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[Illustration: "'_Take away your flowers, my dear._'"]




THE NABOB




BY

ALPHONSE DAUDET



TRANSLATED BY

GEORGE BURNHAM IVES



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

BRANDER MATTHEWS



IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. I.



BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1902


_Copyright, 1898_,
By Little, Brown, and Company.

_All rights reserved._


University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.




PUBLISHER'S NOTE TO FRENCH EDITION


We have been informed that at the time of the publication of _The
Nabob_ in serial form, the government of Tunis was offended at the
introduction therein of individuals whom the author dressed in names
and costumes peculiar to that country. We are authorized by M. Alphonse
Daudet to declare that those scenes in the book which relate to Tunis
are entirely imaginary, and that he never intended to introduce any of
the functionaries of that state.




ALPHONSE DAUDET.


Alphonse Daudet is one of the most richly gifted of modern French
novelists and one of the most artistic; he is perhaps the most
delightful; and he is certainly the most fortunate. In his own country
earlier than any of his contemporaries he saw his stories attain to the
very wide circulation that brings both celebrity and wealth. Beyond the
borders of his own language he swiftly won a popularity both with the
broad public and with the professed critics of literature, second only
to that of Victor Hugo and still surpassing that of Balzac, who is only
of late beginning to receive from us the attention he has so long
deserved.

Daudet has had the rare luck of pleasing partisans of almost every
school; the realists have joyed in his work and so have the romanticists;
his writings have found favor in the eyes of the frank impressionists
and also at the hands of the severer custodians of academic standards.
Mr. Henry James has declared that Daudet is "at the head of his
profession" and has called him "an admirable genius." Mr. Robert Louis
Stevenson thought Daudet "incomparably" the best of the present French
novelists and asserted that "Kings in Exile" comes "very near to being
a masterpiece." M. Jules Lemaitre tells us that Daudet "trails all
hearts after him,--because he has charm, as indefinable in a work of
art as in a woman's face." M. Ferdinand Brunetière, who has scant
relish for latter-day methods in literature, admits ungrudgingly that
"there are certain corners of the great city and certain aspects of
Parisian manners, there are some physiognomies that perhaps no one has
been able to render so well as Daudet, with that infinitely subtle and
patient art which succeeds in giving even to inanimate things the
appearance of life."


I.

The documents are abundant for an analysis of Daudet such as
Sainte-Beuve would have undertaken with avidity; they are more abundant
indeed than for any other contemporary French man of letters even in
these days of unhesitating self-revelation; and they are also of an
absolutely impregnable authenticity. M. Ernest Daudet has written a
whole volume to tell us all about his brother's boyhood and youth and
early manhood and first steps in literature. M. Léon Daudet has written
another solid tome to tell us all about his father's literary
principles and family life and later years and death. Daudet himself
put forth a pair of pleasant books of personal gossip about himself,
narrating his relations with his fellow authors and recording the
circumstances under which he came to compose each of his earlier
stories. Montaigne--whose "Essays" was Daudet's bedside book and who
may be accepted not unfairly as an authority upon egotism--assures us
that "there is no description so difficult, nor doubtless of so great
utility, as that of one's self." And Daudet's own interest in himself
is not unlike Montaigne's,--it is open, innocent and illuminating.

Cuvier may have been able to reconstruct an extinct monster from the
inspection of a single bone; but it is a harder task to revive the
figure of a man, even by the aid of these family testimonies, this
self-analysis, the diligence of countless interviewers of all
nationalities, and indiscretion of a friend like Edmond de Goncourt
(who seems to have acted on the theory that it is the whole duty of man
to take notes of the talk of his fellows for prompt publication). Yet
we have ample material to enable us to trace Daudet's heredity, and to
estimate the influence of his environment in the days of his youth, and
to allow for the effect which certain of his own physical peculiarities
must have had upon his exercise of his art. His near-sightedness, for
example,--would not Sainte-Beuve have seized upon this as significant?
Would he not have seen in this a possible source of Daudet's mastery of
description? And the spasms of pain borne bravely and uncomplainingly,
the long agony of his later years, what mark has this left on his work,
how far is it responsible for a modification of his attitude,--for the
change from the careless gaiety of "Tartarin of Tarascon" to the sombre
satire of "Port-Tarascon"? What caused the joyous story-teller of the
"Letters from my Mill" to develop into the bitter iconoclast of the
"Immortal."

These questions are insistent; and yet, after all, what matters the
answer to any of them? The fact remains that Daudet had his share of
that incommunicable quality which we are agreed to call genius. This
once admitted, we may do our best to weigh it and to resolve it into
its elements, it is at bottom the vital spark that resists all
examination, however scientific we may seek to be. We can test for this
and for that, but in the final analysis genius is inexplicable. It is
what it is, because it is. It might have been different, no doubt, but
it is not. It is its own excuse for being; and, for all that we can say
to the contrary, it is its own cause, sufficient unto itself. Even if
we had Sainte-Beuve's scalpel, we could not surprise the secret.

Yet an inquiry into the successive stages of Daudet's career, a
consideration of his ancestry, of his parentage, of his birth, of the
circumstances of his boyhood, of his youthful adventures,--these things
are interesting in themselves and they are not without instruction.
They reveal to us the reasons for the transformation that goes so far
to explain Daudet's peculiar position,--the transformation of a young
Provençal poet into a brilliant Parisian veritist. Daudet was a
Provençal who became a Parisian,--and in this translation we may find
the key to his character as a writer of fiction.

He was from Provence as Maupassant was from Normandy; and Daudet had
the Southern expansiveness and abundance, just as Maupassant had the
Northern reserve and caution. If an author is ever to bring forth fruit
after his kind he must have roots in the soil of his nativity. Daudet
was no orchid, beautiful and scentless; his writings have always the
full flavor of the southern soil. He was able to set Tartarin before us
so sympathetically and to make Numa Roumestan so convincing because he
recognized in himself the possibility of a like exuberance. He could
never take the rigorously impassive attitude which Flaubert taught
Maupassant to assume. Daudet not only feels for his characters, but he
is quite willing that we should be aware of his compassion.

