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THE NOVELS, ROMANCES
AND 31 E 31 O I R S O E
ALPHONSE DAUDET
P U /' /; A' r A L K I) I T I N
THE NABOB
VOLUME ONE
SOCIETY OF ENGUSH AND FJIENCH
EriERA'l'URE • • NEW YORK
Copyright, 1898,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved.
2Entbersttg 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 publi-
cation of The Nabob in serial form, the government of
Tunis was offended at the ' introduction therein of indi-
viduals 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 function-
aries 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 circula-
tion 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 parti-
sans 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
viii Alphonse Daudet.
thought Daudet " incomparably " the best of the
present French novehsts and asserted that " Kings
in Exile " comes " very near to being a master-
piece." 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
ha? scant relish for latter-day methods in litera-
ture, 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 inan-
imate things the appearance of life."
I.
The documents are abundant for an analysis of
Daudet such as Sainte-Beuve would have under-
taken with avidity; they are more abundant in-
deed than for any other contemporary French man
of letters even in these days of unhesitating self-
revelation ; and they are also of an absolutely im-
pregnable 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. L6on Daudet has
written another solid tome to tell us all about his
father's literary principles and family life and later
Alphofise Daudet. ix
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 Dau-
det'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 illumi-
nating.
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 testi-
monies, 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-sighted-
ness, 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
X Alpho7tse Daudet.
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 joy-
ous 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 in-
communicable 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 con-
trary, 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
Alp house Dattdet. xi
not without instruction. They reveal to us the
reasons for the transformation that goes so far to
explain Daudet's peculiar position, — the trans-
formation of a young Provengal poet into a bril-
liant 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 expan-
siveness 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 be-
cause he recognized in himself the possibility of a
like exuberance. He could never take the rigor-
ously 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 dis-
sected Emma Bovary under the microscope.
Daudet is never flagrantly hostile toward one of
his creatures ; and, however contemptible or despi-
xii Alpho7ise Daudet.
cable the characters he has called into being, he is
scrupulously fair to them. Sidonie and Fdlicia
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 be-
stowed 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
Provengal; 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 hun-
gered 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 Wahr-
heit," — 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
Alp house Daudet. xiii
originality," M. Jules Lemaitre has acutely re-
marked, " is closely to unite observation and fan-
tasy, 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 Nlmes 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 reve-
lation than is " David Copperfield." His father was
a manufacturer whose business was not prosper-
ous and who was forced at last to remove with
the whole family to Lyons in the vain hope of do-
ing 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."
xiv Alp house Daudet.
When he was sixteen he secured a place d^s pion
in a boarding school in the Cevennes, — dipion 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 de-
scribed 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 Signer 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 ac-
complishment of verse as part of their equipment
for the literary life, but who lack a spontaneous
Alp house Daudet. xv
impulse toward rhythm. It may even be suggested
that his Httle 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 sus-
tains some of the most graceful and tender
of his short stories, — "The Death of the Dau-
phin," 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 Aries," which he had elabo-
rated 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 Aries," which is
less moving in the theatre than in its briefer nar-
rative form, not even the latest of them all, the
xvi Alphonse Daudet
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 intoler-
ant and harsh. What is factitious and self-over-
valuing in the Provenqal 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 Hal^vy, 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
Alpho7ise Daudet, xvii
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 news-
papers 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 im-
pressions. 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 Dau-
det' 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
xviii Alphonse Daudet.
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 sel-
fishness of its servants; no single chapter of M.
Zola's splendid and terrible "Downfall" con-
tains a more damning indictment of the leaders
of the imperial army than is to be read in Dau-
det'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 in-
stance, 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
Alphonse Daudet. xix
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 at-
tained. The alleged imitation of the British
novelist by the French may be left for later con-
sideration; but it is possible now to note that in
the earlier descriptive chapters of the " Letters
from my Mill " one may detect a certain similar
ity 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 infe-
licities that Daudet has strunavo, J>avoms.
40 The Nabob.
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, Paga-
netti 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
A Breakfast on Place Vendbme. 41
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 depriv-
ing 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 com-
plexion 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 vic-
tory for the Church."
42 The Nabob.
Beside that pontiff with the starched band, old
Schwalbach, the famous dealer in pictures, dis-
played 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 Mar-
seillais hair-dresser and the Hercules at a country
fair, a masseur, pedicurist, manicurist and some-
thing 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 weak-
nesses, the private miseries of the house in which
he happens to be. M. Bompain completed that
A Breakfast on Place Vendbme. 43
procession of subalterns, all classified with refer-
ence to some one specialty. Bompain, the secre-
tary, 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 trades-
men, penniless journalists, inventors of strange
objects, men from the South landed in Paris with-
out 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 kind-
ness 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
44 The Nabob.
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 simi-
lar outlandish collection of foreign dishes, sauces
with saffron or anchovies, elaborately spiced Turk-
ish delicacies, chickens with fried almonds ; all this,
taken in conjunction with the commonplace decora-
tions of the room, the gilded wainscotings and the
shrill jangle of the new bells, gave one the impres-
sion of a table-d'hote in some great hotel in Smyrna
or Calcutta, or of the gorgeous saloon of a trans-
Atlantic liner, the Percire 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.
