase is; but we none of us
+have hairbreadth escapes every morning before breakfast. The romantic
+is as natural as anything else; it is the excess of the romantic which
+is in bad taste. It is the piling up of the agony which is disgusting.
+It is the accumulation upon one impossible hero of many exceptional
+adventures which is untrue and therefore immoral. Daudet's most
+individual peculiarity was his skill in seizing the romantic aspects of
+the commonplace. In one of his talks with his son he said that a
+novelist must beware of an excess of lyric enthusiasm; he himself
+sought for emotion, and emotion escaped when human proportions were
+exceeded. Balance, order, reserve, symmetry, sobriety,--these are the
+qualities he was ever praising. The real, the truthful, the
+sincere,--this is what he sought always to attain.
+
+Daudet may lack the poignant intensity of Balzac, the lyric sweep of
+Hugo, the immense architectural strength of M. Zola, the implacable
+disinterestedness of Flaubert, the marvellous concentration of
+Maupassant, but he has more humor than any of them and more
+charm,--more sympathy than any but Hugo, and more sincerity than
+any but Flaubert. His is perhaps a rarer combination than any of
+theirs,--the gift of story-telling, the power of character-drawing,
+the grasp of emotional situation, the faculty of analysis, the feeling
+for form, the sense of style, an unfailing and humane interest in his
+fellow-men, and an irresistible desire to tell the truth about life as
+he saw it with his own eyes.
+
+BRANDER MATTHEWS.
+
+Columbia University,
+in the City of New York.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                                       Page
+
+   I. DR. JENKINS' PATIENTS                               7
+
+  II. A BREAKFAST ON PLACE VENDOME                       37
+
+ III. MEMOIRS OF A CLERK.--A CASUAL GLANCE AT
+         THE "CAISSE TERRITORIALE"                       63
+
+  IV. A DEBUT IN SOCIETY                                 77
+
+   V. THE JOYEUSE FAMILY                                103
+
+  VI. FELICIA RUYS                                      128
+
+ VII. JANSOULET AT HOME                                 156
+
+VIII. THE WORK OF BETHLEHEM                             172
+
+  IX. GRANDMAMMA                                        193
+
+   X. MEMOIRS OF A CLERK.--THE SERVANTS                 216
+
+  XI. THE FETES IN HONOR OF THE BEY                     238
+
+ XII. A CORSICAN ELECTION                               272
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"'Take away your flowers, my dear'"          _Frontispiece_
+
+In Felicia's Studio                               _Page_ 26
+
+"'His Excellency, the Duc de Mora!'"              "      88
+
+
+From drawings by Lucius Rossi.
+
+
+
+
+THE NABOB.
+
+
+A hundred years ago Le Sage wrote these words at the head of _Gil
+Blas_:
+
+    "As there are persons who cannot read a book without making
+    personal application of the vicious or absurd characters they
+    find therein, I hereby declare for the benefit of such evil-minded
+    readers that they will err in making such application of the
+    portraits in this book. I make public avowal that my only aim
+    has been to represent the life of mankind as it is."
+
+Without attempting to draw any comparison between Le Sage's novel and
+my own, I may say that I should have liked to place a declaration of
+the same nature on the first page of _The Nabob_, at the time of its
+publication. Several reasons prevented my doing so. In the first place,
+the fear that such an advertisement might seem too much like a bait
+thrown out to the public, an attempt to compel its attention. Secondly,
+I was far from suspecting that a book written with a purely literary
+purpose could acquire at a bound such anecdotal importance, and bring
+down upon me such a buzzing swarm of complaints. Indeed, such a thing
+was never seen before. Not a line of my work, not one of its heroes,
+not even a character of secondary importance, but has become a pretext
+for allusions and protestations. To no purpose does the author deny the
+imputation, swear by all the gods that there is no key to his
+novel--every one forges at least one, with whose assistance he claims
+to open that combination lock. It must be that all these types have
+lived, bless my soul! that they live to-day, exactly identical from
+head to foot. Monpavon is So-and-So, is he not? Jenkins' resemblance is
+striking. One man is angry because he is in it, another one because he
+is not in it; and, beginning with this eagerness for scandal, there is
+nothing, not even chance similarities of name, fatal in the modern
+novel, descriptions of streets, numbers of houses selected at random,
+that has not served to give identity to beings built of a thousand
+pieces and, moreover, absolutely imaginary.
+
+The author is too modest to take all this outcry to himself. He knows
+how great a part the friendly or treacherous indiscretions of the
+newspapers have had therein; and without thanking the former more than
+is seemly, without too great ill-will to the latter, he resigns himself
+to the stormy prospect as something inevitable, and simply deems
+himself in duty bound to affirm that he has never, in twenty years of
+upright, literary toil, resorted to that element of success, neither on
+this occasion nor on any other. As he turned the leaves of his memory,
+which it is every novelist's right and duty to do, he recalled a
+strange episode that occurred in cosmopolitan Paris some fifteen years
+ago. The romance of a dazzling career that shot swiftly across the
+Parisian sky like a meteor evidently served as the frame-work of _The
+Nabob_, a picture of manners and morals at the close of the Second
+Empire. But around that central situation and certain well-known
+incidents, which it was every one's right to study and revive, what a
+world of fancy, what inventions, what elaboration, and, above all, what
+an outlay of that incessant, universal, almost unconscious observation,
+without which there could be no imaginative writers. Furthermore, to
+obtain an idea of the "crystallizing" labor involved in transporting
+the simplest circumstances from reality to fiction, from life to
+romance, one need only open the _Moniteur Officiel_ of February, 1864,
+and compare a certain session of the Corps Legislatif with the picture
+that I give of it in my book. Who could have supposed that, after the
+lapse of so many years, this Paris, famous for its short memory, would
+recognize the original model in the idealized picture the novelist has
+drawn of him, and that voices would be raised to charge with
+ingratitude one who most assuredly was not his hero's "assiduous
+guest," but simply, in their infrequent meetings, an inquisitive
+acquaintance on whose mind the truth is quickly photographed, and who
+can never efface from his memory the images that are once imprinted
+thereon?
+
+I knew the "real Nabob" in 1864. I occupied at that time a
+semi-official position which forced me to exhibit great reserve in my
+visits to that luxurious and hospitable Levantine. Later I was
+intimately associated with one of his brothers; but at that time the
+poor Nabob was far away, struggling through thickets of cruel brambles,
+and he was seen at Paris only occasionally. Moreover, it is very
+unpleasant for a courteous man to reckon thus with the dead, and to
+say: "You are mistaken. Although he was an agreeable host, I was not
+often seen at his table." Let it suffice therefore, for me to declare
+that, in speaking of Mere Francoise's son as I have done, it has been
+my purpose to represent him in a favorable light, and that the charge
+of ingratitude seems to me an absurdity from every standpoint. That
+this is true is proved by the fact that many people consider the
+portrait too flattering, more interesting than nature. To such people
+my reply is very simple: "Jansoulet strikes me as an excellent fellow;
+but at all events, if I am wrong, you can blame the newspapers for
+telling you his real name. I gave you my novel as a novel, good or bad,
+without any guaranty of resemblances."
+
+As to Mora, that is another matter. Something has been said of
+indiscretion, of political defection. Great Heaven! I have never made a
+secret of it. At the age of twenty, I was connected with the office of
+the high functionary who has served as my model; and my friends of
+those days know what a serious political personage I made. The
+Department also must have strange recollections of that eccentric clerk
+with the Merovingian beard, who was always the last to arrive and the
+first to depart, and who never went up to the duke's private office
+except to ask leave of absence; of a naturally independent character,
+too, with hands unstained by anything like sycophancy, and so little
+reconciled to the Empire that, on the day when the duke proposed to him
+to enter his service, the future attache deemed it his duty to declare
+with touching juvenile solemnity that "he was a Legitimist."
+
+"So is the Empress," was His Excellency's reply, and he smiled with
+calm and impertinent condescension. I always saw him with that smile on
+his face, nor had I any need to look through keyholes; and I have drawn
+him so, as he loved to appear, in his Richelieu-Brummel attitude.
+History will attend to the statesman. I have exhibited him, introducing
+him at long range in my fictitious drama, as the worldly creature that
+he was and wished to be, being well assured that in his lifetime it
+would not have offended him to be so presented.
+
+This is what I had to say. And now, having made these declarations in
+all frankness, let us return to work with all speed. My preface will
+seem a little short, and the curious reader will seek in vain therein
+the anticipated piquancy. So much the worse for him. Brief as this page
+may be, it is three times too long for me. Prefaces have this
+disadvantage, that they prevent one from writing books.
+
+ALPHONSE DAUDET.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+DOCTOR JENKINS' PATIENTS.
+
+
+Standing on the stoop of his little house on Rue de Lisbonne, freshly
+shaved, with sparkling eye, lips slightly parted, long hair tinged with
+gray falling over a broad coat-collar, square-shouldered, robust, and
+sound as an oak, the illustrious Irish doctor, Robert Jenkins,
+chevalier of the Medjidie and of the distinguished order of Charles
+III. of Spain, member of several learned and benevolent societies,
+founder and president of the Work of Bethlehem,--in a word, Jenkins,
+the Jenkins of the Jenkins Arsenical Pills, that is to say, the
+fashionable physician of the year 1864, and the busiest man in Paris,
+was on the point of entering his carriage, one morning toward the end
+of November, when a window on the first floor looking on the inner
+courtyard was thrown open, and a woman's voice timidly inquired:
+
+"Shall you return to breakfast, Robert?"
+
+Oh! what a bright, affectionate smile it was that suddenly illumined
+that handsome, apostle-like face, and how readily one could divine, in
+the loving good-morning that his eyes sent up to the warm white
+peignoir visible behind the parted hangings, one of those tranquil,
+undoubting conjugal passions, which custom binds with its most flexible
+and strongest bonds.
+
+"No, Madame Jenkins"--he loved to give her thus publicly her title of
+legitimate wife, as if he felt a secret satisfaction therein, a sort of
+salve to his conscience with respect to the woman who made life so
+attractive to him--"No, do not expect me this morning. I am to
+breakfast on Place Vendome."
+
+"Ah! yes, the Nabob," said the lovely Madame Jenkins, with a very
+marked inflection of respect for that personage out of the _Thousand
+and One Nights_, of whom all Paris had been talking for a month; then,
+after a moment's hesitation, she whispered between the heavy hangings,
+very softly, very lovingly, for the doctor's ear alone: "Be sure and
+not forget what you promised me."
+
+It was probably a promise very difficult to keep, for, at the reminder,
+the apostle's brows contracted, his smile froze upon his lips, his
+whole face assumed an incredibly harsh expression; but it was a matter
+of a moment. The faces of these fashionable physicians become very
+expert in lying, by the bedsides of their wealthy patients. With his
+most affectionate, most cordial manner, and showing a row of dazzling
+teeth, he replied:
+
+"What I promised shall be done, Madame Jenkins. Now, go in at once and
+close your window. The mist is cold this morning."
+
+Yes, the mist was cold, but white as snow; and, hovering outside the
+windows of the comfortable coupe, it lighted up with soft reflections
+the newspaper in the doctor's hands. Over yonder in the dark, crowded,
+populous quarters, in the Paris of tradesmen and workmen, they know
+nothing of the pretty morning mist that loiters on the broad avenues;
+the bustle of the waking hours, the passing and repassing of
+market-gardeners' wagons, omnibuses, drays loaded with old iron, soon
+chop it and rend it and scatter it. Each passer-by carries away a
+little of it on a threadbare coat, a worn muffler, or coarse gloves
+rubbing against each other. It drenches the shivering blouses, the
+waterproofs thrown over working dresses; it blends with all the
+breaths, hot with insomnia or alcohol, buries itself in the depths of
+empty stomachs, penetrates the shops which are just opening their
+doors, dark courtyards, staircases, where it stands on the balusters
+and walls, and fireless garrets. That is why so little of it remains
+out-of-doors. But in that open, stately portion of Paris where Dr.
+Jenkins' patients lived, on those broad tree-lined boulevards, those
+deserted quays, the mist soared immaculate, in innumerable waves, as
+light and fleecy as down. It was compact, discreet, almost luxurious,
+because the sun, slothful in his rising, was beginning to diffuse soft,
+purplish tints, which gave to the mist that enveloped everything, even
+the roofs of the rows of mansions, the aspect of a sheet of white
+muslin spread over scarlet cloth. One would have said that it was a
+great curtain sheltering the long, untroubled sleep of wealth, a thick
+curtain behind which nothing could be heard save the soft closing of a
+porte-cochere, the rattling of the milkmen's tin cans, the bells of a
+herd of asses trotting by, followed by the short, panting breath of
+their conductor, and the rumbling of Jenkins' coupe beginning its daily
+round.
+
+First of all, to the hotel de Mora. On the Quai d'Orleans, beside the
+Spanish embassy, stood a superb palace with its principal entrance on
+Rue de Lille, and a door on the riverside, and long terraces which
+formed a continuation of those of the embassy. Between two high,
+ivy-covered walls, connected by imposing stone arches, the coupe flew
+like an arrow, announced by two strokes of a clanging bell, which
+aroused Jenkins from the trance in which the perusal of his newspaper
+seemed to have plunged him. Then the wheels rolled less noisily over
+the gravel of a vast courtyard and stopped, after a graceful sweep, at
+the front steps, above which was spread a circular awning. One could
+see indistinctly through the mist half a score of carriages in a line,
+and the silhouettes of English grooms leading the duke's saddle-horse
+up and down an avenue of acacias, all leafless at that season and
+standing naked in their bark. Everything revealed well-ordered,
+pompous, assured luxury.
+
+"It makes no difference how early I come, others are always here before
+me," said Jenkins, glancing at the line in which his coupe took its
+place; but, certain of not being compelled to wait, with head erect and
+a tranquil air of authority, he went up the official steps, over which
+so many trembling ambitions, so many stumbling anxieties passed every
+day.
+
+Even in the reception-room, high-studded, and resonant as a church,
+which two huge fires filled with gleaming life, notwithstanding the
+great stoves burning day and night, the magnificence of the
+establishment burst upon one in warm and heady puffs. There was a
+suggestion of the hot-house and the drying-room as well. Great heat and
+abundant light; white wainscoting, white marble statues, immense
+windows, nothing confined or close, and yet an equable atmosphere well
+fitted to encompass the existence of some delicate, over-refined,
+nervous mortal. Jenkins expanded in that factitious sunlight of wealth;
+he saluted with a "good-morning, boys," the powdered Swiss with the
+broad gilt baldric and the footmen in short clothes and blue and gold
+livery, all of whom had risen in his honor, touched lightly with his
+finger the great cage of monkeys capering about with shrill cries, and
+darted whistling up the white marble stairs covered with a carpet soft
+and dense as a lawn, to the duke's apartments. Although he had been
+coming to the hotel de Mora for six months, the good doctor had not yet
+become hardened to the purely physical impression of cheerfulness and
+lightness of heart caused by the atmosphere of that house.
+
+Although it was the abode of the highest functionary of the Empire,
+there was nothing to suggest the departments or their boxes of dusty
+documents. The duke had consented to accept the exalted post of
+Minister of State and President of the Council only on condition that
+he need not leave his house; that he should go to the department only
+an hour or two a day, long enough to affix his signatures to documents
+that required it, and that he should hold his audiences in his bedroom.
+At that moment, although it was so early, the salon was full. There
+were serious, anxious faces, provincial prefects with shaven lips and
+administrative whiskers, something less arrogant in that reception-room
+than in their prefectures; magistrates, stern of manner, dignified of
+gesture; deputies full of importance, shining lights of finance,
+substantial manufacturers from the country; and among them could be
+distinguished, here and there, the thin ambitious face of a deputy
+councillor to some prefecture, in the garb of a solicitor, black coat
+and white cravat; and one and all, standing or seated, alone or in
+groups, silently forced with a glance the lock of that lofty door,
+closed upon their destinies, from which they would come forth in a
+moment, triumphant or crestfallen. Jenkins walked rapidly through the
+crowd, and every one followed with an envious eye this new arrival,
+whom the usher, in his chain of office, frigid and correct in his
+bearing, seated at a table beside the door, greeted with a smile that
+was both respectful and familiar.
+
+"Who is with him?" the doctor inquired, pointing to the duke's room.
+
+With the end of his lips, and not without a slightly ironical twinkle
+of the eye, the usher murmured a name, which, if they had heard it,
+would have angered all those exalted personages who had been waiting an
+hour for the _costumier_ of the opera to finish his audience.
+
+A murmur of voices, a flash of light--Jenkins had entered the duke's
+presence; _he_ never waited.
+
+Standing with his back to the fire, dressed in a blue fur-trimmed
+jacket, which heightened by its soft reflection the strength and
+haughtiness of his face, the President of the Council was
+superintending the drawing of a Pierrette's costume for the duchess to
+wear at her next ball, and giving directions with as much gravity as if
+he were dictating the draft of a law.
+
+"Have very fine pleats on the ruff and none at all on the
+sleeves.--Good-morning, Jenkins. At your service."
+
+Jenkins bowed and stepped forward into the enormous room, whose
+windows, opening on a garden that extended to the Seine, commanded one
+of the loveliest views in all Paris, the bridges, the Tuileries, the
+Louvre, interlaced with trees as black as if they were drawn in India
+ink on the wavering background of the mist. A broad, very low bed on a
+platform a few steps above the floor, two or three small lacquer
+screens with vague fanciful decorations in gold, denoting, as did the
+double doors and the heavy woollen carpet, a dread of cold carried to
+excess, chairs of various styles, long chairs and low chairs, placed at
+random, all well-stuffed and of lazy or voluptuous shapes, composed the
+furniture of that famous room, where the most momentous and the most
+trivial questions were discussed with the same gravity of tone and
+manner. There was a beautiful portrait of the duchess on the wall; and
+on the mantel a bust of the duke, the work of Felicia Ruys, which had
+received the honor of a medal of the first class at the recent Salon.
+
+"Well, Jenkins, how goes it this morning?" said His Excellency, walking
+to meet the doctor, while the costumer was collecting his fashion
+plates, which were strewn about over all the chairs.
+
+"And you, my dear duke? I fancied that you were a little pale last
+night at the Varietes."
+
+"Nonsense! I was never so well. Your pills have a most amazing effect
+on me. I feel so lively, so vigorous. When I think how completely
+foundered I was six months ago!"
+
+Jenkins, without speaking, had put his great head against the
+minister's jacket, at the spot where the heart beats in the majority of
+mankind. He listened a moment while His Excellency continued to talk in
+the indolent, listless tone which was one of his chief claims to
+distinction.
+
+"Whom were you with last night, doctor? That great bronzed Tartar who
+laughed so loud at the front of your box?"
+
+"That was the Nabob, Monsieur le Duc. The famous Jansoulet, who is so
+much talked about just now."
+
+"I might have suspected it. The whole audience was looking at him. The
+actresses played at him all the time. Do you know him? What sort of a
+man is he?"
+
+"I know him. That is, I am treating him. Thanks, my dear duke, that's
+all. Everything is all right there. When he arrived in Paris a month
+ago, the change of climate disturbed him a little. He sent for me, and
+since then has taken a great fancy to me. All that I know of him is
+that he has a colossal fortune, made in Tunis, in the Bey's service,
+that he has a loyal heart, a generous mind in which ideas of
+humanity--"
+
+"At Tunis?" the duke interposed, being naturally far from sentimental
+and humanitarian. "Then, why the name of Nabob?"
+
+"Bah! Parisians don't look so deep as that. In their eyes every rich
+stranger is a nabob, no matter where he comes from. This one, however,
+has just the physique for the part, coppery complexion, eyes like coals
+of fire, and in addition a gigantic fortune, of which he makes, I have
+no hesitation in saying, a most noble and most intelligent use. I owe
+it to him"--here the doctor assumed an air of modesty--"I owe it to him
+that I have succeeded at last in inaugurating the Work of Bethlehem for
+nursing infants, which a morning newspaper that I was looking over just
+now--the _Messager_, I think,--calls 'the great philanthropic idea of
+the century.'"
+
+The duke glanced in an absent-minded way at the sheet the doctor handed
+him. He was not the man to be taken in by paid puffs.
+
+"This Monsieur Jansoulet must be very wealthy," he said coldly. "He is
+a partner in Cardailhac's theatre. Monpavon persuades him to pay his
+debts, Bois-l'Hery stocks his stable for him and old Schwalbach
+furnishes a picture gallery. All that costs money."
+
+Jenkins began to laugh.
+
+"What can you expect, my dear duke; you are an object of great interest
+to the poor Nabob. Coming to Paris with a firm purpose 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 be very glad to
+study his model at closer quarters."
+
+"I know, I know, Monpavon has already asked leave to bring him here.
+But I prefer to wait and see. One must be on one's guard with these
+great fortunes that come from such a distance. _Mon Dieu_, I don't
+say, you know, that if I should meet him elsewhere than in my own
+house, at the theatre, or in somebody's salon--"
+
+"It happens that Madame Jenkins intends to give a little party next
+month. If you would do us the honor--"
+
+"I shall be very glad to go to your house, my dear doctor, and if the
+Nabob should be there, I should not object to his being presented to
+me."
+
+At that moment the usher opened the door.
+
+"Monsieur le Ministre de l'Interieur is in the blue salon. He has but a
+word to say to Your Excellency. Monsieur le Prefet de Police is still
+waiting below, in the gallery."
+
+"Very good," said the duke, "I will go to him. But I should like to
+make a definite arrangement about this costume first. Let us see,
+friend What's-your-name, what do we decide about those ruffs? _Au
+revoir_, doctor. Nothing to do but keep on with the pearls, is there?"
+
+"Keep on with the pearls," said Jenkins, bowing; and he took his leave,
+radiant over the two bits of good fortune that fell to his lot at the
+same time--the honor of entertaining the duke, and the pleasure of
+gratifying his dear Nabob. The crowd of petitioners through whom he
+passed in the ante-chamber was even greater than when he entered; new
+arrivals had joined the patient waiters of the first hour, others were
+hurrying upstairs, pale-faced and full of business, and in the
+courtyard carriages continued to arrive, to range themselves gravely
+and solemnly in a double circle, while the question of ruffed sleeves
+was discussed upstairs with no less solemnity.
+
+"To the club," said Jenkins to his coachman.
+
+                         *        *        *
+
+The coupe rolled along the quays, recrossed the bridges, and turned
+into Place de la Concorde, which already wore a different aspect from
+that it had worn a short time before. The mist had lifted in the
+direction of the Garde-Meuble and the Greek temple of the Madeleine,
+revealing here and there the white spray of a fountain, the arcade of a
+palace, the top of a statue, the shrubbery of the Tuileries, shivering
+by the gates. The veil, not raised but rent in spots, discovered
+patches of blue sky: and, on the avenue leading to the Arc de Triomphe,
+one could see breaks driving swiftly along, filled with coachmen and
+jockeys, dragoons of the Empress's corps, body-guards in gorgeous
+fur-lined coats riding two by two in long lines, with a great clanking
+of bits and spurs and neighing of fresh horses, all in the light of a
+still invisible sun, emerging from the vague depths of the mist,
+plunging into it again in masses, like a swiftly-vanishing vision of
+the morning splendor of that quarter.
+
+Jenkins alighted at the corner of Rue Royale. From roof to cellar of
+the great gambling-house servants were bustling about, shaking rugs,
+airing the salons where the odor of cigar-smoke still lingered, where
+heaps of fine ashes were blowing about in the fireplaces, while on the
+green tables, still quivering with the games of the night, the candles
+were still burning in silver candelabra, the flame ascending straight
+into the pallid light of day. The uproar and the going and coming
+ceased on the third floor, where several members of the club had their
+apartments. Of the number was the Marquis de Monpavon, to whose door
+Jenkins bent his steps.
+
+"Ah! is it you, doctor? Deuce take it! What time is it, pray? I'm not
+at home."
+
+"Not even to the doctor?"
+
+"Oh! not to anybody. A question of costume, my dear fellow. Never mind,
+come in all the same. Toast your feet a moment while Francois finishes
+my hair."
+
+Jenkins entered the bedroom, which was as prosaic a place as all
+furnished apartments are, and approached the fire, where curling-tongs
+of all dimensions were heating, while from the adjoining laboratory,
+separated from the bedroom by an Algerian curtain, the Marquis de
+Monpavon submitted to the manipulations of his valet. Odors of
+patchouli, cold cream, burned horn and burned hair escaped from the
+restricted quarters; and from time to time, when Francois came out to
+take a fresh pair of tongs, Jenkins caught a glimpse of an enormous
+dressing-table laden with innumerable little instruments of ivory,
+steel, and mother-of-pearl, files, scissors, powder-puffs and brushes,
+phials, cups, cosmetics, labelled, arranged in lines, and amid all that
+rubbish, petty ironmongery and dolls' playthings, a hand, the hand of
+an old man, awkward and trembling, dry and long, with nails as
+carefully kept as a Japanese painter's.
+
+While making up his face, the longest and most complicated of his
+matutinal occupations, Monpavon chatted with the doctor, told him of
+his aches and pains and of the good effect of the pearls, which were
+making him younger, he said. And listening to him thus, at a little
+distance, without seeing him, one would have believed he was the Duc de
+Mora, he had so faithfully copied his way of speaking. There were the
+same unfinished sentences, ending in a _ps_--_ps_--_ps_--uttered
+between the teeth. "What's-his-names" and "What-d'ye-call-'ems" at
+every turn, a sort of lazy, bored, aristocratic stammer, in which one
+divined profound contempt for the vulgar art of speech. In the duke's
+circle everybody strove to copy that accent, those disdainful
+intonations, in which there was an affectation of simplicity.
+
+Jenkins, finding the session a little tedious, rose to go.
+
+"Adieu, I am going. Shall I see you at the Nabob's?"
+
+"Yes, I expect to breakfast there--promised to take What's-his-name,
+Thingumbob, you know, about our great affair--ps--ps--ps. Weren't for
+that, I'd stay away--downright menagerie, that house."
+
+The Irishman, despite his kindly feeling, agreed that the society at
+his friend's house was a little mixed. But what of that! they must not
+blame him for that. He didn't know any better, poor man.
+
+"Doesn't know and won't learn," said Monpavon sourly. "Instead of
+consulting men of experience--ps--ps--ps--takes the first sycophant
+that comes. Did you see the horses Bois-l'Hery bought for him?
+Downright swindle, those beasts. And he paid twenty thousand francs for
+them. I'll wager Bois-l'Hery got 'em for six thousand."
+
+"Oh! fie, fie--a gentleman!" said Jenkins, with the indignation of a
+noble soul refusing to believe in evil.
+
+Monpavon went on, as if he did not hear:
+
+"And all because the horses came from Mora's stable!"
+
+"To be sure, the dear Nabob's heart is set on the duke. So that I shall
+make him very happy when I tell him--"
+
+The doctor stopped, in some embarrassment.
+
+"When you tell him what, Jenkins?"
+
+Jenkins, looking decidedly sheepish, was forced to admit that he had
+obtained permission from His Excellency to present his friend
+Jansoulet. He had hardly finished his sentence when a tall spectre with
+flabby cheeks and multicolored hair and whiskers darted from the
+dressing-room into the chamber, holding together with both hands at his
+skinny but very straight neck, a dressing-gown of light silk with
+violet dots, in which he had enveloped himself like a bonbon in its
+paper wrapper. The most salient feature in that heroi-comic countenance
+was a great arched nose shining with cold cream, and a keen, piercing
+eye, too youthful, too clear for the heavy, wrinkled lid that covered
+it. All of Jenkins' patients had that same eye.
+
+Verily Monpavon must have been deeply moved to show himself thus shorn
+of all prestige. In fact it was with white lips and in a changed voice
+that he now addressed the doctor, without the affected stammer,
+speaking rapidly and without stopping to breathe:--
+
+"Come, come, my dear fellow, there's no nonsense between us, is there?
+We have met in front of the same porringer; but I let you have your
+share and I propose that you shall let me have mine." Jenkins' air of
+amazement did not check him. "Let it be understood once for all. I
+promised the Nabob that I'd present him to the duke as I presented you
+long ago. Don't you interfere in what concerns me and me alone."
+
+Jenkins, with his hand upon his heart, protested his innocence. He had
+never had any such intention. Of course Monpavon was too close a friend
+of the duke for any one else to--How could he have imagined such a
+thing?
+
+"I imagine nothing," said the old nobleman, more subdued, but still
+very cold. "I simply wanted to have a perfectly frank explanation with
+you on this subject."
+
+The Irishman held out his broad open palm.
+
+"My dear marquis, explanations are always frank between men of honor."
+
+"Honor is a great word, Jenkins. Let us say men of good-breeding. That
+is sufficient."
+
+And as that same good-breeding, which he put forward as a supreme guide
+of conduct, suddenly reminded him of his absurd plight, the marquis
+offered a finger for his friend's demonstrative grasp and passed
+hastily behind his curtain, while the other took his leave, in haste to
+continue his round of visits.
+
+                         *        *        *
+
+What a magnificent practice this Jenkins had, to be sure! Nothing but
+princely mansions, halls comfortably heated and filled with flowers on
+every floor, downy, silk-lined alcoves, wherein disease became quiet
+and refined, where nothing suggested the brutal hand that tosses upon a
+bed of misery those who cease to work only to die. To tell the truth,
+these clients of Dr. Jenkins were not patients at all. They would not
+have been received at a hospital. As their organs had not even strength
+enough to feel a shock, it was impossible to find the seat of their
+trouble, and the physician leaning over them would have listened in
+vain for the palpitation of suffering in those bodies which were
+already inhabited by the inertia and silence of death. They were
+weakened, exhausted, anaemic, consumed by their absurd mode of life, and
+yet so attached to it that they strove desperately to prolong it. And
+the Jenkins Pearls became famous just because of the lashing they
+administered to jaded constitutions.
+
+"Doctor, I implore you, let me go to the ball this evening!" a young
+woman would say, as she lay, utterly prostrated, in her invalid's
+chair, her voice hardly more than a breath.
+
+"You shall go, my dear child."
+
+And go she would, and look lovelier than ever before.
+
+"Doctor, at any price, even if it's the death of me, I must be at the
+council of ministers to-morrow morning."
+
+He would be there and would win new triumphs by his eloquence and
+ambitious diplomacy. And afterward--oh! afterward, indeed. But no
+matter! to their last day Jenkins' patients went about, showed
+themselves, deceived the consuming selfishness of the multitude. They
+died on their feet, like men and women of the world.
+
+After innumerable turns on the Chaussee d'Antin and Champs-Elysees,
+after visiting all the millionaires and titled personages in Faubourg
+Saint-Honore, the doctor drew up at the corner of Cours-la-Reine and
+Rue Francois I., before a house with a swell front which stood at
+the corner of the quay, and entered an apartment on the ground floor
+which in no wise resembled those he had visited since the morning.
+Immediately upon entering, the tapestries that covered the walls, the
+old stained glass windows intersecting with their lead sashes the soft,
+many-hued light, a gigantic saint in carved wood facing a Japanese
+monster with bulging eyes and back covered with highly polished scales,
+indicated the imaginative and eccentric taste of an artist. The small
+servant who opened the door held in leash an Arabian greyhound larger
+than himself.
+
+"Madame Constance is at mass," he said, "and mademoiselle is in the
+studio, alone. We have been working since six o'clock this morning,"
+the child added, with a terrible yawn, which the dog caught on the
+wing, and which caused him to open wide his red mouth with its rows of
+sharp teeth.
+
+Jenkins, whom we have seen enter the private apartments of the Minister
+of State with such perfect tranquillity, trembled slightly as he raised
+the portiere that hid the open doorway of the studio. It was a
+magnificent sculptor's workroom, the rounded front being entirely of
+glass, with columns at either side: a large bay-window flooded with
+light and at that moment tinged with opal by the mist. More ornate than
+the majority of these workrooms, to which the daubs of plaster, the
+modelling tools, the clay scattered about and the splashes of water
+give something of the appearance of a mason's yard, this one blended a
+little coquetry with its artistic equipment. Green plants in every
+corner, a few good pictures hanging on the bare wall, and here and
+there--on oak pedestals--two or three of the works of Sebastien Ruys,
+whose very last work, not exhibited until after his death, was covered
+with black gauze.
+
+The mistress of the establishment, Felicia Ruys, daughter of the famous
+sculptor, and already known to fame herself by two masterpieces, the
+bust of her father and that of the Duc de Mora, stood in the centre of
+the studio, at work modelling a figure. Dressed in a blue cloth
+riding-habit with long folds, a scarf of China silk twisted around her
+neck like a boy's cravat, her fine, black hair, gathered carelessly on
+top of her little Grecian head, Felicia was working with extreme zeal,
+which added to her beauty by the condensation, so to speak, the
+concentration of all her features in a scrutinizing and satisfied
+expression. But it changed abruptly on the doctor's arrival.
+
+"Ah! it's you, is it?" she said brusquely, as if waking from a dream.
+"Did you ring? I did not hear."
+
+And in the ennui, the weariness that suddenly overspread that lovely
+face, only the eyes retained their expression and brilliancy, eyes in
+which the factitious gleam of the Jenkins Pearls was heightened by a
+natural fierceness.
+
+Oh! how humble and condescending the doctor's voice became, as he
+replied:
+
+"Your work absorbs you completely, does it not, my dear Felicia? Is it
+something new that you're doing? I should say that it is very pretty."
+
+He drew near to the still formless sketch in which a group of two
+animals could be vaguely distinguished, one of them, a greyhound,
+flying over the ground at a truly extraordinary pace.
+
+"The idea came to me last night. I began to work by lamplight. My poor
+Kadour doesn't find it amusing," said the girl, looking with a
+caressing expression of affection at the greyhound, whose paws the
+small servant was trying to separate in order to force him into the
+proper pose.
+
+Jenkins observed with a fatherly air that she did wrong to tire herself
+so, and added, taking her wrist with ecclesiastical precautions:
+
+"Let us see, I am sure that you are feverish."
+
+At the touch of that hand Felicia had a feeling of something very like
+repulsion.
+
+"Let me alone--let me alone--your pearls can do nothing for me. When I
+am not working, I am bored, bored to death, so bored that I could kill
+myself; my ideas are of the color of that thick, brackish water flowing
+yonder. To be just at the beginning of life and to be disgusted with
+it! It's hard. I am reduced to the point of envying my poor Constance,
+who passes her days in her chair, never opening her mouth, but smiling
+all by herself at her memories of the past. I have not even that, not
+even any pleasant memories to recall. I have nothing but work--work!"
+
+[Illustration: _In Felicia's Studio_]
+
+As she spoke, she worked fiercely, sometimes with the tool, sometimes
+with her fingers, which she wiped from time to time on a little sponge
+kept on the wooden frame on which the group stood; so that her
+complaints, her lamentations, inexplicable in a mouth of twenty years
+which had in repose the purity of a Grecian smile, seemed to be uttered
+at random, and addressed to no one in particular. And yet Jenkins
+seemed anxious and disturbed, notwithstanding the apparent interest he
+displayed in the artist's work, or rather in the artist herself, in the
+queenly grace of that mere girl, whose style of beauty seemed to have
+predestined her to the study of the plastic arts.
+
+Annoyed by that admiring glance, which she felt like a weight, Felicia
+resumed:
+
+"By the way, do you know that I saw your Nabob? He was pointed out to
+me at the Opera, Friday."
+
+"Were you at the Opera, Friday?"
+
+"Yes. The duke sent me his box."
+
+Jenkins changed color.
+
+"I persuaded Constance to go with me. It was the first time in twenty
+years, since her farewell performance, that she had entered the Opera.
+It made a great impression on her. During the ballet especially, she
+trembled, she beamed, all her former triumphs sparkled in her eyes. How
+fortunate one is to have such emotions. A perfect type of his class,
+that Nabob. You must bring him to see me. It would amuse me to do his
+head."
+
+"What! why he is frightful! You can't have had a good look at him."
+
+"Indeed I did, on the contrary. He was opposite us. That white
+Ethiopian visage would be superb in marble. And not commonplace, at all
+events. Moreover, if he's so ugly as all that, you won't be so unhappy
+as you were last year when I was doing Mora's bust. What a wicked face
+you had at that time, Jenkins!"
+
+"Not for ten years of life," muttered Jenkins in a threatening voice,
+"would I go through those hours again. But it amuses you to see people
+suffer."
+
+"You know very well that nothing amuses me," she said, shrugging her
+shoulders with supreme impertinence.
+
+Then, without looking at him, without another word, she plunged into
+one of those periods of intense activity by means of which true artists
+escape from themselves and all their surroundings.
+
+Jenkins took a few hurried steps, deeply moved, his lip swollen with
+avowals that dared not come forth, and began two or three sentences
+that met with no reply; at last, feeling that he was dismissed, he took
+his hat and walked toward the door.
+
+"It's understood then, is it? I am to bring him here?"
+
+"Who, pray?"
+
+"Why, the Nabob. Only a moment ago you said yourself--"
+
+"Oh! yes," said the strange creature, whose caprices were not of long
+duration, "bring him if you choose; I don't care particularly about
+it."
+
+And her musical, listless voice, in which something seemed to have
+broken, the utter indifference of her whole bearing showed that it was
+true, that she cared for nothing on earth.
+
+Jenkins went away in sore perplexity, with clouded brow. But as soon as
+he had passed the door he resumed his smiling, cordial manner, being
+one of those men who wear a mask on the street. The mist, still visible
+in the neighborhood of the Seine, was reduced to a few floating shreds,
+which gave an air of vapory unsubstantiality to the houses on the quay,
+to the steam-boats of which only the paddle-wheels could be seen, and
+to the distant horizon, where the dome of the Invalides hovered like a
+gilded balloon, whose netting shed rays of light. The increasing
+warmth, the activity in the quarter indicated that noon was not far
+away and that it would soon be announced by the ringing of all the
+bells.
+
+Before calling upon the Nabob, however, Jenkins had another call to
+make. But it seemed to be a great nuisance to him. However, as he had
+promised! So he said, with sudden decision, as he jumped into the
+carriage:
+
+"68 Rue Saint-Ferdinand, aux Ternes."
+
+Joe, the coachman, was scandalized and made his master repeat the
+address; even the horse showed some little hesitation, as if the
+valuable beast and the spotless new livery were disgusted at having to
+visit a faubourg so far away, outside the restricted but brilliant
+circle in which their master's patients were grouped together. They
+arrived, however, without hindrance, at the end of an unfinished
+provincial street, and at the last of its houses, a five-story
+building, which the street seemed to have sent out to reconnoitre and
+ascertain if it could safely continue in that direction, isolated as it
+was between desolate tracts of land awaiting prospective buildings or
+filled with the materials of demolished structures, with blocks of
+stone, old blinds with no rooms to shelter, boards with hanging hinges,
+a vast boneyard of a whole demolished quarter.
+
+Innumerable signs swayed in the wind over the door, which was adorned
+with a large case of photographs, white with dust, before which Jenkins
+paused for a moment. Had the illustrious physician come so far to have
+his picture taken? One might have thought so from the interest which
+detained him in front of that case, containing fifteen or twenty
+photographs representing the same family in different groups and
+attitudes and with different expressions: an old gentleman with his
+chin supported by a high white stock, and a leather satchel under his
+arm, surrounded by a bevy of maidens with their hair arranged in braids
+or in curls. Sometimes the old gentleman had sat with only two of his
+daughters; or perhaps one of those pretty, graceful figures appeared
+alone, her elbow resting on a truncated column, her head bending over a
+book, in a natural and unstudied pose. But it was always the same
+motive with variations, and there was no other male figure in the case
+but the old gentleman in the white cravat, and no other female figures
+than those of his numerous daughters.
+
+"Studios on the fifth floor," said a sign over the case. Jenkins
+sighed, measured with his eye the distance from the ground to the
+little balcony up among the clouds; then he made up his mind to enter.
+In the hall he passed a white cravat and a majestic leather satchel,
+evidently the old gentleman of the showcase. Upon being questioned, he
+replied that M. Maranne did in fact live on the fifth floor. "But," he
+added with an engaging smile, "the floors are not high." With that
+encouragement the Irishman started up an entirely new and narrow
+staircase, with landings no larger than a stair, a single door on each
+floor and windows which afforded glimpses of a melancholy paved
+courtyard and other stairways, all empty: one of those horrible modern
+houses, built by the dozen by contractors without a son, their greatest
+disadvantage consisting in the thinness of the partitions, which forces
+all the lodgers to live together as in a Fourierite community. For the
+moment that disadvantage was not of serious consequence, only the
+fourth and fifth floors being occupied, as if the tenants had fallen
+from the sky.
+
+On the fourth, behind a door bearing a copper plate with the words: M.
+JOYEUSE, _Expert in Handwriting_, the doctor heard the sound of fresh,
+young laughter and conversation and active footsteps, which accompanied
+him to the door of the photographic establishment above.
+
+These little industries, perching in out-of-the-way corners, and
+seeming to have no communication with the outer world, are one of the
+surprises of Paris. We wonder how people live who take to them for a
+living. What scrupulous providence, for instance, could send customers
+to a photographer on a fifth floor among waste lands, at the far end of
+Rue Ferdinand, or documents for examination to the expert on the floor
+below. Jenkins, as he made that reflection, smiled a pitying smile,
+then entered without ceremony as he was invited to do by this
+inscription: "Walk in without knocking." Alas! the permission was not
+abused.--A tall youth in spectacles, who was writing at a small table,
+his legs wrapped in a traveling shawl, rose hurriedly to greet the
+visitor, whom his short-sightedness prevented him from recognizing.
+
+"Good-morning, Andre," said the doctor, extending his hand cordially.
+
+"Monsieur Jenkins!"
+
+"I am a good fellow as always, you see. Your conduct to us, your
+persistence in living apart from your relatives, commended to my
+dignity the utmost reserve in dealing with you; but your mother wept.
+And here I am."
+
+As he was speaking, he glanced about the poor little studio, where the
+bare walls, the scanty furniture the brand-new photographic apparatus,
+the little fireplace _a la prussienne_, also new, which had never seen
+a fire, were disastrously apparent in the bright light that fell from
+the glass roof. The drawn features and straggling beard of the young
+man, whose very light eyes, high, narrow forehead, and long fair hair
+thrown back in disorder gave him the appearance of a visionary, all
+were accentuated in the uncompromising light; and so was the dogged
+will expressed in that limpid glance which met Jenkins' eye coldly, and
+offered in anticipation an unconquerable opposition to all his
+arguments, all his protestations.
+
+But the excellent Jenkins pretended not to notice it.
+
+"You know how it is, my dear Andre. From the day that I married your
+mother, I have looked upon you as my son. I expected to leave you my
+office, my practice, to place your foot in a golden stirrup, and I was
+overjoyed to see you follow a career devoted to the welfare of mankind.
+Suddenly, without a word of explanation, without a thought for the
+effect such a rupture might produce in the eyes of the world, you cut
+loose from us, you dropped your studies and renounced your future
+prospects, to embark in some degrading mode of life, to adopt an absurd
+trade, the refuge and the pretext of all those who are shut out from
+the society to which they belong."
+
+"I am working at this trade for a living. It's a means of earning my
+bread while I wait."
+
+"Wait for what?--literary renown?"
+
+He glanced contemptuously at the papers scattered over the table.
+
+"But all this does not touch the question; this is what I came here to
+say to you: an opportunity is offered you, a door thrown wide open to
+the future. The Work of Bethlehem is founded. The noblest of my
+humanitarian dreams has taken shape. We have bought a magnificent villa
+at Nanterre in which to install our first branch. The superintendence,
+the management of that establishment is what it has occurred to me to
+offer to you, as to another myself. A princely house to live in, the
+salary of a major-general, and the satisfaction of rendering a service
+to the great human family. Say the word and I will take you to see the
+Nabob, the noble-hearted man who pays the expenses of our undertaking.
+Do you accept?"
+
+"No," said the author, so abruptly that Jenkins was disconcerted.
+
+"That's it. I expected a refusal when I came here, but I came none the
+less. I took for my motto, 'Do what is right, without hope.' And I am
+faithful to my motto. So, it's understood, is it--that you prefer a
+life dependent on chance, without prospects and without dignity, to the
+honorable, dignified, useful life that I offer you?"
+
+Andre made no reply; but his silence spoke for him.
+
+"Beware--you know to what this decision of yours will lead, a final
+estrangement; but you have always desired it. I need not tell you,"
+continued Jenkins, "that to break with me is to break with your mother
+also. She and I are one."
+
+The young man turned pale, hesitated a second, then said with an
+effort:
+
+"If my mother cares to come and see me here, I shall certainly be very
+happy--but my determination to remain apart from you, to have nothing
+in common with you, is irrevocable."
+
+"At least, you will tell me why?"
+
+He made a gesture signifying, "no," that he would not tell him.
+
+For the moment the Irishman was really angry. His whole face assumed a
+savage, cunning expression which would have greatly surprised those who
+knew only the good-humored, open-hearted Jenkins; but he was careful to
+go no farther in the direction of an explanation, which he dreaded
+perhaps no less than he desired it.
+
+"Adieu," he said from the doorway, half turning his head. "Never apply
+to us."
+
+"Never," replied his stepson in a firm voice.
+
+This time, when the doctor said to Joe: "Place Vendome," the horse, as
+if he understood that they were going to call on the Nabob, proudly
+shook his shining curb, and the coupe drove away at full speed,
+transforming the hub of each of its wheels into a gleaming sun. "To
+come such a distance to meet with such a reception! One of the
+celebrities of the day treated so by that Bohemian! This comes of
+trying to do good!" Jenkins vented his wrath in a long monologue in
+that vein; then suddenly exclaimed with a shrug: "Oh! pshaw!" And such
+traces of care as remained on his brow soon vanished on the pavement of
+Place Vendome. On all sides the clocks were striking twelve in the
+sunshine. Emerging from her curtain of mist, fashionable Paris, awake
+and on her feet, was beginning her day of giddy pleasure. The
+shop-windows on Rue de la Paix shone resplendent. The mansions on the
+square seemed to be drawn up proudly in line for the afternoon
+receptions; and, at the end of Rue Castiglione with its white arcades,
+the Tuileries, in the glorious sunlight of winter, marshalled its
+shivering statues, pink with cold, among the leafless quincunxes.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+A BREAKFAST ON PLACE VENDOME.
+
+
+There were hardly more than a score of persons that morning in the
+Nabob's dining-room, a dining-room finished in carved oak, supplied
+only the day before from the establishment of some great
+house-furnisher, who furnished at the same time the four salons which
+could be seen, one beyond the other, through an open door: the
+hangings, the objects of art, the chandeliers, even the plate displayed
+on the sideboards, even the servants who served the breakfast. It was
+the perfect type of the establishment improvised, immediately upon
+alighting from the railway train, by a parvenu of colossal wealth, in
+great haste to enjoy himself. Although there was no sign of a woman's
+dress about the table, no bit of light and airy material to enliven the
+scene, it was by no means monotonous, thanks to the incongruity, the
+nondescript character of the guests, gathered together from all ranks
+of society, specimens of mankind culled from every race in France, in
+Europe, in the whole world, from top to bottom of the social scale.