He is not only incapable of the girding enmity which Taine detected and
detested in Thackeray's treatment of Becky Sharp, but he is also devoid
of the callous detachment with which Flaubert dissected Emma Bovary
under the microscope. Daudet is never flagrantly hostile toward one of
his creatures; and, however contemptible or despicable the characters
he has called into being, he is scrupulously fair to them. Sidonie and
Félicia Ruys severally throw themselves away, but Daudet is never
intolerant. He is inexorable, but he is not insulting. I cannot but
think that it is Provence whence Daudet derived the precious birthright
of sympathy, and that it is Provence again which bestowed on him the
rarer gift of sentiment. It is by his possession of sympathy and of
sentiment that he has escaped the aridity which suffocates us in the
works of so many other Parisian novelists. The South endowed him with
warmth and heartiness and vivacity; and what he learnt from Paris was
the power of self-restraint and the duty of finish.

He was born in Provence and he died in Paris; he began as a poet and he
ended as a veritist; and in each case there was logical evolution and
not contradiction. The Parisian did not cease to be a Provençal; and
the novelist was a lyrist still. Poet though he was, he had an intense
liking for the actual, the visible, the tangible. He so hungered after
truth that he was ready sometimes to stay his stomach with facts in its
stead,--mere fact being but the outward husk, whereas truth is the rich
kernel concealed within. His son tells us that Daudet might have taken
as a motto the title of Goethe's autobiography, "Dichtung und
Wahrheit,"--Poetry and Truth. And this it is that has set Daudet apart
and that has caused his vogue with readers of all sorts and
conditions,--this unique combination of imagination and verity. "His
originality," M. Jules Lemaitre has acutely remarked, "is closely to
unite observation and fantasy, to extract from the truth all that it
contains of the improbable and the surprising, to satisfy at the same
time the readers of M. Cherbuliez and the readers of M. Zola, to write
novels which are at the same time realistic and romantic, and which
seem romantic only because they are very sincerely and very profoundly
realistic."


II.

Alphonse Daudet was born in 1840, and it was at Nîmes that he first
began to observe mankind; and he has described his birthplace and his
boyhood in "Little What's-his-name," a novel even richer in
autobiographical revelation than is "David Copperfield." His father was
a manufacturer whose business was not prosperous and who was forced at
last to remove with the whole family to Lyons in the vain hope of doing
better in the larger town. After reading the account of this parent's
peculiarities in M. Ernest Daudet's book, we are not surprised that the
affairs of the family did not improve, but went from bad to worse.
Alphonse Daudet suffered bitterly in these years of desperate struggle,
but he gained an understanding of the conditions of mercantile life, to
be serviceable later in the composition of "Fromont and Risler."

When he was sixteen he secured a place as _pion_ in a boarding school
in the Cévennes,--_pion_ is a poor devil of a youth hired to keep watch
on the boys. How painful this position was to the young poet can be
read indirectly in "Little What's-his-name," but more explicitly in the
history of that story, printed now in "Thirty Years of Paris." From
this remote prison he was rescued by his elder brother, Ernest, who was
trying to make his way in Paris and who sent for Alphonse as soon as he
had been engaged to help an old gentleman in writing his memoirs. The
younger brother has described his arrival in Paris, and his first
dress-coat and his earliest literary acquaintances. Ernest's salary was
seventy-five francs a month, and on this the two brothers managed to
live; no doubt fifteen dollars went further in Paris in 1857 than they
will in 1899.

In those days of privation and ambition Daudet's longing was to make
himself famous as a poet; and when at last, not yet twenty years old,
he began his career as a man of letters it was by the publication of a
volume of verse, just as his fellow-novelists, M. Paul Bourget and
Signor Gabriele d'Annunzio have severally done. Immature as juvenile
lyrics are likely to be, these early rhymes of Daudet's have a flavor
of their own, a faintly recognizable note of individuality. He is more
naturally a poet than most modern literators who possess the
accomplishment of verse as part of their equipment for the literary
life, but who lack a spontaneous impulse toward rhythm. It may even be
suggested that his little poems are less artificial than most French
verse; they are the result of a less obvious effort. He lisped in
numbers; and with him it was rather prose that had to be consciously
acquired. His lyric note, although not keen and not deep, is heard
again and again in his novels, and it sustains some of the most
graceful and tender of his short stories,--"The Death of the Dauphin,"
for instance, and the "Sous-préfet 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 Odéon. He has told us how the news of the
production of one of these poetic dramas came to him afar in Algiers
whither he had been sent because of a weakness of the lungs,
threatening to become worse in the gray Parisian winter. Other plays of
his, some of them far more important than this early effort, were
produced in the next few years. The most ambitious of these was the
"Woman of Arles," which he had elaborated from a touching short story
and for which Bizet composed incidental music as beautiful and as
overwhelming as that prepared by Mendelssohn for the "Midsummer Night's
Dream."

No one of Daudet's dramatic attempts was really successful; not the
"Woman of Arles," which is less moving in the theatre than in its
briefer narrative form, not even the latest of them all, the freshest
and the most vigorous, the "Struggle for Life," with its sinister
figure of Paul Astier taken over from the "Immortal." Apparently, with
all his desire to write for the stage, Daudet must have been
inadequately endowed with the dramaturgic faculty, that special gift of
playmaking which many a poet lacks and many a novelist, but which the
humblest playwright must needs have and which all the great dramatists
have possessed abundantly in addition to their poetic power.

Perhaps it was the unfavorable reception of his successive dramas which
is responsible for the chief of Daudet's lapses from the kindliness
with which he treats the characters that people his stories. He seems
to have kept hot a grudge against the theatre: and he relieves his
feelings by taking it out of the stage-folk he introduces into his
novels. To actors and actresses he is intolerant and harsh. What is
factitious and self-overvaluing in the Provençal 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 Halévy, whose knowledge of the
histrionic temperament is at least as wide as Daudet's and whose humor
is as keen, but whose judgment is softened by the grateful memory of
many victories won by the united effort of the author and the actor.

Through his brother's influence, Alphonse Daudet was appointed by the
Duke de Morny to a semi-sinecure; and he has recorded how he told his
benefactor before accepting the place that he was a Legitimist and how
the Duke smilingly retorted that the Empress was also. Although it was
as a poet that Daudet made his bow in the world of letters, his first
appearance as a dramatist was not long delayed thereafter; and he soon
came forward also as a journalist,--or rather as a contributor to the
papers. While many of the articles he prepared for the daily and weekly
press were of ephemeral interest only, as the necessity of journalism
demands, to be forgotten forty-eight hours after they were printed, not
a few of them were sketches having more than a temporary value.
Parisian newspapers are more hospitable to literature than are the
newspapers of New York or of London; and a goodly proportion of the
young Southerner's journalistic writing proved worthy of preservation.