A Breakfast on Place Vendbme. 45
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'hdte.
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 con-
science, 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
did n't show it to you? "
** Oh ! " said Moessard modestly, " it was n't
worth the trouble."
He was a journalist in a small way, fair-haired
and spruce, a pretty fellow enough, but with a face
46 The Nabob.
marked by the faded look peculiar to waiters at
all-night restaurants, actors and prostitutes, made
up of conventional grimaces and the sallow reflec-
tion 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 promi-
nence in his circle.
Jansoulet insisted upon reading the article, being
impatient to hear what was said of him. Unfor-
tunately Jenkins had left his copy at the duke's.
" Let some one go at once and get me a Messa-
ger" said the Nabob to the servant behind his
chair,
Moessard interposed :
" That is n'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, Moes-
sard took back his proof and began to read aloud
the Work of Bethlehem and M. Bernard
Jansoulet, a long deliverance in favor of artificial
A Breakfast oii Place Vendbme. 47
nursing, written from Jenkins' notes, which were
recognizable by certain grandiloquent phrases of
the sort that the Irishman afifected : " the long
martyrology of infancy — the venality of the breast
— the goat, the beneficent nurse," — and conclud-
ing, after a turgid description of the magnificent
establishment at Nanterre, with a eulogy of Jen-
kins and the glorification of Jansoulet: " O Ber-
nard 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
48 The Nabob.
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 sud-
denly, when the reading was at an end, in the midst
of a veritable overflow of joy, of one of those out-
bursts 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 com-
patriots, he had known these men whom he called
his friends hardly more than a day, and only from
having loaned them money. Wherefore that sud-
den expansiveness seemed decidedly strange ; but
Jansoulet, too deeply moved to notice anything,
continued :
" After what I have just heard, when I see my-
self 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 ped-
dler'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
A Breakfast on Place Vendome. 49
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 had n'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
VOL. I. — 4
50 The Nabob.
strips as thin as cigarette papers. The Governor,
on the contrary, went through a pantomime ex-
pressive of perfunctory admiration, with exclama-
tions 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 nar-
rative. 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 voy-
ages in distant seas, and the dangers, and the ter-
rible shipwrecks. Next came the tale of his good
luck, the extraordinary accident that suddenly
started him on the road to fortune. " I was wan-
dering 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
A Breakfast on Place Vendbme. 51
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 had n'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 avail-
able 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!"
52 The Nabob,
" Superb."
" Very cJiic — very chic^
" Well said."
" A man like that ought to be in the Chamber."
" He shall be, per Bacco ! my word for it," ex-
claimed 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 apart-
ment. 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 uncer-
tainty or a threat.
The coffee was served in the Oriental fashion,
A Breakfast on Place Vendbme. 53
with all the grounds, in small filigreed silver cups,
and the guests stood around in groups, drinking
hastily, burning their tongues, watching one an-
other furtively, and keeping especially close watch
on the Nabob, in order to grasp the favorable mo-
ment 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 dis-
traught, falsely attentive air, during the breakfast.
But now there was no more embarrassment, no
more grimacing. Everybody in that strange com-
pany 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 advan-
tage 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,
54 The Nabob.
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 what-
ever 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 Jansou-
let 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 Territoriale , which has been aground for
years, buried in sand to her masthead. A mag-
nificent 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
A Breakfast on Place Veudbme. 55
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 quar-
ries, 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 Due 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 Excel-
lency said, it would afford a capitalist an oppor-
tunity to attain a lofty position, even a political
position. Just consider a moment ! in that penni-
less 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
56 The Nabob.
one when I choose. At a word from me all Cor-
sica 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 car-
ried 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 Tcrritoriale.
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-assur-
ance 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 '11 go and drink
my coffee." But ten borrowers are lying in wait
for him. The quickest, the most adroit, is Cardail-
hac, 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
A Breakfast on Place Vcndbme. 57
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 jour-
nalist 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 cur6 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 Due 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 mas-
seur, who closes it, one and all lead the Nabob
58 The Nabob.
aside. But however far away they take him in
that long file of salons, there is always some indis-
creet mirror to reflect the figure of the master of
the house, and the pantomime of his broad back.
Th?t 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 check-
book. In one of his salons the Nabob kept a
commode, an ugly little piece of furniture repre-
senting the savings of some concierge ; it was the
first article Jansoulet bought when he w^as 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 thou-
sand francs in current funds. He resorted to that
never-failing supply on the days of his great audi-
ences, 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
A Breakfast on Place Vendbme. 59
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, abso-
lutely 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
6o The Nabob.
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 Gary's children, the former
justice of the peace at Bourg-Saint-And^ol, 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 G^ry family had for-
merly 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 start-
ing for Paris to seek his fortune. She implored
A Breakfast on Place Vendome. 6i
Jansoulct to assist him, " for he sorely needed it,
poor fellow." And she signed : " Your mother,
who is dying for a sight of you, FRANgoiSE."