+First of all, the master of the house, a sort of giant--sunburned,
+swarthy, with his head between his shoulders--to whom his short nose,
+lost in the puffiness of the face, his woolly hair massed like an
+Astrakhan cap over a low, headstrong forehead, his bristling eyebrows
+with eyes like a wild cat's in ambush, gave the ferocious aspect of a
+Kalmuk, of a savage on the frontiers of civilization, who lived by war
+and marauding. Luckily the lower part of the face, the thick, double
+lips which parted readily in a fascinating, good-humored smile,
+tempered with a sort of Saint Vincent de Paul expression that uncouth
+ugliness, that original countenance, so original that it forgot to be
+commonplace. But his inferior extraction betrayed itself in another
+direction by his voice, the voice of a Rhone boatman, hoarse and
+indistinct, in which the southern accent became rather coarse than
+harsh, and by two broad, short hands, with hairy fingers, square at the
+ends and with almost no nails, which, as they rested on the white table
+cloth, spoke of their past with embarrassing eloquence. Opposite the
+host, on the other side of the table, at which he was a regular guest,
+was the Marquis de Monpavon, but a Monpavon who in no wise resembled
+the mottled spectre whom we saw in the last chapter; a man of superb
+physique, in the prime of life, with a long, majestic nose, the haughty
+bearing of a great nobleman, displaying a vast breastplate of spotless
+linen, which cracked under the continuous efforts of the chest to bend
+forward, and swelled out every time with a noise like that made by a
+turkey gobbling, or a peacock spreading his tail. His name Monpavon was
+well suited to him.[1]
+
+      [1] Paon_, peacock--from Latin pavo, pavonis_.
+
+Belonging to a great family, with wealthy kindred, the Duc de Mora's
+friendship had procured for him a receiver-generalship of the first
+class. Unfortunately his health had not permitted him to retain that
+fine berth--well-informed persons said that his health had nothing to
+do with it--and he had been living in Paris for a year past, waiting
+until he should be cured, he said, to return to his post. The same
+persons asserted that he would never find it again, and that, were it
+not for the patronage of certain exalted personages--Be that as it may,
+he was the important guest at the breakfast; one could see that by the
+way in which the servants waited upon him, by the way in which the
+Nabob consulted him, calling him "Monsieur le Marquis," as they do at
+the Comedie Francaise, less from humility than from pride because of
+the honor that was reflected on himself. Filled with disdain for his
+fellow-guests, Monsieur le Marquis talked little, but with a very lofty
+manner, as if he were obliged to stoop to those persons whom he honored
+with his conversation. From time to time he tossed at the Nabob, across
+the table, sentences that were enigmatical to everybody.
+
+"I saw the duke yesterday. He talked a good deal about you in
+connection with that matter of--you know, What's-his-name,
+Thingumbob--Who is the man?"
+
+"Really! He talked about me?" And the honest Nabob, swelling with
+pride, would look about him, nodding his head in a most laughable way,
+or would assume the meditative air of a pious woman when she hears the
+name of Our Lord.
+
+"His Excellency would be pleased to have you go into
+the--ps--ps--ps--the thing."
+
+"Did he tell you so?"
+
+"Ask the governor--he heard it as well as I."
+
+The person referred to as the governor, Paganetti by name, was an
+energetic, gesticulatory little man, tiresome to watch, his face
+assumed so many different expressions in a minute. He was manager of
+the _Caisse Territoriale_ of Corsica, a vast financial enterprise, and
+was present in that house for the first time, brought by Monpavon; he
+also occupied a place of honor. On the Nabob's other side was an old
+man, buttoned to the chin in a frock-coat without lapels and with a
+standing collar, like an oriental tunic, with a face marred by
+innumerable little gashes, and a white moustache trimmed in military
+fashion. It was Brahim Bey, the most gallant officer of the regency of
+Tunis, _aide-de-camp_ to the former bey, who made Jansoulet's fortune.
+This warrior's glorious exploits were written in wrinkles, in the scars
+of debauchery, on his lower lip which hung down helplessly as if the
+spring were broken, and in his inflamed, red eyes, devoid of lashes.
+His was one of the faces we see in the felon's dock in cases that are
+tried behind closed doors. The other guests had seated themselves
+pell-mell, as they arrived, or beside such acquaintances as they
+chanced to meet, for the house was open to everybody, and covers were
+laid for thirty every morning.
+
+There was the manager of the theatre in which the Nabob was a sleeping
+partner,--Cardailhac, almost as renowned for his wit as for his
+failures, that wonderful carver, who would prepare one of his _bons
+mots_ as he detached the limbs of a partridge, and deposit it with a
+wing in the plate that was handed him. He was a sculptor rather than an
+_improvisateur_, and the new way of serving meats, having them carved
+beforehand in the Russian fashion, had been fatal to him by depriving
+him of all excuse for a preparatory silence. So it was generally said
+that he was failing. He was a thorough Parisian, a dandy to his
+fingers' ends, and as he himself boasted, "not full to bursting with
+superstition," which fact enabled him to give some very piquant details
+concerning the women in his theatrical company to Brahim Bey, who
+listened to him as one turns the pages of an obscene book, and to talk
+theology to his nearest neighbor, a young priest, cure of some little
+Southern village, a thin, gaunt fellow, with a complexion as dark
+as his cassock, with glowing cheek-bones, pointed nose, all the
+characteristics of an ambitious man, who said to Cardailhac, in a very
+loud voice, in a tone of condescension, of priestly authority:
+
+"We are very well satisfied with Monsieur Guizot. He is doing well,
+very well--it's a victory for the Church."
+
+Beside that pontiff with the starched band, old Schwalbach, the famous
+dealer in pictures, displayed his prophet's beard, yellow in spots like
+a dirty fleece, his three mouldy-looking waistcoats and all the
+slovenly, careless attire which people forgave him in the name of art,
+and because he had the good taste to have in his employ, at a time when
+the mania for galleries kept millions of money in circulation, the one
+man who was most expert in negotiating those vainglorious transactions.
+Schwalbach did not talk, contenting himself with staring about through
+his enormous lens-shaped monocle, and smiling in his beard at the
+extraordinary juxtapositions to be observed at that table, which stood
+alone in all the world. For instance Monpavon had very near him--and
+you should have seen how the disdainful curve of his nose was
+accentuated at every glance in his direction--Garrigou the singer, a
+countryman of Jansoulet, distinguished as a ventriloquist, who sang
+_Figaro_ in the patois of the South and had not his like for imitating
+animals. A little farther on, Cabassu, another fellow-countryman, a
+short, thick-set man, with a bull-neck, a biceps worthy of Michel
+Angelo, who resembled equally a Marseillais hair-dresser and the
+Hercules at a country fair, a _masseur_, pedicurist, manicurist and
+something of a dentist, rested both elbows on the table with the
+assurance of a quack whom one receives in the morning and who knows the
+petty weaknesses, the private miseries of the house in which he happens
+to be. M. Bompain completed that procession of subalterns, all
+classified with reference to some one specialty. Bompain, the
+secretary, the steward, the man of confidence, through whose hands all
+the business of the establishment passed; and a single glance at that
+stupidly solemn face, that vague expression, that Turkish fez poised
+awkwardly on that village schoolmaster's head, sufficed to convince one
+what manner of man he was to whom interests like the Nabob's had been
+entrusted.
+
+Lastly, to fill the gaps between the figures we have sketched, Turks of
+every variety! Tunisians, Moors, Egyptians, Levantines; and, mingled
+with that exotic element, a whole multicolored Parisian Bohemia of
+decayed gentlemen, squinting tradesmen, penniless journalists,
+inventors of strange objects, men from the South landed in Paris
+without a sou--all the tempest-tossed vessels to be revictualled, all
+the flocks of birds whirling about in the darkness, that were attracted
+by that great fortune as by the light of a lighthouse. The Nabob
+received that motley crew at his table through kindness of heart,
+generosity, weakness, and entire lack of dignity, combined with
+absolute ignorance, and partly as a result of the same exile's
+melancholy, the same need of expansion that led him to receive, in his
+magnificent palace on the Bardo in Tunis, everybody who landed from
+France, from the petty tradesman and exporter of small wares, to the
+famous pianist on a tour and the consul-general.
+
+Listening to those different voices, those foreign accents, incisive or
+stammering, glancing at those varying types of countenance, some
+uncivilized, passionate, unrefined, others over-civilized, faded, of
+the type that haunts the boulevards, over-ripe as it were, and
+observing the same varieties in the corps of servants, where
+"flunkeys," taken the day before from some office, insolent fellows,
+with the heads of dentists or bath-attendants, bustled about among the
+motionless Ethiopians, who shone like black marble torch-holders,--it
+was impossible to say exactly where you were; at all events, you would
+never have believed that you were on Place Vendome, at the very heart
+and centre of the life of our modern Paris. On the table there was a
+similar outlandish collection of foreign dishes, sauces with saffron or
+anchovies, elaborately spiced Turkish delicacies, chickens with fried
+almonds; all this, taken in conjunction with the commonplace
+decorations of the room, the gilded wainscotings and the shrill jangle
+of the new bells, gave one the impression of a table-d'hote in some
+great hotel in Smyrna or Calcutta, or of the gorgeous saloon of a
+trans-Atlantic liner, the _Pereire_ or the _Sinai_.
+
+It would seem that such a variety of guests--I had almost said of
+passengers--would make the repast animated and noisy. Far from it. They
+all ate nervously, in silence, watching one another out of the corner
+of the eye; and even the most worldly, those who seemed most at ease,
+had in their eyes the wandering, distressed expression indicating a
+persistent thought, a feverish anxiety which caused them to speak
+without answering, to listen without understanding a word of what was
+said.
+
+Suddenly the door of the dining-room was thrown open.
+
+"Ah! there's Jenkins," exclaimed the Nabob, joyfully. "Hail, doctor,
+hail! How are you, my boy?"
+
+A circular smile, a vigorous handshake for the host, and Jenkins took
+his seat opposite him, beside Monpavon and in front of a plate which a
+servant brought in hot haste, exactly as at a table-d'hote. Amid those
+preoccupied, feverish faces, that one presented a striking contrast
+with its good-humor, its expansive smile, and the loquacious,
+flattering affability which makes the Irish to a certain extent the
+Gascons of Great Britain. And what a robust appetite! with what energy,
+what liberty of conscience, he managed his double row of white teeth,
+talking all the while.
+
+"Well, Jansoulet, did you read it?"
+
+"Read what, pray?"
+
+"What! don't you know? Haven't you read what the _Messager_ said
+about you this morning?"
+
+Beneath the thick tan on his cheeks the Nabob blushed like a child, and
+his eyes sparkled with delight as he replied:
+
+"Do you mean it? The _Messager_ said something about me?"
+
+"Two whole columns. How is it that Moessard didn't show it to you?"
+
+"Oh!" said Moessard modestly, "it wasn't worth the trouble."
+
+He was a journalist in a small way, fair-haired and spruce, a pretty
+fellow enough, but with a face marked by the faded look peculiar to
+waiters at all-night restaurants, actors and prostitutes, made up of
+conventional grimaces and the sallow reflection of the gas. He was
+reputed to be the plighted lover of an exiled queen of very easy
+virtue. That rumor was whispered about wherever he went, and gave him
+an envied and most contemptible prominence in his circle.
+
+Jansoulet insisted upon reading the article, being impatient to hear
+what was said of him. Unfortunately Jenkins had left his copy at the
+duke's.
+
+"Let some one go at once and get me a _Messager_," said the Nabob
+to the servant behind his chair.
+
+Moessard interposed:
+
+"That isn't necessary; I must have the thing about me."
+
+And with the free and easy manner of the tap-room habitue, of the
+reporter who scrawls his notes as he sits in front of his mug of beer,
+the journalist produced a pocketbook stuffed with memoranda, stamped
+papers, newspaper clippings, notes on glossy paper with crests--which
+he scattered over the table, pushing his plate away, to look for the
+proof of his article.
+
+"Here it is." He passed it to Jansoulet; but Jenkins cried out:
+
+"No, no, read it aloud."
+
+As the whole party echoed the demand, Moessard took back his proof and
+began to read aloud the WORK OF BETHLEHEM AND M. BERNARD JANSOULET, a
+long deliverance in favor of artificial nursing, written from Jenkins'
+notes, which were recognizable by certain grandiloquent phrases of the
+sort that the Irishman affected: "the long martyrology of infancy--the
+venality of the breast--the goat, the beneficent nurse,"--and
+concluding, after a turgid description of the magnificent establishment
+at Nanterre, with a eulogy of Jenkins and the glorification of
+Jansoulet: "O Bernard Jansoulet, benefactor of infancy!"
+
+You should have seen the annoyed, scandalized faces of the guests. What
+a schemer that Moessard was! What impudent sycophancy! And the same
+envious, disdainful smile distorted every mouth. The devil of it was
+that they were forced to applaud, to appear enchanted, as their host's
+sense of smell was not surfeited by the odor of incense, and as he took
+everything very seriously, both the article and the applause that it
+called forth. His broad face beamed during the reading. Many and many a
+time, far away in Africa, he had dreamed of being thus belauded in the
+Parisian papers, of becoming a person of some consequence in that
+society, the first of all societies, upon which the whole world has its
+eyes fixed as upon a beacon-light. Now that dream was fulfilled. He
+gazed at all those men around his table, at that sumptuous dessert, at
+that wainscoted dining-room, certainly as high as the church in his
+native village; he listened to the dull roar of Paris, rumbling and
+tramping beneath his windows, with the unspoken thought that he was
+about to become a great wheel in that ever-active, complicated
+mechanism. And thereupon, while he sat, enjoying the sense of
+well-being that follows a substantial meal, between the lines of that
+triumphant apology he evoked, by way of contrast, the panorama of his
+own life, his wretched childhood, his haphazard youth, no less
+distressing to recall, the days without food, the nights without a
+place to lay his head. And suddenly, when the reading was at an end, in
+the midst of a veritable overflow of joy, of one of those outbursts of
+Southern effusiveness which compel one to think aloud, he cried,
+protruding his thick lips toward the guests in his genial smile:
+
+"Ah! my friends, my dear friends, if you knew how happy I am, how proud
+I feel!"
+
+It was barely six weeks since he landed in France. With the exception
+of two or three compatriots, he had known these men whom he called his
+friends hardly more than a day, and only from having loaned them money.
+Wherefore that sudden expansiveness seemed decidedly strange; but
+Jansoulet, too deeply moved to notice anything, continued:
+
+"After what I have just heard, when I see myself here in this great
+city of Paris, surrounded by all the illustrious names and
+distinguished minds within its limits, and then recall my father's
+peddler's stall! For I was born in a peddler's stall. My father sold
+old iron at a street corner in Bourg-Saint-Andeol! It was as much as
+ever if we had bread to eat every day, and stew every Sunday. Ask
+Cabassu. He knew me in those days. He can tell you if I am lying. Oh!
+yes, I have known what poverty is." He raised his head in an outburst
+of pride, breathing in the odor of truffles with which the heavy
+atmosphere was impregnated. "I have known poverty, genuine poverty too,
+and for a long time. I have been cold, I have been hungry, and horribly
+hungry, you know, the kind of hunger that makes you stupid, that twists
+your stomach, makes your head go round, and prevents you from seeing,
+just as if some one had dug out the inside of your eyes with an
+oyster-knife. I have passed whole days in bed for lack of a coat to
+wear; lucky when I had a bed, which I sometimes hadn't. I have tried to
+earn my bread at every trade; and the bread cost me so much suffering,
+it was so hard and tough that I still have the bitter, mouldy taste of
+it in my mouth. And that's the way it was till I was thirty years old.
+Yes, my friends, at thirty--and I'm not fifty yet--I was still a
+beggar, without a sou, with no future, with my heart full of remorse
+for my poor mother who was dying of hunger in her hovel down in the
+provinces, and to whom I could give nothing."
+
+The faces of the people who surrounded that strange host as he told the
+story of his evil days were a curious spectacle. Some seemed disgusted,
+especially Monpavon. That display of old rags seemed to him in
+execrable taste, and to denote utter lack of breeding. Cardailhac, that
+sceptic and man of refined taste, a foe to all emotional scenes, sat
+with staring eyes and as if hypnotized, cutting a piece of fruit with
+the end of his fork into strips as thin as cigarette papers. The
+Governor, on the contrary, went through a pantomime expressive of
+perfunctory admiration, with exclamations of horror and compassion;
+while, in striking contrast to him, and not far away, Brahim Bey, the
+thunderbolt of war, in whom the reading of the article, followed by
+discussion after a substantial repast, had induced a refreshing nap,
+was sleeping soundly, with his mouth like a round O in his white
+moustache, and with the blood congested in his face as a result of the
+creeping up of his gorget. But the general expression was indifference
+and ennui. What interest had they, I ask you, in Jansoulet's childhood
+at Bourg-Saint-Andeol, in what he had suffered, and how he had been
+driven from pillar to post? They had not come there for such stuff as
+that. So it was that expressions of feigned interest, eyes that counted
+the eggs in the ceiling or the crumbs of bread on the table-cloth, lips
+tightly compressed to restrain a yawn, betrayed the general impatience
+caused by that untimely narrative. But he did not grow weary. He took
+pleasure in the recital of his past suffering, as the sailor in a safe
+haven delights in recalling his voyages in distant seas, and the
+dangers, and the terrible shipwrecks. Next came the tale of his good
+luck, the extraordinary accident that suddenly started him on the road
+to fortune. "I was wandering about the harbor of Marseille, with a
+comrade as out-at-elbows as myself, who also made his fortune in the
+Bey's service, and, after being my chum, my partner, became my
+bitterest enemy. I can safely tell you his name, _pardi_! He is well
+enough known, Hemerlingue. Yes, messieurs, the head of the great
+banking-house of Hemerlingue and Son hadn't at that time the money to
+buy two sous' worth of crabs on the quay. Intoxicated by the air of
+travel that you breathe in those parts, it occurred to us to go and
+seek a living in some sunny country, as the foggy countries were so
+cruel to us. But where should we go? We did what sailors sometimes do
+to decide what den they shall squander their wages in. They stick a bit
+of paper on the rim of a hat. Then they twirl the hat on a cane, and
+when it stops, they go in the direction in which the paper points. For
+us the paper needle pointed to Tunis. A week later I landed at Tunis
+with half a louis in my pocket, and I return to-day with twenty-five
+millions."
+
+There was a sort of electric shock around the table, a gleam in every
+eye, even in those of the servants. Cardailhac exclaimed: "Mazette!"
+Monpavon's nose subsided.
+
+"Yes, my children, twenty-five millions in available funds, to say
+nothing of all that I've left in Tunis, my two palaces on the Bardo, my
+vessels in the harbor of La Goulette, my diamonds and my jewels, which
+are certainly worth more than twice that. And you know," he added, with
+his genial smile, in his hoarse, unmusical voice, "when it's all gone,
+there will still be some left."
+
+The whole table rose, electrified.
+
+"Bravo! Ah! bravo!"
+
+"Superb."
+
+"Very _chic_--very _chic_."
+
+"Well said."
+
+"A man like that ought to be in the Chamber."
+
+"He shall be, _per Bacco!_ my word for it," exclaimed the Governor, in
+a voice of thunder; and, carried away by admiration, not knowing how to
+manifest his enthusiasm, he seized the Nabob's great hairy hand and
+impulsively put it to his lips. Everybody was standing; they did not
+resume their seats.
+
+Jansoulet, radiant with pleasure, had also risen.
+
+"Let us have our coffee," he said, throwing down his napkin.
+
+Immediately the party circulated noisily through the salons, enormous
+rooms, in which the light, the decoration, the magnificence consisted
+of gold alone. It fell from the ceiling in blinding rays, oozed from
+the walls in fillets, window-sashes and frames of all sorts. One
+retained a little of it on one's hands after moving a chair or opening
+a window; and even the hangings, having been dipped in that Pactolus,
+preserved upon their stiff folds the rigidity and sheen of metal. But
+there was nothing individual, homelike, dainty. It was the monotonous
+splendor of the furnished apartment. And this impression of a flying
+camp, of a temporary establishment, was heightened by the idea of
+travelling that hovered about that fortune drawn from distant sources,
+like a cloud of uncertainty or a threat.
+
+The coffee was served in the Oriental fashion, with all the grounds, in
+small filigreed silver cups, and the guests stood around in groups,
+drinking hastily, burning their tongues, watching one another
+furtively, and keeping especially close watch on the Nabob, in order to
+grasp the favorable moment to jump upon him, drag him into a corner of
+one of those huge rooms, and arrange their loan at last. For it was
+that for which they had been waiting for two hours, that was the object
+of their visit, and the fixed idea that gave them that distraught,
+falsely attentive air, during the breakfast. But now there was no more
+embarrassment, no more grimacing. Everybody in that strange company
+knew that, in the Nabob's crowded existence, the coffee hour alone was
+left free for confidential audiences, and as every one wished to take
+advantage of it, as they had all come for the purpose of tearing a
+handful of wool from that golden fleece which offered itself to them so
+good-naturedly, they no longer talked or listened, they attended
+strictly to business.
+
+Honest Jenkins is the one who begins. He has led his friend Jansoulet
+into a window-recess and is submitting to him the drawings for the
+house at Nanterre. A pretty outlay, by heaven! One hundred and fifty
+thousand francs for the property, and, in addition, the very
+considerable expense of installation, the staff, the bedding, the goats
+for nurses, the manager's carriage, the omnibuses to meet the children
+at every train. A great deal of money--But how comfortable the dear
+little creatures will be there! what a service to Paris, to mankind!
+The Government cannot fail to reward with a bit of red ribbon such
+unselfish philanthropy. "The Cross, the 15th of August." With those
+magic words Jenkins can obtain whatever he wants. With his hoarse,
+cheerful voice, which seems to be hailing a vessel in the fog, the
+Nabob calls, "Bompain." The man in the fez, tearing himself away from
+the cellaret, crosses the salon majestically, whispers, goes away and
+returns with an inkstand and a check-book, the leaves of which come out
+and fly away of themselves. What a fine thing is wealth! To sign a
+check for two hundred thousand francs on his knee costs Jansoulet no
+more than to take a louis from his pocket.
+
+The others, with their noses in their cups and rage in their hearts,
+watch this little scene from afar. And when Jenkins takes his leave,
+bright and smiling, and waving his hand to the different groups,
+Monpavon seizes the Governor: "Now, it's our turn." And they pounce
+together upon the Nabob, lead him to a divan, force him to sit down,
+and squeeze him between them with a savage little laugh that seems to
+mean: "What are we going to do to him?" Extract money from him, as much
+of it as possible. It must be had in order to float the _Caisse
+Territorial_, which has been aground for years, buried in sand to her
+masthead. A magnificent operation, this of floating her again, if we
+are to believe these two gentlemen; for the buried craft is full of
+ingots, of valuable merchandise, of the thousand varied treasures of a
+new country of which every one is talking and of which no one knows
+anything. The aim of Paganetti of Porto-Vecchio in founding that
+unrivalled establishment was to monopolize the exploitation of Corsica:
+iron mines, sulphur mines, copper mines, marble quarries, chalybeate
+and sulphur springs, vast forests of lignum vitae and oak; and to
+facilitate that exploitation by building a network of railroads
+throughout the island, and establishing a line of steamboats. Such was
+the gigantic enterprise to which he has harnessed himself. He has sunk
+a large amount of money in it, and the new-comer, the laborer of the
+eleventh hour, will reap the whole profit.
+
+While the Corsican with his Italian accent, his frantic gestures,
+enumerates the _splendores_ of the affair, Monpavon, dignified and
+haughty, nods his head with an air of conviction, and from time to
+time, when he deems the moment propitious, tosses into the conversation
+the name of the Duc de Mora, which always produces its effect on the
+Nabob.
+
+"Well, what is it that you need?"
+
+"Millions," says Monpavon superbly, in the tone of a man who is not
+embarrassed by any lack of persons to whom to apply. "Yes, millions.
+But it's a magnificent opening. And, as His Excellency said, it would
+afford a capitalist an opportunity to attain a lofty position, even a
+political position. Just consider a moment! in that penniless country.
+One might become a member of the General Council, a Deputy--" The Nabob
+starts. And little Paganetti, feeling the bait tremble on his hook,
+continues: "Yes, a Deputy; you shall be one when I choose. At a word
+from me all Corsica is at your service." Thereupon he launches out on a
+bewildering extemporization, counting up the votes at his disposal, the
+cantons which will rise at his summons. "You bring me your funds--I
+give you a whole people." The affair is carried by storm.
+
+"Bompain! Bompain!" calls the Nabob in his enthusiasm. He has but one
+fear, that the thing will escape him; and to bind Paganetti, who does
+not conceal his need of money, he hastens to pour a first instalment
+into the _Caisse Territoriale_. Second appearance of the man in the red
+cap with the check-book, which he holds solemnly against his breast,
+like a choir-boy carrying the Gospel. Second affixture of Jansoulet's
+signature to a check, which the Governor stows away with a negligent
+air, and which effects a sudden transformation of his whole person.
+Paganetti, but now so humble and unobtrusive, walks away with the
+self-assurance of a man held in equilibrium by four hundred thousand
+francs, while Monpavon, carrying his head even higher than usual,
+follows close upon his heels and watches over him with a more than
+paternal solicitude.
+
+"There's a good stroke of business well done," says the Nabob to
+himself, "and I'll go and drink my coffee." But ten borrowers are lying
+in wait for him. The quickest, the most adroit, is Cardailhac, the
+manager, who hooks him and carries him off into an empty salon. "Let us
+talk a bit, my good friend. I must set before you the condition of our
+theatre." A very complicated condition, no doubt; for here comes
+Monsieur Bompain again, and more sky-blue leaves fly away from the
+check-book. Now, whose turn is it? The journalist Moessard comes to get
+his pay for the article in the _Messager_; the Nabob will learn what it
+costs to be called "the benefactor of infancy" in the morning papers.
+The provincial cure asks for funds to rebuild his church, and takes
+his check by assault with the brutality of a Peter the Hermit. And now
+old Schwalbach approaches, with his nose in his beard, winking
+mysteriously. "Sh! he has vound ein bearl," for monsieur's gallery, an
+Hobbema from the Duc de Mora's collection. But several people have
+their eye on it. It will be difficult to obtain. "I must have it at any
+price," says the Nabob, allured by the name of Mora. "You understand,
+Schwalbach, I must have that _Nobbema_. Twenty thousand francs for you
+if you hit it off."
+
+"I vill do mein best, Monsieur Jansoulet."
+
+And the old knave, as he turns away, calculates that the Nabob's twenty
+thousand, added to the ten thousand the duke has promised him if he
+gets rid of his picture, will make a very pretty little profit for him.
+
+While these fortunate ones succeed one another, others prowl about
+frantic with impatience, biting their nails to the quick; for one and
+all have come with the same object. From honest Jenkins, who headed the
+procession, down to Cabassu, the _masseur_, who closes it, one and
+all lead the Nabob aside. But however far away they take him in that
+long file of salons, there is always some indiscreet mirror to reflect
+the figure of the master of the house, and the pantomime of his broad
+back. That back is so eloquent! At times it straightens up indignantly.
+"Oh! no, that is too much!" Or else it collapses with comical
+resignation. "Very well, if you will have it so." And Bompain's fez
+always lurking in some corner of the landscape.
+
+When these have finished, others arrive; they are the small fish that
+follow in the wake of the great sharks in the savage hunting in the
+sea. There is constant going and coming through those superb white and
+gold salons, a slamming of doors, an unbroken current of insolent
+extortion of the most hackneyed type, attracted from the four corners
+of Paris and the suburbs by that enormous fortune and that incredible
+gullibility.
+
+For these small sums, this incessant doling out of cash, he did not
+have recourse to the checkbook. In one of his salons the Nabob kept a
+commode, an ugly little piece of furniture representing the savings of
+some concierge; it was the first article Jansoulet bought when he was
+in a position to renounce furnished apartments, and he had kept it ever
+since like a gambler's fetish; its three drawers always contained two
+hundred thousand francs in current funds. He resorted to that
+never-failing supply on the days of his great audiences, ostentatiously
+plunging his hands in the gold and silver, stuffing it into his pockets
+to produce it later with the gesture of a cattle-dealer, a certain
+vulgar way of raising the skirts of his coat and sending his hand "down
+to the bottom of the pile." A tremendous inroad must have been made
+upon the little drawers to-day.
+
+                         *        *        *
+
+After so many whispered conferences, requests more or less clearly
+stated, anxious entrances and triumphant exits, the last client
+dismissed, the commode drawers locked, the apartment on Place Vendome
+was left in solitude in the fading light of four o'clock, the close of
+the November days which are prolonged so far beyond that hour by the
+aid of artificial light. The servants removed the coffee cups, the
+_raki_ and the open, half-emptied boxes of cigars. The Nabob, thinking
+that he was alone, drew a long breath of relief: "Ouf! that's all
+over." But no. A figure emerges from a corner already in shadow, and
+approaches with a letter in his hand.
+
+"Another!"
+
+Thereupon the poor man instinctively repeated his eloquent
+horse-dealer's gesture. At that the visitor, also instinctively,
+recoiled so quickly and with such an insulted air that the Nabob
+realized that he was in error and took the trouble to observe the young
+man who stood before him, simply but correctly dressed, with a sallow
+complexion, absolutely no beard, regular features, perhaps a little too
+serious and determined for his years, which fact, with his extremely
+light hair, curling tightly all over his head like a powdered wig, gave
+him the aspect of a young deputy of the Tiers Etat under Louis XVI.,
+the face of a Barnave at twenty. That face, although the Nabob then saw
+it for the first time, was not altogether unfamiliar to him.
+
+"What do you wish, monsieur?"
+
+Taking the letter the young man handed him, he walked to a window to
+read it.
+
+"Ah!--it's from mamma."
+
+He said it with such a joyous inflection, the word "mamma" lighted his
+whole face with such a youthful, attractive smile, that the visitor,
+repelled at first by the parvenu's vulgar appearance, felt in full
+sympathy with him.
+
+The Nabob read in an undertone these few lines written in a coarse,
+incorrect, trembling hand, in striking contrast to the fine laid paper
+with the words "Chateau de Saint-Romans" at the top.
+
+    "MY DEAR SON,--This letter will be handed to you by the oldest of
+    Monsieur de Gery's children, the former justice of the peace at
+    Bourg-Saint-Andeol, who was so kind to us--"
+
+The Nabob interrupted himself to say:
+
+"I ought to have known you, Monsieur de Gery. You look like your
+father. Take a seat, I beg you."
+
+Then he finished running through the letter. His mother made no precise
+request, but, in the name of the services the de Gery family had
+formerly rendered them, she commended Monsieur Paul to him. An orphan,
+with his two young brothers to support, he had been admitted to
+practice as an advocate in the South and was starting for Paris to seek
+his fortune. She implored Jansoulet to assist him, "for he sorely
+needed it, poor fellow." And she signed: "Your mother, who is dying
+for a sight of you, FRANCOISE."
+
+That letter from his mother, whom he had not seen for six years, the
+Southern forms of expression in which he recognized familiar
+intonations, the coarse handwriting which drew for him a beloved face,
+all wrinkled and sunburned and furrowed, but smiling still beneath a
+peasant's cap, made a profound impression upon the Nabob. During the
+six weeks he had been in France, immersed in the eddying whirl of
+Paris, of his installation, he had not once thought of the dear old
+soul; and now he saw her in every line. He stood for a moment gazing at
+the letter, which shook in his fat fingers.
+
+Then, his emotion having subsided, "Monsieur de Gery," he said, "I am
+happy to have the opportunity to repay a little of the kindness your
+family has showered upon mine. This very day, if you agree, I take you
+into my service. You are well educated, you seem intelligent, you can
+be of very great service to me. I have innumerable plans, innumerable
+matters in hand. I have been drawn into a multitude of large industrial
+undertakings. I need some one to assist me, to take my place at need.
+To be sure, I have a secretary, a steward, that excellent Bompain; but
+the poor fellow knows nothing of Paris. You will say that you are fresh
+from the provinces. But that's of no consequence. Well educated as you
+are, a Southerner, open-eyed and adaptable, you will soon get the hang
+of the boulevard. At all events, I'll undertake your education in that
+direction myself. In a few weeks you shall have a foot as thoroughly
+Parisian as mine, I promise you."
+
+Poor man! It was touching to hear him talk about his _Parisian foot_
+and his experience, when he was fated never to be more than a beginner.
+
+"Well, it's a bargain, eh? I take you for my secretary. You shall have
+a fixed salary which we will agree upon directly; and I will give you a
+chance to make your fortune quickly."
+
+And as de Gery, suddenly relieved of all his anxieties as a new-comer,
+a petitioner, a neophyte, did not stir for fear of waking from a dream,
+the Nabob added in a softer tone:
+
+"Now come and sit here by me, and let us talk a little about mamma."
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+MEMOIRS OF A CLERK.--A CASUAL GLANCE AT THE "CAISSE TERRITORIALE."
+
+
+I had just finished my humble morning meal, and, as my custom is, had
+bestowed the balance of my provisions in the safe in the directors'
+room, a magnificent safe with a secret lock, which has served as my
+pantry during the four years, or nearly that, of my employment in the
+_Territoriale_; suddenly the Governor enters the office, red as a
+turkey-cock, his eyes inflamed as if he were fresh from a feast,
+breathing noisily, and says to me in vulgar phrase, with his Italian
+accent:
+
+"There's a horrible smell here, _Moussiou_ Passajon."
+
+There was not a horrible smell, if you please. But--shall I say it?--I
+had sent out for a few onions to put around a bit of knuckle of veal,
+brought down to me by Mademoiselle Seraphine, the cook on the second
+floor, whose accounts I write up every evening. I tried to explain to
+the Governor; but he worked himself into a rage, saying that in his
+opinion there was no sense in poisoning offices in that way, and that
+it wasn't worth while to pay twelve thousand francs a year for a suite
+of rooms with eight windows on the front, in the best part of Boulevard
+Malesherbes, to cook onions in. I don't know what he didn't say to me
+in his effervescent state. For my part, I was naturally vexed to be
+spoken to in that insolent tone. The least one can do is to be polite
+to people whom one neglects to pay, deuce take it! So I retorted that
+it was too bad, really; but, if the _Caisse Territoriale_ would pay
+what they owe me, to wit my arrears of salary for four years, plus
+seven thousand francs advanced by me to the Governor to pay for
+carriages, newspapers, cigars and American drinks on the days the
+council met, I would go and eat like a Christian at the nearest cheap
+alehouse, and should not be reduced to cooking for myself, in the
+directors' room, a wretched stew which I owed to the public compassion
+of cooks. And there you are!
+
+In speaking thus I gave way to an indignant impulse very excusable in
+the eyes of anybody who is acquainted with my position here. However, I
+had said nothing unseemly, but had kept within the limits of language
+suited to my age and education. (I must have stated somewhere in these
+memoirs that I passed more than thirty of my sixty-five years as
+apparitor to the Faculty of Letters at Dijon. Hence my taste for
+reports and memoirs, and those notions of academic style of which
+traces will be found in many passages of this lucubration.) I had, I
+repeat, expressed myself to the Governor with the greatest reserve,
+refraining from employing any of those insulting words with which every
+one here regales him during the day, from our two censors, M. de
+Monpavon, who laughingly calls him _Fleur-de-Mazas_, whenever he comes
+here, and M. de Bois-l'Hery of the Trompettes Club, who is as vulgar in
+his language as a groom, and always says to him by way of adieu: "To
+your wooden bed, flea!" From those two down to our cashier, whom I have
+heard say to him a hundred times, tapping his ledger: "There's enough
+in here to send you to the galleys whenever I choose." And yet, for all
+that, my simple observation produced a most extraordinary effect upon
+him. The circles around his eyes turned bright yellow, and he said,
+trembling with anger, the wicked anger of his country: "Passajon,
+you're a blackguard! One word more and I discharge you." I was struck
+dumb with amazement. Discharge me--me! And what about my four years'
+arrears, and my seven thousand francs of advances! As if he read my
+thoughts as they entered my head, the Governor replied that all the
+accounts were to be settled, including mine. "By the way," he added,
+"just call all the clerks to my office. I have some great news to tell
+them." With that he entered his office and slammed the door behind him.
+
+That devil of a man! No matter how well you may know him, know what a
+liar he is and what an actor, he always finds a way to put you off with
+his palaver. My account! Why, I was so excited that my legs ran away
+with me while I was going about to notify the staff.
+
+Theoretically there are twelve of us at the _Caisse Territoriale_,
+including the Governor and the dandy Moessard, manager of the _Verite
+Financiere_; but really there are less than half that number. In the
+first place, since the _Verite_ ceased to appear--that was two years
+ago--M. Moessard hasn't once set foot inside our doors. It seems that
+he is swimming in honors and wealth, that he has for a dear friend a
+queen, a real queen, who gives him all the money he wants. Oh! what a
+Babylon this Paris is! The others look in occasionally to see if by
+chance there is anything new at the _Caisse_; and, as there never is,
+weeks pass without our seeing them. Four or five faithful ones, poor
+old fellows all, like myself, persist in appearing regularly every
+morning, at the same hour, as a matter of habit, because they have
+nothing else to do, and are at a loss to know what to turn their hand
+to; but they all busy themselves with matters that have no connection
+whatever with the office. One must live, there's no doubt of that! And
+then a man cannot pass his day lounging from chair to chair, from
+window to window, to look out (eight front windows on the boulevard).
+So we try to get such work as we can. For my part, I write for
+Mademoiselle Seraphine and another cook in the house. Then I write
+up my memoirs, which takes no small amount of time. Our receiving
+teller--there's a fellow who hasn't a very laborious task with
+us--makes netting for a house that deals in fishermen's supplies. One
+of our two copyists, who writes a beautiful hand, copies plays for a
+dramatic agency; the other makes little toys worth a sou, which are
+sold by hucksters at the street corners toward New Year's Day, and in
+that way succeeds in keeping himself from starving to death the rest of
+the year. Our cashier is the only one who does no outside work. He
+would think that he had forfeited his honor. He is a very proud man,
+who never complains, and whose only fear is that he may seem to be
+short of linen. Locked into his office, he employs his time from
+morning till night, making shirt-fronts, collars and cuffs out of
+paper. He has attained very great skill, and his linen, always
+dazzlingly white, would deceive any one, were it not that, at the
+slightest movement, when he walks, when he sits down, it cracks as if
+he had a pasteboard box in his stomach. Unluckily all that paper does
+not feed him; and he is so thin, he has such a gaunt look, that one
+wonders what he can live on. Between ourselves, I suspect him of
+sometimes paying a visit to my pantry. That's an easy matter for him;
+for, in his capacity of cashier, he has the "word" that opens the
+secret lock, and I fancy that, when my back is turned, he does a little
+foraging among my supplies.
+
+Surely this is a most extraordinary, incredible banking-house. And yet
+what I am writing is the solemn truth, and Paris is full of financial
+establishments of the same sort as ours. Ah! if I ever publish my
+memoirs. But let me take up the interrupted thread of my narrative.
+
+When we were all assembled in his office, the manager said to us with
+great solemnity:
+
+"Messieurs and dear comrades, the time of our trials is at an end. The
+_Caisse Territoriale_ is entering upon a new phase of its existence."
+
+With that he began to tell us about a superb _combinazione_--that is
+his favorite word, and he says it in such an insinuating tone!--a
+_combinazione_ in which the famous Nabob of whom all the papers are
+talking is to have a part. Thus the _Caisse Territoriale_ would be able
+to discharge its obligation to its loyal servants, to reward those who
+had shown devotion to its service and lop off those who were useless.
+This last for me, I imagine. And finally: "Make up your accounts. They
+will all be settled to-morrow." Unfortunately he has so often soothed
+our feelings with lying words that his discourse produced no effect.
+Formerly those fine promises of his always succeeded. On the
+announcement of a new _combinazione_, we used to caper about and weep
+with joy in the offices, and embrace one another like shipwrecked
+sailors at sight of a sail.
+
+Everyone prepared his account for the next day, as he had told us. But
+the next day, no Governor. The next day but one, still no Governor. He
+had gone on a little journey.
+
+At last, when we were all together, exasperated beyond measure, putting
+out our tongues, crazy for the water that he had held to our mouths,
+the Governor arrived, dropped into a chair, hid his face in his hands,
+and, before we had time to speak to him, exclaimed: "Kill me, kill me!
+I am a miserable impostor. The _combinazione_ has fallen through.
+_Pechero!_ the _combinazione_ has fallen through!" And he cried and
+sobbed, threw himself on his knees, tore out his hair by handfuls and
+rolled on the carpet; he called us all by our nicknames, begged us to
+take his life, spoke of his wife and children, whom he had utterly
+ruined. And not one of us had the courage to complain in the face of
+such despair. What do I say? We ended by sharing it. No, never since
+theatres existed, has there been such an actor. But to-day, it is all
+over, our confidence has departed. When he had gone everybody gave a
+shrug. I must confess, however, that for a moment I was shaken. The
+assurance with which he talked about discharging me, and the name of
+the Nabob, who was so wealthy--
+
+"Do you believe that?" said the cashier. "Why, you'll always be an
+innocent, my poor Passajon. Never you fear! The Nabob's in it just
+about as much as Moessard's queen was."
+
+And he went back to his shirt-fronts.
+
+His last remark referred back to the time when Moessard was paying
+court to his queen and had promised the Governor that, in case he was
+successful, he would induce Her Majesty to invest some funds in our
+enterprise. All of us in the office were informed of that new prospect
+and deeply interested, as you may imagine, in its speedy realization,
+since our money depended on it. For two months that fable kept us in
+breathless suspense. We were consumed with anxiety, we scrutinized
+Moessard's face; we thought that the effects of his association with
+the lady were very visible there; and our old cashier, with his proud,
+serious air, would reply gravely from behind his grating, when we
+questioned him on the subject: "There's nothing new," or: "The affair's
+in good shape." With that everybody was content and we said to each
+other: "It's coming along, it's coming along," as if it were a matter
+in the ordinary course of business. No, upon my word, Paris is the
+only place in the world where such things can be seen. It positively
+makes one's head spin sometimes. The upshot of it was that, one fine
+morning, Moessard stopped coming to the office. He had succeeded, it
+seems; but the _Caisse Territoriale_ did not seem to him a sufficiently
+advantageous investment for his dear friend's funds. That was
+honorable, wasn't it?
+
+However, the sentiment of honor is so easily lost that one can scarcely
+believe it. When I think that I, Passajon, with my white hair, my
+venerable appearance, my spotless past--thirty years of academic
+service--have accustomed myself to living amid these infamies and base
+intrigues like a fish in water! One may well ask what I am doing here,
+why I remain here, how I happened to come here.
+
+How did I happen to come here? Oh! bless your soul, in the simplest way
+you can imagine. Nearly four years ago, my wife being dead and my
+children married, I had just accepted my retiring pension as apparitor
+to the Faculty, when an advertisement in the newspaper happened to
+come to my notice. "WANTED, a clerk of mature age at the _Caisse
+Territoriale_, 56 Boulevard Malesherbes. Good references." Let me make
+a confession at once. The modern Babylon had always tempted me. And
+then I felt that I was still vigorous, I could see ten active years
+before me, during which I might earn a little money, much perhaps, by
+investing my savings in the banking-house I was about to enter. So I
+wrote, inclosing my photograph by Crespon, Place De Marche, in which I
+am represented with a clean-shaven chin, a bright eye under my heavy
+white eyebrows, wearing my steel chain around my neck, my insignia as
+an academic official, "with the air of a conscript father on his curule
+chair!" as our dean, M. Chalmette, used to say. (Indeed he declared
+that I looked very much like the late Louis XVIII., only not so heavy.)
+
+So I furnished the best of references, the most flattering
+recommendations from the gentlemen of the Faculty. By return mail the
+Governor answered my letter to the effect that my face pleased him--I
+should think so, _parbleu!_ a reception room guarded by an imposing
+countenance like mine is a tempting bait to the investor,--and that I
+might come when I chose. I ought, you will tell me, to have made
+inquiries on my own account. Oh! of course I ought. But I had so much
+information to furnish about myself that it never occurred to me to ask
+them for any about themselves. Moreover, how could one have a feeling
+of distrust after seeing these superb quarters, these lofty ceilings,
+these strong-boxes, as large as wardrobes, and these mirrors in which
+you can see yourself from head to foot? And then the sonorous
+prospectuses, the millions that I heard flying through the air, the
+colossal enterprises with fabulous profits. I was dazzled, fascinated.
+I must say, also, that at that time the establishment had a very
+different look from that it has to-day. Certainly affairs were going
+badly--they have always gone badly, have our affairs--and the journal
+appeared only at irregular intervals. But one of the Governor's little
+_combinazioni_ enabled him to save appearances.
+
+He had conceived the idea, if you please, of opening a patriotic
+subscription to erect a statue to General Paolo Paoli, a great man of
+his country. The Corsicans are not rich, but they are as vain as
+turkeys. So money poured into the _Territoriale_. But unfortunately it
+did not last. In two months the statue was devoured, before it was
+erected, and the succession of protests and summonses began again.
+To-day I am used to it. But when I first came from my province, the
+notices posted by order of the court, the bailiffs at the door, made a
+painful impression upon me. Inside, no attention was paid to them. They
+knew that at the last moment a Monpavon or a Bois-l'Hery was certain to
+turn up to appease the bailiffs; for all those gentlemen, being deeply
+involved in the affair, are interested to avoid a failure. That is just
+what saves our evil-minded little Governor. The others run after their
+money--everyone knows what that means in gambling--and they would not
+be pleased to know that all the shares they have in their hands are
+worth nothing more than their weight as old paper.
+
+From the smallest to the greatest, all of us in the house are in that
+plight. From the landlord, to whom we owe two years' rent and who keeps
+us on for nothing for fear of losing it all, down to us poor clerks, to
+myself, who am in for seven thousand francs of savings and my four
+years' back pay, we are all running after our money. That is why I
+persist in remaining here.
+
+Doubtless, notwithstanding my advanced age, I might have succeeded, by
+favor of my education, my general appearance and the care I have always
+taken of my clothes, in getting a place in some other office. There is
+a very honorable person of my acquaintance, M. Joyeuse, bookkeeper for
+Hemerlingue and Son, the great bankers on Rue Saint-Honore, who never
+fails to say to me whenever he meets me:
+
+"Passajon, my boy, don't stay in that den of thieves. You make a
+mistake in staying on there; you'll never get a sou out of it. Come to
+Hemerlingue's. I'll undertake to find some little corner for you. You
+will earn less, but you'll receive very much more."