It has been preserved for us in three volumes of short stories and
sketches, of fantasies and impressions. Not all the contents of the
"Letters from my Mill," of the "Monday Tales" and of "Artists' Wives,"
as we have these collections now, were written in these early years of
Daudet's Parisian career, but many of them saw the light before 1870,
and what has been added since conforms in method to the work of his
'prentice days. No doubt the war with Prussia enlarged his outlook on
life; and there is more depth in the satires this conflict suggested
and more pathos in the pictures it evoked. The "Last Lesson," for
example, that simple vision of the old French schoolmaster taking leave
of his Alsatian pupils, has a symbolic breath not easy to match in the
livelier tales written before the surrender at Sédan; and in the "Siege
of Berlin" there is a vibrant patriotism far more poignant than we can
discover in any of the playful apologues published before the war. He
had had an inside view of the Second Empire, he could not help seeing
its hollowness, and he revolted against the selfishness of its
servants; no single chapter of M. Zola's splendid and terrible
"Downfall" contains a more damning indictment of the leaders of the
imperial army than is to be read in Daudet's "Game of Billiards."

The short story, whether in prose or in verse, is a literary form in
which the French have ever displayed an easy mastery; and from Daudet's
three volumes it would not be difficult to select half-a-dozen little
masterpieces. The Provençal tales lack only rhymes to stand confessed
as poesy; and many a reader may prefer these first flights before
Daudet set his Pegasus to toil in the mill of realism. The "Pope's
Mule," for instance, is not this a marvel of blended humor and fantasy?
And the "Elixir of Father Gaucher," what could be more naïvely ironic?
Like a true Southerner, Daudet delights in girding at the Church; and
these tales bristle with jibes at ecclesiastical dignitaries; but his
stroke is never malignant and there is no barb to his shaft nor poison
on the tip.

Scarcely inferior to the war-stories or to the Provençal sketches are
certain vignettes of the capital, swift silhouettes of Paris, glimpsed
by an unforgetting eye, the "Last Book," for one, in which an unlovely
character is treated with kindly contempt; and for another, the
"Book-keeper," the most Dickens-like of Daudet's shorter pieces, yet
having a literary modesty Dickens never attained. The alleged imitation
of the British novelist by the French may be left for later
consideration; but it is possible now to note that in the earlier
descriptive chapters of the "Letters from my Mill" one may detect a
certain similarity of treatment and attitude, not to Dickens but to two
of the masters on whom Dickens modelled himself, Goldsmith and Irving.
The scene in the diligence, when the baker gently pokes fun at the poor
fellow whose wife is intermittent in her fidelity, is quite in the
manner of the "Sketch Book."

There is the same freshness and fertility in the collection called
"Artists' Wives" as in the "Letters from my Mill," and the "Monday
Tales," but not the same playfulness and fun. They are severe studies,
all of them; and they all illustrate the truth of Bagehot's saying that
a man's mother might be his misfortune, but his wife was his fault. It
is a rosary of marital infelicities that Daudet has strung for us in
this volume, and in every one of them the husband is expiating his
blunder. With ingenious variety the author rings the changes on one
theme, on the sufferings of the ill-mated poet or painter or sculptor,
despoiled of the sympathy he craves, and shackled even in the exercise
of his art. And the picture is not out of drawing, for Daudet can see
the wife's side of the case also; he can appreciate her bewilderment at
the ugly duckling whom it is so difficult for her to keep in the nest.
The women have made shipwreck of their lives too, and they are
companions in misery, if not helpmeets in understanding. This is
perhaps the saddest of all Daudet's books, the least relieved by humor,
the most devoid of the gaiety which illumines the "Letters from my
Mill" and the first and second "Tartarin" volumes. But it is also one
of the most veracious; it is life itself firmly grasped and honestly
presented.

It is not matrimonial incongruity at large in all its shifting aspects
that Daudet here considers; it is only the married unhappiness of the
artist, whatever his mode of expression, and whichever of the muses he
has chosen to serve; it is only the wedded life of the man incessantly
in search of the ideal, and never relaxing in the strain of his
struggle with the inflexible material from which he must shape his
vision of existence. Not only in this book, but in many another has
Daudet shown that he perceives the needs of the artistic temperament,
its demands, its limitations and its characteristics. There is a
playwright in "Rose and Ninette;" there is a painter in the "Immortal;"
there is an actor in "Fromont and Risler;" there are a sculptor, a
poet, and a novelist on the roll of the heroine's lovers in "Sapho."
Daudet handles them gently always, unless they happen to belong to the
theatre. Toward the stage-folk he is pitiless; for all other artists he
has abundant appreciation; he is not blind to their little weaknesses,
but these he can forgive even though he refuses to forget; he is at
home with them. He is never patronizing, as Thackeray is, who also
knows them and loves them. Thackeray's attitude is that of a gentleman
born to good society, but glad to visit Bohemia, because he can speak
the language; Daudet's is that of a man of letters who thinks that his
fellow-artists are really the best society.


III.

Not with pictures of artists at home did Daudet conquer his commanding
position in literature, not with short stories, not with plays, not
with verses. These had served to make him known to the inner circle of
lovers of literature who are quick to appreciate whatever is at once
new and true; but they did not help him to break through the crust and
to reach the hearts of the broad body of readers who care little for
the delicacies of the season, but must ever be fed on strong meat. When
the latest of the three volumes of short stories was published, and
when the "Woman of Arles" was produced, the transformation was
complete: the poet had developed into a veritist, without ceasing to be
a poet, and the Provençal had become a Parisian. His wander-years were
at an end, and he had made a happy marriage. Lucky in the risky
adventure of matrimony, as in so many others, he chanced upon a woman
who was congenial, intelligent and devoted, and who became almost a
collaborator in all his subsequent works.