That letter from his mother, whom he had not
seen for six years, the Southern forms of expres-
sion in which he recognized familiar intonations,
the coarse handwriting which drew for him a be-
loved face, all wrinkled and sunburned and fur-
rowed, but smiling still beneath a peasant's cap,
made a profound impression upon the Nabob.
During the six weeks he had been in France, im-
mersed in the eddying whirl of Paris, of his instal-
lation, 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 op-
portunity 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 under-
takings. 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
62 The Nabob.
soon get the hang of the boulevard. At all events,
I '11 undertake your education in that direction my-
self. In a few weeks you shall have a foot as thor-
oughly 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 Httle about mamma."
Memoirs of a Clerk, 63
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 Tcrritorialc ;
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, Monssiou Pas-
sajon."
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, say-
ing that in his opinion there was no sense in poi-
soning offices in that way, and that it was n't worth
64 The Nabob.
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 did n'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 Gov-
ernor 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 compas-
sion of cooks. And there you are !
In speaking thus I gave way to an indignant im-
pulse 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 lucubra-
tion.) I had, I repeat, expressed myself to the
Governor with the greatest reserve, refraining from
Meinoirs of a Clerk. 65
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-dc-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
ahvays 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 obser-
vation 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. Dis-
charge 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
s..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.
VOL. I. — 5
66 The Nabob.
Theoretically there are twelve of us at the
Caisse Territoriale, including the Governor and the
dandy Moessard, manager of the Veriti Financikre;
but really there are less than half that number.
In the first place, since the FmV/ ceased to appear
— that was two years ago — M. Moessard has n'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 mat-
ters 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 receiv-
ing 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
Memoirs of a Clerk. 67
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
solenm truth, and Paris is full of financial estab-
lishments 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:
68 The Nabob.
" Messieurs and dear comrades, the time of our
trials is at an end. The Caisse Tcrritoriale is
entering upon a new phase of its existence."
With that he began to tell us about a superb
combinasione — that is his favorite word, and he
says it in such an insinuating tone ! — a conibinazi-
one 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 ofif
those who were useless. This last for me, I
imagine. And finally : " Make up your accounts.
They will all be settled to-morrow." Unfortu-
nately he has so often soothed our feelings with
lying words that his discourse produced no effect.
Formerly those fine promises of his always suc-
ceeded. On the announcement of a new com-
binaziotie, 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
Memoirs of a Clerk. 69
through. Pechero! the combinazione has fallen
through ! " And he cried and sobbed, threw him-
self 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 con-
fess, however, that for a moment I was shaken.
The assurance with which he talked about dis-
charging me, and the name of the Nabob, who was
so wealthy —
"Do you believe that?" said the cashier.
" Why, you '11 always be an innocent, my poof
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 success-
ful, 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 sus-
pense. We were consumed with anxiety, we scru-
tinized Moessard's face ; we thought that the effects
70 The Nabob.
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 suf-
ficiently advantageous investment for his dear
friend's funds. That was honorable, was n'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
Memoirs of a Clerk, 71
come to my notice. " Wanted, a clerk of mature
age at the Caisse Tcrritoriale, 56 Boulev^ard Males-
herbes. Good references." Let me make a con-
fession at once. The modern Babylon had always
tempted me. And then I felt that I was still vigor-
ous, 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 du 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 an-
swered my letter to the effect that my face pleased
him — I should think so, parbleii! 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 quar-
72 The Nabob.
ters, 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 enter-
prises with fabulous profits. I was dazzled, fasci-
nated. 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 inter-
vals. But one of the Governor's little conibin-
azioni 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
Territorialc. 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-1'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 fail-
ure. That is just what saves our evil-minded little
Governor. The others run after their moneys
Memoirs of a Clerk. 73
everyone knows what that means in gambhng —
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 ofhce. 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 when-
ever he meets me :
" Passajon, my boy, don't stay in that den of
thieves. You make a mistake in staying on there ;
you '11 never get a sou out of it. Come to Hemer-
lingue's. I '11 undertake to find some little corner
for you. You will earn less, but you '11 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
74 The Nabob.
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 any-
thing 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 Finan-
ciered which disappeared more than two years ago,
comes with an air of timidity to renew his subscrip-
tion, and requests that it be forwarded a little more
regularly, if possible. There is a confidence which
nothing weakens. When one of those innocent
Memoirs of a Clerk. 75
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 pockets :
" Twenty francs cartage ! I have n'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 im-
patient 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 Dien! I know all
76 The Nabob.
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 wind-
fall, if one should come. Oh ! I swear by my
ribbon, by my thirty years of academic service, if
ever an afifair like this of the Nabob makes it pos-
sible 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 for-
ever 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 false-
hood 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 else-
where, my dear Governor.
A Debut in Society. ^'j
TV.
A DfiBUT 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 sur-
feited 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.
•j8 The Nabob.