+
+I feel that he is right, the honest fellow. But it's stronger than I
+am, I cannot make up my mind to go. And yet this is not a cheerful life
+that I lead here in these great cold rooms where no one ever comes,
+where every one slinks into a corner without speaking. What would you
+have? We know one another too well, that's the whole of it. Up to last
+year we had meetings of the council of supervision, meetings of
+stockholders, stormy, uproarious meetings, genuine battles of savages,
+whose yells could be heard at the Madeleine. And subscribers used to
+come too, several times a week, indignant because they had never heard
+anything from their money. Those were the times when our Governor came
+out strong. I have seen people go into his office, monsieur, as fierce
+as wolves thirsty for blood, and come out, after a quarter of an hour,
+milder than sheep, satisfied, reassured, and their pockets comforted
+with a few bank-notes. For there was the cunning of the thing: to ruin
+with money the poor wretches who came to demand it. To-day the
+shareholders of the _Caisse Territoriale_ never stir. I think that they
+are all dead or resigned to their fate. The council never meets. We
+have sessions only on paper; it is my duty to make up a so-called
+balance-sheet--always the same--of which I make a fresh copy every
+three months. We never see a living soul, except that at rare intervals
+some subscriber to the Paoli statue drops down on us from the wilds of
+Corsica, anxious to know if the monument is progressing; or perhaps
+some devout reader of the _Verite Financiere_, which disappeared more
+than two years ago, comes with an air of timidity to renew his
+subscription, and requests that it be forwarded a little more
+regularly, if possible. There is a confidence which nothing weakens.
+When one of those innocent creatures falls in the midst of our
+half-starved band, it is something terrible. We surround him, we
+embrace him, we try to get his name on one of our lists, and, in case
+he resists, if he will subscribe neither to the Paoli monument nor to
+the Corsican railways, then those gentry perform what they call--my pen
+blushes to write it--what they call "the drayman trick."
+
+This is how it is done: we always have in the office a package prepared
+beforehand, a box tied with stout string which arrives, presumably from
+some railway station, while the visitor is there. "Twenty francs cartage,"
+says the one of us who brings in the package. (Twenty francs, or some
+times thirty, according to the victim's appearance.) Every one at once
+begins to fumble in his pocket. "Twenty francs cartage! I haven't
+it."--"Nor I--What luck!" Some one runs to the counting-room.--Closed!
+They look for the cashier. Gone out. And the hoarse voice of the
+drayman waxing impatient in the ante-room: "Come, come, make haste." (I
+am generally selected for the drayman's part, because of my voice.)
+What is to be done? Send back the package? the Governor won't like
+that. "Messieurs, I beg you to allow me," the innocent victim ventures
+to observe, opening his purse.--"Ah! monsieur, if you would."--He pays
+his twenty francs, we escort him to the door, and as soon as his back
+is turned we divide the fruit of the crime, laughing like brigands.
+
+Fie! Monsieur Passajon. Such performances at your time of life! Oh!
+_Mon Dieu_! I know all about it. I know that I should honor myself
+much more if I left this vile place. But, what then? why, I must
+abandon all that I have at stake here. No, it is not possible. It is
+urgently necessary that I remain, that I keep a close watch, that I am
+always on hand to have the advantage of a windfall, if one should come.
+Oh! I swear by my ribbon, by my thirty years of academic service, if
+ever an affair like this of the Nabob makes it possible for me to
+recoup my losses, I will not wait a moment, I will take myself off in
+hot haste to look after my little vineyard near Monbars, cured forever
+of my speculative ideas. But alas! that is a very chimerical
+hope,--played out, discredited, well known as we are on 'Change, with
+our shares no longer quoted at the Bourse, our obligations fast
+becoming waste paper, such a wilderness of falsehood and debts, and the
+hole that is being dug deeper and deeper. (We owe at this moment three
+million five hundred thousand francs. And yet that three millions is
+not what embarrasses us. On the other hand it is what keeps us up; but
+we owe the concierge a little bill of a hundred and twenty five francs
+for postage stamps, gas and the like. That's the dangerous thing.) And
+they would have us believe that a man, a great financier like this
+Nabob, even though he was just from the Congo or had come from the moon
+this very day, is fool enough to put his money in such a trap.
+Nonsense! Is it possible? Tell that story elsewhere, my dear Governor.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+A DEBUT IN SOCIETY.
+
+
+"Monsieur Bernard Jansoulet!"
+
+That plebeian name, proudly announced by the liveried footman in a
+resounding voice, rang through Jenkins's salons like the clash of
+cymbals, like one of the gongs that announce fantastic apparitions in a
+fairy play. The candles paled, flames flashed from every eye, at the
+dazzling prospect of Oriental treasures, of showers of pearls and
+sequins let fall by the magic syllables of that name, but yesterday
+unknown.
+
+Yes, it was he, the Nabob, the richest of the rich, the great Parisian
+curiosity, flavored with that spice of adventure that is so alluring to
+surfeited multitudes. All heads were turned, all conversation was
+interrupted; there was a grand rush for the door, a pushing and
+jostling like that of the crowds on the quay at a seaport, to watch the
+arrival of a felucca with a cargo of gold.
+
+Even the hospitable Jenkins, who was standing in the first salon to
+receive his guests, despite his usual self-possession abruptly left the
+group of men with whom he was talking and bore away to meet the
+galleons.
+
+"A thousand times, a thousand times too kind. Madame Jenkins will be
+very happy, very proud. Come and let me take you to her."
+
+And in his haste, in his vainglorious delight, he dragged Jansoulet
+away so quickly that the latter had no time to present his companion,
+Paul de Gery, whom he was introducing into society. The young man was
+well pleased to be overlooked. He glided into the mass of black coats
+which was forced farther and farther back by every new arrival, and was
+swallowed up in it, a prey to the foolish terror that every young
+provincial feels on his first appearance in a Parisian salon,
+especially when he is shrewd and intelligent and does not wear the
+imperturbable self-assurance of the bumpkin like a coat of mail beneath
+his linen buckler.
+
+You, Parisians of Paris, who, ever since you were sixteen have
+exhibited your youth at the receptions of all classes of society, in
+your first black coat with your crush-hat on your hip,--you, I say,
+have no conception of that anguish, compounded of vanity, timidity and
+recollections of romantic books, which screws our teeth together,
+embarrasses our movements, makes us for a whole evening a statue
+between two doors, a fixture in a window-recess, a poor, pitiful,
+wandering creature, incapable of making his existence manifest
+otherwise than by changing his position from time to time, preferring
+to die of thirst rather than go near the sideboard, and going away
+without having said a word, unless we may have stammered one of those
+incoherent absurdities which we remember for months, and which makes
+us, when we think of it at night, utter an _ah!_ of frantic shame and
+bury our face in the pillow.
+
+Paul de Gery was a martyr of that type. In his province he had always
+lived a very retired life, with a pious, melancholy old aunt, until the
+time when, as a student of law, originally destined for a profession in
+which his father had left an excellent reputation, he had been induced
+to frequent the salons of some of the counsellors of the court,
+old-fashioned, gloomy dwellings, with dingy hangings, where he made a
+fourth hand at whist with venerable ghosts. Jenkins' evening party was
+therefore a debut in society for that provincial, whose very ignorance
+and Southern adaptability made him first of all a keen observer.
+
+From the place where he stood he watched the interesting procession,
+still in progress at midnight, of Jenkins' guests, the whole body of
+the fashionable physician's patients; the very flower of society, a
+large sprinkling of politics and finance, bankers, deputies, a few
+artists, all the jaded ones of Parisian high life, pale and wan, with
+gleaming eyes, saturated with arsenic like gluttonous mice, but
+insatiably greedy of poison and of life. Through the open salon and the
+great reception-room, the doors of which had been removed, he could see
+the stairway and landing, profusely decorated with flowers along the
+sides, where the long trains were duly spread, their silky weight
+seeming to force back the decollete busts of their wearers in that
+graceful ascending motion which caused them to appear, little by
+little, until they burst upon one in the full bloom of their splendor.
+As the couples reached the top of the stairs they seemed to make their
+entrance on the stage; and that was doubly true, for every one left on
+the last step the frowns, the wrinkles of deep thought the air of
+weariness and all traces of anger or depression, to display a tranquil
+countenance, a smile playing over the placid features. The men
+exchanged hearty grasps of the hand, warm fraternal greetings; the
+women, thinking only of themselves, with little affected shrugs, with a
+charming simper and abundant play of the eyes and shoulders, murmured a
+few meaningless words of greeting:
+
+"Thanks! Oh! thanks--how kind you are."
+
+Then the couples separated, for an evening party is no longer, as it
+used to be, an assemblage of congenial persons, in which the wit of the
+women compelled the force of character, the superior knowledge, the
+very genius of the men to bow gracefully before it, but a too numerous
+mob in which the women, who alone are seated, whisper together like
+captives in the harem, and have no other enjoyment than that of being
+beautiful or of seeming to be. De Gery, after wandering through the
+doctor's library, the conservatory and the billiard room, where there
+was smoking, tired of dull, serious conversation, which seemed to him
+to be out of keeping in such a festal scene and in the brief hour of
+pleasure--some one had asked him carelessly and without looking at him,
+what was doing at the Bourse that day--approached the door of the main
+salon, which was blockaded by a dense mass of black coats, a surging
+sea of heads packed closely together and gazing.
+
+An enormous room, handsomely furnished, with the artistic taste
+characteristic of the master and mistress of the house. A few old
+pictures against the light background of the draperies. A monumental
+chimney-piece, decorated with a fine marble group, "The Seasons" by
+Sebastien Ruys, about which long green stalks, with lacelike edges, or
+of the stiffness of carved bronze, bent toward the mirror as toward a
+stream of limpid water. On the low chairs groups of women crowded
+together, blending the vaporous hues of their dresses, forming an
+immense nosegay of living flowers, above which gleamed bare white
+shoulders, hair studded with diamonds, drops of water on the brunettes,
+glistening reflections on the blondes, and the same intoxicating
+perfume, the same confused, pleasant buzzing, made by waves of heat and
+intangible wings, that caresses all the flowers in the garden in
+summer. At times a little laugh, ascending in that luminous atmosphere,
+a quicker breath, made plumes and curls tremble, and attracted
+attention to a lovely profile. Such was the aspect of the salon.
+
+A few men were there, very few, all persons of distinction, laden with
+years and decorations, talking on the arm of a divan or leaning over
+the back of a chair with the condescending air we assume in conversing
+with children. But amid the placid murmur of the private conversations,
+one voice rang out, loud and discordant, the voice of the Nabob, who
+was threading his way through that social conservatory with the
+self-assurance due to his immense fortune and a certain contempt for
+woman which he had brought with him from the Orient.
+
+At that moment, sprawling upon a chair, with his great yellow-gloved
+hands awkwardly clasped, he was talking with a very beautiful woman,
+whose unusual face--much animation upon features of a severe cast--was
+noticeable by reason of its pallor among the surrounding pretty faces,
+just as her dress, all white, classic in its draping and moulded to her
+graceful, willowy figure, contrasted with much richer costumes, not one
+of which had its character of bold simplicity. De Gery, from his
+corner, gazed at that smooth, narrow forehead beneath the fringe of
+hair brushed low, those long, wide-open eyes of a deep blue, an abysmal
+blue, that mouth which ceased to smile only to relax its classic
+outline in a weary, spiritless expression. All in all, the somewhat
+haughty aspect of an exceptional being.
+
+Some one near him mentioned her name--Felicia Ruys. Thereupon he
+understood the rare attraction of that girl, inheritress of her
+father's genius, whose new-born celebrity had reached as far as his
+province, with the halo of a reputation for great beauty. While he was
+gazing at her, admiring her slightest movement, a little puzzled by the
+enigma presented by that beautiful face, he heard a whispered
+conversation behind him.
+
+"Just see how affable she is with the Nabob! Suppose the duke should
+come!"
+
+"Is the Duc de Mora expected?"
+
+"To be sure. The party is given for him; to have him meet Jansoulet."
+
+"And you think that the duke and Mademoiselle Ruys--"
+
+"Where have you come from? It's a liaison known to all Paris. It dates
+from the last Salon, for which she did his bust."
+
+"And what about the duchess?"
+
+"Pshaw! she has seen many others. Ah! Madame Jenkins is going to sing."
+
+There was a commotion in the salon, a stronger pressure in the crowd
+toward the door, and conversation ceased for a moment. Paul de Gery
+drew a long breath. The words he had just overheard had oppressed his
+heart. He felt as if he himself were spattered, sullied by the mud
+unsparingly thrown upon the ideal he had formed for himself of that
+glorious youth, ripened in the sun of art and endowed with such
+penetrating charm. He moved away a little, changed his position. He
+dreaded to hear some other calumny. Madame Jenkins' voice did him good,
+a voice famous in Parisian salons, a voice that, with all its
+brilliancy, was in no sense theatrical, but seemed like speech,
+thrilling with emotion, striking resonant, unfamiliar chords. The
+singer, a woman of from forty to forty-five years of age, had
+magnificent hair of the color of ashes, refined, somewhat weak
+features, and an expression of great amiability. Still beautiful, she
+was dressed with the costly taste of a woman who has not abandoned the
+idea of pleasing. Nor had she abandoned it; she and the doctor--she was
+then a widow--had been married some ten years, and they seemed still to
+be enjoying the first months of their joint happiness. While she sang a
+Russian folk-song, as wild and sweet as the smile of a Slav, Jenkins
+artlessly manifested his pride without attempt at concealment, his
+broad face beamed expansively; and she, every time that she leaned
+forward to take breath, turned in his direction a timid, loving glance
+which sought him out over the music she held in her hand. And when she
+had finished, amid a murmur of delight and admiration, it was touching
+to see her secretly press her husband's hand, as if to reserve for
+herself a little corner of private happiness amid that great triumph.
+Young de Gery was taking comfort in the sight of that happy couple,
+when suddenly a voice murmured by his side--it was not the same voice
+that had spoken just before:
+
+"You know what people say--that the Jenkinses are not married."
+
+"What nonsense!"
+
+"True, I assure you--it seems that there's a genuine Madame Jenkins
+somewhere, but not this one who has been exhibited to us. By the way,
+have you noticed--"
+
+The conversation continued in an undertone. Madame Jenkins approached,
+bowing and smiling, while the doctor, stopping a salver as it passed,
+brought her a glass of bordeaux with the zeal of a mother, an
+impresario, a lover. Slander, slander, ineffaceable stain! Now Jenkins'
+attentions seemed overdone to the provincial. He thought that there was
+something affected, studied in them, and at the same time he fancied
+that he noticed in the thanks she expressed to her husband in a low
+tone a dread, a submissiveness derogatory to the dignity of a lawful
+wife, happy and proud in an unassailable position. "Why, society is a
+hideous thing!" said de Gery to himself in dismay, his hands as cold as
+ice. The smiles that encompassed him seemed to him like mere grimacing.
+He was ashamed and disgusted. Then suddenly his soul rose in revolt:
+"Nonsense! it isn't possible!" And, as if in answer to that
+exclamation, the voice of slander behind him continued carelessly:
+"After all, you know, I am not sure. I simply repeat what I hear. Look,
+there's Baronne Hemerlingue. He has all Paris here, this Jenkins."
+
+The baroness came forward on the doctor's arm; he had rushed forward to
+meet her, and, despite his perfect control over his features, he seemed
+a little perturbed and disconcerted. It had occurred to the excellent
+Jenkins to take advantage of his party to make peace between his friend
+Hemerlingue and his friend Jansoulet, his two wealthiest patients, who
+embarrassed him seriously with their internecine warfare. The Nabob
+asked nothing better. He bore his former chum no malice. Their rupture
+had come about as a result of Hemerlingue's marriage with one of the
+favorites of the former bey. "A woman's row, in fact," said Jansoulet;
+and he would be very glad to see the end of it, for any sort of
+ill-feeling was burdensome to that exuberant nature. But it seemed that
+the baron was not anxious for a reconciliation; for, notwithstanding
+the promise he had given Jenkins, his wife appeared alone, to the
+Irishman's great chagrin.
+
+She was a tall, thin, fragile personage, with eyebrows like a bird's
+feathers, a youthful, frightened manner, thirty years striving to seem
+twenty, with a head-dress of grasses and grain drooping over jet black
+hair thickly strewn with diamonds. With her long lashes falling over
+white cheeks of the wax-like tint of women who have lived long in the
+seclusion of a cloister, a little embarrassed in her Parisian garb, she
+bore less resemblance to a former occupant of a harem than to a nun who
+had renounced her vows and returned to the world. A touch of devotion,
+of sanctity in her carriage, a certain ecclesiastical trick of walking
+with downcast eyes, elbows close to the sides and hands folded, manners
+which she had acquired in the ultra-religious environment in which she
+had lived since her conversion and her recent baptism, completed the
+resemblance. And you can imagine whether worldly curiosity was rampant
+around that ex-odalisque turned fervent Catholic, as she entered the
+room, escorted by a sacristan-like figure with a livid face and
+spectacles, Maitre Le Merquier, Deputy for Lyon, Hemerlingue's man of
+business, who attended the baroness when the baron was "slightly
+indisposed," as upon this occasion.
+
+When they entered the second salon, the Nabob walked forward to meet
+her, expecting to descry in her wake the bloated face of his old
+comrade, to whom it was agreed that he should offer his hand. The
+baroness saw him coming and became whiter than ever. A steely gleam
+shot from under her long lashes. Her nostrils dilated, rose and fell,
+and as Jansoulet bowed, she quickened her pace, holding her head erect
+and rigid, letting fall from her thin lips a word in Arabic which no
+one else could understand, but in which the poor Nabob, for his part,
+understood the bitter insult; for when he raised his head his swarthy
+face was of the color of terra-cotta when it comes from the oven. He
+stood for a moment speechless, his great fists clenched, his lips
+swollen with anger. Jenkins joined him, and de Gery, who had watched
+the whole scene from a distance, saw them talking earnestly together
+with a preoccupied air.
+
+The attempt had miscarried. The reconciliation, so cleverly planned,
+would not take place. Hemerlingue did not want it. If only the duke did
+not break his word! It was getting late. La Wauters, who was to sing
+the "Night" aria from the _Magic Flute_, after the performance at
+her theatre, had just arrived all muffled up in her lace hood.
+
+And the minister did not come.
+
+But it was a promise and everything was understood. Monpavon was to
+take him up at the club. From time to time honest Jenkins drew his
+watch, as he tossed an absent-minded _bravo_ to the bouquet of limpid
+notes that gushed from La Wauters' fairy lips, a bouquet worth three
+thousand francs, and absolutely wasted, in common with the other
+expenses of the festivity, if the duke did not come.
+
+Suddenly both wings of the folding-doors were thrown open:
+
+"His Excellency the Duc de Mora!"
+
+A prolonged thrill of excitement greeted him, respectful curiosity
+drawn up in a double row, instead of the brutal crowding that had
+impeded the passage of the Nabob.
+
+No one could be more skilled than he in the art of making his
+appearance in society, of walking gravely across a salon, ascending the
+tribune with smiling face, imparting solemnity to trifles and treating
+serious matters lightly; it was a resume of his attitude in life, a
+paradoxical distinction. Still handsome, despite his fifty-six
+years,--a beauty attributable to refined taste and perfect proportion,
+in which the grace of the dandy was intensified by something of a
+soldierly character in the figure and the haughty expression of the
+face,--he appeared to admirable advantage in the black coat, whereon,
+in Jenkins' honor, he had placed a few of his decorations, which he
+never displayed except on days of official functions. The sheen of the
+linen and the white cravat, the unpolished silver of the decorations,
+the softness of the thin, grayish hair, gave added pallor to the face,
+the most bloodless of all the bloodless faces assembled that evening
+under the Irishman's roof.
+
+He led such a terrible life! Politics, gambling in every form, on the
+Bourse and at baccarat, and the reputation of a lady-killer which he
+must maintain at any price. Oh! he was a typical patient of Jenkins,
+and he certainly owed that visit in princely state to the inventor of
+the mysterious Pearls, which gave to his eyes that glance of flame, to
+his whole being that extraordinary pulsing vivacity.
+
+[Illustration: "'_His Excellency, the Due de Mora!_'"]
+
+"My dear duke, allow me to present to you--"
+
+Monpavon, solemn of face, with padded calves, attempted to make the
+introduction so anxiously expected; but His Excellency, in his
+preoccupation, did not hear and kept on toward the large salon, borne
+onward by one of those electric currents that break the monotony of
+social life. As he passed, and while he paid his respects to the fair
+Madame Jenkins, the women leaned forward with alluring glances, soft
+laughter, intent upon making a favorable impression. But he saw only
+one, Felicia, who stood in the centre of a group of men, holding forth
+as if in her own studio, and tranquilly sipping a sherbet as she
+watched the duke's approach. She welcomed him with perfect naturalness.
+Those who stood by discreetly withdrew. But, in spite of what de Gery
+had overheard concerning their alleged relations, there seemed to be
+only a good-fellowship entirely of the mind between them, a playful
+familiarity.
+
+"I called at your house, Mademoiselle, on my way to the Bois."
+
+"So I understood. You even went into the studio."
+
+"And I saw the famous group--my group."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"It is very fine. The greyhound runs like a mad dog. The fox is
+admirably done. But I didn't quite understand. You told me that it was
+the story of us two."
+
+"And so it is! Look carefully. It's a fable that I read in--You don't
+read Rabelais, Monsieur le Duc?"
+
+"Faith, no. He is too vulgar."
+
+"Well, I have learned to read him. Very ill-bred, you know! Oh! very.
+My fable, then, is taken from Rabelais. This is it: Bacchus has made a
+wonderful fox that cannot possibly be overtaken. Vulcan, for his part,
+has given a dog of his making the power to overtake any animal that he
+pursues. 'Now,' as my author says, 'suppose that they meet.' You see
+what a wild and interminable race will result. It seems to me, my dear
+duke, that destiny has brought us face to face in like manner, endowed
+with contrary qualities, you, who have received from the gods the gift
+of reaching all hearts, and I, whose heart will never be taken."
+
+She said this, looking him fairly in the face, almost laughing, but
+slim and erect in her white tunic, which seemed to protect her person
+against the liberties of his wit. He, the conqueror, the irresistible,
+had never met one of that audacious, self-willed race. So he enveloped
+her in all the magnetic currents of his seductive charm, while around
+them the murmur of the fete, the flute-like laughter, the rustling of
+satins and strings of pearls played an accompaniment to that duet of
+worldly passion and juvenile irony.
+
+In a moment he rejoined:
+
+"But how did the gods extricate themselves from that scrape?"
+
+"By changing the two coursers to stone."
+
+"By heaven," said he, "that is a result which I refuse to accept. I
+defy the gods to turn my heart to stone."
+
+A flame darted from his eyes, extinguished instantly at the thought
+that people were looking at them.
+
+In truth many people were looking at them, but no one with such deep
+interest as Jenkins, who prowled around them, impatient and chafing, as
+if he were angry with Felicia for monopolizing the important guest of
+the evening. The girl laughingly remarked upon the fact to the duke:
+
+"They will say that I am appropriating you."
+
+She pointed to Monpavon standing expectantly by the Nabob, who, from
+afar, bestowed upon His Excellency the submissive, imploring gaze of a
+great faithful dog. Thereupon the Minister of State remembered what had
+brought him there. He bowed to Felicia and returned to Monpavon, who
+was able at last to present "his honorable friend, Monsieur Bernard
+Jansoulet." His Excellency bowed; the parvenu humbled himself lower
+than the earth; then they conversed for a moment.
+
+It was an interesting group to watch. Jansoulet, tall and strongly
+built, with his vulgar manners, his tanned skin, his broad back, bent
+as if it had become rounded for good and all in the salaams of Oriental
+sycophancy, his short fat hands bursting through his yellow gloves, his
+abundant pantomime, his Southern exuberance causing him to cut off his
+words as if with a machine. The other, of noble birth, a thorough man
+of the world, elegance itself, graceful in the least of his gestures,
+which were very rare by the way, negligently letting fall incomplete
+sentences, lighting up his grave face with a half smile, concealing
+beneath the most perfect courtesy his boundless contempt for men and
+women; and that contempt was the main element of his strength. In an
+American parlor the antithesis would have been less offensive. The
+Nabob's millions would have established equilibrium and even turned the
+scale in his favor. But Paris does not as yet place money above all the
+other powers, and, to be convinced of that fact, one had only to see
+that stout merchant frisking about with an amiable smile before the
+great nobleman, and spreading beneath his feet, like the courtier's
+ermine cloak, his dense parvenu's pride.
+
+From the corner in which he had taken refuge, de Gery was watching the
+scene with interest, knowing what importance his friend attached to
+this presentation, when chance, which had so cruelly given the lie all
+the evening to his artless neophyte's ideas, brought to his ears this
+brief dialogue, in that sea of private conversations in which every one
+hears just the words that are of interest to him:
+
+"The least that Monpavon can do is to introduce him to some decent
+people. He has introduced him to so many bad ones. You know that he's
+just tossed Paganetti and his whole crew into his arms."
+
+"The poor devil! Why, they'll devour him."
+
+"Pshaw! it's only fair to make him disgorge a little. He stole so much
+down there among the Turks."
+
+"Really, do you think so?"
+
+"Do I think so! I have some very precise information on that subject
+from Baron Hemerlingue, the banker who negotiated the last Tunisian
+loan. He knows some fine stories about this Nabob. Just fancy--"
+
+And the stream of calumny began to flow. For fifteen years Jansoulet
+had plundered the late bey shamefully. They mentioned the names of
+contractors and cited divers swindles characterized by admirable
+coolness and effrontery; for instance, the story of a musical
+frigate--yes, it really played tunes--intended as a dining-room
+ornament, which he bought for two hundred thousand francs and sold
+again for ten millions; a throne sold to the bey for three millions,
+whereas the bill could be seen on the books of a house furnisher of
+Faubourg Saint-Honore, and amounted to less than a hundred thousand
+francs; and the most comical part of it was that the bey's fancy
+changed and the royal seat, having fallen into disgrace before it had
+even been unpacked, was still in its packing-case at the custom-house
+in Tripoli.
+
+Furthermore, aside from these outrageous commissions on the sale of the
+most trivial playthings, there were other far more serious accusations,
+but equally authentic, as they all came from the same source. In
+addition to the seraglio there was a harem of European women, admirably
+equipped for His Highness by the Nabob, who should be a connoisseur in
+such matters, as he had been engaged in the most extraordinary
+occupations in Paris before his departure for the Orient: ticket
+speculator, manager of a public ball at the barrier, and of a house of
+much lower reputation. And the whispering terminated in a stifled
+laugh,--the coarse laugh of two men in private conversation.
+
+The young provincial's first impulse, on hearing those infamous
+slanders, was to turn and cry out:
+
+"You lie!"
+
+A few hours earlier he would have done it without hesitation, but since
+he had been there he had learned to be suspicious, sceptical. He
+restrained himself therefore and listened to the end, standing in the
+same spot, having in his heart an unconfessed desire to know more of
+the man in whose service he was. As for the Nabob, the perfectly
+unconscious subject of that ghastly chronicle, he was quietly playing a
+game of ecarte with the Due de Mora in a small salon to which the blue
+hangings and two shaded lamps imparted a meditative air.
+
+O wonderful magic of the galleon! The son of the dealer in old iron
+alone at a card-table with the first personage of the Empire! Jansoulet
+could hardly believe the Venetian mirror in which were reflected his
+resplendent, beaming face and that august cranium, divided by a long
+bald streak. So it was that, in order to show his appreciation of that
+great honor, he strove to lose as many thousand-franc notes as he
+decently could, feeling that he was the winner none the less, and proud
+as Lucifer to see his money pass into those aristocratic hands, whose
+every movement he studied while they were cutting, dealing, or holding
+the cards.
+
+A circle formed around them, but at a respectful distance, the ten
+paces required for saluting a prince; that was the audience of the
+triumph at which the Nabob was present as if in a dream, intoxicated by
+the fairy-like strains slightly muffled in the distance, the songs that
+reached his ears in detached phrases, as if they passed over a resonant
+sheet of water, the perfume of the flowers that bloom so strangely
+toward the close of Parisian balls, when the late hour, confusing all
+notions of time, and the weariness of the sleepless night communicate
+to brains which have become more buoyant in a more nervous atmosphere a
+sort of youthful giddiness. The robust nature of Jansoulet, that
+civilized savage, was more susceptible than another to these strange
+refinements; and he had to exert all his strength to refrain from
+inaugurating with a joyful hurrah an unseasonable out-pouring of words
+and gestures, from giving way to the impulse of physical buoyancy which
+stirred his whole being; like the great mountain dogs which are thrown
+into convulsions of epileptic frenzy by inhaling a single drop of a
+certain essence.
+
+                         *        *        *
+
+"It is a fine night and the sidewalks are dry. If you like, my dear
+boy, we will send away the carriage and go home on foot," said
+Jansoulet to his companion as they left Jenkins' house.
+
+De Gery eagerly assented. He needed to walk, to shake off in the sharp
+air the infamies and lies of that society comedy which left his heart
+cold and oppressed, while all his life-blood had taken refuge in his
+temples, of whose swollen veins he could hear the beating. He walked
+unsteadily, like a poor creature who has been operated on for cataract
+and in the first terror of recovered vision dares not put one foot
+before the other. But with what a brutal hand the operation had been
+performed! And so that great artist with the glorious name, that pure,
+wild beauty, the mere sight of whom had agitated him like a
+supernatural apparition, was simply a courtesan. Madame Jenkins, that
+imposing creature, whose manner was at once so proud and so sweet, was
+not really Madame Jenkins. That illustrious scientist, so frank of
+feature and so hospitable, had the impudence to live publicly in
+shameless concubinage. And Paris suspected it, yet that did not prevent
+Paris from attending their parties. Last of all, this Jansoulet, so
+kind-hearted and generous, for whom he felt such a burden of gratitude
+in his heart, had to his knowledge fallen into the hands of a crew of
+bandits, being himself a bandit, and quite worthy of the scheme devised
+to make him disgorge his millions.
+
+Was it possible; must he believe it?
+
+A sidelong glance at the Nabob, whose huge frame filled the whole
+sidewalk, suddenly revealed to him something low and common that he had
+not before noticed in that gait to which the weight of the money in his
+pockets gave a decided lurch. Yes, he was the typical adventurer from
+the South, moulded of the slime that covers the quays of Marseille,
+trodden hard by all the vagabonds who wander from seaport to seaport.
+Kind-hearted, generous, forsooth! as prostitutes are, and thieves. And
+the gold that flowed into that luxurious and vicious receptacle,
+spattering everything, even the walls, seemed to him now to bring with
+it all the dregs, all the filth of its impure and slimy source. That
+being so, there was but one thing for him, de Gery, to do, and that was
+to go, to leave as soon as possible the place where he ran the risk of
+compromising his name, all that there was of his patrimony. Of course.
+But there were the two little brothers down yonder in the
+provinces,--who would pay for their schooling? Who would keep up the
+modest home miraculously restored by the handsome salary of the oldest
+son, the head of the family? The words "head of the family" cast him at
+once into one of those inward combats in which self-interest and
+conscience are the contending parties--the one strong, brutal,
+attacking fiercely with straight blows, the other retreating, breaking
+the measure by suddenly withdrawing its weapon--while honest Jansoulet,
+the unconscious cause of the conflict, strode along beside his young
+friend, inhaling the fresh air delightedly with the lighted end of his
+cigar.
+
+He had never been so happy that he was alive. And that evening at
+Jenkins', his own debut in society as well as Paul's, had left upon him
+an impression of arches erected as if for a triumph, of a curious
+crowd, of flowers thrown in his path. So true is it that things exist
+only through the eyes that see them. What a success! The duke, just as
+they parted, urging him to come and see his gallery; which meant that
+the doors of the hotel de Mora would be open to him within a week.
+Felicia Ruys consenting to make a bust of him, so that at the next
+exposition the junk-dealer's son would have his portrait in marble by
+the same great artist whose name was appended to that of the Minister
+of State. Was not this the gratification of all his childish vanities?
+
+Revolving thus their thoughts, cheerful or sinister, they walked on
+side by side, preoccupied, distraught, so that Place Vendome, silent
+and flooded by a cold, blue light, rang beneath their feet before they
+had spoken a word.
+
+"Already!" said the Nabob. "I would have liked to walk a little
+farther. What do you say?" And as they walked around the square two or
+three times, he emitted in puffs the exuberant joy with which he was
+full to overflowing.
+
+"How fine it is! What pleasure to breathe! God's thunder! I wouldn't
+give up my evening for a hundred thousand francs. What a fine fellow
+that Jenkins is! Do you like Felicia Ruys' type of beauty? For my part,
+I dote on it. And the duke, what a perfect great nobleman! so simple,
+so amiable. That is fashionable Paris, eh, my son?"
+
+"It's too complicated for me--it frightens me," said Paul de Gery in a
+low voice.
+
+"Yes, yes, I understand," rejoined the other, with adorable conceit.
+"You aren't used to it yet, but one soon gets into it, you know! See
+how perfectly at my ease I am after only a month."
+
+"That's because you had been in Paris before. You used to live here."
+
+"I? Never in my life. Who told you that?"
+
+"Why, I thought so," replied the young man, and added, as a multitude
+of thoughts came crowding into his mind:
+
+"What have you ever done to this Baron Hemerlingue? There seems to be a
+deadly hatred between you."
+
+The Nabob was taken aback for a moment. That name Hemerlingue, suddenly
+obtruded upon his joy, reminded him of the only unpleasant episode of
+the evening.
+
+"To him, as to everybody else," he said in a sad voice, "I never did
+anything but good. We began life together in a miserable way. We grew
+and prospered side by side. When he attempted to fly with his own wings
+I always assisted him, supported him as best I could. It was through me
+that he had the contract for supplying the fleet and army for ten
+years; almost the whole of his fortune comes from that. And then one
+fine morning that idiot of a cold-blooded Bearnese must go and fall in
+love with an odalisque whom the bey's mother had turned out of the
+harem! She was a handsome, ambitious hussy; she made him marry her, and
+naturally, after that excellent marriage, Hemerlingue had to leave
+Tunis. They had made him believe that I egged the bey on to forbid him
+the country. That is not true. On the contrary, I persuaded His
+Highness to allow the younger Hemerlingue--his first wife's child--to
+remain at Tunis to look after their interests there, while the father
+came to Paris to establish his banking-house. But I was well repaid for
+my kindness. When my poor Ahmed died and the _mouchir_, his brother,
+ascended the throne, the Hemerlingues, being restored to favor, never
+ceased to try to injure me in the eyes of the new master. The bey was
+always pleasant with me, but my influence was impaired. Ah well! in
+spite of all that, in spite of all the tricks Hemerlingue has played on
+me and is playing on me still, I was ready to offer him my hand
+to-night. Not only did the villain refuse it, but he sent his wife to
+insult me,--an uncivilized, vicious beast, who can never forgive me for
+refusing to receive her at Tunis. Do you know what she called me there
+to-night when she passed me? 'Robber and son of a dog.' The harlot had
+the face to call me that. As if I didn't know my Hemerlingue, who's as
+cowardly as he is fat. But, after all, let them say what they choose. I
+snap my fingers at 'em. What can they do against me? Destroy my credit
+with the bey? That makes no difference to me. I have no more business
+in Tunis, and I shall get away from there altogether as soon as
+possible. There's only one city, one country in the world, and that is
+Paris, hospitable, open-hearted Paris, with no false modesty, where any
+intelligent man finds room to do great things. And, you see, de Gery, I
+propose to do great things. I've had enough of business life. I have
+worked twenty years for money; now I am greedy for respect, glory,
+renown. I mean to be a personage of some consequence in the history of
+my country, and that will be an easy matter for me. With my great
+fortune, my knowledge of men and of affairs, with what I feel here in
+my head, I can aspire to anything and reach any eminence. So take my
+advice, my dear boy, don't leave me,"--one would have said he was
+answering his young companion's secret thought,--"stick loyally to my
+ship. The spars are stanch and the hold is full of coal. I swear to you
+that we will sail far and fast, damme!"
+
+The artless Southerner thus discharged his plans into the darkness with
+an abundance of expressive gestures, and from time to time, as they
+paced the vast, deserted square, majestically surrounded by its
+tightly-closed silent palaces, he looked up toward the bronze man on
+the column, as if calling to witness that great upstart, whose presence
+in the heart of Paris justifies the most extravagant ambitions and
+renders all chimeras probable.
+
+There is in youth a warmth of heart, a craving for enthusiasm which are
+aroused by the slightest breath. As the Nabob spoke, de Gery felt his
+suspicions vanishing and all his sympathy reviving with an infusion of
+pity. No, surely that man was no vile knave, but a poor deluded mortal
+whose fortune had gone to his head, like a wine too powerful for a
+stomach that has long slaked its thirst with water. Alone in the midst
+of Paris, surrounded by enemies and sharpers, Jansoulet reminded him of
+a pedestrian laden with gold passing through a wood haunted by thieves,
+in the dark and unarmed. And he thought that it would be well for the
+protege to watch over the patron without seeming to do so, to be the
+clear-sighted Telemachus of that blind Mentor, to point out the
+pitfalls to him, to defend him against the brigands, in short to assist
+him to fight in that swarm of nocturnal ambuscades which he felt to be
+lurking savagely about the Nabob and his millions.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+THE JOYEUSE FAMILY.
+
+
+Every morning in the year, at precisely eight o'clock, a new and almost
+uninhabited house in an out-of-the-way quarter of Paris was filled with
+shouts and cries and happy laughter that rang clear as crystal in the
+desert of the hall.
+
+"Father, don't forget my music."
+
+"Father, my embroidery cotton."
+
+"Father, bring us some rolls."
+
+And the father's voice calling from below:
+
+"Yaia, throw down my bag."
+
+"Well, upon my word! he's forgotten his bag."
+
+Thereupon there was joyous haste from top to bottom of the house, a
+running to and fro of all those pretty faces, heavy-eyed with sleep, of
+all those touzled locks which they put in order as they ran, up to the
+very moment when a half-dozen of young girls, leaning over the rail,
+bade an echoing farewell to a little old gentleman neatly dressed and
+well brushed, whose florid face and slight figure disappeared at last
+in the convolutions of the staircase. M. Joyeuse had gone to his
+office. Thereupon the whole flock of fugitives from the bird-cage ran
+quickly up to the fourth floor, and, after locking the door, gathered
+at an open window to catch another glimpse of the father. The little
+man turned, kisses were exchanged at a distance, then the windows were
+closed; the new, deserted house became quiet once more except for the
+signs dancing their wild saraband in the wind on the unfinished street,
+as if they too were stirred to gayety by all that manoeuvring. A moment
+later the photographer on the fifth floor came down to hang his
+show-case at the door, always the same, with the old gentleman in the
+white cravat surrounded by his daughters in varied groups; then he went
+upstairs again in his turn, and the perfect calm succeeding that little
+matutinal tumult suggested the thought that "the father" and his young
+ladies had returned to the show-case, where they would remain
+motionless and smiling, until evening.
+
+From Rue Saint-Ferdinand to Messieurs Hemerlingue and Son's, his
+employers, M. Joyeuse had a walk of three-quarters of an hour. He held
+his head erect and stiff, as if he were afraid of disarranging the
+lovely bow of his cravat, tied by his daughters, or his hat, put on by
+them; and when the oldest, always anxious and prudent, turned up the
+collar of his overcoat just as he was going out, to protect him against
+the vicious gust of wind at the street corner, M. Joyeuse, even when
+the temperature was that of a hothouse, never turned it down until he
+reached the office, like the lover fresh from his mistress's embrace,
+who dares not stir for fear of losing the intoxicating perfume.
+
+The excellent man, a widower for some years, lived for his children
+alone, thought only of them, went out into the world surrounded by
+those little blond heads, which fluttered confusedly around him as in a
+painting of the Assumption. All his desires, all his plans related to
+"the young ladies" and constantly returned to them, sometimes after
+long detours; for M. Joyeuse--doubtless because of his very short neck
+and his short figure, in which his bubbling blood had but a short
+circuit to make--possessed an astonishingly fertile imagination. Ideas
+formed in his mind as rapidly as threshed straw collects around the
+hopper. At the office the figures kept his mind fixed by their
+unromantic rigidity; but once outside, it took its revenge for that
+inexorable profession. The exercise of walking and familiarity with a
+route of which he knew by heart the most trivial details, gave entire
+liberty to his imaginative faculties, and he invented extraordinary
+adventures, ample material for twenty newspaper novels.
+
+Suppose, for example, that M. Joyeuse were walking through Faubourg
+Saint-Honore, on the right hand sidewalk--he always chose that
+side--and espied a heavy laundress's cart going along at a smart trot,
+driven by a countrywoman whose child, perched on a bundle of linen, was
+leaning over the side.
+
+"The child!" the good man would exclaim in dismay, "look out for the
+child!"
+
+His voice would be lost in the clatter of the wheels and his warning in
+the secret design of Providence. The cart would pass on. He would look
+after it for a moment, then go his way; but the drama begun in his mind
+would go on unfolding itself there with numberless sudden changes. The
+child had fallen. The wheels were just about to pass over him. M.
+Joyeuse would dart forward, save the little creature on the very brink
+of death, but the shaft would strike himself full in the breast, and he
+would fall, bathed in his blood. Thereupon he would see himself carried
+to the druggist's amid the crowd that had collected. They would place
+him on a litter and carry him home, then suddenly he would hear the
+heart-rending cry of his daughters, his beloved daughters, upon seeing
+him in that condition. And that cry would go so straight to his heart,
+he would hear it so distinctly, so vividly: "Papa, dear papa!" that he
+would repeat it himself in the street, to the great surprise of the
+passers-by, in a hoarse voice which would wake him from his
+manufactured nightmare.
+
+Would you like another instance of the vagaries of that prodigious
+imagination? It rains, it hails; beastly weather. M. Joyeuse has taken
+the omnibus to go to his office. As he takes his seat opposite a
+species of giant, with brutish face and formidable biceps, M. Joyeuse,
+an insignificant little creature, with his bag on his knees, draws in
+his legs to make room for the enormous pillars that support his
+neighbor's monumental trunk. In the jolting of the vehicle and the
+pattering of the rain on the windows, M. Joyeuse begins to dream. And
+suddenly the colossus opposite, who has a good-natured face enough, is
+amazed to see the little man change color and glare at him with fierce,
+murderous eyes, gnashing his teeth. Yes, murderous eyes in truth, for
+at that moment M. Joyeuse is dreaming a terrible dream. One of his
+daughters is sitting there, opposite him, beside that annoying brute,
+and the villain is putting his arm around her waist under her cloak.
+
+"Take your hand away, monsieur," M. Joyeuse has already said twice. The
+other simply laughs contemptuously. Now he attempts to embrace Elise.
+
+"Ah! villain!"
+
+Lacking strength to defend his daughter, M. Joyeuse, foaming with rage,
+feels in his pocket for his knife, stabs the insolent knave in the
+breast, and goes away with head erect, strong in the consciousness of
+his rights as an outraged father, to make his statement at the nearest
+police-station.
+
+"I have just killed a man in an omnibus!"
+
+The poor fellow wakes at the sound of his own voice actually uttering
+those sinister words, but not at the police-station; he realizes
+from the horrified faces of the passengers that he must have spoken
+aloud, and speedily avails himself of the conductor's call:
+"Saint-Philippe--Pantheon--Bastille," to alight, in dire confusion and
+amid general stupefaction.
+
+That imagination, always on the alert, gave to M. Joyeuse's face a
+strangely feverish, haggard expression, in striking contrast to the
+faultlessly correct dress and bearing of the petty clerk. He lived
+through so many passionate existences in a single day. Such waking
+dreamers as he, in whom a too restricted destiny holds in check
+unemployed forces, heroic faculties, are more numerous than is
+generally supposed. Dreaming is the safety valve through which it all
+escapes, with a terrible spluttering, an intensely hot vapor and
+floating images which instantly disappear. Some come forth from these
+visions radiant, others downcast and abashed, finding themselves once
+more on the commonplace level of everyday life. M. Joyeuse was of the
+former class, constantly soaring aloft to heights from which one cannot
+descend without being a little shaken by the rapidity of the journey.
+
+Now, one morning when our _Imaginaire_ had left his house at the usual
+hour and under the usual circumstances, he started upon one of his
+little private romances as he turned out of Rue Saint-Ferdinand. The
+end of the year was close at hand, and, perhaps it was the sight of a
+board shanty under construction in the neighboring woodyard that made
+him think of "New Year's gifts." And thereupon the word _bonus_
+planted itself in his mind, as the first landmark in an exciting story.
+In the month of December all Hemerlingue's clerks received double pay,
+and in small households, you know, a thousand ambitious or generous
+projects are based upon such windfalls,--presents to be given, a piece
+of furniture to be replaced, a small sum tucked away in a drawer for
+unforeseen emergencies.
+
+The fact is that M. Joyeuse was not rich. His wife, a Mademoiselle de
+Saint-Amand, being tormented with aspirations for worldly grandeur, had
+established the little household on a ruinous footing, and in the three
+years since her death, although _Grandmamma_ had managed affairs so
+prudently, they had not been able as yet to save anything, the burden
+of the past was so heavy. Suddenly the excellent man fancied that the
+honorarium would be larger than usual that year on account of the
+increased work necessitated by the Tunisian loan. That loan was a very
+handsome thing for his employers, too handsome indeed, for M. Joyeuse
+had taken the liberty to say at the office that on that occasion
+"Hemerlingue and Son had shaved the Turk a little too close."
+
+"Yes, the bonus will certainly be doubled," thought the visionary as he
+walked along; and already he saw himself, a month hence, ascending the
+staircase leading to Hemerlingue's private office, with his
+fellow-clerks, for their New Year's call. The banker announced the good
+news; then he detained M. Joyeuse for a private interview. And lo! that
+employer, usually so cold, and encased in his yellow fat as in a bale
+of raw silk, became affectionate, fatherly, communicative. He wished to
+know how many daughters Joyeuse had.
+
+"I have three--that is to say, four, Monsieur le Baron. I always get
+confused about them. The oldest one is such a little woman."
+
+How old were they?
+
+"Aline is twenty, Monsieur le Baron. She's the oldest. Then we have
+Elise who is eighteen and preparing for her examination, Henriette who
+is fourteen, and Zaza or Yaia who is only twelve."
+
+The pet name Yaia amused Monsieur le Baron immensely; he also inquired
+as to the resources of the family.
+
+"My salary, Monsieur le Baron, nothing but that. I had a little money
+laid by, but my poor wife's sickness and the girls' education--"
+
+"What you earn is not enough, my dear Joyeuse. I raise you to a
+thousand francs a month."