His art was ready for a larger effort; it was ripe for a richer
fruitage. Already had he made more than one attempt at a long story,
but this was before his powers had matured, and before he had come to a
full knowledge of himself. "Little What's-his-name," as he himself has
confessed, lacks perspective; it was composed too soon after the
personal experiences out of which it was made,--before Time had put the
scenes in proper proportion and before his hand was firm in its stroke.
"Robert Helmont" is the journal of an observer who happens also to be a
poet and a patriot; but it has scarcely substance enough to warrant
calling it a story. Much of the material used in the making of these
books was very good indeed; but the handling was a little uncertain,
and the result is not quite satisfactory, charming as both of them are,
with the seductive grace which is Daudet's birthright and his
trademark. In his brief tales he had shown that he had the
story-telling faculty, the ability to project character, the gift of
arousing interest; but it remained for him to prove that he possessed
also the main strength requisite to carry him through the long labor of
a full-grown novel. It is not by gentle stories like "Robert Helmont"
and "Little What's-his-name" that a novelist is promoted to the front
rank; and after he had written these two books he remained where he was
before, in the position of a promising young author.

The promise was fulfilled by the publication of "Fromont and
Risler,"--not the best of his novels, but the earliest in which his
full force was displayed. Daudet has told us how this was planned
originally as a play, how the failure of the "Woman of Arles" led him
to relinquish the dramatic form, and how the supposed necessities of
the stage warped the logical structure of the story, turning upon the
intrigues of the young wife the interest which should have been
concentrated upon the partnership, the business rivalry, the mercantile
integrity, whence the novel derived its novelty. The falsifying habit
of thrusting marital infidelity into the foreground of fiction when the
theme itself seems almost to exclude any dwelling on amorous
misadventure, Daudet yielded to only this once; and this is one reason
why a truer view of Parisian life can be found in his pages than in
those of any of his competitors, and why his works are far less
monotonous than theirs.

He is not squeamish, as every reader of "Sapho" can bear witness; but
he does not wantonly choose a vulgar adultery as the staple of his
stories. French fiction, ever since the tale of "Tristan and Yseult"
was first told, has tended to be a poem of love triumphant over every
obstacle, even over honor; and Daudet is a Frenchman with French ideas
about woman and love and marriage; he is not without his share of
Gallic salt; but he is too keen an observer not to see that there are
other things in life than illicit wooings,--business, for example, and
politics, and religion,--important factors all of them in our
complicated modern existence. At the root of him Daudet had a steadfast
desire to see life as a whole and to tell the truth about it
unhesitatingly; and this is a characteristic he shares only with the
great masters of fiction,--essentially veracious, every one of them.

Probably Dickens, frequently as he wrenched the facts of life into
conformity with his rather primitive artistic code, believed that he
also was telling the truth. It is in Daudet's paper explaining how he
came to write "Fromont and Risler" that he discusses the accusation
that he was an imitator of Dickens,--an accusation which seems absurd
enough now that the careers of both writers are closed, and that we can
compare their complete works. Daudet records that the charge was
brought against him very early, long before he had read Dickens, and he
explains that any likeness that may exist is due not to copying but to
kinship of spirit. "I have deep in my heart," he says, "the same love
Dickens has for the maimed and the poor, for the children brought up in
all the deprivation of great cities." This pity for the disinherited,
for those that have had no chance in life, is not the only similarity
between the British novelist and the French; there is also the peculiar
combination of sentiment and humor. Daudet is not so bold as Dickens,
not so robust, not so over-mastering; but he is far more discreet, far
truer to nature, far finer in his art; he does not let his humor carry
him into caricature, nor his sentiment slop over into sentimentality.

Even the minor French novelists strive for beauty of form, and would
be ashamed of the fortuitous scaffolding that satisfies the British
story-tellers. A eulogist of Dickens, Mr. George Gissing, has recently
remarked acutely that "Daudet has a great advantage in his mastery of
construction. Where, as in 'Fromont and Risler,' he constructs too
well, that is to say, on the stage model, we see what a gain it was
to him to have before his eyes the Paris stage of the Second Empire,
instead of that of London in the earlier Victorian time." Where Dickens
emulated the farces and the melodramas of forgotten British
playwrights, Daudet was influenced rather by the virile dramas of Dumas
_fils_ and Augier. But in "Fromont and Risler," not only is the plot a
trifle stagy, but the heroine herself seems almost a refugee of the
footlights; exquisitely presented as Sidonie is, she fails quite to
captivate or convince, perhaps because her sisters have been seen so
often before in this play and in that. And now and again even in his
later novels we discover that Daudet has needlessly achieved the adroit
arrangement of events so useful in the theatre and not requisite in the
library. In "The Nabob," for example, it is the "long arm of
coincidence" that brings Paul de Géry to the inn on the Riviera, and to
the very next room therein at the exact moment when Jenkins catches up
with the fleeing Félicia.

Yet these lapses into the arbitrary are infrequent after all; and as
"Fromont and Risler" was followed first by one and then by another
novel, the evil influence of theatrical conventionalism disappears.
Daudet occasionally permits himself an underplot; but he acts always on
the principle he once formulated to his son: "every book is an
organism; if it has not its organs in place, it dies, and its corpse is
a scandal." Sometimes, as in "Fromont and Risler," he starts at the
moment when the plot thickens, returning soon to make clear the
antecedents of the characters first shown in action; and sometimes, as
in "Sapho," he begins right at the beginning and goes straight through
to the end. But, whatever his method, there is never any doubt as to
the theme; and the essential unity is always apparent. This severity of
design in no way limits the variety of the successive acts of his
drama.

While a novel of Balzac's is often no more than an analysis of
character, and while a novel of Zola's is a massive epic of human
endeavor, a novel of Daudet's is a gallery of pictures, brushed in with
the sweep and certainty of a master-hand,--portraits, landscapes with
figures, marines, battlepieces pieces, bits of _genre_, views of Paris.
And the views of Paris outnumber the others, and almost outvalue them
also. Mr. Henry James has noted that "The Nabob" is "full of episodes
which are above all pages of execution, triumphs of translation. The
author has drawn up a list of the Parisian solemnities, and painted the
portrait, or given a summary, of each of them. The opening day at the
Salon, a funeral at Père la Chaise, a debate in the Chamber of
Deputies, the _première_ of a new play at a favorite theatre, furnish
him with so many opportunities for his gymnastics of observation." And
"The Nabob" is only a little more richly decorated than the "Immortal,"
and "Numa Roumestan," and "Kings in Exile."

These pictures, these carefully wrought masterpieces of rendering are
not lugged in, each for its own sake; they are not outside of the
narrative; they are actually part of the substance of the story. Daudet
excels in describing, and every artist is prone to abound in the sense
of his superiority. As the French saying puts it, a man has always the
defects of his qualities; yet Daudet rarely obtrudes his descriptions,
and he generally uses them to explain character and to set off or bring
out the moods of his personages. They are so swift that I am tempted to
call them flash-lights; but photographic is just what they are not, for
they are artistic in their vigorous suppression of the unessentials;
they are never gray or cold or hard; they vibrate with color and tingle
with emotion.