" 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 over-
looked. 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 pro-
vincial feels on his first appearance in a Parisian
salon, especially when he is shrewd and intelligent
and does not wear the imperturbable self-assur-
ance 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 ot that anguish,
compounded of vanity, timidity and recollections
of romantic books, which screws our teeth to-
gether, embarrasses our movements, makes us for
a whole evening a statue between two doors, a
fixture in a window-recess, a poor, pitiful, wander-
ing 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
A Debut in Society. 79
have stammered one of those incoherent absurdi-
ties 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 fre-
quent 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 provin-
cial, whose very ignorance and Southern adapta-
bility made him first of all a keen observer.
From the place where he stood he watched
the interesting procession, still in progress at mid-
night, 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
So The Nabob,
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 fra-
ternal 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 supe-
rior 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
A Debut in Society. 8i
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, w^hich 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 monu-
mental 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 con-
fused, 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, talk-
ing on the arm of a divan or leaning over the back
82 The Nabob.
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,
A Debut in Society. 83
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 Due de Mora expected? "
" To be sure. The party is given for him ; to
have him meet Jansoulet."
*' And you think that the duke and Made-
moiselle 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 conver-
'sation 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, unfa-
miliar chords. The singer, a woman of from forty
84 The Nabob.
to forty-five years of age, had magnificent hair of
the color of ashes, refined, somewhat weak fea-
tures, and an expression of great amiabihty.
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 happi-
ness. 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 conceal-
ment, 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 mur-
mured by his side — it was not the same voice that
had spoken just before :
"You know what people say — that the Jen-
kinses 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 — "
A D'ehit in Society. 85
The conversation continued in an undertone.
Madame Jenkins approached, bowing and smihng,
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 unassail-
able 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 Hemer-
lingue and his friend Jansoulet, his two wealthiest
patients, who embarrassed him seriously with their
internecine warfare. The Nabob asked nothing
86 The Nabob.
better. He bore his former chum no malice. Their
rupture had come about as a result of Hemer-
lingue'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 eye-
brows 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 down-
cast 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, com-
pleted 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
A Debut in Society. 87
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. Hem-
erlingue 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.
88 The Nabob.
But it was a promise and everything was under-
stood. Monpav^on 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 Due 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
;v '"
/*ii'. .-. t
r^j>^rUjhl. iS^H. t'yluUe. t % i " i
-•*SglgijBTw«wwi«'~
Ccpviaht ifiaS. hy UitU- Brm'
'lU^z/.- 8; Cf Tari<^.
Grandmamjna. 195
" Yes, it 's a name we gave her when she was a
little girl. With her frilled cap, and her authorita-
tive older-sister expression, she had a funny Httle
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 attrac-
tive youth. Every one in the household thought as
he did, and the other Jcyeuse 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 im-
aginary 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 obses-
sion, and the persistent melancholy peculiar to the
day after a fete, extinguished candles, refrains that
have died away, perfumes vanished in the darkness.
196 * The Nabob.
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 every-
body jump.
"Ah! there's Monsieur Andre. Quick, Elise,
a cup. Yaia, the little cakes." Meanwhile, Made-
moiselle 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 with-
out a certain solemnity of manner. He remem-
bered 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.
Grandmamma. 197
" 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. Pho-
tography 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 in-
exhaustible 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 Rcvolte has been acted ! " R^volte 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
198 The Nabob,
through the quarter," added Elise confidently.
Grandmamma smiHngly 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 Imagmairc 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 dispro-
portionately, that a loud " pcmf swallowed up
photographer and photography in a few months.
They laughed heartily when he gave that explana-
tion ; 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."
Grandtnamnia. 1 99
" 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 up-
stairs, 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 un-
certain 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 gentle-
men 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 lumi-
nous circle of the lamp shade, to the great satis-
faction 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
200 The Nabob,
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 sim-
plicity, 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 at-
tracts it, and the satisfaction of a blas^ 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
Grandmamma. 201
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 out-
line 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 af-
fected 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 appar-
ent 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 con-
vinced 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-fellow-
ship 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 cool-
202 The Nabob.
ness 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 excel-
lent 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, not-
Grandmamma. 203
withstanding the evil things he heard, notwith-
standing the strange creature's pecuHarities, he
hovered about her with a dehcious 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 indefatig-
able but apparently effortless devotion, very con-
venient 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
204 The Nabob.
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 origi-
nally 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 per-
son of fifteen, to whom her father had bequeathed
something of his imaginative faculty, was already
arranging her life in anticipation, and declared for-
mally 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,
Grandmamma. 205
always rejected and preparing herself anew, sub-
ject 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, 13 14-13 16.
Philippe V, le Long, 13 16-1322 — 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.
2o6 The Nabob,
" 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 repeti-
tion 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 at-
tentively 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 na-
tures and in their responsibilities and duties brought
those two young people together, made them mutu-
ally 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,
Grandmamma. 207
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 Mademoi-
selle 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 to-
gether 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
2o8 The Nabob.