+
+"Oh! Monsieur le Baron, that is too much!"
+
+But, although he had uttered this last phrase aloud, in the face of a
+policeman who watched with a suspicious eye the little man who
+gesticulated and shook his head so earnestly, the poor visionary did
+not awake. He joyously imagined himself returning home, telling the
+news to his daughters, and taking them to the theatre in the evening to
+celebrate that happy day. God! how pretty the Joyeuse girls were,
+sitting in the front of their box! what a nosegay of rosy cheeks! And
+then, on the next day, lo and behold the two oldest are sought in
+marriage by--Impossible to say by whom, for M. Joyeuse suddenly found
+himself under the porch of the Hemerlingue establishment, in front of a
+swing-door surmounted by the words, "Counting Room" in gold letters.
+
+"I shall always be the same," he said to himself with a little laugh,
+wiping his forehead, on which the perspiration stood in beads.
+
+Put in good humor by his fancy, by the blazing fires in the long line
+of offices, with inlaid floors and wire gratings, keeping the secrets
+confided to them in the subdued light of the ground floor, where one
+could count gold pieces without being dazzled by them, M. Joyeuse bade
+the other clerks a cheery good-morning, and donned his working-coat and
+black velvet cap. Suddenly there was a whistle from above; and the
+cashier, putting his ear to the tube, heard the coarse, gelatinous
+voice of Hemerlingue, the only, the genuine Hemerlingue--the other, the
+son, was always absent--asking for M. Joyeuse. What! was he still
+dreaming? He was greatly excited as he took the little inner stairway,
+which he had ascended so jauntily just before, and found himself in the
+banker's office, a narrow room with a very high ceiling, and with no
+other furniture than green curtains and enormous leather arm-chairs,
+proportioned to the formidable bulk of the head of the house. He was
+sitting there at his desk, which his paunch prevented him from
+approaching, corpulent, puffing, and so yellow that his round face with
+its hooked nose, the face of a fat, diseased owl, shone like a beacon
+light in that solemn, gloomy office. A coarse, Moorish merchant
+mouldering in the dampness of his little courtyard. His eyes gleamed an
+instant beneath his heavy slow-moving eyelids when the clerk entered;
+he motioned to him to approach, and slowly, coldly, with frequent
+breaks in his breathless sentences, instead of: "M. Joyeuse, how many
+daughters have you?" he said this:
+
+"Joyeuse, you have assumed to criticize in our offices our recent
+operations on the market in Tunis. No use to deny it. What you said has
+been repeated to me word for word. And as I can't allow such things
+from one of my clerks, I notify you that with the end of this month you
+will cease to be in my employ."
+
+The blood rushed to the clerk's face, receded, returned, causing each
+time a confused buzzing in his ears, a tumult of thoughts and images in
+his brain.
+
+His daughters!
+
+What would become of them?
+
+Places are so scarce at that time of year!
+
+Want stared him in the face, and also the vision of a poor devil
+falling at Hemerlingue's feet, imploring him, threatening him, leaping
+at his throat in an outburst of desperate frenzy. All this agitation
+passed across his face like a gust of wind which wrinkles the surface
+of a lake, hollowing out shifting caverns of all shapes therein; but he
+stood mute on the same spot, and at a hint from his employer that he
+might withdraw, went unsteadily down to resume his task in the
+counting-room.
+
+That evening, on returning to Rue Saint-Ferdinand, M. Joyeuse said
+nothing to his daughters. He dared not. The thought of casting a shadow
+upon that radiant gayety, which was the whole life of the house, of
+dimming with great tears those sparkling eyes, seemed to him
+unendurable. Moreover he was timid and weak, one of those who always
+say: "Let us wait till to-morrow." So he waited before speaking, in the
+first place until the month of November should be at an end, comforting
+himself with the vague hope that Hemerlingue might change his mind, as
+if he did not know that unyielding will, like the flabby, tenacious
+grasp of a mollusk clinging to its gold ingot. Secondly, when his
+accounts were settled and another clerk had taken his place at the tall
+desk at which he had stood so long, he hoped speedily to find something
+else and to repair the disaster before he was obliged to avow it.
+
+Every morning he pretended to start for the office, allowed himself to
+be equipped and escorted to the door as usual, his great leather bag
+all ready for the numerous parcels he was to bring home at night.
+Although he purposely forgot some of them because of the approach of
+the perplexing close of the month, he no longer lacked time in which to
+do his daughters' errands. He had his day to himself, an interminable
+day, which he passed in running about Paris in search of a place. They
+gave him addresses and excellent recommendations. But in that month of
+December, when the air is so cold and the days are so short, a month
+overburdened with expenses and anxieties, clerks suffer in patience and
+employers too. Every one tries to end the year in tranquillity,
+postponing to the month of January, when time takes a great leap onward
+toward another station, all changes, ameliorations, attempts to lead a
+new life.
+
+Wherever M. Joyeuse called, he saw faces suddenly turn cold as soon as
+he explained the purpose of his visit. "What! you are no longer with
+Hemerlingue and Son? How does that happen?" He would explain the
+condition of affairs as best he could, attributing it to a caprice of
+his employer, that violent-tempered Hemerlingue whom all Paris knew;
+but he was conscious of a cold, suspicious accent in the uniform reply:
+"Come and see us after the holidays." And, timid as he was at best, he
+reached a point at which he hardly dared apply anywhere, but would walk
+back and forth twenty times in front of the same door, nor would he
+ever have crossed the threshold but for the thought of his daughters.
+That thought alone would grasp his shoulder, put heart into his legs
+and send him to opposite ends of Paris in the same day, to exceedingly
+vague addresses given him by comrades, to a great bone-black factory at
+Aubervilliers, for instance, where they made him call three days in
+succession, and all for nothing.
+
+Oh! the long walks in the rain and frost, the closed doors, the
+employer who has gone out or has visitors, the promises given and
+suddenly retracted, the disappointed hopes, the enervating effect of
+long suspense, the humiliation in store for every man who asks for
+work, as if it were a shameful thing to be without it. M. Joyeuse
+experienced all those heartsickening details, and he learned too how
+the will becomes weary and discouraged in the face of persistent
+ill-luck. And you can imagine whether the bitter martyrdom of "the man
+in search of a place" was intensified by the fantasies of his
+imagination, by the chimeras which rose before him from the pavements
+of Paris, while he pursued his quest in every direction.
+
+For a whole month he was like one of those pitiful marionettes who
+soliloquize and gesticulate on the sidewalks, and from whom the
+slightest jostling on the part of the crowd extorts a somnambulistic
+ejaculation: "I said as much," or "Don't you doubt it, monsieur." You
+pass on, you almost laugh, but you are moved to pity at the
+unconsciousness of those poor devils, possessed by a fixed idea, blind
+men led by dreams, drawn on by an invisible leash. The terrible feature
+of it all was this, that when M. Joyeuse returned home, after those
+long, cruel days of inaction and fatigue, he must enact the comedy of
+the man returning from work, must describe the events of the day, tell
+what he had heard, the gossip of the office, with which he was always
+accustomed to entertain the young ladies.
+
+In humble households there is always one name that comes to the lips
+more frequently than others, a name that is invoked on days of
+disaster, that plays a part in every wish, in every hope, even in the
+play of the children, who are permeated with the idea of its
+importance, a name that fills the role of a sub-providence in the
+family, or rather of a supernatural household god. It is the name of
+the employer, the manager of the factory, the landlord, the minister,
+the man, in short, who holds in his powerful hand the welfare, the very
+existence of the family. In the Joyeuse household it was Hemerlingue,
+always Hemerlingue; ten, twenty times a day the name was mentioned in
+the conversation of the girls, who associated it with all their plans,
+with the most trivial details of their girlish ambitions: "If
+Hemerlingue would consent. It all depends on Hemerlingue." And nothing
+could be more delightful than the familiar way in which those children
+spoke of the wealthy boor whom they had never seen.
+
+They asked questions about him. Had their father spoken to him? Was he
+in good humor? To think that all of us, however humble we may be,
+however cruelly enslaved by destiny, have always below us some poor
+creature more humble, more enslaved than ourselves, in whose eyes we
+are great, in whose eyes we are gods, and, as gods, indifferent,
+scornful or cruel.
+
+We can fancy M. Joyeuse's torture when he was compelled to invent
+incidents, to manufacture anecdotes concerning the villain who had
+dismissed him so heartlessly after ten years of faithful service.
+However, he played his little comedy in such way as to deceive them all
+completely. They had noticed only one thing, and that was that their
+father, on returning home at night, always had a hearty appetite for
+the evening meal. I should say as much! Since he had lost his place,
+the poor man had ceased to eat any luncheon.
+
+The days passed. M. Joyeuse found nothing. Yes, he was offered a
+clerkship at the _Caisse Territoriale_, which he declined, being too
+well acquainted with the banking operations, with all the nooks and
+corners of financial Bohemia in general and the _Caisse Territoriale_
+in particular, to step foot in that den.
+
+"But," said Passajon--for it was Passajon, who, happening to meet the
+good man and finding that he was unemployed, had spoken to him of
+taking service with Paganetti--"but I tell you again that it's all
+right. We have plenty of money. We pay our debts. I have been paid;
+just see what a dandy I am."
+
+In truth, the old clerk had a new livery, and his paunch protruded
+majestically beneath his tunic with silver buttons. For all that, M.
+Joyeuse had withstood the temptation, even after Passajon, opening wide
+his bulging eyes, had whispered with emphasis in his ear these words
+big with promise:
+
+"The Nabob is in it."
+
+Even after that, M. Joyeuse had had the courage to say no. Was it not
+better to die of hunger than to enter the service of an unsubstantial
+house whose books he might some day be called upon to examine as an
+expert before a court of justice?
+
+So he continued to wander about; but he was discouraged and had
+abandoned his search for employment. As it was necessary for him to
+remain away from home, he loitered in front of the shop-windows on the
+quays, leaned for hours on the parapets, watching the river and the
+boats discharging their cargoes. He became one of those idlers whom we
+see in the front rank of all street crowds, taking refuge from a shower
+under porches, drawing near the stoves on which the asphalters boil
+their tar in the open air, to warm themselves, and sinking on benches
+along the boulevard when their feet can no longer carry them.
+
+What an excellent way of lengthening one's days, to do nothing!
+
+On certain days, however, when M. Joyeuse was too tired or the weather
+too inclement, he waited at the end of the street until the young
+ladies had closed their window, then went back to the house, hugging
+the walls, hurried upstairs, holding his breath as he passed his own
+door, and took refuge with the photographer, Andre Maranne, who, being
+aware of his catastrophe, offered him the compassionate welcome which
+poor devils extend to one another. Customers are rare so near the
+barriers. He would sit for many hours in the studio, talking in an
+undertone, reading by his friend's side, listening to the rain on the
+window-panes or the wind whistling as in mid-ocean, rattling the old
+doors and window-frames in the graveyard of demolished buildings below.
+On the next floor he heard familiar sounds, full of charm for him,
+snatches of song accompanying the work of willing hands, a chorus of
+laughter, the piano lesson given by _Grandmamma_, the tic-tac of the
+metronome, a delicious domestic hurly-burly that warmed his heart. He
+lived with his darlings, who certainly had no idea that they had him so
+near at hand.
+
+Once, while Maranne was out, M. Joyeuse, acting as a faithful custodian
+of the studio and its brand-new equipment, heard two little taps on the
+ceiling of the fourth floor, two separate, very distinct taps, then a
+cautious rumbling like the scampering of a mouse. The intimacy between
+the photographer and his neighbors justified this prisoner-like method
+of communication, but what did that mean? How should he answer what
+seemed like a call? At all hazards he repeated the two taps, the soft
+drumming sound, and the interview stopped there. When Andre Maranne
+returned, he explained it. It was very simple: sometimes, during the
+day, the young ladies, who never saw their neighbor except in the
+evening, took that means of inquiring for his health and whether
+business was improving. The signal he had heard signified: "Is business
+good to-day?" and M. Joyeuse had instinctively but unwittingly replied:
+"Not bad for the season." Although young Maranne blushed hotly as he
+said it, M. Joyeuse believed him. But the idea of frequent
+communication between the two households made him fear lest his secret
+should be divulged, and thereafter he abstained from what he called his
+"artistic days." However, the time was drawing near when he could no
+longer conceal his plight, for the end of the month was at hand,
+complicated by the end of the year.
+
+Paris was already assuming the usual festal aspect of the last weeks of
+December. That is about all that is left in the way of national or
+popular merrymaking. The revels of the carnival died with Gavarni, the
+religious festivals, the music of which we scarcely hear above the din
+of the streets, seclude themselves behind the heavy church doors, the
+Fifteenth of August has never been aught but the Saint-Charlemagne of
+the barracks; but Paris has retained its respect for the first day of
+the year.
+
+Early in December a violent epidemic of childishness is apparent in the
+streets. Wagons pass, laden with gilded drums, wooden horses,
+playthings by the score. In the manufacturing districts, from top to
+bottom of the five-story buildings, former palaces of the Marais, where
+the shops have such lofty ceilings and stately double doors, people
+work all night, handling gauze, flowers and straw, fastening labels on
+satin-covered boxes, sorting out, marking and packing; the innumerable
+details of the toy trade, that great industry upon which Paris places
+the sign-manual of its refined taste. There is a smell of green wood,
+of fresh paint, of glistening varnish, and in the dust of the garrets,
+on the rickety stairways where the common people deposit all the mud
+through which they have tramped, chips of rosewood are strewn about,
+clippings of satin and velvet, bits of tinsel, all the debris of the
+treasures employed to dazzle childish eyes. Then the shop-windows array
+themselves. Behind the transparent glass the gilt binding of gift-books
+ascends like a gleaming wave under the gas-lights, rich stuffs of
+kaleidoscopic, tempting hues display their heavy, graceful folds, while
+the shop-girls, with their hair piled high upon their heads and ribbons
+around their necks, puff their wares with the little finger in the air,
+or fill silk bags, into which the bonbons fall like a shower of pearls.
+
+But face to face with this bourgeois industry, firmly established and
+intrenched behind its gorgeous shop fronts, is the ephemeral industry
+carried on in the stalls built of plain boards, open to the wind from
+the street, standing in a double row which gives the boulevard the
+aspect of a foreign market place. There are to be found the real
+interest, the poetry of New Year's gifts. Luxurious in the Madeleine
+quarter, less ostentatious toward Boulevard Saint-Denis, cheaper and
+more tawdry as you approach the Bastille, these little booths change
+their character to suit their customers, estimate their chances of
+success according to the condition of the purses of the passers-by.
+Between them stand tables covered with trifles, miracles of the petty
+Parisian trades, made of nothing, fragile and insignificant, but
+sometimes whirled away by fashion in one of its fierce gusts, because
+of their very lightness. And lastly, along the sidewalks, lost in the
+line of vehicles which brush against them as they stroll along, the
+orange-women put the final touch to this ambulatory commerce, heaping
+up the sun-colored fruit under their red lanterns, and crying: "La
+Valence!" in the fog, the uproar, the excessive haste with which Paris
+rushes to meet the close of the year.
+
+Ordinarily M. Joyeuse made a part of the happy crowd that throngs the
+streets with a jingling of money in the pockets and packages in every
+hand. He would run about with _Grandmamma_ in quest of presents for the
+young ladies, stopping in front of the booths of the small shopkeepers
+whom the slightest indication of a customer excites beyond measure, for
+they are unfamiliar with the art of selling and have based upon that
+brief season visions of extraordinary profits. And there would be
+consultations and meditations, a never-ending perplexity as to the
+final selection in that busy little brain, always in advance of the
+present and of the occupation of the moment.
+
+But that year, alas! there was nothing of the sort. He wandered sadly
+through the joyous city, sadder and more discouraged by reason of all
+the activity around him, jostled and bumped like all those who impede
+the circulation of the industrious, his heart beating with constant
+dread, for _Grandmamma_, for several days past, had been making
+significant, prophetic remarks at table on the subject of New Year's
+gifts. For that reason he avoided being left alone with her and had
+forbidden her coming to meet him at the office. But, struggle as he
+would, the time was drawing near, he felt it in his bones, when further
+mystery would be impossible and his secret would be divulged. Was this
+_Grandmamma_ of whom M. Joyeuse stood in such fear such a terrible
+creature, pray? _Mon Dieu_, no! A little stern, that was all, with a
+sweet smile which promised instant pardon to every culprit. But M.
+Joyeuse was naturally cowardly and timid; twenty years of housekeeping
+with a masterful woman, "a person of gentle birth," had enslaved him
+forever, like those convicts who are subjected to surveillance for a
+certain period after their sentences have expired. And he was subjected
+to it for life.
+
+One evening the Joyeuse family was assembled in the small salon, the
+last relic of its splendor, where there still were two stuffed
+arm-chairs, an abundance of crochet-work, a piano, two Carcel lamps
+with little green caps, and a small table covered with trivial
+ornaments.
+
+The true family exists only among the lowly.
+
+For economy's sake only one fire was lighted for the whole house, and
+only one lamp around which all their occupations, all their diversions
+were grouped; an honest family lamp, whose old-fashioned shade--with
+night scenes, studded with brilliant points--had been the wonder and
+the delight of all the girls in their infancy. Emerging gracefully from
+the shadow of the rest of the room, four youthful faces, fair or dark,
+smiling or engrossed, bent forward in the warm, cheerful rays, which
+illumined them to the level of the eyes and seemed to feed the fire of
+their glances, the radiant youth beneath their transparent brows, to
+watch over them, to shelter them, to protect them from the black cold
+wind without, from ghosts, pitfalls, misery and terror, from all the
+sinister things that lurk in an out-of-the-way quarter of Paris on a
+winter's night.
+
+Thus assembled in a small room near the top of the deserted house, in
+the warmth and security of its neatly kept and comfortable home, the
+Joyeuse family resembles a family of birds in a nest at the top of a
+tall tree. They sew and read and talk a little. A burst of flame, the
+crackling of the fire, are the only sounds to be heard, save for an
+occasional exclamation from M. Joyeuse, who sits just outside of his
+little circle, hiding in the shadow his anxious brow and all the
+vagaries of his imagination. Now he fancies that, in the midst of the
+distress by which he is overwhelmed, the absolute necessity of
+confessing everything to his children to-night, to-morrow at latest,
+unforeseen succor comes to him. Hemerlingue, seized with remorse, sends
+to him, to all the others who worked on the Tunisian loan, the
+accustomed December bonus. It is brought by a tall footman: "From
+Monsieur le Baron." The _Imaginaire_ says this aloud. The pretty faces
+turn to look at him; they laugh and move about, and the poor wretch
+wakes with a start.
+
+Oh! how he reviles himself now for his delay in confessing everything,
+for the fallacious security which he has encouraged in his home and
+which he will have to destroy at one blow. Why need he have criticised
+that Tunisian loan? He even blames himself now for having declined a
+position at the _Caisse Territoriale_. Had he the right to decline it?
+Ah! what a pitiful head of a family, who lacked strength to maintain
+or to defend the welfare of his dear ones. And, in presence of the
+charming group sitting within the rays of the lamp, whose tranquil
+aspect is in such glaring contrast to his inward agitation, he is
+seized with remorse, which assails his feeble mind so fiercely that
+his secret comes to his lips, is on the point of escaping him in
+an outburst of sobs, when a ring at the bell--not an imaginary
+ring--startles them all and checks him as he is about to speak.
+
+Who could have come at that hour? They had lived in seclusion since the
+mother's death, receiving almost no visitors. Andre Maranne, when he
+came down to pass a few moments with them, knocked familiarly after the
+manner of those to whom a door is always open. Profound silence in the
+salon, a long colloquy on the landing. At last the old servant--she had
+been in the family as long as the lamp--introduced a young man, a
+perfect stranger, who stopped suddenly, spellbound, at sight of the
+charming picture presented by the four darlings grouped about the
+table. He entered with an abashed, somewhat awkward air. However, he
+set forth very clearly the purpose of his call. He was recommended to
+apply to M. Joyeuse by a worthy man of his acquaintance, old Passajon,
+to give him lessons in book-keeping. A friend of his was involved in
+some large financial enterprises, a stock company of some size. He was
+anxious to be of service to him by keeping an eye upon the employment
+of his funds and the rectitude of his associates' operations; but he
+was a lawyer, with a very imperfect knowledge of financial matters and
+the vernacular of the banking business. Could not M. Joyeuse, in a few
+months, with three or four lessons a week--"
+
+"Why, yes indeed, monsieur, yes indeed," stammered the father, dazed by
+this unhoped-for chance; "I will willingly undertake to fit you in a
+month or two for this work of examining accounts. Where shall we have
+the lessons?"
+
+"Here, if you please," said the young man, "for I am anxious that
+nobody should know that I am working at it. But I shall be very sorry
+if I am to put everybody to flight every time I appear, as I seem to
+have done this evening."
+
+It was a fact that, as soon as the visitor opened his mouth, the four
+curly heads had disappeared, with much whispering and rustling of
+skirts, and the salon appeared very bare now that the great circle of
+white light was empty.
+
+Always quick to take alarm where his daughters were concerned, M.
+Joyeuse replied that "the young ladies always retired early," in a
+short, sharp tone which said as plainly as could be: "Let us confine
+our conversation to our lessons, young man, I beg."
+
+Thereupon they agreed upon the days and the hours in the evening.
+
+As for the terms, that would be for monsieur to determine.
+
+Monsieur named a figure.
+
+The clerk turned scarlet; it was what he earned at Hemerlingue's.
+
+"Oh! no, that is too much."
+
+But the other would not listen; he hemmed and hawed and rolled his
+tongue around as if he were trying to say something that it was very
+difficult to say; then with sudden resolution:
+
+"Here is your first month's pay."
+
+"But, monsieur--"
+
+The young man insisted. He was a stranger. It was fair that he should
+pay in advance. Evidently Passajon had told him. M. Joyeuse understood
+and said, beneath his breath: "Thanks, oh! thanks!" so deeply moved
+that words failed him. Life, it meant life for a few months, time to
+turn around, to find a situation. His darlings would be deprived of
+nothing. They would have their New Year's gifts. O Providence!
+
+"Until Wednesday, then, Monsieur Joyeuse."
+
+"Until Wednesday, Monsieur--?"
+
+"De Gery--Paul de Gery."
+
+They parted, equally dazzled, enchanted, one by the appearance of that
+unexpected saviour, the other by the lovely tableau of which he had
+caught a glimpse, all those maidens grouped around the table covered
+with books and papers and skeins, with an air of purity, of
+hard-working probity. That sight opened up to de Gery a whole new
+Paris, brave, domestic, very different from that with which he was
+already familiar, a Paris of which the writers of feuilletons and the
+reporters never speak, and which reminded him of his province, with an
+additional element, namely, the charm which the surrounding hurly-burly
+and turmoil impart to the peaceful shelter that they do not reach.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+FELICIA RUYS.
+
+
+"By the way, what have you done with your son, Jenkins? Why do we never
+see him at your house now? He was an attractive boy."
+
+As she said this in the tone of disdainful acerbity in which she always
+addressed the Irishman, Felicia was at work on the bust of the Nabob
+which she had just begun, adjusting her model, taking up and putting
+down the modelling tool, wiping her hands with a quick movement on the
+little sponge, while the light and peace of a lovely Sunday afternoon
+flooded the circular glass-walled studio. Felicia "received" every
+Sunday, if receiving consisted in leaving her door open and allowing
+people to come and go and sit down a moment, without stirring from her
+work for them, or even breaking off a discussion she might have begun,
+to welcome new arrivals. There were artists with shapely heads and
+bright red beards, and here and there the white poll of an old man,
+sentimental friends of the elder Ruys; then there were connoisseurs,
+men of the world, bankers, brokers, and some young swells who came
+rather to see the fair sculptress than her sculpture, so that they
+would have the right to say that evening at the club: "I was at
+Felicia's to-day." Among them Paul de Gery, silent, engrossed by an
+admiration which sank a little deeper in his heart day by day, strove
+to comprehend the beautiful sphinx, arrayed in purple cashmere and
+unbleached lace, who worked bravely away in the midst of her clay, a
+burnisher's apron--reaching nearly to the neck--leaving naught visible
+save the proud little face with those transparent tones, those gleams
+as of veiled rays with which intellect and inspiration give animation
+to the features. Paul never forgot what had been said of her in his
+presence, he tried to form an opinion for himself, was beset by doubt
+and perplexity, yet fascinated; vowed every time that he would never
+come again, yet never missed a Sunday. There was another fixture,
+always in the same spot, a little woman with gray, powdered hair and a
+lace handkerchief around her pink face; a pastel somewhat worn by
+years, who smiled sweetly in the discreet light of a window recess, her
+hands lying idly upon her lap, in fakir-like immobility. Jenkins,
+always in good humor, with his beaming face, his black eyes, and his
+apostolic air, went about from one to another, known and loved by all.
+He too never missed one of Felicia's days; and in very truth he
+displayed great patience, for all the sharp words of the artist and of
+the pretty woman as well were reserved for him alone. Without seeming
+to notice it, with the same smiling indulgent serenity, he continued to
+court the society of the daughter of his old friend Ruys, of whom he
+had been so fond and whom he had attended until his last breath.
+
+On this occasion, however, the question that Felicia propounded to him
+on the subject of his son seemed to him extremely disagreeable; and
+there was a frown upon his face, a genuine expression of ill-humor, as
+he replied:
+
+"Faith, I know no more than you as to what has become of him. He has
+turned his back upon us altogether. He was bored with us. He cares for
+nothing but his Bohemia--"
+
+Felicia gave a bound which made them all start, and with flashing eye
+and quivering nostril retorted:
+
+"That is too much. Look you, Jenkins, what do you call Bohemia? A
+charming word, by the way, which should evoke visions of long wandering
+jaunts in the sunlight, halting in shady nooks, the first taste of
+luscious fruits and sparkling fountains, taken at random on the
+highroads. But since you have made of the word with all the charm
+attaching to it a stigma and an insult, to whom do you apply it? To
+certain poor long-haired devils, in love with freedom in rags and
+tatters, who starve to death on fifth floors, looking at the sky at too
+close quarters, or seeking rhymes under tiles through which the rain
+drips; to those idiots, fewer and fewer in number, who in their horror
+of the conventional, the traditional, of the dense stupidity of life,
+have taken a standing jump over the edge. But that's the way it used to
+be, I tell you. That's the Bohemia of Murger, with the hospital at the
+end, the terror of children, the comfort of kindred, Little Red Riding
+Hood eaten by the wolf. That state of things came to an end a long
+while ago. To-day you know perfectly well that artists are the most
+well-behaved people on earth, that they earn money, pay their debts and
+do their best to resemble the ordinary man. There is no lack of genuine
+Bohemians, however; our society is made up of them, but they are found
+more particularly in your circle. _Parbleu!_ they are not labelled
+on the outside, and no one distrusts them; but so far as the
+uncertainty of existence and lack of order are concerned, they have no
+reason to envy those whom they so disdainfully call 'irregulars.' Ah!
+if one knew all the baseness, all the unheard-of, monstrous experiences
+that may be masked by a black coat, the most correct of your horrible
+modern garments! Jenkins, at your house the other evening, I amused
+myself counting all those adventurers of high--"
+
+The little old lady, pink-cheeked and powdered, said to her softly from
+her seat:
+
+"Felicia--take care--"
+
+But she went on without listening to her:
+
+"Who is this Monpavon, Doctor? And Bois-l'Hery? And Mora himself?
+And--"
+
+She was on the point of saying, "And the Nabob?" but checked herself.
+
+"And how many others! Oh! really, I advise you to speak contemptuously
+of Bohemia. Why, your clientage as a fashionable physician, O sublime
+Jenkins, is made up of nothing else. Bohemia of manufacturing, of
+finance, of politics; fallen stars, the tainted of all castes, and the
+higher you go the more of them there are, because high rank gives
+impunity and wealth closes many mouths."
+
+She spoke with great animation, harshly, her lip curling in fierce
+disdain. The other laughed a false laugh and assumed an airy,
+condescending tone. "Ah! madcap! madcap!" And his glance, anxious and
+imploring, rested upon the Nabob, as if to beseech his forgiveness for
+that flood of impertinent paradoxes.
+
+But Jansoulet, far from appearing to be vexed,--he who was so proud to
+pose for that lovely artist, so puffed up by the honor conferred upon
+him--nodded his head approvingly.
+
+"She is right, Jenkins," he said, "she is right. We are the real
+Bohemia. Look at me, for instance, and Hemerlingue, two of the greatest
+handlers of money in Paris. When I think where we started from, all the
+trades that we tried our hands at! Hemerlingue, an old regimental
+sutler; and myself, who carried bags of grain on the wharves at
+Marseille for a living. And then the strokes of luck by which our
+fortunes were made, as indeed all fortunes are made nowadays. Bless my
+soul! Just look under the peristyle at the Bourse from three to five.
+But I beg your pardon, mademoiselle, with my mania for gesticulating
+when I talk, I've spoiled my pose--let's see, will this do?"
+
+"It's of no use," said Felicia, throwing down her modelling-tool with
+the gesture of a spoiled child. "I can do nothing more to-day."
+
+She was a strange girl, this Felicia. A true child of an artist, a
+genial and dissipated artist, according to the romantic tradition, such
+as Sebastien Ruys was. She had never known her mother, being the fruit
+of one of those ephemeral passions which suddenly enter a sculptor's
+bachelor life, as swallows enter a house of which the door is always
+open, and go out again at once, because they cannot build nests there.
+
+On that occasion the lady, on taking flight, had left with the great
+artist, then in the neighborhood of forty, a beautiful child whom he
+had acknowledged and reared, and who became the joy and passion of his
+life. Felicia had remained with her father until she was thirteen,
+importing a childish, refining element into that studio crowded with
+idlers, models, and huge greyhounds lying at full length on divans.
+There was a corner set aside for her, for her attempts at sculpture, a
+complete equipment on a microscopic scale, a tripod and wax; and old
+Ruys would say to all who came in:
+
+"Don't go over there. Don't disturb anything. That's the little one's
+corner."
+
+The result was that at ten years of age she hardly knew how to read and
+handled the modelling-tool with marvellous skill. Ruys would have liked
+to keep the child, who never annoyed him in any way, with him
+permanently, a tiny member of the great brotherhood. But it was a
+pitiful thing to see the little maid exposed to the free and easy
+manners of the habitues of the house, the incessant going and coming of
+models, the discussions concerning an art that is purely physical, so
+to speak; and at the uproarious Sunday dinner-table, too, sitting in
+the midst of five or six women, with all of whom her father was on the
+most intimate terms, actresses, dancers, singers, who, when dinner was
+at an end, smoked with the rest, their elbows on the table, revelling
+in the salacious anecdotes so relished by the master of the house.
+Luckily, childhood is protected by the resistant power of innocence, a
+polished surface over which all forms of pollution glide harmlessly.
+Felicia was noisy, uproarious, badly brought up, but was untainted by
+all that passed over her little mind because it was so near the ground.
+
+Every summer she went to pass a few days with her godmother, Constance
+Crenmitz, the elder Crenmitz, who was for so long a time called by all
+Europe the "illustrious dancer," and who was living quietly in
+seclusion at Fontainebleau.
+
+The arrival of the "little devil" introduced into the old lady's life,
+for a time, an element of excitement from which she had the whole year
+to recover. The frights that the child caused her with her audacious
+exploits in leaping and riding, the passionate outbreaks of that
+untamed nature, made the visit both a delight and a terrible trial to
+her,--a delight, because she worshipped Felicia, the only domestic tie
+left the poor old salamander, retired after thirty years of _battus_ in
+the glare of the footlights; a trial, because the demon pitilessly
+pillaged the ex-dancer's apartments, which were as dainty and neat and
+sweet-smelling as her dressing-room at the Opera, and embellished with
+a museum of souvenirs dated from all the theatres in the world.
+
+Constance Crenmitz was the sole feminine element in Felicia's
+childhood. Frivolous, shallow, having all her life kept her mind
+enveloped in pink swaddling-clothes, she had at all events a dainty
+knack at housekeeping, and agile fingers clever at sewing,
+embroidering, arranging furniture, and leaving the trace of their deft,
+painstaking touch in every corner of a room. She alone undertook to
+train that wild young plant, and to awaken with care the womanly
+instincts in that strange creature, on whose figure cloaks and furs,
+all the elegant inventions of fashion, fell in folds too stiff, or
+performed other strange antics.
+
+It was the dancer again--surely the little Ruys must not be
+abandoned--who, triumphing over the paternal selfishness, compelled the
+sculptor to assent to a necessary separation, when Felicia was twelve
+or thirteen years old; furthermore, she assumed the responsibility of
+finding a suitable boarding school, and purposely selected a very rich
+but very bourgeois establishment, pleasantly situated in a
+sparsely-settled faubourg, in a huge old-fashioned mansion, surrounded
+by high walls and tall trees,--a sort of convent, minus the restraint
+and contempt for serious studies.
+
+Indeed, a great deal of hard work was done at Madame Belin's
+establishment, with no opportunities to go out except on great
+festivals, and no communication with the outside world except a visit
+from one's relatives on Thursday, in a little garden of flowering
+shrubs, or in the vast parlor with the carved and gilded panels above
+the doors. Felicia's first appearance in that almost monastic
+institution caused considerable commotion; her costume, selected by the
+Austrian ballet-dancer, her curly hair falling to the waist, her
+ungainly, boyish bearing, gave rise to some ill-natured remarks; but
+she was a Parisian and readily adapted herself to all situations, to
+all localities. In a few days she wore more gracefully than any of the
+others the little black apron, to which the most coquettish attached
+their watches, the straight skirt--a stern and cruel requirement at
+that period, when the prevailing fashion enlarged the circumference of
+woman with an infinite number of ruffles and flounces--and the
+prescribed arrangement of the hair, in two braids fastened together
+well down on the neck, after the fashion of Roman peasants.
+
+Strangely enough, the assiduous work of the classes, their tranquil
+regularity, suited Felicia's nature, all intelligence and animation, in
+which a taste for study was enlivened by an overflow of childish
+spirits in the hours of recreation. Every one loved her. Among those
+children of great manufacturers, Parisian notaries and gentleman-farmers,
+a substantial little world by themselves, somewhat inclined to
+stiffness and formality, the well-known name of old Ruys, and the
+respect which is universally manifested in Paris for a high reputation
+as an artist, gave to Felicia a position apart from the rest and
+greatly envied; a position made even more brilliant by her success in
+her studies, by a genuine talent for drawing, and by her beauty, that
+element of superiority which produces its effect even upon very young
+girls.
+
+In the purer atmosphere of the boarding-school, she felt the keenest
+pleasure in making herself womanly, in resuming her true sex, in
+learning order, regularity, in a different sense from that inculcated
+by the amiable dancer, whose kisses always retained a taste of rouge,
+and whose embraces always left an impression of unnaturally round arms.
+Pere Ruys was enchanted, every time that he went to see his daughter,
+to find her more of a young lady, able to enter and walk about and
+leave a room with the pretty courtesy that made all of Madame Belin's
+boarders long for the _frou-frou_ of a long train.
+
+At first he came often, then, as he lacked time for all the commissions
+accepted and undertaken, the advances upon which helped to pay for the
+disorder and heedlessness of his life, he was seen less frequently in
+the parlor. At last disease took a hand. Brought to earth by hopeless
+anaemia, for weeks he did not leave the house, nor work. He insisted
+upon seeing his daughter; and from the peaceful, health-giving shadow
+of the boarding-school Felicia returned to her father's studio, still
+haunted by the same cronies, the parasites that cling to every
+celebrity, among whom sickness had introduced a new figure in the
+person of Dr. Jenkins.
+
+That handsome, open face, the air of frankness and serenity diffused
+over the whole person of that already well known physician, who talked
+of his art so freely, yet performed miraculous cures, and his assiduous
+attentions to her father, made a deep impression on the girl. Jenkins
+soon became the friend, the confidant, a vigilant and gentle guardian.
+Sometimes in the studio, when some one--the father himself most
+frequently--made a too equivocal remark or a ribald jest, the Irishman
+would frown and make a little noise with his lips, or else would divert
+Felicia's attention. He often took her to pass the day with Madame
+Jenkins, exerting himself to prevent her from becoming once more the
+wild creature of the ante-boarding school days, or indeed the something
+worse than that which she threatened to become, in the moral
+abandonment, the saddest of all forms of abandonment, in which she was
+left.
+
+But the girl had a more powerful protector than the irreproachable but
+worldly example of the fair Madame Jenkins: the art which she adored,
+the enthusiasm it aroused in her essentially open nature, the sentiment
+of beauty, of truth, which passed from her thoughtful brain, teeming
+with ideas, into her fingers with a little quiver of the nerves, a
+longing to see the thing done, the image realized. All day she worked
+at her sculpture, gave shape to her reveries, with the happy tact of
+instinct-guided youth, which imparts so much charm to first works; that
+prevented her from regretting too keenly the austere regime of the
+Belin institution, which was as perfect a safeguard and as light as the
+veil of a novice who has not taken her vows; and it also shielded her
+from perilous conversations to which in her one absorbing preoccupation
+she paid no heed.
+
+Ruys was proud of the talent springing up by his side. As he grew
+weaker from day to day, having already reached the stage at which the
+artist regrets his vanishing powers, he followed Felicia's progress as
+a consolation for the close of his own career. The modelling-tool,
+which trembled in his hand, was seized at his side with virile firmness
+and self-assurance, tempered by all of the innate refinement of her
+being that a woman can apply to the realization of her ideal of an art.
+A curious sensation is that twofold paternity, that survival of genius,
+which abandons the one who is going away to pass into the one who is
+coming, like the lovely domestic birds which, on the eve of a death,
+desert the threatened roof for a more cheerful dwelling.
+
+In the last days of her father's life, Felicia--a great artist, and
+still a child--did half of her father's work for him, and nothing could
+be more touching than that collaboration of the father and daughter, in
+the same studio, sculptors of the same group. Things did not always run
+smoothly. Although she was her father's pupil, Felicia's individuality
+was already inclined to rebel against any arbitrary guidance. She had
+the audacity of beginners, the presentiment of a great future felt only
+by youthful geniuses, and, in opposition to the romantic traditions of
+Sebastien Ruys, a tendency toward modern realism, a feeling that she
+must plant that glorious old flag upon some new monument.
+
+Then there would be terrible scenes, disputes from which the father
+would come forth vanquished, annihilated by his daughter's logic,
+amazed at the rapid progress children make on the highroads, while
+their elders, who have opened the gates for them, remain stationary at
+the point of departure. When she was working for him Felicia yielded
+more readily; but concerning her own work she was intractable. For
+instance, the _Joueur de Boules_, her first exhibited work, which
+made such a tremendous hit at the Salon of 1862, was the occasion of
+violent disputes between the two artists, of such fierce controversy
+that Jenkins had to intervene and to superintend the removal of the
+figure, which Ruys had threatened to break.
+
+Aside from these little dramas, which had no effect upon the love of
+their hearts, those two worshipped each other, with the presentiment
+and, as the days passed, the cruel certainty of an impending
+separation; when suddenly there came a horrible episode in Felicia's
+life. One day Jenkins took her home to dinner with him, as he often
+did. Madame Jenkins and her son were away for two days; but the
+doctor's years, his semi-paternal intimacy, justified him in inviting
+to his house, even in his wife's absence, a girl whose fifteen years,
+the fifteen years of an Eastern Jewess resplendent with premature
+beauty, left her still almost a child.
+
+The dinner was very lively, Jenkins cordial and agreeable as always.
+Then they went into the doctor's office; and suddenly, as they sat on
+the divan, talking in the most intimate and friendly way concerning her
+father, his health and their joint work, Felicia had a feeling as of
+the cold blast from an abyss between herself and that man, followed by
+the brutal embrace of a satyr's claw. She saw a Jenkins totally unknown
+to her, wild-eyed, stammering, with brutish laugh and insulting hands.
+In the surprise, the unexpectedness of that outbreak of the animal
+instinct, any other than Felicia, any child of her years, but genuinely
+innocent, would have been lost. The thing that saved her, poor child,
+was her knowledge. She had heard so many stories at her father's table!
+And then her art, her life at the studio. She was no _ingenue_. She at
+once understood what that embrace meant, she squirmed and struggled,
+then, finding that she was not strong enough, screamed. He was
+frightened, released her, and suddenly she found herself on her feet,
+free, with the man at her knees, weeping and imploring forgiveness. He
+had yielded to an attack of frenzy. She was so lovely, he loved her so
+dearly. He had struggled for months. But now it was all over--never
+again, oh! never again. He would not even touch the hem of her dress.
+She did not reply, but tremblingly rearranged her hair and her clothes
+with frenzied fingers. Go, she must go at once, alone. He sent a
+servant with her, and whispered, as she entered the carriage: "Above
+all things, not a word of this at home. It would kill your father." He
+knew her so well, he was so sure of closing her mouth by that thought,
+the villain, that he came the next day as if nothing had happened,
+effusive as always and with the same ingenuous face. She never did
+mention the incident to her father or to anybody else. But from that
+day a change took place in her, as if the springs of her pride were
+relaxed. She became capricious, had fits of lassitude, a curl of
+disgust in her smile, and sometimes she yielded to sudden outbursts of
+wrath against her father, and cast scornful glances upon him, rebuking
+him for his failure to watch over her.
+
+"What is the matter with her?" Pere Ruys would ask; and Jenkins, with
+the authority of a physician, would attribute it to her age and a
+physical trouble. He himself avoided speaking to the girl, relying upon
+time to efface the sinister impression, and not despairing of obtaining
+what he desired, for he desired more eagerly than ever, being in the
+grasp of the insane passion of a man of forty-seven, the incurable
+passion of maturity; and that was the hypocrite's punishment. His
+daughter's strange state caused the sculptor genuine distress; but it
+was of brief duration. Ruys suddenly expired, fell to pieces all at
+once, like all those whom Jenkins attended. His last words were:
+
+"Jenkins, I place my daughter in your care."
+
+The words were so ironical in all their mournfulness that Jenkins, who
+was present at the last, could not avoid turning pale.
+
+Felicia was even more stupefied than sorrowful. To the feeling of
+amazement at death, which she had never seen before, and which appeared
+in a guise so dear to her, was added the feeling of a terrible
+loneliness surrounded by darkness and perils.
+
+Several friends of the sculptor assembled in a family council to
+deliberate concerning the future of the unfortunate, penniless orphan.
+They had found fifty francs in the catch-all in which Sebastien kept
+his money on a little commode in the studio, well known to his needy
+friends, who had recourse to it without scruple. No other patrimony, in
+cash at all events; only a most superb collection of artistic objects
+and curios, a few valuable pictures and some scattered outstanding
+claims hardly sufficient to cover his innumerable debts. They talked of
+a sale at auction. Felicia, on being consulted, replied that it was a
+matter of indifference to her whether they sold all or none, but that
+she begged them, for God's sake, to leave her in peace.
+
+The sale did not take place, however, thanks to the godmother, the
+excellent Crenmitz, who suddenly made her appearance, as tranquil and
+gentle as always:
+
+"Don't listen to them, my child, sell nothing. Your old Constance has
+fifteen thousand francs a year which were intended for you. You shall
+have the benefit of them now, that's all. We will live together here. I
+will not be in the way, you will see. You can work at your sculpture,
+while I keep the house. Does that suit you?"
+
+It was said so affectionately, in the childish accent of foreigners
+expressing themselves in French, that the girl was deeply moved. Her
+stony heart opened, a burning flood poured from her eyes and she threw
+herself, buried herself in the ex-dancer's arms: "Oh! godmother, how
+good you are! Yes, yes; don't leave me again--stay with me always. Life
+frightens and disgusts me. I see so much hypocrisy and lying!" And when
+the old woman had made herself a silky, embroidered nest in the house,
+which resembled a traveller's camp filled with the treasures of all
+lands, those two widely different natures took up their life together.
+
+It was no small sacrifice that Constance had made to the little demon,
+to leave her retreat at Fontainebleau for Paris, which she held in
+horror. From the day when the ballet-dancer, once famous for her
+extravagant caprices, who squandered princely fortunes between her five
+parted fingers, had descended from the realm of apotheoses with a last
+remnant of their dazzling glare still lingering in her eyes, and had
+tried to resume the life of ordinary mortals, to administer her little
+income and her modest household, she had been subjected to a multitude
+of unblushing attempts at extortion and schemes which were readily
+successful in view of the ignorance of that poor butterfly, who was
+afraid of reality and constantly coming in contact with all its unknown
+difficulties. In Felicia's house the responsibility became far more
+serious, because of the extravagant methods long ago inaugurated by the
+father and continued by the daughter, both artists having the utmost
+contempt for economy. She had other difficulties, too, to overcome. She
+could not endure the studio, with its permanent odor of tobacco smoke,
+with the cloud, impenetrable to her, in which artistic discussions and
+ideas, expressed in their baldest form, were confounded in vague eddies
+of glowing vapor which invariably gave her the sick headache. The
+_blague_ was especially terrifying to her. Being a foreigner, a former
+divinity of the ballet greenroom, fed upon superannuated compliments,
+gallantries _a la Dorat_ she was unable to understand it, and was
+dismayed at the wild exaggerations, the paradoxes of those Parisians
+whose wits were sharpened by the liberty of the studio.
+
+She whose wit had consisted entirely in the agility of her feet was
+awed by her new surroundings and relegated to the position of a simple
+companion; and to see that amiable old creature, silent and smiling,
+sitting in the bright light of the rounded window, her knitting on her
+knees, like one of Chardin's bourgeoises, or walking quickly up the
+long Rue de Chaillot where the nearest market was situated, with her
+cook at her side, one would never have dreamed that the worthy woman
+had once held kings, princes, all the susceptible portion of the
+nobility and the world of finance, subject to the whim of her toes and
+her gauze skirts.
+
+Paris is full of these extinct stars which have fallen back into the
+crowd.
+
+Some of these celebrities, these conquerors of a former time, retain a
+gnawing rage in their hearts; others, on the contrary, dwell blissfully
+upon the past, ruminate in ineffable content all their glorious, bygone
+joys, seeking only repose, silence and obscurity, wherein they may
+remember and meditate, so that, when they die, we are amazed to learn
+that they were still living.
+
+Constance Crenmitz was one of those happy mortals. But what a strange
+artists' household was that of those two women, equally childlike,
+contributing to the common stock inexperience and ambition, the
+tranquillity of an accomplished destiny and the feverish activity of a
+life in its prime, all the differences indeed that were indicated by
+the contrast between that blonde, white as a withered rose, who seemed
+to be dressed, beneath her fair complexion, in a remnant of Bengal
+fire, and that brunette, with the regular features, who almost
+invariably enveloped her beauty in dark stuffs, simply made, as if with
+a semblance of masculinity.