And just as a painter keeps filling his sketch-books with graphic hints
for elaboration later, so Daudet was indefatigable in note-taking. He
explains his method in his paper of "Fromont and Risler;" how he had
for a score of years made a practice of jotting down in little
note-books not only his remarks and his thoughts, but also a rapid
record of what he had heard with his ears ever on the alert, and what
he had seen with those tireless eyes of his. Yet he never let the dust
of these note-books choke the life out of him. Every one of his novels
was founded on fact,--plot, incidents, characters and scenery.

He used his imagination to help him to see; he used it also to peer
into and behind the mere facts. All that he needed to invent was a
connecting link now and again; and it may as well be admitted at once
that these mere inventions are sometimes the least satisfactory part of
his stories. The two young men in "The Nabob," for instance, whom Mr.
Henry James found it difficult to tell apart, the sculptor-painter in
the "Immortal," the occasional other characters which we discover to be
made up, lack the individuality and the vitality of figures taken from
real life by a sympathetic effort of interpretative imagination.
Delobelle, Gardinois, "all the personages of 'Fromont' have lived,"
Daudet declares; and he adds a regret that in depicting old Gardinois
he gave pain to one he loved, but he "could not suppress this type of
egotist, aged and terrible."

Since the beginning of the art of story-telling, the narrators must
have gone to actuality to get suggestions for their character-drawing;
and nothing is commoner than the accusation that this or that novelist
has stolen his characters ready-made,--filching them from nature's
shop-window, without so much as a by-your-leave. Daudet is bold in
committing these larcenies from life and frank in confessing them,--far
franker than Dickens, who tried to squirm out of the charge that he had
put Landor and Leigh Hunt unfairly into fiction. Perhaps Dickens was
bolder than Daudet, if it is true that he drew Micawber from his own
father, and Mrs. Nickleby from his own mother. Daudet was taxed with
ingratitude that he had used as the model of Mora, the Duke de Morny,
who had befriended him; and he defended himself by declaring that he
thought the duke would find no fault with the way Mora had been
presented. But a great artist has never copied his models slavishly; he
has utilized them in the effort to realize to his own satisfaction what
he has already imagined. Daudet maintained to his son that those who
were without imagination cannot even observe accurately. Invention
alone, mere invention, an inferior form of mental exercise, suffices to
provide a pretty fair romantic tale, remote from the facts of every-day
life, but only true imagination can sustain a realistic novel where
every reader's experience qualifies him to check off the author's
progress, step by step.


IV.

It would take too long--although the task would be amusing--to call the
roll of Daudet's novels written after "Fromont and Risler" had revealed
to him his own powers, and to discuss what fact of Parisian history had
been the starting point of each of them and what notabilities of Paris
had sat for each of the chief characters. Mr. Henry James, for
instance, has seen it suggested that Félicia Ruys is intended as a
portrait of Mme. Sarah-Bernhardt; M. Zola, on the other hand, denies
that Félicia Ruys is Mme. Sarah-Bernhardt and hints that she is rather
Mme. Judith Gautier. Daudet himself refers to the equally absurd report
that Gambetta was the original of Numa Roumestan,--a report over which
the alleged subject and the real author laughed together. Daudet's own
attitude toward his creations is a little ambiguous or at least a
little inconsistent; in one paper he asserts that every character of
his has had a living original, and in another he admits that Elysée
Méraut, for example, is only in part a certain Thérion.

The admission is more nearly exact than the assertion. Every novelist
whose work is to endure even for a generation must draw from life,
sometimes generalizing broadly and sometimes keeping close to the
single individual, but always free to modify the mere fact as he may
have observed it to conform with the larger truth of the fable he shall
devise. Most story-tellers tend to generalize, and their fictions lack
the sharpness of outline we find in nature. Daudet prefers to retain as
much of the actual individual as he dares without endangering the web
of his composition; and often the transformation is very slight,--Mora,
for instance, who is probably a close copy of Morny, but who stands on
his own feet in "The Nabob," and lives his own life as independently as
though he was a sheer imagination. More rarely the result is not so
satisfactory; J. Tom Lévis, for example, for whose authenticity the
author vouches, but who seems out of place in "Kings in Exile," like a
fantastic invention, such as Balzac sometimes permitted himself as a
relief from his rigorous realism.

For incident as well as for character Daudet goes to real life. The
escape of Colette from under the eyes of her father-in-law,--that
actually happened; but none the less does it fit into "Kings in Exile."
And Colette's cutting off her hair in grief at her husband's
death,--that actually happened also; but it belongs artistically in the
"Immortal." On the other hand, the fact which served as the foundation
of the "Immortal"--the taking in of a _savant_ by a lot of forged
manuscripts--has been falsified by changing the _savant_ from a
mathematician (who might easily be deceived about a matter of
autographs) to a historian (whose duty it is to apply all known tests
of genuineness to papers purporting to shed new light on the past).
This borrowing from the newspaper has its evident advantages, but it
has its dangers also, even in the hands of a poet as adroit as Daudet
and as imaginative. Perhaps the story of his which is most artistic in
its telling, most shapely, most harmonious in its modulations of a
single theme to the inevitable end, developed without haste and without
rest, is "Sapho;" and "Sapho" is the novel of Daudet's in which there
seems to be the least of this stencilling of actual fact, in which the
generalization is the broadest, and in which the observation is least
restricted to single individuals.

But in "Sapho" the theme itself is narrow, narrower than in "Numa
Roumestan," and far narrower than in either "The Nabob" or "Kings in
Exile;" and this is why "Sapho," fine as it is, and subtle, is perhaps
less satisfactory. No other French novelist of the final half of the
nineteenth century, not Flaubert, not Goncourt, not M. Zola, not
Maupassant, has four novels as solid as these, as varied in incident,
as full of life, as rich in character, as true. They form the
quadrilateral wherein Daudet's fame is secure.