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 imagina-
tion. 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 youth-
ful chatter. " Oh ! when she talked to me about
her art, with the ardor which she put into every-
thing, 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 pecul-
iar emotion that one feels at the sight of a beauti-
ful 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 du-
ties to me. And of all that friendship, and very
Graizdmamma. 209
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 dis-
appointed 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 even-
ings, but on other evenings as well, and almost for-
got to go and see Felicia for the pleasure of hear-
ing Aline speak of her.
One evening, when he left the Joyeuse apart-
ment, he found waiting for him on the landing M.
Andr6, 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 visit-
ors at the same house, who are attached by no
bond, who seem indeed to be separated by a cer-
tain 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
VOL. I. — 14
2IO The Nabob.
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 scat-
tered 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 appear-
ance, 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 transi-
tion. 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 be-
tween you and the poor poet who carries on an
absurd trade in order to gain time to attain suc-
cess, 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, ex-
cited by his rival's unruffled tranquillity. " I have
loved Mademoiselle Joyeuse a long while. That
Grandmamma. 2 1 1
love is the aim, the joy, and the strength of a very
hard Hfe, painful in many respects. I have noth-
ing 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 author-
ized him to proclaim his rights.
" Yes, monsieur. Mademoiselle Elise knows that
I love her, and before your frequent visits — "
" lilise — is it EHse 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 respect-
ful 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 inti-
mate and confidential character, attributable to the
earnest avowal with which it began. Paul con-
fessed that he too was in love, and that his only
212 The Nabob.
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. " Grand-
mamma 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 Rivolte ! 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 com-
pletely 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 melan-
choly 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
Grandmamma. 213
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 mana-
gerial 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 expres-
sion, 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,
2 14 ^^^ Nabob,
which were a source of pain to my mother, I pre-
ferred 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 our-
selves, 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 un-
fortunate bride in the guise of a Zulu queen, under
her wreath which melted into her hair ! And all
Grandmamma. 215
so overflowing with good-nature, with encourage-
ment 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 melan-
choly incidents of his life, Paul recalled Felicia's
outburst on the subject of Bohemians, and all that
she said to Jenkins concerning their exalted cour-
age, 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 examina-
tion she was so long in passing, of the difficult
trade of photography, of all the unforeseen hard-
ships 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.
2i6 The Nabob.
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 min-
isterial 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 miracu-
lous. 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 confi-
Memoirs of a Clerk. — The Servants. 2 1 7
dence 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 indescrib-
able 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 adora-
tion to compel them to pay some attention to you.
Let me hasten to add that I had no need of any-
thing of the sort to attract the attention of the
Nabob. When I rose as he passed — ^ deeply
moved but dignified : you can always trust Passa-
jon — 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 w^ord
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. Per-
haps 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
2i8 The Nabob.
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 consid-
eration of my certificates of service at the Ter-
ritoriale 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 sav-
ings, which I actually held in my hand for a whole
day, intrusted to the fostering care of ihe Gover-
nor, 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
Memoirs of a Clerk. — The Servants. 219
the boulevards, everywhere : " The Nabob is in the
thing." That is to say, we are running over with
cash, the worst combinasiojii 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
sayi That was rather a neat trick on Hemer-
lingue, 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 skil-
fully, the son in Tunis, the father in Paris, to bring
the Nabob into disfavor. To be sure, fifteen mil-
lions 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
2 20 The Nabob.
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 per-
sons 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, Monpa-
von'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 under-
hand 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^
I saw, notwithstanding the defective orthography,
that it was a serious, authoritative function ; so
1 M. Noel requests the pleasure of M. 's company on the
evening of the 25th instant. Supper.
Memoirs of a Clerk. — The Servants. 221
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 ! *
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.
1 A fig for the pleasure
Which fear can destroy !
222 The Nabob.
" Welcome, Monsieur Passajon," he said ; and
taking my cap with silver ornaments, which, as I
entered the room, I held in my right hand accord-
ing 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 por-
tion 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 resem-
blances 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 dis-
playing his linen shirtfront, a mania for raising
his arms to pull down his cuffs, which is Mon-
pavon 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'H^ry, Monpavon and Jenkins. Is it to
debase the superiors, to exalt the servant class?
Every country has its customs ; nobody but a fool
Memoirs of a Clerk. — The Servants, 223
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 /<7r/^r- 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 scan-
dalous 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, chok-
ing 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
224 ^'^^ Nabob.
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 hier-
archy 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 orna-
ments, the ladies who had gone to look after little
Tom ; ladies' maids with glossy, well-oiled hair,
housekeepers in beribboned caps, negresses, gov-
ernesses, 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
Memoirs of a Clerk. — The Servants. 225
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 per-
fumery 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 digni-
fied air, M. Noel began to laugh. " No offence,
old girl. The strong box is full. You '11 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 invi-
voL. I. — 15
2 26 The Nabob.
tations, and I expressed my anxiety in an under-
tone to one of my lovely nieces, who replied :
" We are waiting for M. Louis."
"M. Louis?"
"What! Don't you know M. Louis, the Due
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 bear-
ing, 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.