+
+Unforeseen emergencies, caprice, ignorance of even the most trivial
+things, led to extreme confusion in the management of the household,
+from which they were sometimes unable to extricate themselves except by
+enforced privations, by dismissing servants, by reforms laughable in
+their exaggeration. During one of those crises Jenkins made delicate,
+carefully veiled offers of assistance which were repelled with scorn by
+Felicia.
+
+"It isn't right," said Constance, "to be so rude to that poor doctor.
+After all, there was nothing insulting in what he said. An old friend
+of your father's."
+
+"That man, anybody's friend! Oh! what a superb Tartuffe!"
+
+And Felicia, hardly able to contain herself, twisted her wrath into
+irony, mimicked Jenkins, the affected gestures, the hand on the heart;
+then, puffing out her cheeks, said in a hoarse, whistling voice, full
+of false effusiveness:
+
+"We must be kind, we must be humane. To do good without hope of
+reward!--that is the secret."
+
+Constance laughed, in spite of herself, till the tears ran down her
+cheeks, the resemblance was so perfect.
+
+"Never mind, you were too harsh--you will end by driving him away."
+
+"Oh! indeed!" said a shake of the girl's head.
+
+In truth, he continued to come to the house, always affable and sweet,
+dissembling his passion, which was visible only when he became jealous
+of new-comers, overwhelming with attentions the ex-ballet-dancer, to
+whom his pleasant manners were gratifying in spite of everything, and
+who recognized in him a man of her own time, of the time when men paid
+their respects to women by kissing their hand, with a complimentary
+remark as to their appearance.
+
+                         *        *        *
+
+One morning, Jenkins, having looked in during his round of visits,
+found Constance alone and unoccupied in the reception room.
+
+"I am mounting guard, Doctor, as you see," she said calmly.
+
+"How does that happen?"
+
+"Why, Felicia's at work. She doesn't want to be disturbed and the
+servants are so stupid. I am carrying out her orders myself."
+
+Then, as she saw the Irishman walk toward the studio, she added:
+
+"No, no, don't go there. She gave me strict orders not to let any one
+go in."
+
+"Very good, but I--"
+
+"I beg you not--you will get me a scolding."
+
+Jenkins was about to withdraw, when a peal of laughter from Felicia
+reached their ears through the portiere and made him raise his head.
+
+"So she isn't alone?"
+
+"No. The Nabob is with her. They are having a sitting--for the bust."
+
+"But why this mystery? It's very strange."
+
+He strode back and forth, raging inwardly, but holding himself back.
+
+At last he broke out.
+
+It was improper beyond expression to allow a girl to be closeted in
+that way with a man.
+
+He was astonished that so serious-minded, so devout a person as
+Constance--What did it look like?
+
+The old lady gazed at him in stupefaction. As if Felicia were like
+other girls! And then, what danger could there be with the Nabob, such
+a serious man and so ugly? Moreover, Jenkins ought to know well enough
+that Felicia never consulted anybody, that she did only what she chose.
+
+"No, no, it's impossible; I cannot allow this," exclaimed the Irishman.
+
+And, paying no further heed to the dancer, who threw up her arms to
+call heaven to witness what was taking place, he walked toward the
+studio; but, instead of entering at once, he opened the door gently and
+raised a corner of the hanging, so that a part of the room, just that
+part where the Nabob was posing, was visible to him, although at a
+considerable distance.
+
+Jansoulet was seated, without a cravat, with his waistcoat thrown open,
+talking excitedly, in an undertone. Felicia answered in laughing
+whispers. The sitting was very animated. Then there was a pause, a
+rustling of skirts, and the artist, going up to her model, turned his
+linen collar back all the way around, with a familiar gesture, letting
+her hand run lightly over the tanned skin.
+
+That Ethiopian face, in which the muscles quivered with the
+intoxication of supreme content, with its great eyelids lowered like
+those of a sleeping beast being tickled with a straw, the bold outline
+of the girl as she leaned over that outlandish face to verify its
+proportions, and then a violent, irresistible gesture, seizing the
+slender hand as it passed and pressing it to two thick, trembling
+lips,--Jenkins saw all this in a red glare.
+
+The noise that he made in entering caused the two to resume their
+respective positions, and in the bright light which dazzled his prying,
+catlike eyes, he saw the girl standing before him, indignant,
+dumfounded: "What is this? Who has dared?" and the Nabob on his
+platform, with his collar turned back, petrified, monumental.
+
+Jenkins, somewhat abashed, dismayed by his own audacity, stammered some
+words of apology. He had something very urgent to say to M. Jansoulet,
+very important information which could not be delayed. He knew from a
+reliable source that there would be a distribution of crosses on March
+16th. The Nabob's face, momentarily contracted, at once relaxed.
+
+"Ah! really?"
+
+He abandoned his pose. The matter was well worth considering, deuce
+take it! M. de La Perriere, one of the Empress's secretaries, had been
+directed by her to visit the shelter of Bethlehem. Jenkins had come to
+take the Nabob to the secretary's office at the Tuileries and make
+inquiries. That visit to Bethlehem meant a cross for him.
+
+"Come, let us be off; I am with you, my dear doctor."
+
+He bore Jenkins no ill-will for disturbing him, and he feverishly tied
+his cravat, forgetting under the stress of his new emotion the
+agitation of a moment before, for with him ambition took precedence of
+everything.
+
+While the two men talked together in undertones, Felicia, standing
+before them, with quivering nostrils and lip curling in scorn, watched
+them as if to say: "Well! I am waiting."
+
+Jansoulet apologized for being obliged to interrupt the sitting; but a
+visit of the utmost importance--She smiled pityingly.
+
+"Go, go. At the point where we are now, I can work without you."
+
+"Oh! yes," said the doctor, "the bust is almost finished. It's a fine
+piece of work," he added, with the air of a connoisseur.
+
+And, relying on the compliment to cover his retreat, he was slinking
+away, crestfallen; but Felicia fiercely called him back:
+
+"Stay, you. I have something to say to you."
+
+He saw by her expression that he must comply, under pain of an
+outbreak.
+
+"With your permission, my friend? Mademoiselle has a word to say to me.
+My coupe is at the door. Get in, I will be with you in a moment."
+
+When the studio door closed upon those heavy departing footsteps, they
+looked each other in the face.
+
+"You must be either drunk or mad to venture to do such a thing. What!
+you presume to enter my studio when I do not choose to receive? Why
+this violence? By what right?"
+
+"By the right that desperate, unconquerable passion gives."
+
+"Be quiet, Jenkins; those are words that I do not wish to hear. I let
+you come here through pity, through habit, because my father was fond
+of you. But never speak to me again of your--love"--she said the word
+very low, as if it were a disgrace--"or you will see me no more, even
+though I should be driven to die in order to escape you for good and
+all."
+
+A child taken in fault does not bend his head more humbly than Jenkins
+as he replied:
+
+"True--I was wrong. A moment of madness, of blindness. But why do you
+take pleasure in tearing my heart as you do?"
+
+"As if I were thinking of you!"
+
+"Whether you are thinking of me or not, I am here, I see what is going
+on, and your coquetry pains me terribly."
+
+A slight flush rose in her cheeks at that reproach.
+
+"I, a coquette! With whom?"
+
+"With him," said the Irishman, pointing to the superb apelike bust.
+
+She tried to laugh.
+
+"The Nabob. What nonsense!"
+
+"Do not lie. Do you think I am blind, that I don't understand all your
+manoeuvres? You stay alone with him a long while. I was at the door
+just now. I saw you." He lowered his voice as if his breath had failed
+him. "What are you after, in heaven's name, you strange, heartless
+child? I have seen you repel the handsomest, the noblest, the greatest.
+That little de Gery devours you with his eyes, but you pay no heed to
+him. Even the Duc de Mora has not succeeded in reaching your heart. And
+this man, a shocking, vulgar creature, who isn't thinking of you, who
+has something very different from love in his head--you saw how he went
+away just now! What are you aiming at? What do you expect from him?"
+
+"I intend--I intend that he shall marry me. There."
+
+Coolly, in a softer tone, as if the confession had drawn her nearer to
+the man she despised so bitterly, she set forth her reasons. She had
+luxurious, extravagant tastes, unmethodical habits which nothing could
+overcome and which would infallibly lead her to poverty and
+destitution, and good Crenmitz too, who allowed herself to be ruined
+without a word. In three years, four years at most, it would be all
+over. And then would come debts and desperate expedients, the ragged
+gowns and old shoes of poor artists' households. Or else the lover, the
+keeper, that is to say slavery and degradation.
+
+"Nonsense," said Jenkins. "What of me, am I not here?"
+
+"Anything rather than you," she said, drawing herself up. "No, what I
+must have, what I will have, is a husband to protect me from others and
+from myself, to keep me from a mass of black things of which I am
+afraid when life becomes a bore to me, from abysses into which I feel
+that I may plunge,--some one who will love me while I work, and will
+relieve my poor old exhausted fairy from doing sentry duty. That man
+suits me and I have had my eye on him ever since I first saw him. He is
+ugly to look at, but he seems kind; and then he is absurdly rich, and
+wealth, in that degree, must be amusing. Oh! I know all about it. There
+probably is some black spot in his life which has brought him good
+luck. All that gold can't have been honestly come by. But tell me
+truly, Jenkins, with your hand on that heart which you invoke so often,
+do you think that I am a very tempting wife for an honest man?
+Consider: of all these young men who ask as a favor to be allowed to
+come here, what one has ever thought of asking for my hand? Never a
+single one. De Gery no more than the rest. I charm, but I terrify. That
+is easily understood. What can anyone expect of a girl brought up as I
+was, with no mother or family, tossed in a heap with my father's models
+and mistresses? Such mistresses, great God! And Jenkins for my only
+protector. Oh! when I think of it! When I think of it!"
+
+And, with the memory of that already distant episode, thoughts came to
+her mind which inflamed her wrath. "Oh! yes, I am a child of chance,
+and this adventurer is just the husband for me."[2]
+
+      [2] Je suis une fille _d'aventure_, et cet _aventurier_ est bien
+      le mari qu'il me faut.
+
+"At least you will wait until he's a widower," retorted Jenkins
+tranquilly. "And in that case you may have to wait a long while, for
+his Levantine looks to be in excellent health."
+
+Felicia Ruys became livid.
+
+"He is married?"
+
+"Married, why, to be sure, and father of a lot of children. The whole
+outfit landed here two days ago."
+
+She stood for a moment, speechless, her cheeks quivering.
+
+In front of her the Nabob's broad visage, in shining clay, with its
+flat nose, its sensual good-humored mouth, seemed to cry aloud in its
+fidelity to life. She gazed at it a moment, then stepped toward it, and
+with a gesture of disgust overturned the high, wooden stand and the
+gleaming, greasy block itself, which fell to the floor a shapeless mass
+of mud.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+JANSOULET AT HOME.
+
+
+Married he had been for twelve years, but had never mentioned the fact
+to any one of his Parisian acquaintances, by virtue of an acquired
+Oriental habit, the habit that Oriental peoples have of maintaining
+silence concerning their female relations. Suddenly it was learned that
+Madame was coming, that apartments must be made ready for her, her
+children and her women. The Nabob hired the whole second floor of the
+house on Place Vendome, the previous tenant being sacrificed to Nabob
+prices. The stables were increased in size, the staff of servants was
+doubled; and then, one day, coachmen and carriages went to the Lyon
+station to fetch Madame, who arrived with a retinue of negresses,
+little negroes and gazelles, completely filling a long train that had
+been heated expressly for her all the way from Marseille.
+
+She alighted in a terrible state of prostration, exhausted and
+bewildered by her long railroad journey, the first in her life, for she
+had been taken to Tunis as a child and had never left it. Two negroes
+carried her from the carriage to her apartments in an armchair, which
+was always kept in the vestibule thereafter, ready for that difficult
+transportation. Madame Jansoulet could not walk upstairs, for it made
+her dizzy; she would not have an elevator because her weight made it
+squeak; besides, she never walked. An enormous creature, so bloated
+that it was impossible to assign her an age, but somewhere between
+twenty-five and forty, with rather a pretty face, but features all
+deformed by fat, lifeless eyes beneath drooping lids grooved like
+shells, trussed up in exported gowns, loaded with diamonds and jewels
+like a Hindoo idol, she was a most perfect specimen of the transplanted
+Europeans who are called Levantines. A strange race of obese Creoles,
+connected with our society by naught save language and dress, but
+enveloped by the Orient in its stupefying atmosphere, the subtle
+poisons of its opium-laden air, in which everything becomes limp and
+nerveless, from the tissues of the skin to the girdle around the waist,
+ay, even to the mind itself and the thought.
+
+She was the daughter of an enormously wealthy Belgian, a dealer in
+coral at Tunis, in whose establishment Jansoulet had been employed for
+several months on his first arrival in the country. Mademoiselle
+Afchin, at that time a fascinating doll, with dazzling complexion and
+hair, and perfect health, came often to the counting-room for her
+father, in the great chariot drawn by mules which conveyed them to
+their beautiful villa of La Marse in the outskirts of Tunis. The child,
+always _decollete_, with gleaming white shoulders seen for a moment in
+a luxurious frame, dazzled the adventurer; and years after, when he had
+become rich, the favorite of the bey, and thought of settling down, his
+mind reverted to her. The child had changed into a stout, heavy, sallow
+girl. Her intellect, never of a high order, had become still more
+obtuse in the torpor of such a life as dormice lead, in the neglect of
+a father whose whole time and thought were given to business, and in
+the use of tobacco saturated with opium and of sweetmeats,--the torpor
+of her Flemish blood conjoined with Oriental indolence; and with all
+the rest, ill-bred, gluttonous, sensual, arrogant, a Levantine trinket
+brought to perfection.
+
+But Jansoulet saw nothing of all that.
+
+In his eyes she was then, she was always, down to the time of her
+arrival in Paris, a superior being, a person of the highest refinement,
+a Demoiselle Afchin; he spoke to her with respect, maintained a
+slightly humble and timid attitude toward her, gave her money without
+counting it, indulged her most extravagant caprices, her wildest whims,
+all the strange conceits of a Levantine's brain distracted by ennui and
+idleness. A single word justified everything; she was a Demoiselle
+Afchin. And yet they had nothing in common; he was always at the Kasbah
+or the Bardo, in attendance on the bey, paying his court to him, or
+else in his counting-room; she passed her day in bed, on her head a
+diadem of pearls worth three hundred thousand francs, which she never
+laid aside, brutalizing herself by smoking, living as in a harem,
+admiring herself in the mirror, arraying herself in fine clothes, in
+company with several other Levantines, whose greatest joy consisted in
+measuring with their necklaces the girth of arms and legs which
+rivalled one another in corpulency, bringing forth children with whom
+she never concerned herself, whom she never saw, who had never even
+caused her suffering, for she was delivered under the influence of
+chloroform. A "bale" of white flesh perfumed with musk. And Jansoulet
+would say with pride: "I married a Demoiselle Afchin!"
+
+Under Parisian skies and in the cold light of the capital, his
+disillusionment began. Having determined to set up a regular
+establishment, to receive, to give entertainments, the Nabob had sent
+for his wife, in order to place her at the head of his house. But when
+he saw that mass of stiff, crackling dry-goods, of Palais-Royal finery,
+alight at his door, and all the extraordinary outfit that followed her,
+he had a vague impression of a Queen Pomare in exile. The difficulty
+was that he had seen some genuine women of fashion and he made
+comparisons. He had planned a grand ball to celebrate her arrival, but
+he prudently abstained. Indeed Madame Jansoulet refused to receive any
+one. Her natural indolence was augmented by the homesickness which the
+cold yellow fog and the pouring rain had brought upon her as soon as
+she landed. She passed several days in bed, crying aloud like a child,
+declaring that they had brought her to Paris to kill her, and even
+rejecting the slightest attentions from her women. She lay there
+roaring among her lace pillows, her hair in a tangled mass around her
+diadem, the windows closed and curtains tightly drawn, lamps lighted
+day and night, crying out that she wanted to go away--ay, to go
+away--ay; and it was a pitiful thing to see, in that tomb-like
+darkness, the half-filled trunks scattered over the carpet, the
+frightened gazelles, the negresses crouching around their hysterical
+mistress, groaning in unison, with haggard eyes, like the dogs of
+travellers in polar countries which go mad when they cannot see the
+sun.
+
+The Irish doctor, upon being admitted to that distressing scene, had no
+success with his fatherly ways, his fine superficial phrases. Not at
+any price would the Levantine take the pearls with arsenical base, to
+give tone to her system. The Nabob was horrified. What was he to do?
+Send her back to Tunis with the children? That was hardly possible. He
+was definitively in disgrace there. The Hemerlingues had triumphed. A
+last insult had filled the measure to overflowing: on Jansoulet's
+departure the bey had commissioned him to have several millions of gold
+coined after a new pattern at the Paris Mint; then the commission had
+been abruptly withdrawn and given to Hemerlingue. Jansoulet, being
+publicly insulted, retorted with a public manifesto, offering all his
+property for sale, his palace on the Bardo presented to him by the
+former bey, his villas at La Marse, all of white marble, surrounded by
+magnificent gardens, his counting rooms, the most commodious and most
+sumptuously furnished in the city, and instructing the intelligent
+Bompain to bring his wife and children to Paris in order to put the
+seal of finality to his departure. After such a display, it would be
+hard to return; that is what he tried to make Mademoiselle Afchin
+understand, but she replied only by prolonged groans. He strove to
+comfort her, to amuse her, but what form of distraction could be made
+to appeal to that abnormally apathetic nature? And then, could he
+change the skies of Paris, give back to the wretched Levantine her
+marble-tiled _patio_, where she used to pass long hours in a cool,
+delicious state of drowsiness, listening to the plashing of the water
+in the great alabaster fountain with three basins one above the other,
+and her gilded boat, covered with a purple awning and rowed by eight
+supple, muscular Tripolitan oarsmen over the lovely lake of El-Baheira,
+when the sun was setting? Sumptuous as were the apartments on Place
+Vendome, they could not supply the place of those lost treasures. And
+she plunged deeper than ever in her despair. One habitue of the house
+succeeded, however, in drawing her out of it, Cabassu, who styled
+himself on his cards "professor of massage;" a stout dark thick-set
+man, redolent of garlic and hair-oil, square-shouldered, covered with
+hair to his eyes, who knew stories of Parisian seraglios, trivial
+anecdotes within the limited range of Madame's intellect. He came once
+to rub her, and she wished to see him again, detained him. He was
+obliged to abandon all his other customers and to become the _masseur_
+of that able-bodied creature, at a salary equal to that of a senator,
+her page, her reader, her body-guard. Jansoulet, overjoyed to see that
+his wife was contented, was not conscious of the disgusting absurdity
+of the intimacy.
+
+Cabassu was seen in the Bois, in the enormous and sumptuous caleche
+beside the favorite gazelle, at the back of the theatre boxes which the
+Levantine hired, for she went abroad now, revivified by her masseur's
+treatment and determined to be amused. She liked the theatre,
+especially farces or melodramas. The apathy of her unwieldy body was
+minimized in the false glare of the footlights. But she enjoyed
+Cardailhac's theatre most of all. There the Nabob was at home. From the
+first manager down to the last box-opener, the whole staff belonged to
+him. He had a key to the door leading from the corridor to the stage;
+and the salon attached to his box, decorated in Oriental fashion, with
+the ceiling hollowed out like a bee-hive, divans upholstered in camel's
+hair, the gas-jet enclosed in a little Moorish lantern, was admirably
+adapted for a nap during the tedious _entr'actes_: a delicate
+compliment from the manager to his partner's wife. Nor had that monkey
+of a Cardailhac stopped at that: detecting Mademoiselle Afchin's liking
+for the stage, he had succeeded in persuading her that she possessed an
+intuitive knowledge of all things pertaining to it, and had ended by
+asking her to cast a glance in her leisure moments, the glance of an
+expert, upon such pieces as he sent to her. An excellent way of binding
+the partnership more firmly.
+
+Poor manuscripts in blue or yellow covers, which hope has tied with
+slender ribbons, ye who take flight swelling with ambition and with
+dreams, who knows what hands will open you, turn your leaves, what
+prying fingers will deflower your unknown charm, that shining dust
+stored up by every new idea? Who passes judgment on you, and who
+condemns you? Sometimes, before going out to dinner, Jansoulet, on
+going up to his wife's room, would find her smoking in her easy-chair,
+with her head thrown back and piles of manuscript by her side, and
+Cabassu, armed with a blue pencil, reading in his hoarse voice and with
+his Bourg-Saint-Andeol intonation some dramatic lucubration which he
+cut and slashed remorselessly at the slightest word of criticism from
+the lady. "Don't disturb yourselves," the good Nabob's wave of the hand
+would say, as he entered the room on tiptoe. He would listen and nod
+his head admiringly as he looked at his wife. "She's an astonishing
+creature," he would say to himself, for he knew nothing of literature,
+and in that direction at all events he recognized Mademoiselle Afchin's
+superiority.
+
+"She had the theatrical instinct," as Cardailhac said; but as an
+offset, the maternal instinct was entirely lacking. She never gave a
+thought to her children, abandoning them to the hands of strangers,
+and, when they were brought to her once a month, contenting herself
+with giving them the flabby, lifeless flesh of her cheeks to kiss,
+between two puffs of a cigarette, and never making inquiries concerning
+the details of care and health which perpetuate the physical bond of
+motherhood, and make the true mother's heart bleed in sympathy with her
+child's slightest suffering.
+
+They were three stout, heavy, apathetic boys, of eleven, nine, and
+seven years, with the Levantine's sallow complexion and premature
+bloated appearance, and their father's velvety, kindly eyes. They were
+as ignorant as young noblemen of the Middle Ages; in Tunis M. Bompain
+had charge of their studies, but in Paris the Nabob, intent upon giving
+them the benefit of a Parisian education, had placed them in the most
+stylish and most expensive boarding school, the College Bourdaloue,
+conducted by excellent Fathers, who aimed less at teaching their pupils
+than at moulding them into well-bred, reflecting men of the world, and
+who succeeded in producing little monstrosities, affected and
+ridiculous, scornful of play, absolutely ignorant, with no trace of
+spontaneity or childishness, and despairingly pert and forward. The
+little Jansoulets did not enjoy themselves overmuch in that hothouse
+for early fruits, notwithstanding the special privileges accorded to
+their immense wealth; they were really too neglected. Even the Creoles
+in the institution had correspondents and visitors; but they were never
+called to the parlor, nor was any relative of theirs known to the
+school authorities; from time to time they received baskets of
+sweetmeats or windfalls of cake, and that was all. The Nabob, as he
+drove through Paris, would strip a confectioner's shop-window for their
+benefit and send the contents to the college with that affectionate
+impulsiveness blended with negro-like ostentation which characterized
+all his acts. It was the same with their toys, always too fine, too
+elaborate, of no earthly use, the toys which are made only for show and
+which the Parisian never buys. But the thing to which above all others
+the little Jansoulets owed the respectful consideration of pupils and
+masters was their well-filled purse, always ready for collections, for
+professorial entertainments, and for the charitable visits, the famous
+visits inaugurated by the College Bourdaloue, one of the tempting items
+on the programme of the institution, the admiration of impressionable
+minds.
+
+Twice a month, turn and turn about, the pupils belonging to the little
+Society of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, established at the college on the
+model of the great society of that name, went in small detachments,
+unattended, like grown men, to carry succor and consolation to the
+farthest corners of the thickly-peopled faubourgs. In that way it was
+sought to teach them charity by experience, the art of finding out the
+wretchedness, the necessities of the people and of dressing their
+sores, always more or less repulsive, with a balsam of kind words and
+ecclesiastical maxims. To console, to convert the masses by the aid of
+childhood, to disarm religious incredulity by the youth and innocence
+of the apostles; such was the purpose of that little society, a purpose
+that failed absolutely of realization, by the way. The children,
+well-dressed, well-fed, in excellent health, went only to addresses
+designated beforehand and found respectable poor people, sometimes a
+little ailing, but far too clean, already enrolled and relieved by the
+rich charitable organizations of the Church. They never happened upon
+one of those loathsome homes, where hunger, mourning, abject poverty,
+all forms of misery, physical and moral, are written in filth on the
+walls, in indelible wrinkles on the faces. Their visit was arranged in
+advance like that of the sovereign to the guard-house to taste the
+soldier's soup; the guard-house is notified and the soup seasoned for
+the royal palate. Have you seen those pictures in religious books,
+where a little communicant, with his bow on his arm and his taper in
+his hand, all combed and curled, goes to assist a poor old man lying on
+his wretched pallet with the whites of his eyes turned up to the sky?
+These charitable visits had the same conventional stage-setting and
+accent. The machine-like gestures of the little preachers with arms too
+short for the work, were answered by words learned by rote, so false as
+to set one's teeth on edge. The comical words of encouragement, the
+"consolation lavishly poured forth" in prize-book phrases by voices
+suggestive of young roosters with the influenza, called forth emotional
+blessings, the whining, sickening mummery of a church porch after
+vespers. And as soon as the young visitors' backs were turned, what an
+explosion of laughter and shouting in the garret, what a dancing around
+the offerings brought, what an overturning of armchairs in which they
+have been feigning illness, what a pouring of boluses into the fire, a
+fire of ashes, very artistically arranged! When the little Jansoulets
+went to visit their parents, they were placed in charge of the man with
+the red fez, Bompain the indispensable. It was Bompain who took them to
+the Champs-Elysees, arrayed in English jackets, silk hats of the latest
+style--at seven years!--and with little canes dangling from the ends of
+their dogskin gloves. It was Bompain who superintended the victualling
+of the break on which he went with the children to the races,
+race-cards stuck in their hats around which green veils were twisted,
+wonderfully like the characters in lilliputian pantomimes whose
+comicality consists solely in the size of their heads compared with
+their short legs and dwarfish movements. They smoked and drank
+outrageously. Sometimes the man in the fez, himself hardly able to
+stand, brought them home horribly ill. And yet Jansoulet loved his
+little ones, especially the youngest, who, with his long hair and his
+doll-like aspect, reminded him of little Afchin in her carriage. But
+they were still at the age when children belong to the mother, when
+neither a stylish tailor nor accomplished masters nor a fashionable
+boarding-school nor the ponies saddled for the little men in the
+stable, when nothing in short takes the place of the watchful and
+attentive hand, the warmth and gayety of the nest. The father was
+unable to give them that in any event; and then he was so busy!
+
+A thousand matters, the _Caisse Territoriale_, the arrangement of
+the picture gallery, races at Tattersall's with Bois-l'Hery, some
+gimcrack to go and see, here or there, at the houses of collectors to
+whom Schwalbach recommended him, hours passed with trainers, jockeys,
+dealers in curiosities, the occupied, varied existence of a bourgeois
+gentleman in modern Paris. In all this going and coming he succeeded in
+Parisianizing himself a little more each day, was admitted to
+Monpavon's club, made welcome in the green-room at the ballet, behind
+the scenes at the theatre, and continued to preside at his famous
+bachelor breakfasts, the only entertainments possible in his
+establishment. His existence was really very full, and yet de Gery
+relieved him from the most difficult part of it, the complicated
+department of solicitations and contributions.
+
+The young man was now a witness, as he sat at his desk, of all the
+audacious and burlesque inventions, all the heroi-comic schemes of that
+mendicancy of a great city, organized like a ministerial department and
+in numbers like an army, which subscribes to the newspapers and knows
+its _Bottin_ by heart. It was his business to receive the fair-haired
+lady, young, brazen-faced and already faded, who asks for only a
+hundred louis, threatening to throw herself into the water immediately
+upon leaving the house if they are not forthcoming, and the stout
+matron, with affable, unceremonious manners, who says on entering the
+room: "Monsieur, you do not know me. Nor have I the honor of knowing
+you; but we shall soon know each other. Be kind enough to sit down and
+let us talk." The tradesman in difficulties, on the brink of
+insolvency--it is sometimes true--who comes to entreat you to save his
+honor, with a pistol all ready for suicide bulging out the pocket of
+his coat--sometimes it is only the bowl of his pipe. And oftentimes
+cases of genuine distress, prolix and tiresome, of people who do not
+even know how to tell how unfitted they are to earn their living.
+Besides such instances of avowed mendicancy, there were others in
+disguise: charity, philanthropy, good works, encouragement of artists,
+house-to-house collections for children's hospitals, parish churches,
+penitentiaries, benevolent societies or district libraries. And lastly
+those that array themselves in a worldly mask: tickets to concerts,
+benefit performances, tickets of all colors, "platform, front row,
+reserved sections." The Nabob's orders were that no one should be
+refused, and it was a decided gain that he no longer attended to such
+matters in person. For a long time he had deluged all this hypocritical
+scheming with gold, with lordly indifference, paying five hundred
+francs for a ticket to a concert by some Wurtemberg zither-player, or
+Languedocian flutist, which would have been quoted at ten francs at the
+Tuileries or the Due de Mora's. On some days young de Gery went out
+from these sessions actually nauseated. All his youthful honesty rose
+in revolt; he attempted to induce the Nabob to institute some reforms;
+but he, at the first word, assumed the bored expression characteristic
+of weak natures when called upon to give an opinion, or else replied
+with a shrug of his great shoulders: "Why this is Paris, my dear child.
+Don't you be alarmed, but just let me alone. I know where I'm going and
+what I want."
+
+He wanted two things at that time,--a seat in the Chamber of Deputies
+and the cross of the Legion of Honor. In his view those were the first
+two stages of the long ascent which his ambition impelled him to
+undertake. He certainly would be chosen a deputy through the _Caisse
+Territoriale_, at the head of which he was. Paganetti from
+Porto-Vecchio often said to him:
+
+"When the day comes, the island will rise as one man and vote for you."
+
+But electors were not the only thing it was necessary to have; there
+must be a vacant seat in the Chamber, and the delegation from Corsica
+was full. One member, however, old Popolasca, being infirm and in no
+condition to perform his duties, might be willing to resign on certain
+conditions. It was a delicate matter to negotiate, but quite
+practicable, for the good man had a large family, estates which
+produced almost nothing, a ruined palace at Bastia, where his children
+lived on _polenta_, and an apartment at Paris, in a furnished
+lodging-house of the eighteenth order. By not haggling over one or two
+hundred thousand francs, they might come to terms with that famished
+legislator who, when sounded by Paganetti, did not say yes or no, being
+allured by the magnitude of the sum but held back by the vainglory of
+his office. The affair was in that condition and might be decided any
+day.
+
+With regard to the Cross, the prospect was even brighter. The Work of
+Bethlehem had certainly created a great sensation at the Tuileries.
+Nothing was now wanting but M. de La Perriere's visit and his report,
+which could not fail to be favorable, to ensure the appearance on the
+list of March 16th, the date of an imperial anniversary, of the
+glorious name of Jansoulet. The 16th of March, that is to say, within a
+month. What would old Hemerlingue say to that signal distinction?--old
+Hemerlingue, who had had to be content with the Nisham for so long. And
+the bey, who had been made to believe that Jansoulet was under the ban
+of Parisian society, and the old mother, down at Saint-Romans, who was
+always so happy over her son's successes! Was not all that worth a few
+millions judiciously distributed and strewn by that road leading to
+renown, along which the Nabob walked like a child, with no fear of
+being devoured at the end? And was there not in these external joys,
+these honors, this dearly bought consideration, a measure of
+compensation for all the chagrins of that Oriental won back to European
+life, who longed for a home and had naught but a caravansary, who
+sought a wife and found naught but a Levantine?
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+THE WORK OF BETHLEHEM.
+
+
+Bethlehem! Why did that legendary name, sweet to the ear, warm as the
+straw in the miraculous stable, give you such a cold shudder when you
+saw it in gilt letters over that iron gateway? The feeling was due
+perhaps to the melancholy landscape, the vast, desolate plain that
+stretches from Nanterre to Saint-Cloud, broken only by an occasional
+clump of trees or the smoke from some factory chimney. Perhaps, too, in
+a measure, to the disproportion between the humble hamlet of Judaea and
+that grandiose structure, that villa in the style of Louis XIII., built
+of small stones and mortar, and showing pink through the leafless
+branches of the park, where there were several large ponds with a
+coating of green slime. Certain it is that on passing the place one's
+heart contracted. When one entered the grounds it was much worse. An
+oppressive, inexplicable silence hovered about the house, where the
+faces at the windows had a depressing aspect behind the small
+old-fashioned, greenish panes. The she-goats, straying along the paths,
+languidly cropped the first shoots of grass, with occasional "baas" in
+the direction of their keeper, who seemed as bored as they, and
+followed visitors with a listless eye. There was an air of mourning,
+the deserted, terrified aspect of a plague-stricken spot. Yet that had
+once been an attractive, cheerful property, and there had been much
+feasting and revelry there not long before. It had been laid out for
+the famous singer who had sold it to Jenkins, and it exhibited traces
+of the imaginative genius peculiar to the operatic stage, in the bridge
+across the pond, where there was a sunken wherry filled with
+water-soaked leaves, and in its summer-house, all of rockwork, covered
+with climbing ivy. It had seen some droll sights, had that
+summer-house, in the singer's time, and now it saw some sad ones, for
+the infirmary was located there.
+
+To tell the truth, the whole establishment was simply one huge
+infirmary. The children fell sick as soon as they arrived, languished
+and finally died unless their parents speedily removed them to the safe
+shelter of their homes. The cure of Nanterre went so often to Bethlehem
+with his black vestments and his silver crucifix, the undertaker had so
+many orders for coffins for the house, that it was talked about in the
+neighborhood, and indignant mothers shook their fists at the model
+nursery, but only at a safe distance if they happened to have in their
+arms a little pink and white morsel of humanity to shelter from all the
+contagions of that spot. That was what gave the miserable place such a
+heart-rending look. A house where children die cannot be cheerful; it
+is impossible for the trees to bloom there, or the birds to nest, or
+the water to flow in laughing ripples of foam.
+
+The institution seemed to be fairly inaugurated. Jenkins' idea,
+excellent in theory, was extremely difficult, almost impracticable, in
+practice. And yet God knows that the affair had been carried through
+with an excess of zeal as to every detail, even the most trifling, and
+that all the money and attendants necessary were forthcoming. At the
+head of the establishment was one of the most skilful men in the
+profession, M. Pondevez, a graduate of the Paris hospitals; and
+associated with him, to take more direct charge of the children, a
+trustworthy woman, Madame Polge. Then there were maids and seamstresses
+and nurses. And how perfectly everything was arranged and systematized,
+from the distribution of the water through fifty faucets, to the
+omnibus with its driver in the Bethlehem livery, going to the station
+at Rueil to meet every train, with a great jingling of bells. And the
+magnificent goats, goats from Thibet, with long silky coats and
+bursting udders. Everything was beyond praise in the organization of
+the establishment; but there was one point at which everything went to
+pieces. This artificial nursing, so belauded in the prospectus, did not
+agree with the children. It was a strange obstinacy, as if they
+conspired together with a glance, the poor little creatures, for they
+were too young to speak--most of them were destined never to speak--"If
+you say so, we won't suck the goats." And they did not, they preferred
+to die one after another rather than to suck them. Was Jesus of
+Bethlehem nursed by a goat in his stable? Did he not, on the contrary,
+nestle against a woman's breast, soft and full, on which he fell asleep
+when his thirst was satisfied? Who ever saw a goat among the legendary
+oxen and asses on that night when the beasts spoke? In that case, why
+lie, why call it Bethlehem?
+
+The manager was touched at first by so many deaths. This Pondevez, a
+waif and estray of the life of the Quarter, a twentieth year student
+well known in all the fruit-shops of Boulevard Saint-Michel under the
+name of Pompon, was not a bad man. When he realized the failure of
+artificial nursing, he simply hired four or five buxom nurses in the
+neighborhood, and nothing more was needed to revive the children's
+appetites. That humane impulse was near costing him his place.
+
+"Nurses at Bethlehem," said Jenkins in a rage, when he came to pay his
+weekly visit. "Are you mad? Upon my word! why the goats then, and the
+lawns to feed them, and my idea, and the pamphlets about my idea? What
+becomes of all these? Why, you're going against my system, you're
+stealing the founder's money."
+
+"But, my dear master," the student tried to reply, passing his hands
+through his long red beard, "but--as they don't like that food--"
+
+"Very well! let them go hungry, but let the principle of artificial
+nursing be respected. Everything depends on that. I don't wish to have
+to tell you so again. Send away those horrible nurses. For bringing up
+our children we have goat's milk and cow's milk in a great emergency;
+but I can't concede anything beyond that."
+
+He added, with his apostolic air:
+
+"We are here to demonstrate a grand philanthropic idea. It must
+triumph, even at the cost of some sacrifices. Look to it."
+
+Pondevez did not insist. After all, it was a good place, near enough to
+Paris to permit descents upon Nanterre from the Quarter on Sunday, or a
+visit by the manager to his favorite breweries. Madame Polge--whom
+Jenkins always called "our intelligent overseer," and whom he had in
+fact placed there to oversee everything, the manager first of all--was
+not so austere as her duties would lead one to believe, and readily
+yielded to the charm of a _petit verre_ or two of "right cognac," or
+to a game of bezique for fifteen hundred points. So he dismissed the
+nurses and tried to harden himself against whatever might happen. What
+did happen? A genuine Massacre of the Innocents. So that the few
+parents who were possessed of any means at all, mechanics or tradesmen
+of the faubourgs, who had been tempted by the advertisements to part
+with their children, speedily took them away, and there remained in the
+establishment only the wretched little creatures picked up under
+porches or in the fields, or sent by the hospitals, and doomed from
+their birth to all manner of ills. As the mortality constantly
+increased, even that source of supply failed, and the omnibus that had
+departed at full speed for the railway station returned as light and
+springy as an empty hearse. How could that state of affairs last? How
+long would it take to kill off the twenty-five or thirty little ones
+who were left? That is what the manager, or, as he had christened
+himself, the register of deaths, Pondevez, was wondering one morning
+after breakfast, as he sat opposite Madame Polge's venerable curls,
+taking a hand at that lady's favorite game.
+
+"Yes, my dear Madame Polge, what is to become of us? Things cannot go
+on long like this. Jenkins won't give in, the children are as obstinate
+as mules. There's no gainsaying it, they'll all pass out of our hands.
+There's that little Wallachian--I mark the king, Madame Polge--who may
+die any minute. Poor little brat, just think, it's three days since
+anything went into his stomach. I don't care what Jenkins says; you
+can't improve children, like snails, by starving them. It's a
+distressing thing not to be able to save a single one. The infirmary
+hasn't unlimited capacity. In all earnestness this is a pitiful
+business. Bezique, forty."
+
+Two strokes of the bell at the main entrance interrupted his monologue.
+The omnibus was returning from the station and its wheels ground into
+the gravel in unaccustomed fashion.
+
+"What an astonishing thing!" said Pondevez, "the carriage isn't empty."
+
+In truth the vehicle drew up at the steps with a certain pride, and the
+man who alighted crossed the threshold at a bound. It was an express
+from Jenkins with important news; the doctor would be there in two
+hours to inspect the asylum, with the Nabob and a gentleman from the
+Tuileries. He gave strict injunctions that everything should be ready
+for their reception. The plan was formed so suddenly that he had not
+had time to write; but he relied on M. Pondevez to make the necessary
+arrangements.
+
+"Deuce take him and his necessary arrangements! muttered Pondevez in
+dismay. It was a critical situation. That momentous visit came at the
+worst possible moment, when the system was rapidly going to pieces.
+Poor Pompon, in dire perplexity, tugged at his beard and gnawed the
+ends of it.
+
+"Come, come," he said abruptly to Madame Polge, whose long face had
+grown still longer between her false curls. "There is only one thing
+for us to do. We must clear out the infirmary, carry all the sick ones
+into the dormitory. They'll be no better nor worse for spending half a
+day there. As for the scrofulous ones, we'll just put them out of
+sight. They're too ugly, we won't show them. Come, off we go! all hands
+on deck!"
+
+The dinner-bell rang the alarm and everybody hurried to the spot.
+Seamstresses, nurses, maid-servants, came running from every side,
+jostling one another in the corridors, hurrying across the yards.
+Orders flew hither and thither, and there was a great calling and
+shouting; but above all the other noises soared the noise of a grand
+scrubbing, of rushing water, as if Bethlehem had been surprised by a
+conflagration. And the wailing of sick children torn from their warm
+beds, all the whimpering little bundles carried through the damp park,
+with a fluttering of bedclothes among the branches, strengthened the
+impression of a fire. In two hours, thanks to the prodigious activity
+displayed, the whole house from top to bottom was ready for the
+impending visit, all the members of the staff at their posts, the fire
+lighted in the stove, the goats scattered picturesquely through the
+park. Madame Polge had put on her green dress, the manager's attire was
+a little less slovenly than usual, but so simple as to exclude any idea
+of premeditation. Let the Empress's secretary come!
+
+And here he is.
+
+He alights with Jenkins and Jansoulet from a magnificent carriage with
+the Nabob's red and gold livery. Feigning the utmost astonishment,
+Pondevez rushes forward to meet his visitors.
+
+"Ah! Monsieur Jenkins, what an honor! What a surprise!"
+
+Salutations are exchanged on the stoop, reverences, handshakings,
+introductions. Jenkins, his coat thrown back from his loyal breast,
+indulges in his heartiest, most engaging smile; but a meaning furrow
+lies across his brow. He is anxious concerning the surprises that the
+establishment may have in store, for he knows its demoralized
+condition. If only Pondevez has taken proper precautions! It begins
+well, however. The somewhat theatrical aspect of the approach to the
+house, the white fleeces gambolling among the shrubbery, have enchanted
+M. de La Perriere, who, with his innocent eyes, his straggling white
+beard and the constant nodding of his head, is not himself unlike a
+goat escaped from its tether.
+
+"First of all, messieurs, the most important room in the house, the
+Nursery," says the manager, opening a massive door at the end of the
+reception-room. The gentlemen follow him, descend a few steps and find
+themselves in an enormous basement room, with tiled floor, formerly the
+kitchen of the chateau. The thing that impresses one on entering is a
+huge, high fireplace of the old pattern, in red brick, with two stone
+benches facing each other under the mantel, and the singer's crest--an
+immense lyre with a roll of music--carved on the monumental pediment.
+The effect was striking; but there came from it a terrible blast of
+air, which, added to the cold of the floor, to the pale light falling
+through the windows on a level with the ground, made one shudder for
+the well-being of the children. What would you have? They were obliged
+to use that unhealthy apartment for the Nursery because of the
+capricious, country-bred nurses who were accustomed to the
+unconstrained manners of the stable; one had only to see the pools of
+milk, the great reddish spots drying on the floor, to inhale the acrid
+odor that assailed your nostrils as you entered, mingled with whey and
+moist hair and many other things, to be convinced of that absolute
+necessity.
+
+The dark walls of the room were so high that at first the visitors
+thought that the Nursery was deserted. They distinguished, however, at
+the farther end, a bleating, whining, restless group. Two countrywomen,
+with surly, brutish, dirty faces, two "dry-nurses," who well deserved
+their name, were sitting on mats with their nurslings in their arms,
+each having a large goat before her, with legs apart and distended
+udders. The manager seemed to be agreeably surprised:
+
+"On my word, messieurs, this is a lucky chance. Two of our children are
+having a little lunch. We will see how nurses and nurslings agree."
+
+"What's the matter with the man? He is mad," said Jenkins to himself,
+in dire dismay.
+
+But the manager was very clear-headed, on the contrary, and had himself
+shrewdly arranged the scene, selecting two patient, good-natured
+beasts, and two exceptional subjects, two little idiots who were
+determined to live at any price, and opened their mouths to nourishment
+of any sort, like little birds still in the nest.
+
+"Come, messieurs, and see for yourselves."
+
+The cherubs were really nursing. One of them, cuddled under the goat's
+belly, went at it so heartily that you could hear the _glou-glou_ of
+the warm milk as it went down, down into his little legs, which
+quivered with satisfaction. The other, more calm, lay indolently in his
+Auvergnat nurse's lap, and required some little encouragement from her.
+
+"Come, suck, I tell you, suck, _bougri_!"
+
+At last, as if he had formed a sudden resolution, he began to drink so
+greedily that the woman, surprised by his abnormal appetite, leaned
+over him and exclaimed, with a laugh;
+
+"Ah! the scamp, what a mischievous trick! it's his thumb he's sucking
+instead of the goat."
+
+He had thought of that expedient, the angel, to induce them to leave
+him in peace. The incident produced no ill effect; on the contrary, M.
+de La Perriere was much amused at the nurse's idea that the child had
+tried to play a trick on them. He left the Nursery highly delighted.
+"Positively de-de-delighted," he repeated as they ascended the grand
+echoing staircase, decorated with stags' antlers, which led to the
+dormitory.
+
+Very light and airy was that great room, occupying the whole of one
+side of the house, with numerous windows, cradles at equal intervals,
+with curtains as white and fleecy as clouds. Women were passing to and
+fro in the broad passage-way in the centre, with piles of linen in
+their arms, keys in their hands, overseers or "movers." Here they had
+tried to do too much, and the first impression of the visitors was
+unfavorable. All that white muslin, that waxed floor, in which the
+light shone without blending, the clean window-panes reflecting the
+sky, which wore a gloomy look at sight of such things, brought out more
+distinctly the thinness, the sickly pallor of those little
+shroud-colored, moribund creatures. Alas! the oldest were but six
+months, the youngest barely a fortnight, and already, upon all those
+faces, those embryotic faces, there was an expression of disgust, an
+oldish, dogged look, a precocity born of suffering, visible in the
+numberless wrinkles on those little bald heads, confined in linen caps
+edged with tawdry hospital lace. From what did they suffer? What
+disease had they? They had everything, everything that one can have;
+diseases of children and diseases of adults. Offspring of poverty and
+vice, they brought into the world when they were born ghastly phenomena
+of heredity. One had a cleft palate, another great copper-colored
+blotches on his forehead, and all were covered with humor. And then
+they were starving to death. Notwithstanding the spoonfuls of milk and
+sugared water that were forced into their mouths, and the
+sucking-bottle that was used more or less in spite of the prohibition,
+they were dying of inanition. Those poor creatures, exhausted before
+they were born, needed the freshest, the most strengthening food; the
+goats might perhaps have supplied it, but they had sworn not to suck
+the goats. And that was what made the dormitory lugubrious and silent,
+without any of the little outbursts of anger emphasized by clenched
+fists, without any of the shrieks that show the even red gums, whereby
+the child makes trial of his strength and of his lungs; only an
+occasional plaintive groan, as if the soul were tossing and turning
+restlessly in a little diseased body, unable to find a place to rest.
+
+Jenkins and the manager, noticing the unfavorable impression produced
+upon their guests by the visit to the dormitory, tried to enliven the
+situation by talking very loud, with a good-humored, frank,
+well-satisfied manner. Jenkins shook hands warmly with the overseer.