"Sapho" is a daughter of the "Lady of the Camellias," and a
grand-daughter of "Manon Lescaut,"--Frenchwomen, all of them, and of a
class French authors have greatly affected. But Daudet's book is not a
specimen of what Lowell called "that _corps-de-ballet_ literature in
which the most animal of the passions is made more temptingly naked by
a veil of French gauze." It is at bottom a moral book, much as "Tom
Jones" is moral. Fielding's novel is English, robust, hearty, brutal in
a way, and its morality is none too lofty. Daudet's is French, softer,
more enervating, and with an almost complacent dwelling on the sins of
the flesh. But neither Fielding nor Daudet is guilty of sentimentality,
the one unforgivable crime in art. In his treatment of the relation of
the sexes Daudet was above all things truthful; his veracity is
inexorable. He shows how man is selfish in love and woman also, and how
the egotism of the one is not as the egotism of the other. He shows how
Fanny Legrand slangs her lover with the foul language of the gutter
whence she sprang, and how Jean when he strikes back, refrains from
foul blows. He shows how Jean, weak of will as he was, gets rid of the
millstone about his neck, only because of the weariness of the woman to
whom he has bound himself. He shows us the various aspects of the love
which is not founded on esteem, the Héttema couple, De Potter and Rose,
Déchelette and Alice Doré, all to set off the sorry idyl of Fanny and
Jean.

In "Numa Roumestan" there is a larger vision of life than in "Sapho,"
even if there is no deeper insight. The construction is almost as
severe; and the movement is unbroken from beginning to end, without
excursus or digression. The central figure is masterly,--the kindly and
selfish Southerner, easy-going and soft-spoken, an orator who is so
eloquent that he can even convince himself, a politician who thinks
only when he is talking, a husband who loves his wife as profoundly as
he can love anybody except himself, and who loves his wife more than
his temporary mistress, even during the days of his dalliance. Numa is
a native of the South of France, as was Daudet himself; and it is out
of the fulness of knowledge that the author evolves the character,
brushing in the portrait with bold strokes and unceasingly adding
caressing touches till the man actually lives and moves before our
eyes. The veracity of the picture is destroyed by no final
inconsistency. What Numa is, Numa will be. Daudet never descends at the
end of his novels like a god from the machine to change character in
the twinkling of an eye, and to convert bad men to good thoughts and
good deeds.

He can give us goodness when he chooses, a human goodness, not
offensively perfect, not preaching, not mawkish, but high-minded and
engaging. There are two such types in "Kings in Exile," the Queen and
Elysée Méraut, essentially honest both of them, thinking little of
self, and sustained by lofty purpose. Naturalistic novelists generally
(and M. Zola in particular), live in a black world peopled mainly by
fools and knaves; from this blunder Daudet is saved by his Southern
temperament, by his lyric fervor, and, at bottom, by his wisdom. He
knows better; he knows that while a weak creature like Christian II. is
common, a resolute soul like Frédérique is not so very rare. He knows
that the contrast and the clash of these characters is interesting
matter for the novelist. And no novelist has had a happier inspiration
than that which gave us "Kings in Exile," a splendid subject,
splendidly handled, and lending itself perfectly to the display of
Daudet's best qualities, his poetry, his ability to seize the actual,
and his power of dealing with material such as the elder Dumas would
have delighted in with a restraint and a logic the younger Dumas would
have admired. Plot and counter-plot, bravery, treachery, death,--these
are elements for a romanticist farrago; and in Daudet's hands they are
woven into a tapestry almost as stiff as life itself. The stuff is
romantic enough, but the treatment is unhesitatingly realistic; and
"Kings in Exile," better than any other novel of Daudet's, explains his
vogue with readers of the most divergent tastes.

In "The Nabob," the romantic element is slighter than in "Kings in
Exile;" the subject is not so striking; and the movement of the story
is less straightforward. But what a panorama of Paris it is that he
unrolls before us in this story of a luckless adventurer in the city of
luxury then under the control of the imperial band of brigands! No
doubt the Joyeuse family is an obtrusion and an artistic blemish, since
they do not logically belong in the scheme of the story; and yet they
(and their fellows in other books of Daudet's) testify to his effort to
get the truth and the whole truth into his picture of Paris life. Mora
and Félicia Ruys and Jenkins, these are the obverse of the medal,
exposed in the shop-windows that every passer-by can see. The Joyeuse
girls and their father are the reverse, to be viewed only by those who
take the trouble to look at the under side of things. They are samples
of the simple, gentle, honest folk, of whom there must be countless
thousands in France and even in its capital, but who fail to interest
most French novelists just because they are not eccentric or wicked or
ugly. Of a truth, Aline Joyeuse is as typically Parisian as Félicia
Ruys herself; both are needed if the census is to be complete; and the
omission of either is a source of error.

There is irony in Daudet's handling of these humbler figures, but it is
compassionate and almost affectionate. If he laughs at Father Joyeuse
there is no harshness and no hostility in his mirth. For the Joyeuse
daughters he has indulgence and pity; and his humor plays about them
and leaves them scart-free. It never stings them or scorches or sears,
as it does Astier-Réhu and Christian II. and the Prince of Axel, in
spite of his desire to be fair toward all the creatures of his brain.

Irony is only one of the manifestations of Daudet's humor. Wit he has
also, and satire. And he is doubly fortunate in that he has both humor
and the sense-of-humor--the positive and the negative. It is the
sense-of-humor, so called, that many humorists are without, a
deprivation which allows them to take themselves so seriously that they
become a laughing-stock for the world. It is the sense-of-humor that
makes the master of comedy, that helps him to see things in due
proportion and perspective, that keeps him from exaggeration and
emphasis, from sentimentality and melodrama and bathos. It is the
sense-of-humor that prevents our making fools of ourselves; it is humor
itself that softens our laughter at those who make themselves
ridiculous. In his serious stories Daudet employs this negative humor
chiefly, as though he had in memory La Bruyère's assertion that "he who
makes us laugh rarely is able to win esteem for himself." His positive
humor,--gay, exuberant, contagious,--finds its full field for display
in some of the short stories, and more especially in the Tartarin
series.

Has any book of our time caused more laughter than "Tartarin of
Tarascon"--unless it be "Tartarin on the Alps"? I can think only of one
rival pair, "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn,"--for Mark Twain and
Alphonse Daudet both achieved the almost impossible feat of writing a
successful sequel to a successful book, of forcing fortune to a
repetition of a happy accident. The abundant laughter the French
humorist excited is like that evoked by the American humorist,--clean,
hearty, healthy, self-respecting; it is in both cases what George Eliot
in one of her letters called "the exquisite laughter that comes from a
gratification of the reasoning faculty." Daudet and Mark Twain are
imaginative realists; their most amusing extravagance is but an
exaggeration of the real thing; and they never let factitious fantasy
sweep their feet off the ground. Tartarin is as typical of Provence as
Colonel Sellers--to take that figure of Mark Twain's which is most
like--is typical of the Mississippi Valley.