Memoirs of a Clerk. — The Servants. 227
" 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 neigh-
bor, 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 noble-
man's household.
" He 's a parvenu," he said to me in an under-
tone. " 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 pom-
viades, 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 ex-
pensive 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
228 The Nabob.
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 does n't do
that? As if he would n'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 '11 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 Tcrritoriale, where he does nothing
but rummage among the books. Very polite cer-
tainly, 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
Memoirs of a Clerk. — The Servants. 229
recently had an experience similar to yours with
His Excellency's chief secretary, who presumed to
indulge in some observations concerning the house-
hold 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 boiiillottc 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, show-
ing his old fangs.
The other rose, red as fire, on the point of losing
his temper, but M. Louis made a sign with his
230 The Nabob.
hand that he had something to say, and M. Noel at
once sat down, putting his hand to his ear, Hke 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 Hps and sipping his wine
slowly ; " it is true that we received the Nabob at
Grandbois some weeks ago. Indeed, a very amus-
ing thing happened there. We have a great many
mushrooms in the second park, and His Excel-
lency 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 gentle-
men filled their plates, all except Monsieur le Due,
who can't digest them and thought that politeness
required him to say to his guests : ' Oh ! it is n'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.' Marign}^, being less at home, looked
askance at his plate.
" ' Why, Monpavon, upon my word, these mush-
rooms 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! '
Memoirs of a Clerk. — The Servants. 231
" * Oh ! your Excellency, the idea ! Why, I
would eat them with my eyes closed.'
" I leave it to you, if that was n'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 mush-
rooms, 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 mouth-
fuls. 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 scat-
tered 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
232 I he Nabob.
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'H6ry,
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 ambassa-
dors' balls, and their names always in the news-
papers, 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 cus-
tomers there and makes them pay double price,
because a man does n'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
Memoirs of a Clerk. — The Servants. 233
ridiculous sometimes, but instantly adopted by
society, because Madame is still a very beautiful
woman, and of high repute in the matter of fash-
ion ; she is what is called a lanceiise. 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 prac-
tice 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 chand-froid de volaillcs.
Such is the life of that curious household. Noth-
ing 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
234 ^-^^ Nabob.
blagucnr, P^re 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 Mon-
pavon. 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
Memoirs of a Clerk. — The Servants. 235
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 quar-
ters, 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 car-
riage." 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 '11 see if he '11 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 '11 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,
236 The Nabob.
speaking of his unfortunate mistress as the lowest
of the low. For my part, I confess that she ex-
cited 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 ser-
vice 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 re-
mains of dishes and the dregs of bottles. The
champagne was beginning to lay hold of its vic-
tims among the guests. Joe insisted on dancing
a jig on the cloth. The ladies, at the slightest
suggestion that was a trifle broad, threw them-
selves 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 be-
fore they were emptied ; a chambermaid dipped a
handkerchief in hers, which was full of water, and
Memoirs of a Clerk. — The Servants. 237
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 ! "
238 Tlie Nabob.
XL
THE FfiTES 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 fagade 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 fh'igonle 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 Her-
mitage, spread out over five leagues of vines grow-
ing 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
The Fetes in Honor of the Bey. 239
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 stories 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 fairy-
land in those regions, scorched by the mistral, is
that oasis of verdure and of lovely, gushing water.
240 The Nabob.
" When I am rich, mamma," Jansoulet, when he
was a mere urchin, used to say to his mother
whom he adored, " I '11 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 unconscion-
able, 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
The Fetes in Honor of the Bey. 241
touch with real Hfe 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 Hfe, which awakened her
with the familiar crowing of the roosters, the shrill
cries of the peacocks, and sent her down the wind-
ing staircase before daybreak. She deemed her-
self simply a trustee of that magnificent property,
of which she had charge for her son's benefit, and
Avhich she proposed to turn over to him in good
condition on the day when, considering himself
wealthy enough and weary of living among the
Tnrs, he should come, as he had promised, and
live with her beneath the shade of Saint-Romans.
Imagine then her untiring, all-pervading watch-
fulness.
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,
VOL. I. — 16
242 The Nabob.
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 cen-
tenary 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 rail-
ings, 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.
The Fetes in Honor of the Bey. 243
He was the oldest, Bernard's brother, the cher-
ished darhng 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 sacri-
fice to send that handsome, ambitious youth to
Paris ; and he had started with four or five mar-
shals' 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 every-
thing 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 pro-
cess 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 tender-
ness, and whom, from the time he was five years
244 ^^^^ Nabob.
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 affec-
tion, of motherly cosseting that she owed him.
But, you see, these kingly fortunes have the bur-
dens, 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 impa-
tiently 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 illus-
trated in the journals? — plus a cedar of Lebanon,
brought from the end of the world, — a great
camniajitran of a tree, which was as costly to
The Fetes in Honor of the Bey. 245
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 con-
fusion 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 have n'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 intro-
duce 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
246 The Nabob.
" 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 Jier. 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 acquit-
ted 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
The Fetes in Hojior of the Bey. 247
seignorial porch, displayed its splendor to the ad-
miration of the visitors, and reflected the beauty of
that marvellous landscape, lying serene and peace-
ful 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 re-
produced 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 Cardail-
hac 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 hand-
some 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 dis-
cussed. Cardailhac, whose views were broad, had
his plan all formed.