+
+"Well, Madame Polge, are our little pupils getting on?"
+
+"As you see, Monsieur le Docteur," she replied, pointing to the beds.
+
+Very funereal in her green dress was tall Madame Polge, the ideal of
+dry nurses; she completed the picture.
+
+But where had the Empress's secretary gone? He was standing by a
+cradle, which he was scrutinizing sadly, shaking his head.
+
+"_Bigre de Bigre!_" whispered Pompon to Madame Polge. "It's the
+Wallachian."
+
+The little blue card, hanging above the cradle as in hospitals, set
+forth the nationality of the child within: "Moldo-Wallachian." What
+cursed luck that Monsieur le Secretaire's eye should happen to light
+upon him! Oh! the poor little head lying on the pillow, with cap all
+awry, nostrils contracted, lips parted by a short, panting breath, the
+breath of those who are just born and of those who are about to die.
+
+"Is he ill?" the secretary softly asked the manager, who had drawn
+near.
+
+"Not in the least," replied the audacious Pompon, and he walked to the
+cradle, poked the little one playfully with his finger, rearranged the
+pillow, and said in a hearty, affectionate voice, albeit a little
+roughly: "Well, old fellow?" Roused from his stupor, emerging from the
+torpor which already enveloped him, the little fellow opened his eyes
+and looked at the faces bending over him, with sullen indifference,
+then, returning to his dream which he deemed more attractive, clenched
+his little wrinkled hands and heaved an inaudible sigh. Oh! mystery!
+Who can say for what purpose that child was born? To suffer two months
+and to go away without seeing or understanding anything, before anyone
+had heard the sound of his voice!
+
+"How pale he is!" muttered M. de La Perriere, himself as pale as death.
+The Nabob, too, was as white as a sheet. A cold breath had passed over
+them. The manager assumed an indifferent air.
+
+"It's the reflection. We all look green."
+
+"To be sure--to be sure," said Jenkins, "it's the reflection of the
+pond. Just come and look, Monsieur le Secretaire." And he led him to
+the window to point out the great sheet of water in which the willows
+dipped their branches, while Madame Polge hastily closed the curtains
+of his cradle upon the little Wallachian's never-ending dream.
+
+They must proceed quickly to inspect other portions of the
+establishment in order to do away with that unfortunate impression.
+
+First they show M. de La Perriere the magnificent laundry, with
+presses, drying machines, thermometers, huge closets of polished walnut
+full of caps and nightgowns, tied together and labelled by dozens. When
+the linen was well warmed the laundress passed it out through a little
+wicket in exchange for the number passed in by the nurse. As you see,
+the system was perfect, and everything, even to the strong smell of
+lye, combined to give the room a healthy, country-like aspect. There
+were garments enough there to clothe five hundred children. That was
+the capacity of Bethlehem, and everything was provided on that basis:
+the vast dispensary, gleaming with glass jars and Latin inscriptions,
+with marble pestles in every corner; the hydropathic arrangements with
+the great stone tanks, the shining tubs, the immense apparatus
+traversed by pipes of all lengths for the ascending and descending
+_douches_, in showers, in jets, and in whip-like streams; and the
+kitchens fitted out with superb graduated copper kettles, with
+economical coal and gas ovens. Jenkins had determined to make it a
+model establishment; and it was an easy matter for him, for he had
+worked on a grand scale, as one works when funds are abundant. One
+could feel everywhere, too, the experience and the iron hand of "our
+intelligent overseer," to whom the manager could not forbear to do
+public homage. That was the signal for general congratulations. M. de
+La Perriere, delighted with the equipment of the establishment,
+congratulated Dr. Jenkins upon his noble creation, Jenkins
+congratulated his friend Pondevez, who in his turn thanked the
+secretary for having condescended to honor Bethlehem with a visit. The
+good Nabob chimed in with that concert of laudation and had a pleasant
+word for every one, but was somewhat astonished all the same that no
+one congratulated him too, while they were about it. To be sure, the
+best of all congratulations awaited him on the 16th of March at the
+head of the _Journal Officiel_, in a decree which gleamed before his
+eyes in anticipation and made him squint in the direction of his
+buttonhole.
+
+These pleasant words were exchanged as they walked through a long
+corridor where their sententious phrases were repeated by the echoes;
+but suddenly a horrible uproar arrested their conversation and their
+footsteps. It was like the miaouwing of frantic cats, the bellowing of
+wild bulls, the howling of savages dancing the war-dance--a frightful
+tempest of human yells, repeated and increased in volume and prolonged
+by the high, resonant arches. It rose and fell, stopped suddenly, then
+began again with extraordinary intensity. The manager was disturbed,
+and started to make inquiries. Jenkins' eyes were inflamed with rage.
+
+"Let us go on," said the manager, really alarmed this time; "I know
+what it is."
+
+He did know what it was; but M. de La Perriere proposed to know, too,
+and before Pondevez could raise his hand, he pushed open the heavy door
+of the room whence that fearful concert proceeded.
+
+In a vile kennel which the grand scouring had passed by, for they had
+no idea of exhibiting it, some half score little monstrosities lay
+stretched on mattresses laid side by side on the floor, under the
+guardianship of a chair unoccupied save by an unfinished piece of
+knitting, and a little cracked kettle, full of hot wine, boiling over a
+smoking wood fire. They were the leprous, the scrofulous, the outcasts
+of Bethlehem, who had been hidden away in that retired corner--with
+injunctions to their dry nurse to amuse them, to pacify them, to sit on
+them if necessary, so that they should not cry--but whom that stupid,
+inquisitive countrywoman had left to themselves while she went to look
+at the fine carriage standing in the courtyard. When her back was
+turned the urchins soon wearied of their horizontal position; and all
+the little, red-faced, blotched _croute-leves_ lifted up their robust
+voices in concert, for they, by some miracle, were in good health,
+their very disease saved and nourished them. As wild and squirming as
+cockchafers thrown on their backs, struggling to rise with the aid of
+knees and elbows,--some unable to recover their equilibrium after
+falling on their sides, others sitting erect, bewildered, their little
+legs wrapped in swaddling-clothes, they spontaneously ceased their
+writhings and their cries when they saw the door open; but M. de La
+Perriere's shaking beard reassured them, encouraged them to fresh
+efforts, and in the renewed uproar the manager's explanation was almost
+inaudible: "Children that are kept secluded--contagion--skin diseases."
+Monsieur le Secretaire inquired no farther; less heroic than Bonaparte
+when he visited the plague-stricken wretches at Jaffa, he rushed to the
+door, and in his confusion and alarm, anxious to say something and
+unable to think of anything appropriate, he murmured, with an ineffable
+smile: "They are cha-arming."
+
+The inspection concluded, they all assembled in the salon on the ground
+floor, where Madame Polge had prepared a little collation. The cellars
+of Bethlehem were well stocked. The sharp air of the high land, the
+going upstairs and downstairs had given the old gentleman from the
+Tuileries such an appetite as he had not had for many a day, so that he
+talked and laughed with true rustic good-fellowship, and when they were
+all standing, the visitors being about to depart, he raised his glass,
+shaking his head the while, to drink this toast: "To Be-Be-Bethlehem!"
+
+The others were much affected, there was a clinking of glasses, and
+then the carriage bore the party swiftly along the avenue of lindens,
+where a cold, red, rayless sun was setting. Behind them the park
+relapsed into its gloomy silence. Great dark shadows gathered at the
+foot of the hedges, invaded the house, crept stealthily along the paths
+and across their intersections. Soon everything was in darkness save
+the ironical letters over the entrance gate, and, at a window on the
+ground-floor, a flickering red glimmer, the flame of a taper burning by
+the pillow of the dead child.
+
+    "_By decree of March 12, 1865, promulgated at the recommendation
+    of the Minister of the Interior, Monsieur le Docteur Jenkins,
+    founder and president of the Work of Bethlehem, is appointed
+    chevalier of the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honor. Exemplary
+    devotion to the cause of humanity._"
+
+When he read these lines on the first page of the _Journal Officiel_,
+on the morning of the 16th, the poor Nabob had an attack of vertigo.
+
+Was it possible?
+
+Jenkins decorated and not he!
+
+He read the announcement twice, thinking that his eyes must have
+deceived him. There was a buzzing in his ears. The letters, two of
+each, danced before his eyes with the red circles caused by looking at
+the sun. He had been so certain of seeing his name in that place; and
+Jenkins--only the day before--had said to him so confidently: "It is
+all settled!" that it still seemed to him that he must be mistaken. But
+no, it was really Jenkins. It was a deep, heart-sickening, prophetic
+blow, like a first warning from destiny, and was the more keenly felt
+because, for years past, the man had been unaccustomed to
+disappointments, had lived above humanity. All the good that there was
+in him learned at that moment to be distrustful.
+
+"Well," he said to de Gery, entering his room, as he did every morning,
+and surprising him with the paper in his hand and evidently deeply
+moved, "I suppose you have seen,--my name is not in the _Officiel_?"
+
+He tried to smile, his features distorted like those of a child
+struggling to restrain his tears. Then, suddenly, with the frankness
+that was so attractive in him, he added: "This makes me feel very
+badly,--I expected too much."
+
+As he spoke, the door opened and Jenkins rushed into the room,
+breathless, panting, intensely agitated.
+
+"It's an outrage--a horrible outrage. It cannot, shall not be."
+
+The words rushed tumultuously to his lips, all trying to come out at
+once; then he seemed to abandon the attempt to express his thoughts and
+threw upon the table a little shagreen box and a large envelope, both
+bearing the stamp of the chancellor's office.
+
+"There are my cross and my letters patent," he said. "They are yours,
+my friend, I cannot keep them."
+
+In reality that did not mean much. Jansoulet arraying himself in
+Jenkins' ribbon would speedily be punished for unlawfully wearing a
+decoration. But a _coup de theatre_ is not necessarily logical; this
+particular one led to an effusion of sentiment, embraces, a generous
+combat between the two men, the result being that Jenkins restored the
+objects to his pocket, talking about protests, letters to the
+newspapers. The Nabob was obliged to stop him again.
+
+"Do nothing of the kind, you rascal. In the first place, it would
+stand in my way another time. Who knows? perhaps on the 15th of next
+August--"
+
+"Oh! I never thought of that," cried Jenkins, jumping at the idea. He
+put forth his arm, as in David's _Serment_: "I swear it by my sacred
+honor!"
+
+The subject dropped there. At breakfast the Nabob did not refer to it
+and was as cheerful as usual. His good humor lasted through the day;
+and de Gery, to whom that scene had been a revelation of the real
+Jenkins, an explanation of the satirical remarks and restrained wrath
+of Felicia Ruys when she spoke of the doctor, asked himself to no
+purpose how he could open his dear master's eyes concerning that
+scheming hypocrite. He should have known, however, that the men of the
+South, all effusiveness on the surface, are never so utterly blind, so
+deluded as to resist the wise results of reflection. That evening the
+Nabob opened a shabby little portfolio, badly worn at the corners, in
+which for ten years past he had manoeuvred his millions, minuting his
+profits and his expenses in hieroglyphics comprehensible to himself
+alone. He calculated for a moment, then turned to de Gery.
+
+"Do you know what I am doing, my dear Paul?" he asked.
+
+"No, monsieur."
+
+"I have just been reckoning"--and his mocking glance, eloquent of his
+Southern origin, belied his good-humored smile--"I have just been
+reckoning that I have spent four hundred and thirty thousand francs to
+obtain that decoration for Jenkins."
+
+Four hundred and thirty thousand francs! And the end was not yet.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+GRANDMAMMA.
+
+
+Three times a week, in the evening, Paul de Gery appeared to take his
+lesson in bookkeeping in the Joyeuse dining-room, not far from the
+small salon where the little family had burst upon him at his first
+visit; so that, while he was being initiated into all the mysteries of
+"debit and credit," with his eyes fixed on his white-cravated
+instructor, he listened in spite of himself to the faint sounds of the
+toilsome evening on the other side of the door, longing for the vision
+of all those pretty heads bending over around the lamp. M. Joyeuse
+never mentioned his daughters. As jealous of their charms as a dragon
+standing guard over lovely princesses in a tower, aroused to vigilance
+by the fanciful imaginings of his doting affection, he replied dryly
+enough to his pupil's questions concerning "the young ladies," so that
+the young man ceased to mention them to him. He was surprised, however,
+that he never happened to see this "Grandmamma" whose name recurred
+constantly in M. Joyeuse's conversation upon every subject, in the most
+trivial details of his existence, hovering over the house like the
+symbol of its perfect orderliness and tranquillity.
+
+Such extreme reserve, on the part of a venerable lady, who in all
+probability had passed the age at which the adventurous spirit of a
+young man is to be feared, seemed to him exaggerated. But the lessons
+were very practical, given in very clear language, and the professor
+had an excellent method of demonstration, marred by a single fault, a
+habit of relapsing into fits of silence, broken by starts and
+interjections that went off like bombs. Outside of that he was the best
+of masters, intelligent, patient and faithful. Paul learned to find his
+way through the complicated labyrinth of books of account and resigned
+himself to the necessity of asking nothing further.
+
+One evening, about nine o'clock, as the young man rose to go, M.
+Joyeuse asked him if he would do him the honor to take a cup of tea
+_en famille_, a custom of the time of Madame Joyeuse, born Saint-Amand,
+who used to receive her friends on Thursdays. Since her death, and the
+change in their financial position, their friends had scattered; but
+they had retained that little "weekly extra." Paul having accepted, the
+good man opened the door and called:
+
+"Grandmamma."
+
+A light step in the hall and a face of twenty years, surrounded by a
+nimbus of abundant, fluffy brown hair, abruptly made its appearance. De
+Gery looked at M. Joyeuse with an air of stupefaction:
+
+"Grandmamma?"
+
+"Yes, it's a name we gave her when she was a little girl. With her
+frilled cap, and her authoritative older-sister expression, she had a
+funny little face, so wise-looking. We thought that she looked like her
+grandmother. The name has clung to her."
+
+From the worthy man's tone, it was evident that to him it was the most
+natural thing in the world, that grandmotherly title bestowed upon such
+attractive youth. Every one in the household thought as he did, and the
+other Joyeuse girls, who ran to their father and grouped themselves
+about him somewhat as in the show-case on the ground-floor, and the old
+servant, who brought and placed upon the table in the salon, whither
+they had adjourned, a magnificent tea-service, a relic of the former
+splendor of the establishment, all called the girl "Grandmamma," nor
+did she once seem to be annoyed by it, for the influence of that
+blessed name imparted to the affection of them all a touch of deference
+that flattered her and gave to her imaginary authority a singular
+attractiveness, as of a protecting hand.
+
+It may have been because of that title, which he had learned to cherish
+in his infancy, but de Gery found an indescribable fascination in the
+girl. It did not resemble the sudden blow he had received from another,
+full in the heart, the perturbation mingled with a longing to fly, to
+escape an obsession, and the persistent melancholy peculiar to the day
+after a fete, extinguished candles, refrains that have died away,
+perfumes vanished in the darkness. No, in the presence of that young
+girl, as she stood looking over the family table, making sure that
+nothing was lacking, letting her loving, sparkling eyes rest upon her
+children, her little children, he was assailed by a temptation to know
+her, to be to her as an old friend, to confide to her things that he
+confessed to none but himself; and when she offered him his cup, with
+no worldly airs, no society affectations, he would have liked to say
+like the others a "Thanks, Grandmamma," in which he might put his whole
+heart.
+
+Suddenly a cheery, vigorous knock made everybody jump.
+
+"Ah! there's Monsieur Andre. Quick, Elise, a cup. Yaia, the little
+cakes." Meanwhile, Mademoiselle Henriette, the third of the Joyeuse
+girls,--who had inherited from her mother, born Saint-Amand, a certain
+worldly side,--in view of the crowded condition of the salons that
+evening, rushed to light the two candles on the piano.
+
+"My fifth act is done," cried the newcomer, as he entered the room; then
+he stopped short. "Ah! excuse me," and his face took on a discomfited
+expression at sight of the stranger. M. Joyeuse introduced them to
+each other: "Monsieur Paul de Gery--Monsieur Andre Maranne,"--not
+without a certain solemnity of manner. He remembered his wife's
+receptions long ago; and the vases on the mantel, the two great lamps,
+the work-table, the armchairs arranged in a circle, seemed to share
+the illusion, to shine brighter as if rejuvenated by that unusual
+throng.
+
+"So your play is finished?"
+
+"Finished, Monsieur Joyeuse, and I mean to read it to you one of these
+days."
+
+"Oh! yes, Monsieur Andre. Oh! yes," said all the girls in chorus.
+
+Their neighbor wrote for the stage and no one of them entertained a
+doubt of his success. Photography held out less promise of profit, you
+know. Customers were very rare, the passers-by disinclined to patronize
+him. To keep his hand in and get his new apparatus into working order,
+Monsieur Andre was taking his friends again every Sunday, the family
+lending themselves for his experiments with unequalled good-humor, for
+the prosperity of that inchoate, suburban industry was a matter of
+pride to them all, arousing, even in the girls, that touching sentiment
+of fraternity which presses the humblest destinies together as closely
+as sparrows on the edge of a roof. But Andre Maranne, with the
+inexhaustible resources of his high forehead, stored with illusions,
+explained without bitterness the indifference of the public. Either the
+weather was unfavorable or else every one complained of the wretched
+condition of business, and he ended always with the same consoling
+refrain: "Wait until _Revolte_ has been acted!" _Revolte_ was the title
+of his play.
+
+"It's a surprising thing," said the fourth of the Joyeuse girls, a
+child of twelve with her hair in a pigtail, "it's a surprising thing
+that you do so little business with such a splendid balcony!"
+
+"And then there's a great deal of passing through the quarter," added
+Elise confidently. Grandmamma smilingly reminded her that there was
+even more on Boulevard des Italiens.
+
+"Ah! if it were Boulevard des Italiens--" said M. Joyeuse dreamily,
+and away he went on his chimera, which was suddenly brought to a
+stand-still by a gesture and these words, uttered in a piteous tone:
+"closed because of failure." In an instant the terrible _Imaginaire_
+had installed his friend in a splendid apartment on the boulevard,
+where he earned an enormous amount of money, increasing his expenses
+at the same time so disproportionately, that a loud "_pouf_" swallowed
+up photographer and photography in a few months. They laughed heartily
+when he gave that explanation; but they all agreed that Rue
+Saint-Ferdinand, although less showy, was much more reliable than
+Boulevard des Italiens. Moreover, it was very near the Bois de
+Boulogne, and if the fashionable world should once begin to pass that
+way--That fashionable society which her mother so affected was
+Mademoiselle Henriette's fixed idea; and she was amazed that the
+thought of receiving _high-life_ in his little fifth-floor studio,
+about as large as a diving-bell, should make their neighbor laugh. Why,
+only a week or two before, a carriage came there with servants in
+livery. Sometimes, too, he had had a "very swell" visitor.
+
+"Oh! a real great lady," Grandmamma chimed in. "We were at the window
+waiting for father. We saw her leave the carriage and look at the
+frame; we thought surely she came to see you."
+
+"She did come to see me," said Andre, a little embarrassed.
+
+"For a moment we were afraid she would go on as so many others do, on
+account of your five flights. So we all four did our best to stop her,
+to magnetize her with our four pairs of wide-open eyes. We pulled her
+very gently by the feathers in her hat and the lace on her cape. 'Come
+upstairs, pray, madame, pray come upstairs,' and finally she came.
+There is so much magnetism in eyes that want a thing very much!"
+
+Surely she had magnetism enough, the dear creature, not only in her
+eyes, which were of uncertain hue, veiled or laughing like the sky of
+her Paris, but in her voice, in the folds of her dress, in everything,
+even to the long curl that shaded her straight, graceful statue-like
+neck and attracted you by its tapering shaded point, deftly curled over
+a supple finger.
+
+The tea being duly served, while the gentlemen continued their talking
+and drinking--Pere Joyeuse was always very slow in everything that he
+did, because of his abrupt excursions into the moon--the girls resumed
+their work, the table was covered with wicker baskets, embroidery,
+pretty wools whose brilliant coloring brightened the faded flowers in
+the old carpet, and the group of the other evening was formed anew in
+the luminous circle of the lamp shade, to the great satisfaction of
+Paul de Gery. It was the first evening of that sort he had passed in
+Paris; it reminded him of other far-away evenings, cradled by the same
+innocent mirth, the pleasant sound of scissors laid upon the table, of
+the needle piercing the cotton, or the rustling of the leaves of a book
+as they are turned, and dear faces, vanished forever, clustered in the
+same way around the family lamp, alas! so suddenly extinguished.
+
+Once admitted into that charming domestic circle, he was not excluded
+from it again, but took his lessons among the girls, and made bold to
+talk with them when the good man closed his ledger. There everything
+tended to give him grateful repose from the seething life in which the
+Nabob's luxurious worldliness involved him; he bathed in that
+atmosphere of honesty and simplicity, and strove to cure there the
+wounds with which a hand more indifferent than cruel was mercilessly
+riddling his heart.
+
+                         *        *        *
+
+"Women have hated me, other women have loved me. She who did me the
+most harm never had either love or hate for me." Paul had fallen in,
+with the woman of whom Heinrich Heine speaks. Felicia was very
+hospitable and cordial to him. There was no one whom she welcomed more
+graciously. She reserved for him a special smile, in which there was
+the pleased expression of an artist's eye resting upon a type which
+attracts it, and the satisfaction of a _blase_ mind which is amused by
+anything new, however simple it may seem to be. She liked that reserve,
+most alluring in a Southerner, the straightforwardness of that
+judgment, entirely free from artistic or worldly formulas and enlivened
+by a touch of local accent. It was a change for her from the zigzag
+movement of the thumb, drawing flattery in outline with the gestures of
+a studio fag, from the congratulations of comrades on the way in which
+she silenced some poor fellow, and from the affected admiration, the
+"chawming--veay pretty," with which the young dandies honored her as
+they sucked the handles of their canes. He, at all events, said nothing
+of that sort to her. She had nicknamed him Minerva, because of his
+apparent tranquillity and the regularity of his profile; and as soon as
+he appeared, she would say: "Ah! there's Minerva. Hail, lovely Minerva.
+Take off your helmet and let us have a talk."
+
+But that familiar, almost fraternal, tone convinced the young man of
+the hopelessness of his love. He realized that he could not hope to
+make any further progress in that feminine good-fellowship in which
+affection was lacking, and that he should lose something every day of
+his charm as an unfamiliar type in the eyes of that creature who was
+born bored, and who seemed to have lived her life already and to find
+the insipidity of repetition in everything that she heard or saw.
+Felicia was suffering from ennui. Only her art had the power to divert
+her, to take her out of herself, to transport her to a fairyland of
+dazzling beauty from which she returned all bruised and sore, always
+surprised at the awakening, which resembled a fall. She compared
+herself to the jelly-fish, whose transparent brilliancy in the coolness
+and constant movement of the waves, vanishes on the shore in little
+gelatinous pools. During those intervals of idleness, when the absence
+of thought leaves the hand inert upon the modelling tool, Felicia,
+deprived of the sole moral nerve of her intellect, became savage,
+unapproachable, sullen beyond endurance,--the revenge of paltry human
+qualities upon great tired brains. After she had brought tears to the
+eyes of all those whom she loved, had striven to evoke painful memories
+or paralyzing anxieties, and had reached the brutal, murderous climax
+of her fatigue,--as it was always necessary, where she was concerned,
+that something ridiculous should be mingled even with the saddest
+things, she would blow away the remains of her ennui with a cry like
+that of a dazed wild beast, a sort of yawning roar which she called
+"the cry of the jackal in the desert," and which would drive the blood
+from the excellent Crenmitz's cheeks, taking her by surprise in her
+torpid placidity.
+
+Poor Felicia! Her life was in very truth a ghastly desert when her art
+did not enliven it with its visions, a dismal, unrelieved desert, where
+everything was crushed and flattened beneath the same monotonous
+immensity, the ingenuous love of a boy of twenty and the caprice of an
+amorous duke, where everything was covered with dry sand blown about by
+the scorching winds of destiny. Paul was conscious of that void, he
+tried to escape from it; but something detained him, like a weight
+which unwinds a chain, and, notwithstanding the evil things he heard,
+notwithstanding the strange creature's peculiarities, he hovered about
+her with a delicious sense of enjoyment, under pain of carrying naught
+away from that long amorous contemplation save the despair of a
+believer reduced to the adoration of images.
+
+The place of refuge was in yonder out-of-the-way quarter, where the
+wind blew so hard without preventing the flame from burning white and
+straight,--it was in the domestic circle presided over by Grandmamma.
+Oh! she did not suffer from ennui, she never uttered "the cry of the
+jackal in the desert." Her life was too well filled: the father to
+comfort and encourage, the children to teach, all the material cares of
+a household in which the mother was lacking, the engrossing thoughts
+which wake with the dawn and which the night puts to sleep, unless it
+renews them in dreams--one of those instances of indefatigable but
+apparently effortless devotion, very convenient for poor human
+selfishness, because it dispenses with all gratitude and hardly makes
+itself felt, its touch is so light. She was not one of the courageous
+girls who work to support their parents, give lessons from morning to
+night and forget the annoyances of the household in the excitement of
+an engrossing occupation. No, she had formed a different conception of
+her duty, she was a sedentary bee confining her labors to the hive,
+with no buzzing around outside in the fresh air and among the flowers.
+A thousand and one functions to perform: tailor, milliner, mender,
+keeper of accounts as well,--for M. Joyeuse, being incapable of any
+sort of responsibility, left the disposition of the family funds
+absolutely in her hands,--teacher and music mistress.
+
+As is often the case in families which were originally in comfortable
+circumstances, Aline, being the eldest, had been educated in one of the
+best boarding-schools in Paris, Elise had remained there two years with
+her; but the two younger ones, having come too late, had been sent to
+little day-schools in the quarter and had all their studies to
+complete; and it was no easy matter, for the youngest laughed on every
+pretext, an exuberant, healthy, youthful laugh, like the warbling of a
+lark drunken on green wheat, and flew away out of sight of desk and
+symbols, while Mademoiselle Henriette, always haunted by her ideas of
+grandeur, her love of "the substantial," was none too eager for study.
+That young person of fifteen, to whom her father had bequeathed
+something of his imaginative faculty, was already arranging her life in
+anticipation, and declared formally that she should marry some one of
+birth and should never have more than three children: "A boy for the
+name, and two little girls--so that I can dress them alike."
+
+"Yes, that's right," Grandmamma would say, "you shall dress them alike.
+Meanwhile, let us see about our participles."
+
+But the most troublesome of all was Elise with her thrice unsuccessful
+examination in history, always rejected and preparing herself anew,
+subject to attacks of profound terror and self-distrust which led her
+to carry that unfortunate handbook of French history with her wherever
+she went, and to open it at every instant, in the omnibus, in the
+street, even at the breakfast table; but, being already a young woman
+and very pretty, she no longer had the mechanical memory of childhood
+in which dates and events are incrusted forever. Amid her other
+preoccupations the lesson would fly away in a moment, despite the
+pupil's apparent application, her long lashes concealing her eyes, her
+curls sweeping the page, and her rosy mouth twitching slightly at the
+corners as she repeated again and again: "Louis le Hutin, 1314-1316.
+Philippe V, le Long, 1316-1322--1322.--Oh! Grandmamma, I am lost. I
+shall never learn them." Thereupon Grandmamma would take a hand, help
+her to fix her attention, to store away some of those barbarous dates
+in the Middle Ages, as sharp-pointed as the helmets of the warriors of
+those days. And in the intervals of those manifold tasks, of that
+general and constant superintendence, she found time to make pretty
+things, to take from her work-basket some piece of knitting or
+embroidery, which clung to her as steadfastly as young Elise to her
+history of France. Even when she was talking, her fingers were never
+unemployed for one moment.
+
+"Do you never rest?" de Gery asked her while she counted in a whisper
+the stitches of her embroidery, "three, four, five," in order to vary
+the shades.
+
+"Why, this work is rest," she replied. "You men have no idea how useful
+needlework is to a woman's mind. It regularizes the thought, fixes with
+a stitch the passing moment and what it carries with it. And think of
+the sorrows that are soothed, the anxieties forgotten by the help of
+this purely physical attention, this constant repetition of the same
+movement, in which you find--and find very quickly, whether you will or
+no--that your equilibrium is entirely restored. It does not prevent me
+from hearing all that is said in my neighborhood, from listening to you
+even more attentively than I should if I were idle--three, four, five."
+
+Oh! yes, she listened. That was plain from the animation of her face,
+from the way in which she would suddenly straighten herself up, with
+her needle in the air and the thread stretched over her raised little
+finger. Then she would suddenly resume her work, sometimes interjecting
+a shrewd, thoughtful word, which as a general rule agreed with what
+friend Paul thought. A similarity in their natures and in their
+responsibilities and duties brought those two young people together,
+made them mutually interested each in those things that the other had
+most at heart. She knew the names of his two brothers, Pierre and
+Louis, and his plans for their future when they should leave school.
+Pierre wanted to be a sailor. "Oh! no, not a sailor," said Grandmamma,
+"it would 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 a provincial, for she was full of affection for the
+city where she was born, where she had grown chastely to womanhood, and
+which gave her in return the vivacity, the natural refinement, the
+sprightly good-humor which make one think that Paris, with its rains,
+its fogs, its sky which is no sky, is the true fatherland of woman,
+whose nerves it spares and whose patient and intelligent qualities it
+develops.
+
+Each day Paul de Gery appreciated Mademoiselle Aline more
+thoroughly--he was the only one in the house who called her by that
+name--and, strangely enough, it was Felicia who finally cemented their
+intimacy. What connection could there be between that artist's
+daughter, fairly launched in the most exalted spheres, and that
+bourgeois maiden lost to sight in the depths of a suburb? Connections
+of childhood and friendship, common memories, the great courtyard of
+the Belin establishment, where they had played together for three
+years. Such meetings are very common in Paris. A name mentioned at
+random in conversation suddenly calls forth the amazed question:
+
+"What! do you know her?"
+
+"Do I know Felicia? Why we sat at adjoining desks in the first class.
+We had the same garden. Such a dear, lovely, clever girl!"
+
+And, noticing how pleased he was to listen to her, Aline recalled the
+days, still so near, which already formed part of the past to her,
+fascinating and melancholy like all pasts. She was quite alone in life,
+was little Felicia. On Thursday, when they called out the names in the
+parlor, there was never any one for her; except now and then an old
+woman, a nice old woman, if she was a little ridiculous, a former
+ballet-dancer it was said, whom Felicia called the Fairy. She had pet
+names like that for everybody of whom she was fond, and she transformed
+them all in her imagination. They used to see each other during the
+vacations. Madame Joyeuse, although she refused to send Aline to M.
+Ruys's studio, invited Felicia for whole days,--very short days, made
+up of work and music, of joint dreams and unrestrained youthful
+chatter. "Oh! when she talked to me about her art, with the ardor which
+she put into everything, how delighted I was to hear her! How many
+things she enabled me to understand of which I never should have had
+the slightest idea! Even now, when we go to the Louvre with papa, or to
+the Exhibition of the first of May, the peculiar emotion that one feels
+at the sight of a beautiful bit of sculpture or a fine painting, makes
+me think instantly of Felicia. In my young days she represented art,
+and it went well with her beauty, her somewhat reckless but so kindly
+nature, in which I was conscious of something superior to myself, which
+carried me away to a great height without frightening me. Suddenly we
+ceased to see each other. I wrote to her--no reply. Then fame came to
+her, great sorrow and engrossing duties to me. And of all that
+friendship, and very deep-rooted it must have been, for I cannot speak
+of it without--three, four, five--nothing is left but old memories to
+be poked over like dead ashes."
+
+Leaning over her work, the brave girl hastily counted her stitches,
+concealing her grief in the fanciful designs of her embroidery, while
+de Gery, deeply moved to hear the testimony of those pure lips in
+contradiction of the calumnies of a few disappointed dandies or jealous
+rivals, felt relieved of a weight and once more proud of his love. The
+sensation was so sweet to him that he came very often to seek to renew
+it, not only on lesson evenings, but on other evenings as well, and
+almost forgot to go and see Felicia for the pleasure of hearing Aline
+speak of her.
+
+One evening, when he left the Joyeuse apartment, he found waiting for
+him on the landing M. Andre, the neighbor, who took his arm feverishly.
+
+"Monsieur de Gery," he said, in a trembling voice, his eyes flashing
+fire behind their spectacles, the only part of his face one could see
+at night, "I have an explanation to demand at your hands. Will you come
+up to my room a moment?"
+
+Between that young man and himself there had been only the usual
+relations of two frequent visitors at the same house, who are attached
+by no bond, who seem indeed to be separated by a certain antipathy
+between their natures and their modes of life. What could there be for
+them to explain? Sorely puzzled, he followed Andre.
+
+The sight of the little studio, cold and cheerless under its glass
+ceiling, the empty fireplace, the wind blowing as it blows outside, and
+making the candle flicker, the only light that shone upon that vigil of
+a penniless recluse, reflected upon scattered sheets all covered with
+writing,--in a word, that atmosphere of inhabited cells wherein the
+very soul of the inhabitants exhales,--enabled de Gery to comprehend at
+once the impassioned Andre Maranne, his long hair thrown back and
+flying in the wind, his somewhat eccentric appearance, very excusable
+when one pays for it with a life of suffering and privations; and his
+sympathy instantly went out to the courageous youth, whose militant
+pride he fully divined at a single glance. But the other was too
+excited to notice this transition. As soon as the door was closed, he
+said, with the accent of a stage hero addressing the perjured seducer:
+
+"Monsieur de Gery, I am not a Cassandra yet." And, as he observed his
+interlocutor's unbounded amazement, he added: "Yes, yes, we understand
+each other. I see perfectly clearly what attracts you to M. Joyeuse's,
+nor has the warm welcome you receive there escaped me. You are rich,
+you are of noble birth, no one can hesitate between you and the poor
+poet who carries on an absurd trade in order to gain time to attain
+success, which will never come perhaps. But I won't allow my happiness
+to be stolen from me. We will fight, monsieur, we will fight," he
+repeated, excited by his rival's unruffled tranquillity. "I have loved
+Mademoiselle Joyeuse a long while. That love is the aim, the joy, and
+the strength of a very hard life, painful in many respects. I have
+nothing but that in the world, and I should prefer to die rather than
+to renounce it."
+
+What a strange combination is the human heart! Paul was not in love
+with the charming Aline. His whole heart belonged to another. He
+thought of her simply as a friend, the most adorable of friends. And
+yet the idea that Maranne was thinking of her, that she undoubtedly
+responded to his lover-like attentions, caused him a thrill of jealous
+anger, and his tone was very sharp when he asked if Mademoiselle
+Joyeuse were aware of this feeling of Andre's and had in any way
+authorized him to proclaim his rights.
+
+"Yes, monsieur, Mademoiselle Elise knows that I love her, and before
+your frequent visits--"
+
+"Elise--is it Elise you're talking about?"
+
+"Why, who should it be, pray? The other two are too young."
+
+He entered thoroughly into the traditions of the family. In his eyes
+Grandmamma's twenty years, her triumphant charm, were concealed by a
+respectful _sobriquet_ and by her providential qualities.
+
+A very brief explanation having allayed Andre Maranne's excitement, he
+offered his apologies to de Gery, invited him to take a seat in the
+carved wooden armchair in which his customers posed, and their
+conversation speedily assumed an intimate and confidential character,
+attributable to the earnest avowal with which it began. Paul confessed
+that he too was in love, and that his only purpose in coming so often
+to M. Joyeuse's was to talk about his beloved with Grandmamma, who had
+known her long before.
+
+"It's the same with me," said Andre. "Grandmamma knows all my secrets;
+but we have not dared say anything to her father yet. My position is
+too uncertain. Ah! when _Revolte_ has been brought out!"
+
+Thereupon they talked about _Revolte_! the famous drama on which he had
+been at work day and night for six months, which had kept him warm all
+through the winter, a very hard winter, whose rigor was tempered,
+however, by the magic power of composition in the little garret, which
+it completely transformed. There, in that confined space, all the
+heroes of his play had appeared to the poet, like familiar sprites
+falling through the roof or riding on the moonbeams, and with them the
+high-warp tapestries, the gleaming chandeliers, the vast parks with
+gateways flooded with light, all the usual magnificence of stage-setting,
+as well as the glorious uproar of the first performance, the applause
+being represented by the rain beating on the windows and the signs
+flapping against the door, while the wind, whistling through the
+melancholy lumber-yard below with a vague murmur of voices brought from
+afar and carried far, resembled the murmur from the boxes opening into
+the lobby, allowing his triumph to circulate amid the chattering and
+confusion of the audience. It was not simply the renown and the money
+that that blessed play were to bring to him, but something far more
+precious. How carefully, therefore, did he turn the pages of the
+manuscript contained in five great books in blue covers, such books as
+the Levantine spread out upon the divan on which she took her siestas,
+and marked with her managerial pencil.
+
+Paul having drawn near the table in his turn, in order to examine the
+masterpiece, his eyes were attracted by a portrait of a woman in a
+handsome frame, which seemed, being so near the artist's work, to have
+been stationed there to stand guard over it. Elise, of course? Oh! no,
+Andre had no right as yet to take his young friend's photograph away
+from its protecting environment. It was a woman of about forty, fair,
+with a sweet expression, and dressed in the height of fashion. When he
+saw the face, de Gery could not restrain an exclamation.
+
+"Do you know her?" said Andre Maranne.
+
+"Why, yes--Madame Jenkins, the Irish doctor's wife. I took supper with
+them last winter."
+
+"She is my mother." And the young man added in a lower tone:
+
+"Madame Maranne married Dr. Jenkins for her second husband. You are
+surprised, are you not, to find me in such destitution when my parents
+are living in luxury? But, as you know, chance sometimes brings very
+antipathetic natures together in the same family. My father-in-law and
+I could not agree. He wanted to make a doctor of me, whereas I had no
+taste for anything but writing. At last, in order to avoid the constant
+disputes, which were a source of pain to my mother, I preferred to
+leave the house and dig my furrow all alone, without assistance from
+any one. It was a hard task! money was lacking. All the property is in
+the hands of that--of M. Jenkins. It was a question of earning my
+living, and you know what a difficult matter that is for persons like
+ourselves, well brought up as it is termed. To think that, with all the
+knowledge included in what it is fashionable to call a thorough
+education, I could find nothing but this child's play which gave me any
+hope of being able to earn my bread! Some little savings from my
+allowance as a young man sufficed to buy my first outfit, and I opened
+a studio far away, at the very end of Paris, in order not to annoy my
+parents. Between ourselves, I fancy that I shall never make my fortune
+in photography. The first weeks especially were very hard. No one came,
+or if by any chance some poor devil did toil up the stairs, I missed
+him, I spread him out on my plate in a faint, blurred mixture like a
+ghost. One day, very early in my experience, there came a wedding
+party, the bride all in white, the husband with a waistcoat--oh! such a
+waistcoat! And all the guests in white gloves which they insisted upon
+having included in the photograph, because of the rarity of the
+sensation. Really, I thought I should go mad. Those black faces, the
+great white daubs for the dress, the gloves and the orange flowers, the
+unfortunate bride in the guise of a Zulu queen, under her wreath which
+melted into her hair! And all so overflowing with good-nature, with
+encouragement for the artist. I tried them at least twenty times, kept
+them until five o'clock at night. They left me only when it was dark,
+to go and dine! Fancy that wedding-day passed in a photograph gallery!"
+
+While Andre thus jocosely narrated the melancholy incidents of his
+life, Paul recalled Felicia's outburst on the subject of Bohemians, and
+all that she said to Jenkins concerning their exalted courage, their
+thirst for privations and trials. He thought also of Aline's passionate
+fondness for her dear Paris, of which he knew nothing but the unhealthy
+eccentricities, whereas the great city concealed so much unknown
+heroism, so many noble illusions in its folds. The sensation he had
+previously felt in the circle of the Joyeuses' great lamp, he was even
+more keenly conscious of in that less warm, less peaceful spot, whither
+art brought its desperate or glorious uncertainty; and it was with a
+melting heart that he listened while Andre Maranne talked to him of
+Elise, of the examination she was so long in passing, of the difficult
+trade of photography, of all the unforeseen hardships of his life,
+which would surely come to an end "when _Revolte_ should have been
+brought out," a fascinating smile playing about the poet's lips as they
+gave utterance to that hope, so often expressed, which he made haste to
+ridicule himself, as if to deprive others of the right to ridicule it.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+MEMOIRS OF A CLERK.--THE SERVANTS.
+
+
+Really the wheel of fortune in Paris revolves in a way to make one's
+head swim!
+
+To have seen the _Caisse Territoriale_ as I have seen it, fireless
+rooms, never swept, covered with the dust of the desert, notices of
+protest piled high on the desks, a notice of sale on execution at the
+door every week, and my ragout diffusing the odor of a poor man's
+kitchen over it all; and to witness now the rehabilitation of our
+Society in its newly-furnished salons, where it is my duty to light
+ministerial fires, in the midst of a busy throng, with whistles,
+electric bells, piles of gold pieces so high that they topple over--it
+borders on the miraculous. To convince myself that it is all true, I
+have to look at myself in the glass, to gaze at my iron-gray coat
+trimmed with silver, my white cravat, my usher's chain such as I used
+to wear at the Faculty on council days. And to think that, to effect
+this transformation, to bring back to our brows the gayety that is the
+mother of concord, to restore to our paper its value ten times over and
+to our dear Governor the esteem and confidence of which he was so
+unjustly deprived, it only needed one man, that supernatural Croesus
+whom the hundred voices of fame designate by the name of the Nabob.
+
+Oh! the first time that he came into the offices, with his fine
+presence, his face, a little wrinkled perhaps but so distinguished, the
+manners of an habitue of courts, on familiar terms with all the princes
+of the Orient, in a word with the indescribable touch of
+self-confidence and grandeur that great fortune gives, I felt my heart
+swell in my waistcoat with its double row of buttons. They may say all
+they choose about their equality and fraternity, there are some men who
+are so much above others, that you feel like falling on your face
+before them and inventing new formulae of adoration to compel them to
+pay some attention to you. Let me hasten to add that I had no need of
+anything of the sort to attract the attention of the Nabob. When I rose
+as he passed--deeply moved but dignified: you can always trust
+Passajon--he looked at me with a smile and said in an undertone to the
+young man who accompanied him: "What a fine head, like--" then a word
+that I did not hear, a word ending in _ard_, like leopard. But no,
+it could not be that, for I am not conscious of having a head like a
+leopard. Perhaps he said like Jean-Bart, although I do not see the
+connection. However, he said: "What a fine head, like--" and his
+condescension made me proud. By the way, all the gentlemen are very
+kind, very polite to me. It seems that there has been a discussion in
+regard to me, whether they should keep me or send me away like our
+cashier, that crabbed creature who was always talking about sending
+everybody to the galleys, and whom they requested to go and make his
+economical shirt-fronts somewhere else. Well done! That will teach him
+to use vulgar language to people.
+
+When it came to me, the Governor was kind enough to forget my rather
+hasty words in consideration of my certificates of service at the
+_Territoriale_ and elsewhere; and after the council meeting he said to
+me with his musical accent: "Passajon, you are to stay on with us." You
+can imagine whether I was happy, whether I lost myself in expressions
+of gratitude. Just consider! I should have gone away with my few sous,
+with no hope of ever earning any more, obliged to go and cultivate my
+little vineyard at Montbars, a very narrow field for a man who has
+lived among all the financial aristocracy of Paris and the bold strokes
+of financiering that make fortunes. Instead of that, here I am
+established all anew in a superb position, my wardrobe replenished, and
+my savings, which I actually held in my hand for a whole day, intrusted
+to the fostering care of the Governor, who has undertaken to make them
+yield a handsome return. I rather think that he is the man who knows
+how to do it. And not the slightest occasion for anxiety. All
+apprehensions vanish before the word that is all the fashion at this
+moment in all administrative councils, at all meetings of the
+shareholders, on the Bourse, on the boulevards, everywhere: "The Nabob
+is in the thing." That is to say, we are running over with cash, the
+worst _combinazioni_ are in excellent shape.
+
+That man is so rich!
+
+Rich to such a degree that one cannot believe it. Why, he has just
+loaned fifteen millions off-hand to the Bey of Tunis. Fifteen millions,
+I say! That was rather a neat trick on Hemerlingue, who tried to make
+trouble between him and that monarch and to cut the grass from under
+his feet in those lovely Oriental countries, where it grows tall and
+thick and golden-colored. It was an old Turk of my acquaintance,
+Colonel Brahim, one of our council at the _Territoriale_, who arranged
+the loan. Naturally the bey, who was very short of pocket money, it
+seems, was greatly touched by the Nabob's zeal to accommodate him, and
+he sent him by Brahim a letter of acknowledgment in which he told him
+that on his next trip to Vichy he would pass two days with him at the
+magnificent Chateau de Saint-Romans, which the former bey, this one's
+brother, once honored with a visit. Just think what an honor! To
+receive a reigning prince! The Hemerlingues are in a frenzy. They had
+manoeuvred so skilfully, the son in Tunis, the father in Paris, to
+bring the Nabob into disfavor. To be sure, fifteen millions is a large
+sum of money. But do not say: "Passajon is gulling us." The person who
+told me the story had in his hands the paper sent by the bey in a green
+silk envelope stamped with the royal seal. His only reason for not
+reading it was that it was written in Arabic; otherwise he would have
+taken cognizance of it as he does of all the Nabob's correspondence.
+That person is his valet de chambre, M. Noel, to whom I had the honor
+to be presented last Friday at a small party of persons in service,
+which he gave to some of his friends. I insert a description of that
+festivity in my memoirs, as one of the most interesting things I have
+seen during my four years' residence in Paris.
+
+I supposed at first, when M. Francis, Monpavon's valet de chambre,
+mentioned the affair to me, that it was to be one of the little
+clandestine junkets such as they sometimes have in the attic rooms on
+our boulevard, with the leavings sent up by Mademoiselle Seraphine and
+the other cooks in the house, where they drink stolen wine and stuff
+themselves, sitting on trunks, trembling with fear, by the light of two
+candles which they put out at the slightest noise in the corridors.
+Such underhand performances are repugnant to my character. But when I
+received an invitation on pink paper, written in a very fine hand, as
+if for a ball given by the people of the house:
+
+    _M. Noel pri M.--de se randre a sa soire du 25 couran._
+
+    _On soupra._[3]
+
+      [3] M. Noel requests the pleasure of M. ----'s company on the
+      evening of the 25th instant. Supper.