Tartarin is as true as Numa Roumestan; in fact they may almost be said
to be sketched from the same model but in a very different temper. In
"Numa Roumestan" we are shown the sober side of the Southern
temperament, the sorrow it brings in the house though it displays joy
in the street; and in "Tartarin" we behold only the immense comicality
of the incessant incongruity between the word and the deed. Tartarin is
Southern, it is true, and French; but he is very human also. There is a
boaster and a liar in most of us, lying in wait for a chance to rush
out and put us to shame. It is this universality of Daudet's satire
that has given Tartarin its vogue on both sides of the Atlantic. The
ingenuity of Tartarin's misadventures, the variety of them in Algiers
and in Switzerland, the obvious reasonableness of them all, the
delightful probability of these impossibilities, the frank gaiety and
the unflagging high spirits,--these are precious qualities, all of
them; but it is rather the essential humanness of Tartarin himself that
has given him a reputation throughout the world. Very rarely indeed now
or in the past has an author been lucky enough to add a single figure
to the cosmopolitan gallery of fiction. Cervantes, De Foe, Swift, Le
Sage, Dumas, have done it; Fielding and Hawthorne and Turgenef have
not.

It is no wonder that Daudet takes pride in this. The real joy of the
novelist, he declares, is to create human beings, to put on their feet
types of humanity who thereafter circulate through the world with the
name, the gesture, the grimace he has given them and who are cited and
talked about without reference to their creator and without even any
mention of him. And whenever Daudet heard some puppet of politics or
literature called a Tartarin, a shiver ran through him--"the shiver of
pride of a father, hidden in the crowd that is applauding his son and
wanting all the time to cry out 'That's my boy!'"


V.

The time has not yet come for a final estimate of Daudet's
position,--if a time ever arrives when any estimate can be final. But
already has a selection been made of the masterpieces which survive,
and from which an author is judged by the next generation that will
have time to criticise only the most famous of the works this
generation leaves behind it. We can see also that much of Daudet's
later writing is slight and not up to his own high standard, although
even his briefest trifle had always something of his charm, of his
magic, of his seductive grace. We can see how rare an endowment he has
when we note that he is an acute observer of mankind, and yet without
any taint of misanthropy, and that he combines fidelity of reproduction
with poetic elevation.

He is--to say once more what has already been said in these pages more
than once--he is a lover of romance with an unfaltering respect for
reality. We all meet with strange experiences once in our lives, with
"things you could put in a story," as the phrase is; but we none of us
have hairbreadth escapes every morning before breakfast. The romantic
is as natural as anything else; it is the excess of the romantic which
is in bad taste. It is the piling up of the agony which is disgusting.
It is the accumulation upon one impossible hero of many exceptional
adventures which is untrue and therefore immoral. Daudet's most
individual peculiarity was his skill in seizing the romantic aspects of
the commonplace. In one of his talks with his son he said that a
novelist must beware of an excess of lyric enthusiasm; he himself
sought for emotion, and emotion escaped when human proportions were
exceeded. Balance, order, reserve, symmetry, sobriety,--these are the
qualities he was ever praising. The real, the truthful, the
sincere,--this is what he sought always to attain.

Daudet may lack the poignant intensity of Balzac, the lyric sweep of
Hugo, the immense architectural strength of M. Zola, the implacable
disinterestedness of Flaubert, the marvellous concentration of
Maupassant, but he has more humor than any of them and more
charm,--more sympathy than any but Hugo, and more sincerity than
any but Flaubert. His is perhaps a rarer combination than any of
theirs,--the gift of story-telling, the power of character-drawing,
the grasp of emotional situation, the faculty of analysis, the feeling
for form, the sense of style, an unfailing and humane interest in his
fellow-men, and an irresistible desire to tell the truth about life as
he saw it with his own eyes.

BRANDER MATTHEWS.

Columbia University,
in the City of New York.




CONTENTS

                                                       Page

   I. DR. JENKINS' PATIENTS                               7

  II. A BREAKFAST ON PLACE VENDÔME                       37

 III. MEMOIRS OF A CLERK.--A CASUAL GLANCE AT
         THE "CAISSE TERRITORIALE"                       63

  IV. A DÉBUT IN SOCIETY                                 77

   V. THE JOYEUSE FAMILY                                103

  VI. FELICIA RUYS                                      128

 VII. JANSOULET AT HOME                                 156

VIII. THE WORK OF BETHLEHEM                             172

  IX. GRANDMAMMA                                        193

   X. MEMOIRS OF A CLERK.--THE SERVANTS                 216

  XI. THE FÊTES IN HONOR OF THE BEY                     238

 XII. A CORSICAN ELECTION                               272




ILLUSTRATIONS


"'Take away your flowers, my dear'"          _Frontispiece_

In Felicia's Studio                               _Page_ 26

"'His Excellency, the Duc de Mora!'"              "      88


From drawings by Lucius Rossi.




THE NABOB.


A hundred years ago Le Sage wrote these words at the head of _Gil
Blas_:

    "As there are persons who cannot read a book without making
    personal application of the vicious or absurd characters they
    find therein, I hereby declare for the benefit of such evil-minded
    readers that they will err in making such application of the
    portraits in this book. I make public avowal that my only aim
    has been to represent the life of mankind as it is."

Without attempting to draw any comparison between Le Sage's novel and
my own, I may say that I should have liked to place a declaration of
the same nature on the first page of _The Nabob_, at the time of its
publication. Several reasons prevented my doing so. In the first place,
the fear that such an advertisement might seem too much like a bait
thrown out to the public, an attempt to compel its attention. Secondly,
I was far from suspecting that a book written with a purely literary
purpose could acquire at a bound such anecdotal importance, and bring
down upon me such a buzzing swarm of complaints. Indeed, such a thing
was never seen before. Not a line of my work, not one of its heroes,
not even a character of secondary importance, but has become a pretext
for allusions and protestations. To no purpose does the author deny the
imputation, swear by all the gods that there is no key to his
novel--every one forges at least one, with whose assistance he claims
to open that combination lock. It must be that all these types have
lived, bless my soul! that they live to-day, exactly identical from
head to foot. Monpavon is So-and-So, is he not? Jenkins' resemblance is
striking. One man is angry because he is in it, another one because he
is not in it; and, beginning with this eagerness for scandal, there is
nothing, not even chance similarities of name, fatal in the modern
novel, descriptions of streets, numbers of houses selected at random,
that has not served to give identity to beings built of a thousand
pieces and, moreover, absolutely imaginary.