" Carte blanche, of course, eh. Nabob?"
" Carte blanche, old fellow. And let old Hem-
erlingue burst with rage."
Thereupon the manager detailed his plans, the
festivities to be divided by days, as at Vaux when
248 The Nabob.
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 pro-
grammes, 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 chil-
dren — 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 Fran^oise and she called him Monsieur
Paul. They were old friends. And what do you
suppose they were talking about? Of her grand-
children, 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
The Fetes in Honor of the Bey. 249
for them ! I should have been so happy if he had
brought me my three h'ttle 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 did n't give the father —
for, you see. Monsieur Paul, parents are n'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 inter-
vals 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;
250 The Nabob.
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 om-
nipotence. 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 did n'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 '11 send them to you with
Bompain. You remember him, don't you, Bom-
pain Jean-Baptiste? And you shall keep them
two whole months. They '11 come to you to have
you tell them fine stories, they '11 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
The Fetes in Honor of the Bey. 251
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 bound-
less 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 some-
thing 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 expression-
less, 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, respect-
fully, as one addresses the head of the family:
" Good-evening, Aine."
Perhaps the imprisoned mind heard him in the
252 The Nabob.
depths of its dark, degrading purgatory. But the
lips moved and a long groan made answer ; a far-
ofif wail, a despairing appeal caused the glance
Frangoise and her son exchanged to overflow with
impotent tears, and drew from them both a simul-
taneous cry in which their sorrows met : Pcca'ire /
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 conse-
quence, that one need only emit false notes from
pretty lips, show lovely arms and well-turned legs
in the free-and-easy neglig6 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
hospitaHty, 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
The Fetes in Honor of the Bey. 253
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 squeak-
ing 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
Aries 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
254 ^^^-^ Nabob.
from Porte-Saint-Martin, who was called Cardail-
hac, 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 direc-
tion 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 house-
keeper, to whom some one came every moment
and seized her keys to get spare linen or silver-
ware, to open another room, thinking of the
throwing open of her stores of treasures, of the
plundering of her wardrobes and her sideboards,
The Fetes in Honor of the Bey. 255
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 pret-
tiest girls of Aries, 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 succes-
sion 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;
256 The Nabob.
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 vil-
lages 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 tam-
bourine 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 inde-
scribable 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
The Fetes in Honor of the Bey. 257
to watch the passage of a colossal procession on
Corpus Christ! , and who were reminded by that
visit of an Oriental prince to a child of the prov-
ince, 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, tri-
umphant and perspiring.
" Did n'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 per-
formance like this."
He lowered his voice because the mother was
close by:
"Have you seen our Aries girls? No, look at
them more carefully — the first one, the one stand-
ing in front to offer the bouquet."
" Why, that 's Amy Ferat ! "
" Parblen ! 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 crea-
tures would n't know what it meant ! Oh ! I have
thought of everything, you '11 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
VOL. I. — 17
258 The Nabob.
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 thou-
sand persons.
Just then the carriages appeared, the state car-
riages 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 Car-
dailhac'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 marvel-
The Fetes in Honor of the Bey. 259
lous sparterieSy 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 meas-
ured, 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
26o The Nabob.
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, — anti-
cipation 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
Itmch 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 dis-
quiet 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 impres-
sive, solemn groups, with the pursed lips, the shift-
Tlie Fetes hi Honor of the Bey. 261
ing 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 embroid-
eries, 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 Jan-
soulet, 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 fran-
tically 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
262 The Nabob.
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 locomo-
tive, 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 Jansou-
let 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, doubt-
less, 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 some-
The Fetes in Honor of the Bey. 263
what 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, Jansou-
let was suddenly enveloped, made prisoner, para-
lyzed 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 im-
passively with a little fan of spartum, embroidered
with gold. Two aides-de-camp were standing near
him and an engineer of the French company. Op-
posite 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 fall-
ing 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
264 The Nabob.
face conveyed no idea to them. Pitiably pale, with
the perspiration standing on his brow, he stam-
mered : " 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 accus-
tomed 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 disap-
pear, 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 : " Is n't the
Bey going to stop ? " he stammered a few incoher-
ent words : " Court intrigues — infamous machi-
The Fetes in Honor of the Bey. 265
nations." And suddenly, shaking his fist at the
train which had already disappeared, with blood-
shot 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 fad-
ing 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
266 The Nabob.
point, the road from Giffas to Saint-Romans was
naught but one long, unbroken wave of sound.
In vain did Cardailhac, all the gentlemen, Jansou-
let himself, lean out of the windows and make des-
perate 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 ex-
traordinary pronunciation to the unfamiliar title,
as if it had three Us 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, find-
ing 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
The Fetes in Honor of the Bey. 267
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 farandoleiirs 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 car-
riage, 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
i6S The Nabob.