+
+I saw, notwithstanding the defective orthography, that it was a
+serious, authoritative function; so I arrayed myself in my newest frock
+coat and my finest linen, and betook myself to Place Vendome, to the
+address indicated by the invitation.
+
+M. Noel had selected for his party the evening of a first performance
+at the Opera, which society attended _en masse_, so that the whole
+household had the bit in their teeth until midnight, and the entire
+house at their disposal. Nevertheless, our host had preferred to
+receive us in his room in the upper part of the house, and I strongly
+approved his judgment, being therein of the opinion of the good man who
+said:
+
+    Fi du plaisir
+    Que la crainte peut corrompre![4]
+
+      [4]
+
+          A fig for the pleasure
+          Which fear can destroy!
+
+But talk to me about the attics on Place Vendome! A thick carpet on the
+floor, the bed out of sight in an alcove, Algerian curtains with red
+stripes, a green marble clock, the whole lighted by patent
+self-regulating lamps. Our dean, M. Chalmette, at Dijon had no better
+quarters than that. I arrived about nine o'clock with Monpavon's old
+Francis, and I must confess that my appearance created a sensation,
+preceded as I was by the fame of my academic past, by my reputation for
+refined manners and great learning. My fine bearing did the rest, for I
+must say that I know how to carry myself. M. Noel, very dark skinned,
+with mutton-chop whiskers, and dressed in a black coat, came forward to
+meet us.
+
+"Welcome, Monsieur Passajon," he said; and taking my cap with silver
+ornaments, which, as I entered the room, I held in my right hand
+according to custom, he handed it to an enormous negro in red and gold
+livery.
+
+"Here, Lakdar, take this--and this," he said, by way of jest, giving
+him a kick in a certain portion of the back.
+
+There was much laughter at that sally, and we began to converse most
+amicably. An excellent fellow, that M. Noel, with his Southern accent,
+his determined bearing, the frankness and simplicity of his manners. He
+reminded me of the Nabob, minus his master's distinguished mien,
+however. Indeed, I noticed that evening that such resemblances are of
+common occurrence in valets de chambre, who, as they live on intimate
+terms with their masters, by whom they are always a little dazzled, end
+by adopting their peculiarities and their mannerisms. For instance, M.
+Francis has a certain habit of drawing himself up and displaying his
+linen shirtfront, a mania for raising his arms to pull down his cuffs,
+which is Monpavon to the life. But there is one who does not resemble
+his master in the least, that is Joe, Dr. Jenkins' coachman. I call him
+Joe, but at the party everybody called him Jenkins; for in that circle
+the stable folk among themselves call one another by their employers'
+names, plain Bois-l'Hery, Monpavon and Jenkins. Is it to debase the
+superiors, to exalt the servant class? Every country has its customs;
+nobody but a fool ought to be astonished by them. To return to Joe
+Jenkins--how can the doctor, who is such an amiable man, so perfect in
+every respect, keep in his service that _gin_ and _porter_-soaked
+brute, who sits silent for hours at a time, and then, the instant that
+the liquor goes to his head, begins to roar and wants to box
+everybody--witness the scandalous scene that had just taken place when
+we arrived.
+
+The marquis's little tiger, Tom Bois-l'Hery, as they call him here,
+undertook to joke with that Irish beast, who--at some Parisian gamin's
+jest--retorted by a terrible Belfast knock-down blow in the middle of
+the face.
+
+"Come on, Humpty-Dumpty! Come on, Humpty-Dumpty!" roared the coachman,
+choking with rage, while they carried his innocent victim into the
+adjoining room, where the ladies, young and old, were engaged in
+bandaging his nose. The excitement was soon allayed, thanks to our
+arrival, thanks also to the judicious words of M. Barreau, a man of
+mature years, sedate and majestic, of my own type. He is the Nabob's
+cook, formerly _chef_ at the Cafe Anglais, and M. Cardailhac, manager
+of the Nouveautes, secured him for his friend. To see him in his black
+coat and white cravat, with his handsome, full, clean-shaven face, you
+would take him for one of the great functionaries of the Empire. To be
+sure, a cook in a house where the table is set for thirty people every
+morning, in addition to Madame's table, and where everyone is fed on
+the best and the extra best, is no ordinary cook-shop artist. He
+receives a colonel's salary, with board and lodging, and then the
+perquisites! No one has any idea of what the perquisites amount to in a
+place like that. So every one addressed him with great respect, with
+the consideration due to a man of his importance: "Monsieur Barreau"
+here, "my dear Monsieur Barreau" there. You must not imagine that the
+servants in a house are all chums and social equals. Nowhere is the
+hierarchy more strictly observed than among them. For instance, I
+noticed at M. Noel's party that the coachmen did not fraternize with
+their grooms, nor the valets de chambre with the footmen and
+out-riders, any more than the steward and butler mingled with the
+scullions; and when M. Barreau cracked a little joke, no matter what it
+was, it was a pleasure to see how amused his underlings seemed to be. I
+have no fault to find with these things. Quite the contrary. As our
+dean used to say: "A society without a hierarchy is a house without a
+stairway." But the fact seemed to me worth noting in these memoirs.
+
+The party, I need not say, lacked something of its brilliancy until the
+return of its fairest ornaments, the ladies who had gone to look after
+little Tom; ladies' maids with glossy, well-oiled hair, housekeepers in
+beribboned caps, negresses, governesses, among whom I at once acquired
+much prestige, thanks to my respectable appearance and the nickname "my
+uncle" which the youngest of those attractive females were pleased to
+bestow upon me. I tell you there was no lack of second-hand finery,
+silk and lace, even much faded velvet, eight-button gloves cleaned
+several times and perfumery picked up on Madame's toilet-table; but
+their faces were happy, their minds given over to gayety, and I had no
+difficulty in forming a very lively little party in one corner--always
+perfectly proper, of course--that goes without saying--and entirely
+befitting a person in my position. But that was the general tone of the
+occasion. Not until toward the close of the collation did I hear any of
+the unseemly remarks, any of the scandalous anecdotes that amuse the
+gentlemen of our council so highly; and it gives me pleasure to state
+that Bois-l'Hery the coachman, to cite no other instance, is very
+differently brought up from Bois-l'Hery the master.
+
+M. Noel alone, by his familiar tone and the freedom of his repartees,
+overstepped the limit. There's a man who does not scruple to call
+things by their names. For instance, he said to M. Francis, so loud
+that he could be heard from one end of the salon to the other: "I say,
+Francis, your old sharper played still another trick on us last week."
+And as the other threw out his chest with a dignified air, M. Noel
+began to laugh. "No offence, old girl. The strong box is full. You'll
+never get to the bottom of it." And it was then that he told us about
+the loan of fifteen millions I mentioned above.
+
+Meanwhile I was surprised to see no signs of preparation for the supper
+mentioned on the invitations, and I expressed my anxiety in an
+undertone to one of my lovely nieces, who replied:
+
+"We are waiting for M. Louis."
+
+"M. Louis?"
+
+"What! Don't you know M. Louis, the Duc de Mora's valet de chambre?"
+
+Thereupon I was enlightened on the subject of that influential
+personage, whose good offices are sought by prefects, senators, even by
+ministers, and who evidently makes them pay roundly for them, for, with
+his salary of twelve hundred francs from the duke, he has saved enough
+to have an income of twenty-five thousand francs, has his daughters at
+the boarding-school of the Sacred Heart, his son at Bourdaloue College,
+and a chalet in Switzerland to which the whole family go for the
+vacation.
+
+At that juncture the personage in question arrived; but there was
+nothing in his appearance that would have led me to guess his position,
+which has not its like in Paris. No majesty in his bearing, a waistcoat
+buttoned to the chin, a mean, insolent manner, and a fashion of
+speaking without opening his lips, very unpleasant to those who are
+listening to him.
+
+He saluted the company with a slight nod, offered a finger to M. Noel,
+and there we sat, staring at each other, congealed by his grand
+manners, when a door was thrown open at the end of the room and the
+supper made its appearance--all kinds of cold meats, pyramids of fruit,
+bottles of every shape, beneath the glare of two candelabra.
+
+"Now, messieurs, escort the ladies."
+
+In a moment we were in our places, the ladies seated, with the oldest
+or most important of us men, the others standing, passing dishes,
+chattering, drinking out of all the glasses, picking a mouthful from
+every plate. I had M. Francis for my neighbor, and I was obliged to
+listen to his spiteful remarks against M. Louis, of whom he is jealous
+because he has such a fine situation in comparison with that he himself
+holds in his played-out nobleman's household.
+
+"He's a parvenu," he said to me in an undertone. "He owes his fortune
+to his wife, to Madame Paul."
+
+It seems that this Madame Paul is a housekeeper who has been twenty
+years in the duke's service, and who understands, as no one else does,
+how to make a certain pomade for certain infirmities that he has. Mora
+cannot do without her. Remarking that fact, M. Louis paid his court to
+the old woman, married her, although he is much younger than she; and,
+in order not to lose his nurse _aux pommades_, His Excellency took
+the husband for his valet de chambre. In my heart, notwithstanding what
+I may have said to M. Francis, I considered that marriage perfectly
+proper and in conformity with the healthiest morality, as both the
+mayor and the cure had a hand in it. Moreover, that excellent repast,
+consisting of choice and very expensive dishes which I did not even
+know by name, had disposed my mind to indulgence and good humor. But
+everybody was not in the same mood, for I heard M. Barreau's baritone
+voice on the other side of the table, grumbling:
+
+"Why does he meddle? Do I stick my nose into his business? In the first
+place, it's a matter that concerns Bompain, not him. And what does it
+amount to? What is it that he finds fault with me for? The butcher
+sends me five baskets of meat every morning. I use only two and sell
+the other three. Where's the chef who doesn't do that? As if he
+wouldn't do better to keep an eye on the big leakage above stairs,
+instead of coming and spying about my basement. When I think that the
+first-floor clique has smoked twenty-eight thousand francs' worth of
+cigars in three months! Twenty-eight thousand francs! Ask Noel if I
+lie. And on the second floor, in Madame's apartments, there's a fine
+mess of linen, dresses thrown aside after one wearing, jewels by the
+handful, and pearls so thick that you crush 'em as you walk. Oh! you
+just wait a bit, and I'll take a twist on that little fellow."
+
+I understood that he was talking about M. de Gery, the Nabob's young
+secretary, who often comes to the _Territoriale_, where he does
+nothing but rummage among the books. Very polite certainly, but a very
+proud youngster who does not know how to make the most of himself.
+There was nothing but a chorus of maledictions against him around the
+table. Even M. Louis delivered himself on that subject, with his high
+and mighty air:
+
+"Our cook, my dear Monsieur Barreau, has recently had an experience
+similar to yours with His Excellency's chief secretary, who presumed to
+indulge in some observations concerning the household expenses. The
+cook ran up to the duke's study post-haste, in his professional
+costume, and said, with his hand on his apron string: 'Your Excellency
+may choose between Monsieur and me.' The duke did not hesitate. One can
+find as many secretaries as one wants; whereas the good cooks are all
+known. There are just four in Paris. I include you, my dear Barreau. We
+dismissed our chief secretary, giving him a prefecture of the first
+class as a consolation; but we kept our chief cook."
+
+"Ah! that's the talk," said M. Barreau, who was delighted to hear that
+anecdote. "That's what it is to be in a great nobleman's service. But
+parvenus are parvenus, what do you expect?"
+
+"And Jansoulet is nothing more than that," added M. Francis, pulling
+down his cuffs. "A man who was once a porter at Marseille."
+
+At that M. Noel bristled up.
+
+"I say there, old Francis, you're glad enough to have the porter of La
+Cannebiere pay for your roastings at _bouillotte_ all the same. You
+won't find many parvenus like us, who loan millions to kings, and whom
+great noblemen like Mora don't blush to receive at their table."
+
+"Oh! in the country," sneered M. Francis, showing his old fangs.
+
+The other rose, red as fire, on the point of losing his temper, but
+M. Louis made a sign with his hand that he had something to say, and
+M. Noel at once sat down, putting his hand to his ear, like the rest
+of us, in order to lose none of the august words.
+
+"It is true," said the great personage, speaking with the ends of
+his lips and sipping his wine slowly; "it is true that we received
+the Nabob at Grandbois some weeks ago. Indeed, a very amusing
+thing happened there. We have a great many mushrooms in the
+second park, and His Excellency sometimes amuses himself by picking
+them. At dinner a great dish of mushrooms was served. There was
+What-d'ye-call-him--Thingamy--What's-his-name--Marigny, the Minister
+of the Interior, Monpavon, and your master, my dear Noel. The
+mushrooms made the round of the table,--they looked very inviting,
+and the gentlemen filled their plates, all except Monsieur le Duc,
+who can't digest them and thought that politeness required him to say
+to his guests: 'Oh! it isn't that I am afraid of them, you know. They
+are all right,--I picked them with my own hand.'
+
+"'_Sapristi!_' said Monpavon, laughingly, 'in that case, my dear
+Auguste, excuse me if I don't taste them,' Marigny, being less at home,
+looked askance at his plate.
+
+"'Why, Monpavon, upon my word, these mushrooms look very healthy. I am
+really sorry that I am no longer hungry.'
+
+"The duke remained perfectly serious.
+
+"'Come, Monsieur Jansoulet, I trust that you won't insult me as they
+have done. Mush-rooms selected by myself!'
+
+"'Oh! your Excellency, the idea! Why, I would eat them with my eyes
+closed.'
+
+"I leave it to you, if that wasn't great luck for the poor Nabob, the
+first time that he ate a meal with us. Duperron, who was waiting
+opposite him, told us about it in the butler's pantry. It seems that it
+was the most comical thing in the world to see Jansoulet stuff himself
+with mushrooms, rolling his eyes in terror, while the others watched
+him curiously without touching their plates. It made him sweat, poor
+devil! And the best part of it was that he took a second portion; he
+had the courage to take more. But he poured down bumpers of wine
+between every two mouthfuls. Well! shall I tell you what I think? That
+was a very shrewd move on his part, and I am no longer surprised that
+that fat ox-driver has been the favorite of sovereigns. He knows how to
+flatter them, in the little things that they don't talk about. In fact,
+the duke has doted on him since that day."
+
+That little story caused much hilarity, and scattered the clouds
+collected by a few imprudent words. And thereupon, as the wine had
+loosened all our tongues, and as we all knew one another better, we
+rested our elbows on the table and began to talk about masters and
+places where we had worked, and the amusing things we had seen. Ah! I
+heard some fine stories and had a glimpse at some domestic scenes!
+Naturally, I produced my little effect with the story of my pantry at
+the _Territoriale_, of the time when I used to put my ragout in the
+empty safe, which did not prevent our cashier, a great stickler for
+routine, from changing the combination every two days, as if it
+contained all the treasures of the Bank of France. M. Louis seemed to
+enjoy my story. But the most astonishing thing was what little
+Bois-l'Hery, with his Parisian street-arab's accent, told us of the
+home life of his employers.
+
+Marquis and Marquise de Bois-l'Hery, second floor, Boulevard Haussmann.
+Furniture like the Tuileries, blue satin on all the walls, pictures,
+mantel ornaments, curiosities, a genuine museum, I tell you!
+overflowing on to the landings. Service very stylish: six servants,
+chestnut-colored livery in winter, nankeen livery in summer. You see
+those people everywhere,--at the small Monday parties, at the races, at
+first nights, at ambassadors' balls, and their names always in the
+newspapers, with remarks as to Madame's fine toilets and Monsieur's
+amazing _chic_. Well! all that is nothing but flim-flam, veneer,
+outside show, and if the marquis needed a hundred sous, no one would
+loan them to him on his worldly possessions. The furniture is hired by
+the fortnight from Fitily, the cocottes' upholsterer. The curiosities,
+the pictures, belong to old Schwalbach, who sends his customers there
+and makes them pay double price, because a man doesn't haggle when
+he thinks he is buying from a marquis, an amateur. As for the
+marchioness's dresses, the milliner and dress-maker furnish her with
+them for exhibition every season, make her wear the new styles, a
+little ridiculous sometimes, but instantly adopted by society, because
+Madame is still a very beautiful woman, and of high repute in the
+matter of fashion; she is what is called a _lanceuse_. And the
+servants! Provisional like all the rest, changed every week at the
+pleasure of the intelligence office, which sends them there to give
+them practice before taking serious positions. They may have neither
+sponsors nor certificates; they may have just come from prison or
+elsewhere. Glanard, the great place-broker on Rue de la Paix, supplies
+Boulevard Haussmann. The servants stay there one week, two weeks, long
+enough to purchase recommendations from the marquis, who, mark you,
+pays nothing and barely feeds them; for in that house the kitchen ovens
+are cold most of the time, as Monsieur and Madame dine out almost every
+evening, or attend balls at which supper is served. It is a positive
+fact that there are people in Paris who take the buffet seriously, and
+eat their first meal of the day after midnight. The Bois-l'Herys are
+well posted as to houses where there is a buffet. They will tell you
+that you get a very good supper at the Austrian embassy, that the
+Spanish embassy is a little careless in the matter of wines, and that
+the Minister of Foreign Affairs gives you the best _chaud-froid de
+volailles_. Such is the life of that curious household. Nothing of all
+they have is sewn on; everything is basted or pinned. A gust of wind,
+and away it all goes. But at all events they are sure of losing
+nothing. That is what gives the marquis that _blagueur_, Pere
+Tranquille air, as he looks you in the face with both hands in his
+pockets, as much as to say: "Well, what then? What can you do to me?"
+
+And the little tiger, in the aforesaid attitude, with his prematurely
+old, vicious child's face, copied his master so perfectly that it
+seemed to me as if I were looking at the man himself sitting in our
+administrative council, facing the Governor, and overwhelming him with
+his cynical jests. After all, we must agree that Paris is a wonderful
+great city, for any one to be able to live here in that way for fifteen
+years, twenty years of tricks and dodges and throwing dust in people's
+eyes, without everybody finding him out, and to go on making a
+triumphant entry into salons in the wake of a footman shouting his name
+at the top of his voice: "Monsieur le Marquis de Bois-l'Hery."
+
+You see, you must have been to a servants' party before you can believe
+all that one learns there, and what a curious thing Parisian society is
+when you look at it thus from below, from the basement. For instance,
+happening to be between M. Francis and M. Louis, I caught this scrap of
+confidential conversation concerning Sire de Monpavon. M. Louis said:
+
+"You are doing wrong, Francis, you are in funds just now. You ought to
+take advantage of it to return that money to the Treasury."
+
+"What can you expect?" replied M. Francis, disconsolately. "Play is
+consuming us."
+
+"Yes, I know. But beware. We shall not always be at hand. We may die or
+go out of the government. In that case you will be called to account
+over yonder. It will be a terrible time."
+
+I had often heard a whisper of the marquis's forced loan of two hundred
+thousand francs from the State, at the time when he was
+receiver-general; but the testimony of his valet de chambre was the
+worst of all. Ah! if the masters suspected what the servants know, all
+that they tell in their quarters, if they could hear their names
+dragged about in the sweepings of the salons and the kitchen refuse,
+they would never again dare to say so much as: "Close the door," or
+"Order the carriage." There's Dr. Jenkins, for example, with the
+richest practice in Paris, has lived ten years with a magnificent wife,
+who is eagerly welcomed everywhere; he has done everything he could to
+conceal his real position, announced his marriage in the newspapers in
+the English style, and hired only foreign servants who know barely
+three words of French, but all to no purpose. With these few words,
+seasoned with faubourg oaths and blows on the table, his coachman Joe,
+who detests him, told us his whole history while we were at supper.
+
+"She's going to croak, his Irishwoman, his real wife. Now we'll see if
+he'll marry the other one. Forty-five years old Mistress Maranne is,
+and not a shilling. You ought to see how afraid she is that he'll turn
+her out. Marry her, not marry her--_kss-kss_--what a laugh we'll have."
+And the more they gave him to drink, the more he told, speaking of his
+unfortunate mistress as the lowest of the low. For my part, I confess
+that she excited my interest, that false Madame Jenkins, who weeps in
+every corner, implores her husband as if he were the headsman, and is
+in danger of being sent about her business when all society believes
+her to be married, respectable, established for life. The others did
+nothing but laugh, especially the women. _Dame!_ it is amusing when one
+is in service to see that these ladies of the upper ten have their
+affronts too, and tormenting cares which keep them awake.
+
+At that moment our party presented a most animated aspect, a circle of
+merry faces turned toward the Irishman, who carried off the palm by his
+anecdote. That aroused envy; every one rummaged his memory and dragged
+out whatever he could find there of old scandals, adventures of
+betrayed husbands, all the domestic secrets that are poured out on the
+kitchen table with the remains of dishes and the dregs of bottles. The
+champagne was beginning to lay hold of its victims among the guests.
+Joe insisted on dancing a jig on the cloth. The ladies, at the
+slightest suggestion that was a trifle broad, threw themselves back
+with the piercing laughter of a person who is being tickled, letting
+their embroidered skirts drag under the table, which was piled with
+broken victuals, and covered with grease. M. Louis had prudently
+withdrawn. The glasses were filled before they were emptied; a
+chambermaid dipped a handkerchief in hers, which was full of water, and
+bathed her forehead with it because her head was going round, she said.
+It was time that it should end; in fact, an electric bell, ringing
+loudly in the hall, warned us that the footman on duty at the theatre
+had called the coachmen. Thereupon Monpavon proposed a toast to the
+master of the house, thanking him for his little party. M. Noel
+announced that he would repeat it at Saint-Romans, during the
+festivities in honor of the bey, to which most of those present would
+probably be invited. And I was about to rise in my turn, being
+sufficiently familiar with banquets to know that on such occasions the
+oldest of the party is expected to propose a toast to the ladies, when
+the door was suddenly thrown open and a tall footman, all muddy,
+breathless and perspiring, with a dripping umbrella in his hand, roared
+at us, with no respect for the guests:
+
+"Come, get out of here, you pack of cads; what are you doing here?
+Don't I tell you it's done!"
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+THE FETES IN HONOR OF THE BEY.
+
+
+In the regions of the South, of the civilization of long ago, the
+historic chateaux still standing are very few. At rare intervals some
+old abbey rears its tottering and dismantled facade on a hillside,
+pierced with holes which once were windows, which see naught now but
+the sky,--monuments of dust, baked by the sun, dating from the days of
+the Crusades or of Courts of Love, without a trace of man among their
+stones, where even the ivy has ceased to climb, and the acanthus, but
+where the dried lavender and the _ferigoule_ perfume the air. Amid
+all these ruins the chateau de Saint-Romans stands forth a glorious
+exception. If you have travelled in the South you have seen it, and you
+shall see it again in a moment. It is between Valence and Montelimart,
+in a neighborhood where the railroad runs straight along the Rhone, at
+the base of the hills of Beaume, Rancoule and Mercurol, the whole
+glowing vintage of the Hermitage, spread out over five leagues of vines
+growing in close, straight lines in the vineyards, which seem to the
+eye like fields of fleece, and extend to the very brink of the river,
+as green and full of islands at that spot as the Rhine near Bale, but
+with such a flood of sunshine as the Rhine never had. Saint-Romans is
+opposite, on the other bank; and, notwithstanding the swiftness of the
+vision, the headlong rush of the railway carriages, which seem
+determined at every curve to plunge madly into the Rhone, the chateau
+is so huge, extends so far along the neighboring slope, that it seems
+to follow the wild race of the train and fixes in your eyes forever the
+memory of its flights of steps, its balcony-rails, its Italian
+architecture, two rather low stones surmounted by a terrace with little
+pillars, flanked by two wings with slated roofs, and overlooking the
+sloping banks, where the water from the cascades rushes down to the
+river, the network of gravelled paths, the vista formed by hedges of
+great height with a white statue at the end sharply outlined against
+the blue sky as against the luminous background of a stained-glass
+window. Far up, among the vast lawns whose brilliant verdure defies the
+blazing climate, a gigantic cedar rears, terrace-like, its masses of
+green foliage, with its swaying dark shadows,--an exotic figure, which
+makes one think, as he stands before that sometime abode of a
+farmer-general of the epoch of Louis XIV., of a tall negro carrying a
+courtier's umbrella.
+
+From Valence to Marseille, throughout the valley of the Rhone,
+Saint-Romans de Bellaigue is as famous as a fairy palace; and a genuine
+fairyland in those regions, scorched by the mistral, is that oasis of
+verdure and of lovely, gushing water.
+
+"When I am rich, mamma," Jansoulet, when he was a mere urchin, used to
+say to his mother whom he adored, "I'll give you Saint-Romans de
+Bellaigue."
+
+And as that man's life seemed the realization of a tale of the
+_Thousand and One Nights_, as all his wishes were gratified, even
+the most unconscionable, as his wildest chimeras took definite shape
+before him, and licked his hands like docile pet spaniels, he had
+purchased Saint-Romans in order to present it to his mother, newly
+furnished and gorgeously restored. Although ten years had passed since
+then, the good woman was not yet accustomed to that magnificent
+establishment. "Why, you have given me Queen Jeanne's palace, my dear
+Bernard," she wrote to her son; "I shall never dare to live in it." As
+a matter of fact she never had lived in it, having installed herself in
+the steward's house, a wing of modern construction at the end of the
+main buildings, conveniently situated for overlooking the servants'
+quarters and the farm, the sheepfolds and the oil-presses, with their
+rustic outlook of grain in stacks, of olive-trees and vines stretching
+out over the fields as far as the eye could see. In the great chateau
+she would have fancied herself a prisoner in one of those enchanted
+dwellings where sleep seizes you in the fulness of your joy and does
+not leave you for a hundred years. Here at all events the peasant
+woman, who had never been able to accustom herself to that colossal
+fortune, which had come too late, from too great a distance and like a
+thunderbolt, felt in touch with real life by virtue of the going and
+coming of the laborers, the departure and return of the cattle, their
+visits to the watering-place, all the details of pastoral life, which
+awakened her with the familiar crowing of the roosters, the shrill
+cries of the peacocks, and sent her down the winding staircase before
+daybreak. She deemed herself simply a trustee of that magnificent
+property, of which she had charge for her son's benefit, and which she
+proposed to turn over to him in good condition on the day when,
+considering himself wealthy enough and weary of living among the
+_Turs_, he should come, as he had promised, and live with her
+beneath the shade of Saint-Romans.
+
+Imagine then her untiring, all-pervading watchfulness.
+
+In the twilight of early dawn, the farm servants heard her hoarse,
+husky voice:
+
+"Olivier--Peyrol--Audibert--Come! It's four o'clock." Then a dive into
+the huge kitchen, where the maids, heavy with sleep, were warming the
+soup over the bright, crackling peat fire. They gave her her little
+plate of red Marseille earthenware, filled with boiled chestnuts, the
+frugal breakfast of an earlier time which nothing could induce her to
+change. Off she went at once with long strides, the keys jingling on
+the great silver key-ring fastened to her belt, her plate in her hand,
+held in equilibrium by the distaff which she held under her arm as if
+ready for battle, for she spun all day long, and did not stop even to
+eat her chestnuts. A glance, as she passed, at the stable, still dark,
+where the horses were sluggishly moving about, at the stifling
+cow-shed, filled with heads impatiently stretched toward the door; and
+the first rays of dawn, stealing over the courses of stone that
+supported the embankment of the park, fell upon the old woman running
+through the dew with the agility of a girl, despite her seventy years,
+verifying exactly each morning all the treasures of the estate, anxious
+to ascertain whether the night had stolen the statues and urns,
+uprooted the centenary trees, dried up the sparkling fountains that
+plashed noisily in their bowls. Then the bright southern sun, humming
+and vibrating, outlined upon the gravel of a path, or against the white
+supporting wall of a terrace, that tall old woman's figure, slender and
+straight as her distaff, picking up pieces of dead wood, breaking off a
+branch from a shrub that was out of line, heedless of the scorching
+reflection which affected her tough skin no more than an old stone
+bench. About that hour another promenader appeared in the park, less
+active, less bustling, dragging himself along rather than walking,
+leaning on the walls and railings, a poor bent, palsied creature, with
+a lifeless face to which one could assign no age, who, when he was
+tired, uttered a faint, plaintive cry to call the servant, who was
+always at hand to assist him to sit down, to huddle himself up on some
+step, where he would remain for hours, motionless and silent, his mouth
+half-open, blinking his eyes, soothed by the strident monotony of the
+locusts, a human blot on the face of the superb landscape.
+
+He was the _oldest_, Bernard's brother, the cherished darling of the
+Jansoulets, father and mother, the hope and the glory of the family of
+the junk-dealer, who, faithful like so many more in the South to the
+superstition concerning the right of primogeniture, had made every
+conceivable sacrifice to send that handsome, ambitious youth to Paris;
+and he had started with four or five marshals' batons in his trunk, the
+admiration of all the girls in the village; but Paris--after it had
+beaten and twisted and squeezed that brilliant Southern rag in its
+great vat for ten years, burned him in all its acids, rolled him in all
+its mire--relegated him at last to the state of battered flotsam and
+jetsam, embruted, paralyzed, which had killed his father with grief and
+compelled his mother to sell everything in her house and to live by
+domestic service in the well-to-do families of the neighborhood.
+Luckily, just about the time that that relic of Parisian hospitals,
+sent back to his home by public charity, appeared in Bourg-Saint-Andeol,
+Bernard,--who was called Cadet, as in all the half-Arab Southern
+families, where the eldest son always takes the family name and the
+last comer the name of Cadet,--Bernard was already in Tunis, in process
+of making his fortune, and sending money home regularly. But what
+remorse it caused the poor mother to owe everything, even life itself,
+and the comfort of the wretched invalid, to the brave, energetic lad,
+of whom his father and she had always been fond, but without genuine
+tenderness, and whom, from the time he was five years old, they had
+been accustomed to treat as a day-laborer, because he was very strong
+and hairy and ugly, and was already shrewder than any one else in the
+house in the matter of dealing in old iron. Ah! how she would have
+liked to have her Cadet with her, to repay him a little of all he was
+doing for her, to pay in one sum all the arrears of affection, of
+motherly cosseting that she owed him.
+
+But, you see, these kingly fortunes have the burdens, the vexations of
+kingly existences. Poor Mother Jansoulet, in her dazzling surroundings,
+was much like a genuine queen, having undergone the long banishments,
+the cruel separations and trials which atone for earthly grandeur; one
+of her sons in a state of stupid lethargy for all time, the other far
+away, writing little, engrossed by his great interests, always saying,
+"I will come," and never coming. In twelve years she had seen him but
+once, in the confusion of the bey's visit at Saint-Romans: a bewildering
+succession of horses, carriages, fireworks, and festivities. Then he
+had whirled away again behind his sovereign, having had hardly time to
+embrace his old mother, who had retained naught of that great joy, so
+impatiently awaited, save a few newspaper pictures, in which Bernard
+Jansoulet was exhibited arriving at the chateau with Ahmed and
+presenting his aged mother to him,--is not that the way in which kings
+and queens have their family reunions illustrated in the journals?--plus
+a cedar of Lebanon, brought from the end of the world,--a great
+_caramantran_ of a tree, which was as costly to move and as much in the
+way as the obelisk--being hoisted and planted by force of men and money
+and horses; a tree which had wrought confusion among the shrubbery as
+the price of setting up a souvenir commemorative of the royal visit. On
+his present trip to France, at least, knowing that he had come for
+several months, perhaps forever, she hoped to have her Bernard all to
+herself. And lo! he swooped down upon her one fine evening, enveloped
+in the same triumphant splendor, in the same official pomp, surrounded
+by a multitude of counts, marquises, fine gentlemen from Paris, who
+with their servants filled the two great breaks she had sent to meet
+them at the little station of Giffas, on the other side of the Rhone.
+
+"Come, come, embrace me, my dear mamma. There's no shame in hugging
+your boy, whom you haven't seen for years, close to your heart.
+Besides, all these gentlemen are friends of ours. This is Monsieur le
+Marquis de Monpavon, and Monsieur le Marquis de Bois-l'Hery. Ah! the
+time has gone by when I used to bring you to eat bean soup with us,
+little Cabassu and Bompain Jean-Baptiste. You know Monsieur de
+Gery--he, with my old friend Cardailhac, whom I introduce to you, make
+up the first batch. But others are coming. Prepare for a terrible
+how-d'ye-do. We receive the bey in four days."
+
+"The bey again!" said the good woman in dismay. "I thought he was
+dead."
+
+Jansoulet and his guests could but laugh at her comical alarm,
+heightened by her Southern accent.
+
+"But there's another, mamma. There are always beys--luckily for me,
+_sapristi_! But don't you be afraid. You won't have so much trouble on
+your hands. Friend Cardailhac has undertaken to look after things.
+We're going to have some superb fetes. Meanwhile give us some dinner
+quick, and show us our rooms. Our Parisian friends are tired out."
+
+"Everything is ready, my son," said the old woman simply, standing
+stiffly erect in her cap of Cambrai linen, with points yellowed by age,
+which she never laid aside even on great occasions. Wealth had not
+changed _her_. She was the typical peasant of the Rhone valley,
+independent and proud, with none of the cunning humility of the rustics
+described by Balzac, too simple, too, to be puffed up by wealth. Her
+only pride was to show her son with what painstaking zeal she had
+acquitted herself of her duties as care-taker. Not an atom of dust, not
+a trace of dampness on the walls. The whole magnificent ground-floor,
+the salons with the silk draperies and upholstery of changing hue,
+taken at the last moment from their coverings; the long summer
+galleries, with cool, resonant inlaid floors, which the Louis XV.
+couches, with cane seats and backs upholstered with flowered stuffs,
+furnished with summer-like coquetry; the enormous dining-hall,
+decorated with flowers and branches; even the billiard-room, with its
+rows of gleaming balls, its chandeliers and cue-racks,--the whole vast
+extent of the chateau, seen through the long door-windows, wide open
+upon the broad seignorial porch, displayed its splendor to the
+admiration of the visitors, and reflected the beauty of that marvellous
+landscape, lying serene and peaceful in the setting sun, in the
+mirrors, the waxed or varnished wainscoting, with the same fidelity
+with which the poplars bowing gracefully to each other, and the swans,
+placidly swimming, were reproduced on the mirror-like surface of the
+ponds. The frame was so beautiful, the general outlook so superb, that
+the obtrusive, tasteless luxury melted away, disappeared even to the
+most sensitive eye.
+
+"There's something to work with," said Cardailhac the manager, with his
+monocle at his eye, his hat on one side, already planning his
+stage-setting.
+
+And the haughty mien of Monpavon, who had been somewhat offended at
+first by the old lady's head-dress when she received them on the porch,
+gave place to a condescending smile. Certainly there was something to
+work with, and their friend Jansoulet, under the guidance of men of
+taste, could give his Maugrabin Highness a very handsome reception.
+They talked about nothing else all the evening. Sitting in the
+sumptuous dining-room, with their elbows on the table, warmed by wine
+and with full stomachs, they planned and discussed. Cardailhac, whose
+views were broad, had his plan all formed.
+
+"Carte blanche, of course, eh, Nabob?"
+
+"Carte blanche, old fellow. And let old Hemerlingue burst with rage."
+
+Thereupon the manager detailed his plans, the festivities to be divided
+by days, as at Vaux when Fouquet entertained Louis XIV.; one day a
+play, another day Provencal fetes, _farandoles_, bull-fights, local
+music; the third day--And, in his mania for management, he was already
+outlining programmes, posters, while Bois-l'Hery, with both hands in
+his pockets, lying back in his chair, slept peacefully with his cigar
+stuck in the corner of his sneering mouth, and the Marquis de Monpavon,
+always on parade, drew up his breastplate every moment, to keep himself
+awake.
+
+De Gery had left them early. He had gone to take refuge with the old
+lady--who had known him, and his brothers, too, when they were
+children--in the modest parlor in the wing, with the white curtains and
+light wall-paper covered with figures, where the Nabob's mother tried
+to revive her past as an artisan, with the aid of some relics saved
+from the wreck.
+
+Paul talked softly, sitting opposite the handsome old woman with the
+severe and regular features, the white hair piled on top of her head
+like the flax on her distaff, who sat erect upon her chair, her flat
+bust wrapped in a little green shawl;--never in her life had she rested
+her back against the back of a chair or sat in an armchair. He called
+her Francoise and she called him Monsieur Paul. They were old friends.
+And what do you suppose they were talking about? Of her grandchildren,
+_pardi!_ of Bernard's three boys whom she did not know, whom she would
+have loved so dearly to know.
+
+"Ah! Monsieur Paul, if you knew how I long for them! I should have been
+so happy if he had brought me my three little ones instead of all these
+fine gentlemen. Just think, I have never seen them, except in those
+pictures yonder. Their mother frightens me a bit, she's a great lady
+out-and-out, a Demoiselle Afchin. But the children, I'm sure they're
+not little coxcombs, but would be very fond of their old _granny_.
+It would seem to me as if it was their father a little boy again, and
+I'd give them what I didn't give the father--for, you see, Monsieur
+Paul, parents aren't always just. They have favorites. But God is just.
+You ought to see how He deals with the faces that you paint and fix up
+the best, to the injury of the others. And the favoritism of the old
+people often does harm to the young."
+
+She sighed as she glanced in the direction of the great alcove, from
+which, through the high lambrequins and falling draperies, issued at
+intervals a long, shuddering breath like the moan of a sleeping child
+who has been whipped and has cried bitterly.
+
+A heavy step on the stairs, an unmelodious but gentle voice, saying in
+a low tone: "It's I--don't move,"--and Jansoulet appeared. As everybody
+had gone to bed at the chateau, he, knowing his mother's habits and
+that hers was always the last light to be extinguished in the house,
+had come to see her, to talk with her a little, to exchange the real
+greeting of the heart which they had been unable to exchange in the
+presence of others. "Oh! stay, my dear Paul; we don't mind you." And,
+becoming a child once more in his mother's presence, he threw his whole
+long body on the floor at her feet, with cajoling words and gestures
+really touching to behold. She was very happy too to have him by her
+side, but she was a little embarrassed none the less, looking upon him
+as an all-powerful, strange being, exalting him in her artless
+innocence to the level of an Olympian encompassed by thunder-bolts and
+lightning-flashes, possessing the gift of omnipotence. She talked to
+him, inquired if he was still satisfied with his friends, with the
+condition of his affairs, but did not dare to ask the question she had
+asked de Gery: "Why didn't you bring me my little grandsons?"--But he
+broached the subject himself.
+
+"They're at boarding-school, mamma; as soon as the vacation comes, I'll
+send them to you with Bompain. You remember him, don't you, Bompain
+Jean-Baptiste? And you shall keep them two whole months. They'll come
+to you to have you tell them fine stories, they'll go to sleep with
+their heads on your apron, like this--"
+
+And he himself, placing his curly head, heavy as lead, on the old
+woman's knees, recalling the happy evenings of his childhood when he
+went to sleep that way if he were allowed to do so, if his older
+brother's head did not take up all the room--he enjoyed, for the first
+time since his return to France, a few moments of blissful repose,
+outside of his tumultuous artificial life, pressed against that old
+motherly heart which he could hear beating regularly, like the pendulum
+of the century-old clock standing in a corner of the room, in the
+profound silence of the night, which one can feel in the country,
+hovering over the boundless expanse. Suddenly the same long sigh, as of
+a child who has fallen asleep sobbing, was repeated at the farther end
+of the room.
+
+"Is that--?"
+
+"Yes," she said, "I have him sleep here. He might need me in the
+night."
+
+"I should like to see him, to embrace him."
+
+"Come."
+
+The old woman rose, took her lamp, led the way gravely to the alcove,
+where she softly drew aside the long curtain and motioned to her son to
+come, without making a noise.
+
+He was asleep. And it was certain that something lived in him that was
+not there the day before, for, instead of the flaccid immobility in
+which he was mired all day, he was shaken at that moment by violent
+tremors, and on his expressionless, dead face there was a wrinkle of
+suffering life, a contraction as of pain. Jansoulet, profoundly moved,
+gazed at that thin, wasted, earth-colored face, on which the beard,
+having appropriated all the vitality of the body, grew with surprising
+vigor; then he stooped, placed his lips on the forehead moist with
+perspiration, and, feeling that he started, he said in a low tone,
+gravely, respectfully, as one addresses the head of the family:
+
+"Good-evening, Aine."
+
+Perhaps the imprisoned mind heard him in the depths of its dark,
+degrading purgatory. But the lips moved and a long groan made answer; a
+far-off wail, a despairing appeal caused the glance Francoise and her
+son exchanged to overflow with impotent tears, and drew from them both
+a simultaneous cry in which their sorrows met: _Pecaire!_ the local
+word expressive of all pity, all affection.
+
+                         *        *        *
+
+Early the next morning the uproar began with the arrival of the actors
+and actresses, an avalanche of caps, chignons, high boots, short
+petticoats, affected screams, veils floating over the fresh coats of
+rouge; the women were in a large majority, Cardailhac having reflected
+that, where a bey was concerned, the performance was of little
+consequence, that one need only emit false notes from pretty lips, show
+lovely arms and well-turned legs in the free-and-easy neglige of the
+operetta. All the plastic celebrities of his theatre were on hand,
+therefore, Amy Ferat at their head, a hussy who had already tried her
+eye-teeth on the gold of several crowns; also two or three famous comic
+actors, whose pallid faces produced the same effect of chalky, spectral
+blotches amid the bright green of the hedgerows as was produced by the
+plaster statuettes. All that motley crew, enlivened by the journey, the
+unfamiliar fresh air, and the copious hospitality, as well as by the
+hope of hooking something in that procession of beys, nabobs, and other
+purse-bearers, asked nothing better than to caper and sing and make
+merry, with the vulgar enthusiasm of a crowd of Seine boatmen ashore on
+a lark. But Cardailhac did not propose to have it so. As soon as they
+had arrived, made their toilets and eaten their first breakfast, out
+came the books; we must rehearse!--There was no time to lose. The
+rehearsals took place in the small salon near the summer gallery, where
+they were already beginning to build the stage; and the noise of the
+hammers, the humming of the refrains, the thin voices supported by the
+squeaking of the orchestra leader's violin, mingled with the loud
+trumpet-calls of the peacocks on their perches, were blown to shreds in
+the mistral, which, failing to recognize the frantic chirping of its
+grasshoppers, contemptuously whisked it all away on the whirling tips
+of its wings.
+
+Sitting in the centre of the porch, as if it were the proscenium of his
+theatre, Cardailhac, while superintending the rehearsals, issued his
+commands to a multitude of workmen and gardeners, ordered trees to be
+felled which obstructed the view, drew sketches of the triumphal
+arches, sent despatches and messengers to mayors, to sub-prefects, to
+Arles to procure a deputation of girls of the province in the national
+costume, to Barbantane, where the most skilful dancers of the
+_farandole_ are to be found, to Faraman renowned for its herds of wild
+bulls and Camarguese horses; and as Jansoulet's name blazed forth at
+the foot of all these despatches, as the name of the Bey of Tunis also
+figured in them, everybody acquiesced with the utmost eagerness, the
+telegraphic messages arrived in an endless stream, and that little
+Sardanapalus from Porte-Saint-Martin, who was called Cardailhac, was
+forever repeating: "There is something to work with;" delighted to
+throw gold about like handfuls of seed, to have a stage fifty leagues
+in circumference to arrange, all Provence, of which country that
+fanatical Parisian was a native, and thoroughly familiar with its
+resources in the direction of the picturesque.
+
+Dispossessed of her functions, the old lady seldom appeared, gave her
+attention solely to the farm and her invalid, terrified by that crowd
+of visitors, those insolent servants whom one could not distinguish
+from their masters, those women with brazen, coquettish manners, those
+closely-shaven old villains who resembled wicked priests, all those mad
+creatures who chased one another through the halls at night with much
+throwing of pillows, wet sponges, and curtain tassels which they tore
+off to use as projectiles. She no longer had her son in the evening,
+for he was obliged to remain with his guests, whose number increased as
+the time for the fetes drew near; nor had she even the resource of
+talking about her grandsons with "Monsieur Paul," whom Jansoulet,
+always the kindest of men, being a little awed by his friend's
+seriousness of manner, had sent away to pass a few days with his
+brothers. And the careful housekeeper, to whom some one came every
+moment and seized her keys to get spare linen or silverware, to open
+another room, thinking of the throwing open of her stores of treasures,
+of the plundering of her wardrobes and her sideboards, remembering the
+condition in which the visit of the former bey had left the chateau,
+devastated as by a cyclone, said in her patois, feverishly moistening
+the thread of her distaff:
+
+"May God's fire devour all beys and all future beys!"
+
+At last the day arrived, the famous day of which people still talk
+throughout the whole province. Oh! about three o'clock in the
+afternoon, after a sumptuous breakfast presided over by the old mother
+with a new Cambrai cap on her head,--a breakfast at which, side by side
+with Parisian celebrities, prefects were present and deputies, all in
+full dress, with swords at their sides, mayors in their scarfs of
+office, honest cures cleanly shaven,--when Jansoulet, in black coat and
+white cravat, surrounded by his guests, went out upon the stoop and
+saw, framed in that magnificent landscape, amid flags and arches and
+ensigns, that swarm of heads, that sea of brilliant costumes rising
+tier above tier on the slopes and thronging the paths; here, grouped
+in a nosegay on the lawn, the prettiest girls of Arles, whose little
+white faces peeped sweetly forth from lace neckerchiefs; below, the
+_farandole_ from Barbantane, its eight tambourines in a line, ready for
+the word, hand in hand, ribbons fluttering in the wind, hats over one
+ear, the red _taillote_ about the loins; still lower, in the succession
+of terraces, the choral societies drawn up in line, all black beneath
+their bright-hued caps, the banner-bearer in advance, serious and
+resolved, with clenched teeth, holding aloft his carved staff; lower
+still, on an immense _rond-point_, black bulls in shackles, and
+Camargue gauchos on their little horses with long white manes, their
+leggings above their knees, brandishing their spears; and after them
+more flags and helmets and bayonets, reaching to the triumphal arch at
+the entrance; then, as far as the eye could see on the other side of
+the Rhone,--over which two gangs of workmen had just thrown a bridge of
+boats, so that they could drive from the station to Saint-Romans in a
+straight line,--was an immense crowd, whole villages pouring down from
+all the hills, overflowing on the Giffas road in a wilderness of noise
+and dust, seated on the edge of the ditches, swarming among the elms,
+piled upon wagons, a formidable living lane for the procession to pass
+through; and over it all a huge white sun whose arrows a capricious
+breeze sent in every direction, from the copper of a tambourine to the
+point of a spear and the fringe of a banner, while the mighty Rhone,
+high-spirited and free, bore away to the ocean the shifting tableaux of
+that royal fete. In presence of those marvels, in which all the gold in
+his coffers shone resplendent, the Nabob felt a thrill of admiration
+and pride.
+
+"It is fine," he said, turning pale, and his mother, standing behind
+him, as pale as he, but from indescribable terror, murmured:
+
+"It is too fine for any man. One would think that God was coming."
+
+The feeling of the devout old peasant woman was much the same as that
+vaguely experienced by all those people who had assembled on the roads
+as if to watch the passage of a colossal procession on Corpus Christi,
+and who were reminded by that visit of an Oriental prince to a child of
+the province, of the legends of the Magian kings, the arrival of
+Gaspard the Moor bringing to the carpenter's son the myrrh and the
+crown.
+
+Amid the heartfelt congratulations that were showered on Jansoulet,
+Cardailhac, who had not been seen since morning, suddenly appeared,
+triumphant and perspiring.
+
+"Didn't I tell you that there was something to work with! Eh? Isn't
+this _chic_? There's a grouping for you! I fancy our Parisians would
+pay something handsome to attend a first performance like this."
+
+He lowered his voice because the mother was close by:
+
+"Have you seen our Arles girls? No, look at them more carefully--the
+first one, the one standing in front to offer the bouquet."
+
+"Why, that's Amy Ferat!"
+
+"_Parbleu!_ you can see yourself, my dear fellow, that if the bey
+throws his handkerchief into that bevy of pretty girls, there must be
+at least one who knows enough to pick it up. Those innocent creatures
+wouldn't know what it meant! Oh! I have thought of everything, you'll
+see. It's all mounted and arranged as if it were on the stage. Farm
+side, garden side."
+
+At that point, to give an idea of the perfectness of his organization,
+the manager raised his cane; his gesture was instantly repeated from
+end to end of the park, with the result that all the musical societies,
+all the trumpets, all the tambourines burst forth in unison in the
+majestic strains of the familiar song of the South: _Grand Soleil de
+la Provence_. The voices, the brazen notes ascended into the light,
+swelling the folds of the banners, giving the signal to the dancers of
+the _farandole_, who began to sway back and forth, to go through their
+first antics where they stood, while, on the other side of the river, a
+murmur ran through the crowd like a breeze, caused doubtless by the
+fear that the bey had arrived unexpectedly from another direction. A
+second gesture from the manager and the great orchestra subsided, more
+gradually, with _rallentando_ passages and meteoric showers of notes
+scattered among the foliage; but nothing better could be expected from
+a company of three thousand persons.
+
+Just then the carriages appeared, the state carriages which had figured
+in the festivities in honor of the former bey, two great pink and gold
+chariots _a la mode de Tunis_, which Mother Jansoulet had taken care of
+as precious relics, and which came forth from the carriage-house with
+their varnished panels, their hangings and gold fringe as bright and
+fresh as when they were new. There again Cardailhac's ingenuity had
+exerted itself freely, and instead of horses, which were a little heavy
+for those fragile-looking, daintily decorated vehicles, the white reins
+guided eight mules with ribbons, plumes, and silver bells upon their
+heads, and caparisoned from head to foot with those marvellous
+_sparteries_, of which Provence seems to have borrowed the secret
+from the Moors and to have perfected the cunning art of manufacturing.
+If the bey were not satisfied with that!
+
+The Nabob, Monpavon, the prefect and one of their generals entered the
+first carriage, the others took their places in the second and
+following ones. The cures and mayors, all excited by the wine they had
+drunk, ran to place themselves at the head of the singing societies of
+their respective parishes, which were to go to meet the procession; and
+the whole multitude set forth on the Giffas road.
+
+It was a superbly clear day, but warm and oppressive, three months in
+advance of the season, as often happens in those impetuous regions
+where everything is in a hurry, where everything arrives before its
+time. Although there was not a cloud to be seen, the deathlike
+stillness of the atmosphere, the wind having fallen suddenly as one
+lowers a veil, the dazzling expanse, heated white-hot, a solemn silence
+hovering over the landscape, all indicated that a storm was brewing in
+some corner of the horizon. The extraordinary torpidity of the
+surrounding objects gradually affected the persons. Naught could be
+heard save the tinkling bells of the mules as they ambled slowly along,
+the measured, heavy tread, through the burning dust, of the bands of
+singers whom Cardailhac stationed at intervals in the procession, and
+from time to time, in the double, swarming line of human beings that
+bordered the road as far as the eye could see, a call, the voices of
+children, the cry of a peddler of fresh water, the inevitable
+accompaniment of all open-air fetes in the South.
+
+"For heaven's sake, open the window on your side, General, it's
+stifling," said Monpavon, with crimson face, fearing for his paint; and
+the lowered sashes afforded the worthy populace a view of those exalted
+functionaries mopping their august faces, which were terribly flushed
+and wore the same agonized expression of anticipation,--anticipation of
+the bey's arrival, of the storm, of something.
+
+Another triumphal arch. Giffas and its long stony street strewn with
+green palm leaves, its old, dirty houses covered with flowers and
+decorations. Outside of the village the station, a square white
+structure, planted like a die at the side of the track, a genuine type
+of the little country station lost among vineyards, its only room
+always empty, except for an occasional old woman with a quantity of
+parcels, waiting in a corner, three hours too early for her train.
+
+In the bey's honor the little building was decked with flags and
+banners, furnished with rugs and divans and a splendid buffet, on which
+was a light lunch and water ices all ready for his Highness. When he
+had arrived and alighted from his carriage, the Nabob shook off the
+species of haunting disquiet which had oppressed him for a moment past,
+without his knowing why. Prefects, generals, deputies, black coats and
+embroidered military coats stood on the broad inner platform, in
+impressive, solemn groups, with the pursed lips, the shifting from one
+foot to the other, the self-conscious starts of a public functionary
+who feels that he is being stared at. And you can imagine whether noses
+were flattened against window-panes in order to obtain a glimpse of
+those hierarchic embroideries, of Monpavon's breastplate, which
+expanded and rose like an omelette soufflee, of Cardailhac gasping for
+breath as he issued his final orders, and of the beaming face of
+Jansoulet, their Jansoulet, whose eyes, sparkling between the bloated,
+sunburned cheeks, resembled two great gilt nails in a piece of Cordova
+leather. Suddenly the electric bells began to ring. The station-agent
+rushed frantically out to the track: "The train is signalled,
+messieurs. It will be here in eight minutes." Everybody started. Then a
+general instinctive impulse caused every watch to be drawn from its
+fob. Only six minutes more. Thereupon, in the profound silence, some
+one exclaimed: "Look there!" On the right, in the direction from which
+the train was to come, two high vine-covered hills formed a tunnel into
+which the track plunged and disappeared, as if swallowed up. At that
+moment the whole sky in that direction was as black as ink, obscured by
+an enormous cloud, a threatening wall cutting the blue as with a knife,
+rearing palisades, lofty cliffs of basalt on which the light broke like
+white foam with the pallid gleam of moonlight. In the solemn silence of
+the deserted track, along that line of rails where one felt that
+everything, so far as the eye could see, stood aside for the passage of
+his Highness, that aerial cliff was a terrifying spectacle as it
+advanced, casting its shadow before it with that illusion of
+perspective which gave to the cloud a slow, majestic movement and to
+its shadow the rapid pace of a galloping horse. "What a storm we are
+going to have directly!" That was the thought that came to them all;
+but they had not time to express it, for an ear-piercing whistle was
+heard and the train appeared in the depths of the dark tunnel. A
+typical royal train, short and travelling fast, decorated with French
+and Tunisian flags, its groaning, puffing locomotive, with an enormous
+bouquet of roses on its breast, representing the maid of honor at a
+wedding of Leviathans.
+
+It came rushing on at full speed, but slackened its pace as it drew
+near. The functionaries formed a group, drawing themselves up,
+arranging their swords, adjusting their false collars, while Jansoulet
+walked along the track toward the train, the obsequious smile on his
+lips and his back already bent for the "Salem alek!" The train
+continued to move, very slowly. Jansoulet thought that it had stopped,
+and placed his hand on the door of the royal carriage glittering with
+gold under the black sky; but the headway was too great, doubtless, for
+the train still went forward, the Nabob walking beside it, trying to
+open that infernal door which resisted all his efforts, and with the
+other hand making a sign of command to the machine. But the machine did
+not obey. "Stop, I tell you!" It did not stop. Impatient at the delay,
+he sprang upon the velvet-covered step, and with the somewhat
+presumptuous impetuosity, which used to please the former bey so much,
+he cried out, thrusting his great curly head in at the window:
+
+"Station for Saint-Romans, your Highness!"
+
+You know that sort of vague light peculiar to dreams, that colorless,
+empty atmosphere, in which everything assumes a ghostly aspect? well,
+Jansoulet was suddenly enveloped, made prisoner, paralyzed by it. He
+tried to speak, but the words would not come; his nerveless fingers
+clung so feebly to their support that he nearly fell backward. In
+heaven's name, what had he seen? Half reclining on a divan which
+extended across one end of the car, his fine head with its dead-white
+complexion and its long, silky black beard resting on his hand, the
+bey, buttoned to the chin in his Oriental frock-coat, without other
+ornament than the broad ribbon of the Legion of Honor across his breast
+and the diamond clasp in his cap, was fanning himself impassively with
+a little fan of _spartum_, embroidered with gold. Two aides-de-camp
+were standing near him and an engineer of the French company. Opposite
+him, upon another divan, in a respectful attitude, but one indicating
+high favor, as they alone remained seated in presence of the bey, both
+as yellow as saffron, their long whiskers falling over their white
+cravats, sat two owls, one fat, the other thin. They were the
+Hemerlingues, father and son, who had reconquered his Highness and were
+carrying him in triumph to Paris. A ghastly dream! All those people,
+although they knew Jansoulet well, stared coolly at him as if his face
+conveyed no idea to them. Pitiably pale, with the perspiration standing
+on his brow, he stammered: "But, your Highness, do you not mean to
+leave--" A livid flash, like that of a sabre stroke, followed by a
+frightful peal of thunder, cut him short. But the flash that shot from
+the monarch's eyes seemed far more terrible to him. Rising to his feet
+and stretching out his arm, the bey crushed him with these words,
+prepared in advance and uttered slowly in a rather guttural voice
+accustomed to the harsh Arabic syllables, but in very pure French:
+
+"You may return home, Mercanti. The foot goes where the heart leads it,
+mine shall never enter the door of the man who has robbed my country."
+
+Jansoulet tried to say a word. The bey waved his hand: "Begone!" And
+the engineer having pressed the button of an electric bell, to which a
+whistle replied, the train, which had not come to a full stop,
+stretched and strained its iron muscles and started ahead under full
+steam, waving its flags in the wind of the storm amid whirling clouds
+of dense smoke and sinister flashes.
+
+He stood by the track, dazed, staggering, crushed, watching his fortune
+recede and disappear, heedless of the great drops of rain that began to
+fall upon his bare head. Then, when the others rushed toward him,
+surrounded him and overwhelmed him with questions: "Isn't the Bey going
+to stop?" he stammered a few incoherent words: "Court intrigues--infamous
+machinations." And suddenly, shaking his fist at the train which had
+already disappeared, with bloodshot eyes and the foam of fierce wrath
+on his lips, he cried with the roar of a wild beast:
+
+"Vile curs!"
+
+"Courage, Jansoulet, courage."
+
+You can guess who said that, and who, passing his arm through the
+Nabob's, tried to straighten him up, to make him throw out his breast
+as he did, led him to the carriages amid the stupefied silence of the
+braided coats, and helped him to enter, crushed and bewildered, as a
+relative of the deceased is hoisted into a mourning carriage at the
+close of the lugubrious ceremony. The rain was beginning to fall, the
+peals of thunder followed one another rapidly. They crowded into the
+carriages, which started hurriedly homeward. Thereupon a heart-rending,
+yet comical thing took place, one of those cruel tricks which cowardly
+destiny plays upon its victims when they are down. In the fading light,
+the increasing obscurity caused by the squall, the crowd that filled
+all the approaches to the station believed that it could distinguish a
+Royal Highness amid such a profusion of gold lace, and as soon as the
+wheels began to revolve, a tremendous uproar, an appalling outcry which
+had been brewing in all those throats for an hour past, arose and
+filled the air, rebounded from hill to hill and echoed through the
+valley: "Vive le Bey!" Warned by that signal, the first flourishes rang
+out, the singing societies struck up in their turn, and as the noise
+increased from point to point, the road from Giffas to Saint-Romans was
+naught but one long, unbroken wave of sound. In vain did Cardailhac,
+all the gentlemen, Jansoulet himself, lean out of the windows and make
+desperate signs: "Enough! enough!" Their gestures were lost in the
+confusion, in the darkness; what was seen of them seemed an
+encouragement to shout louder. And I give you my word that it was in no
+wise needed. All those Southerners, whose enthusiasm had been kept at
+fever heat since morning, excited still more by the tedium of the long
+wait and by the storm, gave all that they had of voice, of breath, of
+noisy energy, blending with the national hymn of Provence that
+oft-repeated cry, which broke in upon it like a refrain: "Vive le Bey!"
+The majority had no sort of idea what a bey might be, did not even
+picture him to themselves, and gave a most extraordinary pronunciation
+to the unfamiliar title, as if it had three _b's_ and ten _y's_. But no
+matter, they worked themselves into a frenzy over it, threw up their
+hands, waved their hats, and waxed excited over their own antics.
+Women, deeply affected, wiped their eyes; and suddenly the piercing cry
+of a child came from the topmost branches of an elm: "Mamma, mamma, I
+see him!" He saw him! They all saw him for that matter; to this day
+they would all take their oath that they saw him.
+
+Confronted with such delirious excitement, finding it impossible to
+impose silence and tranquillity upon that mob, there was but one course
+for the people in the carriages to pursue: to let them alone, raise the
+windows and drive at full speed in order to abridge that unpleasant
+martyrdom as much as possible. Then it was terrible. Seeing the cortege
+quicken its pace, the whole road began to run with it. The _farandoleurs_
+of Barbantane, hand-in-hand, bounded from side to side, to the muffled
+wheezing of their tambourines, forming a human garland around the
+carriage doors. The singing societies, unable to sing at that breathless
+pace, but howling none the less, dragged their banner-bearers along,
+the banners thrown over their shoulders; and the stout, red-faced
+cures, panting, pushing their huge overburdened paunches before them,
+still found strength to shout in the mules' ears, in sympathetic,
+effusive tones: "Vive notre bon Bey!" And with it all, the rain, the
+rain falling in bucketfuls, in sheets, soiling the pink carriages,
+increasing the confusion, giving to that triumphal return the aspect of
+a rout, but a laughable rout, compounded of songs, laughter, blasphemy,
+frantic embraces and infernal oaths, something like the return from a
+Corpus Christi procession in the storm, with cassocks tucked up,
+surplices thrown over the head, and the good Lord hastily housed under
+a porch.
+
+A dull rumbling announced to the poor Nabob, sitting silent and
+motionless in a corner of his carriage, that they were crossing the
+bridge of boats. They had arrived.
+
+"At last!" he said, looking out through the dripping windows at the
+foam-tipped waves of the Rhone, where the storm seemed to him like
+repose after that through which he had passed. But, when the first
+carriage reached the triumphal arch at the end of the bridge, bombs
+were exploded, the drums beat, saluting the monarch's arrival upon his
+faithful subject's domain, and the climax of irony was reached when, in
+the half light, a blaze of gas suddenly illuminated the roof of the
+chateau with letters of fire, over which the rain and wind caused great
+shadows to run to and fro, but which still displayed very legibly the
+legend: "Viv' L' B'Y M'H'MED."
+
+"That's the bouquet," said the unhappy Nabob, unable to restrain a
+smile, a very pitiful, very bitter smile. But no, he was mistaken. The
+bouquet awaited him at the door of the chateau; and it was Amy Ferat
+who came forward to present it to him, stepping out of the group of
+maidens from Arles, who were sheltering their watered silk skirts and
+figured velvet caps under the marquee, awaiting the first carriage. Her
+bunch of flowers in her hand, modestly, with downcast eyes and roguish
+ankle, the pretty actress darted to the door and stood almost kneeling
+in an attitude of salutation, which she had been rehearsing for a week.
+Instead of the bey, Jansoulet stepped out, excited, stiffly erect, and
+passed her by without even looking at her. And as she stood there, her
+nosegay in her hand, with the stupid expression of a balked fairy,
+Cardailhac said to her with the _blague_ of a Parisian who speedily
+makes the best of things:
+
+"Take away your flowers, my dear, your affair has fallen through. The
+Bey isn't coming--he forgot his handkerchief, and as that's what he
+uses to talk to ladies, why, you understand--"
+
+                         *        *        *
+
+Now, it is night. Everybody is asleep at Saint-Romans after the
+tremendous hurly-burly of the day. The rain is still falling in
+torrents, the banners feebly wave their drenched carcasses, one can
+hear the water rushing down the stone steps, transformed into cascades.
+Everything is streaming and dripping. A sound of water, a deafening
+sound of water. Alone in his magnificently furnished chamber with its
+seignorial bed and its curtains of Chinese silk with purple stripes,
+the Nabob is still stirring, striding back and forth, revolving bitter
+thoughts. His mind is no longer intent upon the affront to himself, the
+public affront in the presence of thirty thousand persons, nor upon the
+murderous insult that the Bey addressed to him in presence of his
+mortal enemies. No, that Southerner with his wholly physical
+sensations, swift as the action of new weapons, has already cast away
+all the venom of his spleen. Moreover court favorites are always
+prepared, by many celebrated precedents, for such overwhelming falls
+from grace. What terrifies him is what he can see behind that insult.
+He reflects that all his property is over yonder, houses,
+counting-rooms, vessels, at the mercy of the bey, in that lawless
+Orient, the land of arbitrary power. And, pressing his burning brow
+against the streaming glass, with the perspiration standing on his
+back, and hands cold as ice, he stares vacantly out into the night, no
+darker, no more impenetrable than his own destiny.
+
+Suddenly he hears footsteps, hurried footsteps, at his door.
+
+"Who's there?"
+
+"Monsieur," says Noel, entering the room half-dressed, "a very urgent
+despatch sent from the telegraph office by special messenger."
+
+"A despatch!--What is the next thing?"
+
+He takes the blue paper and opens it with trembling hand. The god,
+having already been wounded twice, is beginning to feel that he is
+vulnerable, to lose his assurance; he experiences the apprehensions,
+the nervous tremors of other men. The signature first. _Mora!_ Is it
+possible? The duke, the duke telegraph to him! Yes, there is no doubt
+about it. _M-o-r-a._
+
+And above:
+
+    _Popolasca is dead. Election in Corsica soon. You are official
+    candidate._
+
+A deputy! That means salvation. With that he has nothing to fear. A
+representative of the great French nation is not to be treated like a
+simple _mercanti_. Down with the Hemerlingues!
+
+"O my duke, my noble duke!"
+
+He was so excited that he could not sign the receipt.
+
+"Where's the man who brought this despatch?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Here, Monsieur Jansoulet," replied a hearty voice from the hall, in
+the familiar Southern dialect.
+
+He was a lucky dog, that messenger.
+
+"Come in," said the Nabob.
+
+And, after handing him his receipt, he plunged his hands into his
+pockets, which were always full, grasped as many gold pieces as he
+could hold and threw them into the poor devil's cap as he stood there
+stammering, bewildered, dazzled by the fortune that had befallen him in
+the darkness of that enchanted palace.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+A CORSICAN ELECTION.
+
+
+    "POZZONEGRO, near Sartene.
+
+    "I am able at last to write you of my movements, my dear Monsieur
+    Joyeuse. In the five days that we have been in Corsica we have
+    travelled about so much, talked so much, changed carriages and
+    steeds so often, riding sometimes on mules, sometimes on asses, and
+    sometimes even on men's backs to cross streams, have written so
+    many letters, made notes on so many petitions, given away so many
+    chasubles and altar-cloths, propped up so many tottering church
+    steeples, founded so many asylums, proposed and drunk so many
+    toasts, absorbed so much talk and Talano wine and white cheese,
+    that I have found no time to send an affectionate word to the
+    little family circle around the big table, from which I have been
+    missing for two weeks. Luckily my absence will not last much
+    longer, for we expect to leave day after to-morrow and travel
+    straight through to Paris. So far as the election is concerned, I
+    fancy that our trip has been successful. Corsica is a wonderful
+    country, indolent and poor, a mixture of poverty and of pride which
+    makes both the noble and bourgeois families keep up a certain
+    appearance of opulence even at the price of the most painful
+    privations. They talk here in all seriousness of the great wealth
+    of Popolasca, the indigent deputy whom death robbed of the hundred
+    thousand francs his resignation in the Nabob's favor would have
+    brought him. All these people have, moreover, a frenzied longing
+    for offices, an administrative mania, a craving to wear a uniform
+    of some sort and a flat cap on which they can write: "Government
+    clerk." If you should give a Corsican peasant his choice between
+    the richest farm in Beauce and the baldric of the humblest
+    forest-warden, he would not hesitate a moment, he would choose the
+    baldric. Under such circumstances you can judge whether a candidate
+    with a large fortune and governmental favors at his disposal has a
+    good chance of being elected. Elected M. Jansoulet will be,
+    therefore, especially if he succeeds in the move which he is making
+    at this moment and which has brought us to the only inn of a small
+    village called Pozzonegro (Black Well), a genuine well, all black
+    with verdure, fifty cottages built of red stone clustered around a
+    church of the Italian type, in the bottom of a ravine surrounded by
+    steep hills, by cliffs of bright-colored sandstone, scaled by vast
+    forests of larches and junipers. Through my open window, at which I
+    am writing, I can see a bit of blue sky overhead, the orifice of
+    the black well; below, on the little square, shaded by an enormous
+    walnut tree, as if the shadows were not dense enough already, two
+    shepherds dressed in skins are playing cards on the stone curb of a
+    fountain. Gambling is the disease of this country of sloth, where
+    the crops are harvested by men from Lucca. The two poor devils
+    before me could not find a sou in their pockets; one stakes his
+    knife, the other a cheese wrapped in vine leaves, the two stakes
+    being placed beside them on the stone. A little cure is watching
+    them, smoking his cigar, and apparently taking the liveliest
+    interest in their game.
+
+    "And that is all--not a sound anywhere except the regular dropping
+    of the water on the stone, the exclamations of one of the gamblers,
+    who swears by the _sango del seminario_; and in the common-room of
+    the inn, under my chamber, our friend's earnest voice, mingled with
+    the buzzing of the illustrious Paganetti, who acts as interpreter
+    in his conversation with the no less illustrious Piedigriggio.
+
+    "M. Piedigriggio (Grayfoot) is a local celebrity. He is a tall old
+    man of seventy-five, still very erect in his short cloak over which
+    his long white beard falls, his brown woollen Catalan cap on his
+    hair, which is also white, a pair of scissors in his belt, which he
+    uses to cut the great leaves of green tobacco in the hollow of his
+    hand; a venerable old fellow in fact, and when he crossed the
+    square and shook hands with the cure, with a patronizing smile at
+    the two gamblers, I never would have believed that I had before me
+    the famous brigand Piedigriggio, who, from 1840 to 1860, _held the
+    thickets_ in Monte-Rotondo, tired out gendarmes and troops of the
+    line, and who to-day, his seven or eight murders with the rifle or
+    the knife being outlawed by lapse of time, goes his way in peace
+    throughout the region that saw his crimes, and is a man of
+    considerable importance. This is the explanation: Piedigriggio has
+    two sons, who, following nobly in his footsteps, have toyed with
+    the rifle and now hold the thickets in their turn. Impossible to
+    lay hands upon or to find, as their father was for twenty years,
+    informed by the shepherds of the movements of the gendarmerie, as
+    soon as the gendarmes leave a village, the brigands appear there.
+    The older of the two, Scipion, came last Sunday to Pozzonegro to
+    hear mass. To say that people are fond of them, and that the grasp
+    of the bloodstained hand of these villains is agreeable to all
+    those who receive it, would be to calumniate the pacific
+    inhabitants of this commune; but they fear them, and their will is
+    law.
+
+    "Now it appears that the Piedigriggios have taken it into their
+    heads to espouse the cause of our rival in the election, a
+    formidable alliance, which may cause two whole cantons to vote
+    against us, for the knaves have legs as long, in proportion, as the
+    range of their guns. Naturally we have the gendarmes with us, but
+    the brigands are much more powerful. As our host said to us this
+    morning: 'The gendarmes, they go, but the banditti, they stay.' In
+    the face of that very logical reasoning, we realized that there was
+    but one thing to do, to treat with the Piedigriggios, and make a
+    bargain with them. The mayor said a word to the old man, who
+    consulted his sons, and they are discussing the terms of the treaty
+    downstairs. I can hear the Governor's voice from here: 'Nonsense,
+    my dear fellow, I'm an old Corsican myself, you know.' And then the
+    other's tranquil reply, cut simultaneously with his tobacco by the
+    grating noise of the great scissors. The 'dear fellow' does not
+    seem to have faith; and I am inclined to think that matters will
+    not progress until the gold pieces ring on the table.
+
+    "The trouble is that Paganetti is well known in his native country.
+    The value of his word is written on the public square at Corte
+    which still awaits the monument to Paoli, in the vast crop of
+    humbuggery that he has succeeded in planting in this sterile
+    Ithacan island, and in the flabby, empty pocket-books of all the
+    wretched village cures, petty bourgeois, petty noblemen, whose
+    slender savings he has filched by dangling chimerical _combinazioni_
+    before their eyes. Upon my word, he needed all his phenomenal
+    assurance, together with the financial resources he now has at his
+    command to satisfy all demands, to venture to show his face here
+    again.
+
+    "After all, how much truth is there in these fabulous works
+    undertaken by the _Caisse Territoriale_?
+
+    "None at all.
+
+    "Mines which do not yield, which will never yield, as they exist
+    only on paper; quarries which as yet know not pickaxe or powder;
+    untilled, sandy moors, which they survey with a gesture, saying,
+    'We begin here, and we go way over yonder, to the devil.' It's the
+    same with the forests,--one whole densely wooded slope of
+    Monte-Rotondo, which belongs to us, it seems, but which it is not
+    practicable to cut unless aeronauts should do duty as woodcutters.
+    So as to the mineral baths, of which this wretched hamlet of
+    Pozzonegro is one of the most important, with its fountain, whose
+    amazing ferruginous properties Paganetti is constantly vaunting. Of
+    packet-boats, not a trace. Yes, there is an old, half-ruined
+    Genoese tower, on the shore of the Bay of Ajaccio, with this
+    inscription on a tarnished panel over its hermetically closed door:
+    'Paganetti Agency, Maritime Company, Bureau of Information.' The
+    bureau is kept by fat gray lizards in company with a screech-owl.
+    As for the railroads, I noticed that all the excellent Corsicans to
+    whom I mentioned them, replied with cunning smiles, disconnected
+    phrases, full of mystery; and not until this morning did I obtain
+    the exceedingly farcical explanation of all this reticence.
+
+    "I had read among the documents which the Governor waves before our
+    eyes from time to time, like a fan to inflate his _blague_, a deed
+    of a marble quarry at a place called Taverna, two hours from
+    Pozzonegro. Availing myself of our visit to this place, I jumped on
+    a mule this morning, without a word to any one, and, guided by a
+    tall rascal, with the legs of a deer,--a perfect specimen of the
+    Corsican poacher or smuggler, with his great red pipe between his
+    teeth,--I betook myself to Taverna. After a horrible journey among
+    cliffs intersected by crevasses, bogs, and abysses of immeasurable
+    depth, where my mule maliciously amused himself by walking close to
+    the edge, as if he were measuring it with his shoes, we descended
+    an almost perpendicular surface to our destination,--a vast desert
+    of rocks, absolutely bare, all white with the droppings of gulls
+    and mews; for the sea is just below, very near, and the silence of
+    the place was broken only by the beating of the waves and the
+    shrill cries of flocks of birds flying in circles. My guide, who
+    has a holy horror of customs officers and gendarmes, remained at
+    the top of the cliff, because of a small custom-house station on
+    the shore, while I bent my steps toward a tall red building which
+    reared its three stories aloft in that blazing solitude, the
+    windows broken, the roof-tiles in confusion, and over the rotting
+    door an immense sign: '_Caisse Territoriale. Carr--bre--54._' The
+    wind and sun and rain have destroyed the rest.
+
+    "Certainly there has been at some time an attempt made to work the
+    mine, for there is a large, square, yawning hole, with cleanly-cut
+    edges and patches of red streaked with brown, like leprous spots,
+    along its sterile walls; and among the nettles at the bottom
+    enormous blocks of marble of the variety known in commerce as
+    _griotte_, condemned blocks of which no use can be made for lack of
+    a proper road leading to the quarry, or a harbor which would enable
+    boats to approach the hill; and, more than all else, for lack of
+    sufficient funds to supply either of those needs. So the quarry,
+    although within a few cable-lengths of the shore, is abandoned,
+    useless, and a nuisance, like Robinson Crusoe's boat, with the same
+    drawbacks as to availability. These details of the distressing
+    history of our only territorial possession were furnished me by an
+    unhappy survivor, shivering with fever, whom I found in the
+    basement of the yellow house trying to cook a piece of kid over the
+    acrid smoke of a fire of mastic branches.
+
+    "That man, who comprises the whole staff of the _Caisse
+    Territoriale_ in Corsica, is Paganetti's foster-father, an
+    ex-lighthouse-keeper who does not mind loneliness. The Governor
+    leaves him there partly from charity, and also because an
+    occasional letter from the Taverna quarry produces a good effect at
+    meetings of shareholders. I had great difficulty in extorting any
+    information from that three-fourths wild man, who gazed at me
+    suspiciously, in ambush behind his goat-skin _pelone_; he did
+    tell me, however, unintentionally, what the Corsicans understand by
+    the term railroad, and why they assume this mysterious manner when
+    they mention it. While I was trying to find out whether he knew
+    anything of the scheme for an iron road in the island, the old
+    fellow did not put on the cunning smile I had observed in his
+    compatriots, but said to me quite naturally, in very good French,
+    but in a voice as rusty and stiff as an old lock that is seldom
+    used:
+
+    "'Oh! moussiou, no need of railroads here--'
+
+    "'But they are very valuable, very useful to make communication
+    easier.'
+
+    "'I don't say that ain't true; but with the gendarmes we don't need
+    anything more.'
+
+    "'The gendarmes?'
+
+    "'To be sure.'
+
+    "The misunderstanding lasted fully five minutes, before I finally
+    comprehended that the secret police are known here as the
+    'railroads.' As there are many Corsican police officials on the
+    Continent, they make use of an honest euphemism to describe their
+    degrading occupation in their family circle. You ask the kinsmen of
+    one of them, 'Where's your brother Ambrosini?' 'What is your Uncle
+    Barbicaglia doing?' They will answer, with a little wink: 'He has a
+    place on the railroad;' and everybody knows what that means. Among
+    the lower classes, the peasants, who have never seen a railroad and
+    have no idea what it is, there is a perfectly serious belief that
+    the great department of the secret imperial police has no other
+    name than that. Our principal agent in the island shares that
+    touching innocence; this will give you an idea of the condition of
+    the _Line from Ajaccio to Bastia via Bonifacio, Porto Vecchio,
+    etc._, which figures on the great books with green backs in the
+    Paganetti establishment. In a word, all the assets of the
+    territorial bank are comprised in a few desks and two old
+    hovels--the whole hardly worthy of a place in the rubbish-yard on
+    Rue Saint-Ferdinand, where I hear the weathercocks creaking and the
+    old doors slamming every night as I fall asleep.
+
+    "But in that case what has been done, what is being done with the
+    enormous sums that M. Jansoulet has poured into the treasury in the
+    last five months, to say nothing of what has come from other
+    sources attracted by that magic name? I fully agreed with you that
+    all these soundings and borings and purchases of land, which appear
+    on the books in a fine round hand, were immeasurably exaggerated.
+    But how could any one suspect such infernal impudence? That is why
+    M. le Gouverneur was so disgusted at the idea of taking me on this
+    electoral trip. I have not thought it best to have an explanation
+    on the spot. My poor Nabob has enough on his mind with his
+    election. But, as soon as we have returned, I shall place all the
+    details of my long investigation before his eyes; and I will
+    extricate him from this den of thieves by persuasion or by force.
+    They have finished their negotiations downstairs. Old Piedigriggio
+    is crossing the square, playing with his long peasant's purse,
+    which looks to me to be well-filled. The bargain is concluded, I
+    suppose. A hasty adieu, my dear Monsieur Joyeuse; remember me to
+    the young ladies, and bid them keep a tiny place for me at the
+    work-table.
+
+    "PAUL DE GERY."
+
+The electoral cyclone in which they had been enveloped in Corsica
+crossed the sea in their wake like the blast of a sirocco, followed
+them to Paris and blew madly through the apartments on Place Vendome,
+which were thronged from morning till night by the usual crowd,
+increased by the constant arrival of little men as dark as carob-beans,
+with regular, bearded faces, some noisy, buzzing and chattering, others
+silent, self-contained and dogmatic, the two types of the race in which
+the same climate produces different results. All those famished
+islanders made appointments, in the wilds of their uncivilized
+fatherland, to meet one another at the Nabob's table, and his house had
+become a tavern, a restaurant, a market-place. In the dining-room,
+where the table was always set, there was always some Corsican, newly
+arrived, in the act of taking a bite, with the bewildered and greedy
+expression of a relation from the country.
+
+The noisy, blatant breed of election agents is the same everywhere; but
+these men were distinguished by something more of ardor, a more
+impassioned zeal, a turkey-cock vanity heated white-hot. The most
+insignificant clerk, inspector, mayor's secretary, or village
+schoolmaster talked as if he had a whole canton behind him and the
+pockets of his threadbare coat stuffed full of ballots. And it is a
+fact, which Jansoulet had had abundant opportunity to verify, that in
+the Corsican villages the families are so ancient, of such humble
+origin, with so many ramifications, that a poor devil who breaks stones
+on the high road finds some way to work out his relationship to the
+greatest personages on the island, and in that way wields a serious
+influence. As the national temperament, proud, cunning, intriguing,
+revengeful, intensifies these complications, the result is that great
+care must be taken as to where one puts his foot among the snares that
+are spread from one end of the island to the other.
+
+The most dangerous part of it was that all those people were jealous of
+one another, detested one another, quarrelled openly at the table on
+the subject of the election, exchanging black glances, grasping the
+hilts of their knives at the slightest dispute, talking very loud and
+all together, some in the harsh, resonant Genoese patois, others in the
+most comical French, choking with restrained insults, throwing at one
+another's heads the names of unknown villages, dates of local history
+which suddenly placed two centuries of family feuds upon the table
+between two covers. The Nabob was afraid that his breakfasts would end
+tragically, and tried to calm all those violent natures with his
+kindly, conciliatory smile. But Paganetti reassured him. According to
+him, the vendetta, although still kept alive in Corsica, very rarely
+employs the stiletto and the firearm in these days. The anonymous
+letter has taken their place. Indeed, unsigned letters were received
+every day at Place Vendome, after the style of this one:--
+
+    "You are so generous, Monsieur Jansoulet, that I can do no less
+    than point out to you Sieur Bornalinco (Ange-Marie) as a traitor
+    who has gone over to your enemies; I have a very different story to
+    tell of his cousin Bornalinco (Louis-Thomas), who is devoted to the
+    good cause," etc.
+
+Or else:
+
+    "Monsieur Jansoulet, I fear that your election will be badly
+    managed and will come to nothing if you continue to employ Castirla
+    (Josue) of the canton of Odessa, while his kinsman, Luciani, is the
+    very man you need."
+
+Although he finally gave up reading such missives, the poor candidate
+was shaken by all those doubts, by all those passions, being caught in
+a network of petty intrigues, his mind full of terror and distrust,
+anxious, excited, nervous, feeling keenly the truth of the Corsican
+proverb:
+
+"If you are very ill-disposed to your enemy, pray that he may have an
+election in his family."
+
+We can imagine that the check-book and the three great drawers in the
+mahogany commode were not spared by that cloud of devouring locusts
+that swooped down upon "Moussiou Jansoulet's" salons. Nothing could be
+more comical than the overbearing way in which those worthy islanders
+negotiated their loans, abruptly and with an air of defiance. And yet
+they were not the most terrible, except in the matter of boxes of
+cigars, which vanished in their pockets so rapidly as to make one think
+they proposed to open a _Civette_ on their return to the island. But
+just as wounds grow red and inflamed on very hot days, so the election
+had caused an amazing recrudescence in the systematic pillage that
+reigned in the house. The expenses of advertising were considerable:
+Moessard's articles, sent to Corsica in packages of twenty thousand,
+thirty thousand copies, with portraits, biographies, pamphlets, all the
+printed clamor that it is possible to raise around a name. And then
+there was no diminution in the ordinary consumption of the panting
+pumps established around the reservoir of millions. On one side the
+Work of Bethlehem, a powerful machine, pumping at regular intervals,
+with tremendous energy; the _Caisse Territoriale_, with marvellous
+power of suction, indefatigable in its operation, with triple and
+quadruple action, of several thousand horse-power; and the Schwalbach
+pump, and the Bois-l'Hery pump, and how many more; some of enormous
+size, making a great noise, with audacious pistons, others more quiet
+and reserved, with tiny valves, bearings skilfully oiled--toy-pumps as
+delicately constructed as the probosces of insects whose thirst causes
+stings, and which deposit poison on the spot from which they suck their
+life; but all working with the same unanimity, and fatally certain to
+cause, if not an absolute drought, at all events a serious lowering of
+the level.
+
+Already unfavorable reports, vague as yet, were in circulation on the
+Bourse. Was it a manoeuvre of the enemy, of that Hemerlingue against
+whom Jansoulet was waging ruthless financial war, trying to defeat all
+his operations, and losing very considerable sums at the game, because
+he had against him his own excitable nature, his adversary's
+cool-headedness and the bungling of Paganetti, whom he used as a man of
+straw? In any event, the star of gold had turned pale. Paul de Gery
+learned as much from Pere Joyeuse, who had entered the employ of a
+broker as book-keeper, and was thoroughly posted on matters connected
+with the Bourse; but what alarmed him more than all else was the
+Nabob's strange agitation, the craving for excitement which had
+succeeded the admirable calmness of conscious strength, of serenity,
+the disappearance of his Southern sobriety, the way in which he
+stimulated himself before eating by great draughts of _raki_, talking
+loud and laughing uproariously like a common sailor during his watch on
+deck. One felt that the man was tiring himself out to escape some
+absorbing thought, which was visible nevertheless in the sudden
+contraction of all the muscles of his face when it passed through his
+mind, or when he was feverishly turning over the pages of his tarnished
+little memorandum-book. The serious interview, the decisive explanation
+that Paul was so desirous to have with him, Jansoulet would not have at
+any price. He passed his evenings at the club, his mornings in bed, and
+as soon as he was awake had his bedroom full of people, who talked to
+him while he was dressing, and to whom he replied with his face in his
+wash-bowl. If, by any miracle, de Gery caught him for a second, he
+would run away or cut him short with a: "Not now, I beg you." At last
+the young man resorted to heroic measures.
+
+One morning about five o'clock, Jansoulet, on returning from his club,
+found on the table beside his bed a little note which he took at first
+for one of the anonymous denunciations which he received every day. It
+was a denunciation, in very truth, but signed, written with the utmost
+frankness, breathing the loyalty and youthful seriousness of the man
+who wrote it. De Gery set before him very clearly all the infamous
+schemes, all the speculations by which he was surrounded. He called the
+rascals by their names, without circumlocution. There was not one among
+the ordinary habitues of the house who was not a suspicious character,
+not one who came there for any other purpose than to steal or lie. From
+attic to cellar, pillage and waste. Bois-l'Hery's horses were unsound,
+the Schwalbach gallery a fraud, Moessard's articles notorious
+blackmail. De Gery had drawn up a long detailed list of those impudent
+frauds, with proofs in support of his allegations; but he commended
+especially to Jansoulet's attention the matter of the _Caisse
+Territoriale_, as the really dangerous element in his situation. In the
+other matters money alone was at risk; in this, honor was involved.
+Attracted by the Nabob's name, by his title of president of the
+council, hundreds of stockholders had walked into that infamous trap,
+seeking gold in the footsteps of that lucky miner. That fact imposed a
+terrible responsibility upon him which he would understand by reading
+the memorandum relating to the concern, which was falsehood and fraud,
+pure and simple, from beginning to end.
+
+"You will find the memorandum to which I refer," said Paul de Gery in
+conclusion, "in the first drawer in my desk. Various receipts are
+affixed to it. I have not put it in your room, because I am distrustful
+of Noel as of all the rest. To-night, when I go away, I will hand you
+the key. For I am going away, my dear friend and benefactor, I am going
+away, overflowing with gratitude for the benefits you have conferred on
+me, and in despair because your blind confidence has prevented me from
+repaying them in part. My conscience as a man of honor would reproach
+me were I to remain longer useless at my post. I am looking on at a
+terrible disaster, the pillage of a Summer Palace, which I am powerless
+to check; but my heart rises in revolt at all that I see. I exchange
+grasps of the hand which dishonor me. I am your friend, and I seem to
+be their confederate. And who knows whether, by living on in such an
+atmosphere, I might not become so?"
+
+This letter, which he read slowly, thoroughly, even to the spaces
+between the words and the lines, made such a keen impression on the
+Nabob that, instead of going to bed, he went at once to his young
+secretary. Paul occupied a study at the end of the suite of salons,
+where he slept on a couch, a provisional arrangement which he had never
+cared to change. The whole house was still asleep. As he walked through
+the long line of great salons, which were not used for evening
+receptions, so that the curtains were always open and at that moment
+admitted the uncertain light of a Parisian dawn, the Nabob paused,
+impressed by the melancholy aspect that his magnificent surroundings
+presented. In the heavy odor of tobacco and various liquors that filled
+the rooms, the furniture, the wainscotings, the decorations seemed
+faded yet still new. Stains on the crumpled satin, ashes soiling the
+beautiful marbles, marks of boots on the carpet reminded him of a huge
+first-class railway carriage, bearing the marks of the indolence,
+impatience and ennui of a long journey, with the destructive contempt
+of the public for a luxury for which it has paid. Amid that stage
+scenery, all in position and still warm from the ghastly comedy that
+was played there every day, his own image, reflected in twenty cold,
+pale mirrors, rose before him, at once ominous and comical, ill-at-ease
+in his fashionable clothes, with bloated cheeks and face inflamed and
+dirty.
+
+What an inevitable and disenchanting morrow to the insane life he was
+leading!
+
+He lost himself for a moment in gloomy thoughts; then, with the
+vigorous shrug of the shoulders which was so familiar in him, that
+packman's gesture with which he threw off any too painful
+preoccupation, he resumed the burden which every man carries with him,
+and which causes the back to bend more or less, according to his
+courage or his strength, and entered de Gery's room, where he found him
+already dressed and standing in front of his open desk, arranging
+papers.
+
+"First of all, my boy," said Jansoulet, closing the door softly on
+their interview, "answer me this question frankly. Are the motives set
+forth in your letter your real motives for resolving to leave me? Isn't
+there underneath it all one of these infamous stories that I know are
+being circulated against me in Paris? I am sure you would be frank
+enough to tell me, and to give me a chance to--to set myself right in
+your eyes."
+
+Paul assured him that he had no other reasons for going, but that those
+he had mentioned were surely sufficient, as it was a matter of
+conscience.
+
+"Listen to me then, my child, and I am sure that I shall be able to
+keep you. Your letter, eloquent as it was with honesty and sincerity,
+told me nothing new, nothing that I had not been convinced of for three
+months. Yes, my dear Paul, you were right; Paris is more complicated
+than I thought. What I lacked when I arrived here was an honest,
+disinterested cicerone to put me on my guard against persons and
+things. I found none but people who wanted to make money out of me. All
+the degraded scoundrels in the city have left the mud from their boots
+on my carpets. I was looking at those poor salons of mine just now.
+They need a good thorough sweeping; and I promise you that they shall
+have, _jour de Dieu!_ and from no light hand. But I am waiting until I
+am a deputy. All these rascals are of service to me in my election; and
+the election is too necessary to me for me to throw away the slightest
+chance. This is the situation in two words. Not only does the bey not
+intend to repay the money I loaned him a month ago; he has met my claim
+with a counter-claim for twenty-four millions, the figure at which he
+estimates the sums I obtained from his brother. That is infernal
+robbery, an impudent slander. My fortune is my own, honestly my own. I
+made it in my dealings as a contractor. I enjoyed Ahmed's favor; he
+himself furnished me with opportunities for making money. It is very
+possible that I have screwed the vise a little hard sometimes. But the
+matter must not be judged with the eyes of a European. The enormous
+profits that the Levantines make are a well-known and recognized thing
+over yonder; they are the ransom of the savages whom we introduce to
+western comforts. This wretched Hemerlingue, who is suggesting all this
+persecution of me to the bey, has done very much worse things. But
+what's the use of arguing? I am in the wolf's jaws. Pending my
+appearance to justify myself before his courts--I know all about
+justice in the Orient--the bey has begun by putting an embargo on all
+my property, ships, palaces and their contents. The affair has been
+carried on quite regularly, in pursuance of a decree of the Supreme
+Council. I can feel the claw of Hemerlingue Junior under it all. If I
+am chosen deputy, it is all a jest. The Council revokes its decree and
+my treasures are returned with all sorts of excuses. If I am not
+elected, I lose everything, sixty, eighty millions, even the possible
+opportunity of making another fortune; it means ruin, disgrace, the
+bottomless pit. And now, my son, do you propose to abandon me at such a
+crisis? Remember that I have nobody in the world but you. My wife? you
+have seen her, you know how much support, how much good advice she
+gives her husband. My children? It's as if I had none. I never see
+them, they would hardly know me in the street. My ghastly magnificence
+has made an empty void around me, so far as affections are concerned,
+has replaced them by shameless selfish interests. I have no one to love
+but my mother, who is far away, and you, who come to me from my mother.
+No, you shall not leave me alone among all the slanders that are
+crawling around me. It is horrible--if you only knew! At the club, at
+the theatre, wherever I go, I see Baroness Hemerlingue's little snake's
+head, I hear the echo of her hissing, I feel the venom of her hatred.
+Everywhere I am conscious of mocking glances, conversations broken off
+when I appear, smiles that lie, or kindness in which there is a
+mingling of pity. And then the defections, the people who move away as
+if a catastrophe were coming. For instance, here is Felicia Ruys, with
+my bust just finished, alleging some accident or other as an excuse for
+not sending it to the Salon. I said nothing, I pretended to believe it.
+But I understood that there was some infamy on foot in that quarter,
+too,--and it's a great disappointment to me. In emergencies as grave as
+that I am passing through, everything has its importance. My bust at
+the Exhibition, signed by that famous name, would have been of great
+benefit to me in Paris. But no, everything is breaking, everything is
+failing me. Surely you see that you must not fail me."
+
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2), by Alphonse Daudet
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