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 Hght, 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'v 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 pre-
sent it to him, stepping out of the group of
maidens from Aries, 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 kneel-
ing 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
The Fetes in Honor of the Bey. 269
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 ban-
ners feebly wave their drenched carcasses, one can
hear the water rushing down the stone steps, trans-
formed into cascades. Everything is streaming
and dripping. A sound of water, a deafening
sound of water. Alone in his magnificently fur-
nished 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 ene-
mies. No, that Southerner with his wholly phys-
ical 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 overwhelm-
ing 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,
270 The Nabob.
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 pos-
sible ? 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.
The Fetes in Honor of the Bey. 271
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 for-
tune that had befallen him in the darkness of that
enchanted palace.
i']2 The Nabob.
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, indo-
lent 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 serious-
A Corsica7i Electio7i. 273
ness 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 gov-
ernmental 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 gen-
uine 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 cur6 is watching them, smoking
VOL. I. — 18
2 74 ^/^^ Nabob.
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 exclama-
tions of one of the gamblers, who swears by the sango del
setninario ; 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 inter-
preter 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 cur6, with
a patronizing smile at the two gamblers, I never would
have believed that I had before me the famous brigand
Piedigriggio, who, from 184c to i^6o, 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, fol-
lowing 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
A Corsican Election. 275
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 calum-
niate 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 Cor-
sican 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 cur^s, petty bourgeois, petty noblemen, whose
276 The Nabob.
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 ferru-
ginous 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, Mari-
time 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 Gov-
ernor waves before our eyes from time to time, like a
A Cor sic an Election. 277
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 im-
measurable 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 Terrifotiak. 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
grioite, condemned blocks of which no use can be made
278 ' The Nabob.
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 cible-lengths of the shore, is abandoned,
useless, and a nuisance, like Robinson Crusoe's boat,
with the same drawbacks as to availability. These de-
tails 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 lea^-es 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
observ^ed in his compatriots, but said to me quite natu-
rally, 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.'
A Cor sic an Election. 279
" ' 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 Cor-
sican poHce 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
28o The Nabob.
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 investi-
gation 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 Piedi-
griggio 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 G:6ry."
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 con-
stant 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 diiTerent results. All those
famished islanders made appointments, in the wilds
of their uncivilized fatherland, to meet one an-
other at the Nabob's table, and his house had be-
A Corsican Electio7t. 281
come 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 dis-
tinguished 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 bal-
lots. And it is a fact, which Jansoulet had had
abundant opportunity to verify, that in the Cor-
sican 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 tem-
perament, 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
282 The Nabob.
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 anony-
mous letter has taken their place. Indeed, un-
signed 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 BornaUnco (Ange-
Marie) as a traitor who has gone over to your enemies ;
I have a very different story to tell of his cousin Borna-
linco (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 (Josu(§) of the canton of Odessa,
while his kinsman, Luciani, is the very man you need."
Although he finally gave up reading such mis-
sives, 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
A Corsican Election. 283
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 ter-
rible, 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 Civclte
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
2 84 The Nabob.
horse-power ; and the Schwalbach pump, and the
Bois-l'H^ry pump, and how many more ; some of
enormous size, making a great noise, with auda-
cious pistons, others more quiet and reserved, with
tiny valves, bearings skilfully oiled — toy-pumps
as delicately constructed as the probosces of in-
sects whose thirst causes stings, and which deposit
poison on the spot from which they suck their
hfe ; 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 con-
siderable 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
A Corsican Election. 285
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 con-
traction of all the muscles of his face when it
passed through his mind, or when he was fever-
ishly 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 circum-
locution. There was not one among the ordinary
habitues of the house who was not a suspicious
286 The Nabob.
character, not one who came there for any other
purpose than to steal or He. From attic to cellar,
pillage and waste. Bois-l'Hery's horses were un-
sound, 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 pre-
vented me from repaying them in part. My con-
science as a man of honor would reproach me
A Corsican Electimt, 287
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 confeder-
ate. 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 mar-
bles, 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.
288 The Nabob.
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 omin-
ous 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 pack-
man's gesture with which he threw ofl" 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.
A Cor sic an Election. 289
" 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 con-
vinced 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 it, jour de Dien !
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 neces-
sary 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, hon-
estly my own. I made it in my dealings as a
contractor. I enjoyed Ahmed's favor ; he him-
self 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.
VOL. I. — 19
290 The Nabob.
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 intro-
duce to western comforts. This wretched Hemer-
lingue, 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 con-
tents. The aff"air has been carried on quite regu-
larly, 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 bot-
tomless 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.
A Cor dean Election. 291
No, you shall not leave me alone among all the
slanders that are crawling around me. It is hor-
rible — if you only knew ! At the club, at the
theatre, wherever I go, I see Baroness Hemer-
lingue's little snake's head, I hear the echo of her
hissing, I feel the venom of her hatred. Every-
where I am conscious of mocking glances, conver-
sations 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 in-
stance, 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 under-
stood 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.
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