The author is too modest to take all this outcry to himself. He knows
how great a part the friendly or treacherous indiscretions of the
newspapers have had therein; and without thanking the former more than
is seemly, without too great ill-will to the latter, he resigns himself
to the stormy prospect as something inevitable, and simply deems
himself in duty bound to affirm that he has never, in twenty years of
upright, literary toil, resorted to that element of success, neither on
this occasion nor on any other. As he turned the leaves of his memory,
which it is every novelist's right and duty to do, he recalled a
strange episode that occurred in cosmopolitan Paris some fifteen years
ago. The romance of a dazzling career that shot swiftly across the
Parisian sky like a meteor evidently served as the frame-work of _The
Nabob_, a picture of manners and morals at the close of the Second
Empire. But around that central situation and certain well-known
incidents, which it was every one's right to study and revive, what a
world of fancy, what inventions, what elaboration, and, above all, what
an outlay of that incessant, universal, almost unconscious observation,
without which there could be no imaginative writers. Furthermore, to
obtain an idea of the "crystallizing" labor involved in transporting
the simplest circumstances from reality to fiction, from life to
romance, one need only open the _Moniteur Officiel_ of February, 1864,
and compare a certain session of the Corps Législatif with the picture
that I give of it in my book. Who could have supposed that, after the
lapse of so many years, this Paris, famous for its short memory, would
recognize the original model in the idealized picture the novelist has
drawn of him, and that voices would be raised to charge with
ingratitude one who most assuredly was not his hero's "assiduous
guest," but simply, in their infrequent meetings, an inquisitive
acquaintance on whose mind the truth is quickly photographed, and who
can never efface from his memory the images that are once imprinted
thereon?

I knew the "real Nabob" in 1864. I occupied at that time a
semi-official position which forced me to exhibit great reserve in my
visits to that luxurious and hospitable Levantine. Later I was
intimately associated with one of his brothers; but at that time the
poor Nabob was far away, struggling through thickets of cruel brambles,
and he was seen at Paris only occasionally. Moreover, it is very
unpleasant for a courteous man to reckon thus with the dead, and to
say: "You are mistaken. Although he was an agreeable host, I was not
often seen at his table." Let it suffice therefore, for me to declare
that, in speaking of Mère Françoise's son as I have done, it has been
my purpose to represent him in a favorable light, and that the charge
of ingratitude seems to me an absurdity from every standpoint. That
this is true is proved by the fact that many people consider the
portrait too flattering, more interesting than nature. To such people
my reply is very simple: "Jansoulet strikes me as an excellent fellow;
but at all events, if I am wrong, you can blame the newspapers for
telling you his real name. I gave you my novel as a novel, good or bad,
without any guaranty of resemblances."

As to Mora, that is another matter. Something has been said of
indiscretion, of political defection. Great Heaven! I have never made a
secret of it. At the age of twenty, I was connected with the office of
the high functionary who has served as my model; and my friends of
those days know what a serious political personage I made. The
Department also must have strange recollections of that eccentric clerk
with the Merovingian beard, who was always the last to arrive and the
first to depart, and who never went up to the duke's private office
except to ask leave of absence; of a naturally independent character,
too, with hands unstained by anything like sycophancy, and so little
reconciled to the Empire that, on the day when the duke proposed to him
to enter his service, the future attaché deemed it his duty to declare
with touching juvenile solemnity that "he was a Legitimist."

"So is the Empress," was His Excellency's reply, and he smiled with
calm and impertinent condescension. I always saw him with that smile on
his face, nor had I any need to look through keyholes; and I have drawn
him so, as he loved to appear, in his Richelieu-Brummel attitude.
History will attend to the statesman. I have exhibited him, introducing
him at long range in my fictitious drama, as the worldly creature that
he was and wished to be, being well assured that in his lifetime it
would not have offended him to be so presented.

This is what I had to say. And now, having made these declarations in
all frankness, let us return to work with all speed. My preface will
seem a little short, and the curious reader will seek in vain therein
the anticipated piquancy. So much the worse for him. Brief as this page
may be, it is three times too long for me. Prefaces have this
disadvantage, that they prevent one from writing books.

ALPHONSE DAUDET.




I.

DOCTOR JENKINS' PATIENTS.


Standing on the stoop of his little house on Rue de Lisbonne, freshly
shaved, with sparkling eye, lips slightly parted, long hair tinged with
gray falling over a broad coat-collar, square-shouldered, robust, and
sound as an oak, the illustrious Irish doctor, Robert Jenkins,
chevalier of the Medjidie and of the distinguished order of Charles
III. of Spain, member of several learned and benevolent societies,
founder and president of the Work of Bethlehem,--in a word, Jenkins,
the Jenkins of the Jenkins Arsenical Pills, that is to say, the
fashionable physician of the year 1864, and the busiest man in Paris,
was on the point of entering his carriage, one morning toward the end
of November, when a window on the first floor looking on the inner
courtyard was thrown open, and a woman's voice timidly inquired:

"Shall you return to breakfast, Robert?"

Oh! what a bright, affectionate smile it was that suddenly illumined
that handsome, apostle-like face, and how readily one could divine, in
the loving good-morning that his eyes sent up to the warm white
peignoir visible behind the parted hangings, one of those tranquil,
undoubting conjugal passions, which custom binds with its most flexible
and strongest bonds.

"No, Madame Jenkins"--he loved to give her thus publicly her title of
legitimate wife, as if he felt a secret satisfaction therein, a sort of
salve to his conscience with respect to the woman who made life so
attractive to him--"No, do not expect me this morning. I am to
breakfast on Place Vendôme."

"Ah! yes, the Nabob," said the lovely Madame Jenkins, with a very
marked inflection of respect for that personage out of the _Thousand
and One Nights_, of whom all Paris had been talking for a month; then,
after a moment's hesitation, she whispered between the heavy hangings,
very softly, very lovingly, for the doctor's ear alone: "Be sure and
not forget what you promised me."

It was probably a promise very difficult to keep, for, at the reminder,
the apostle's brows contracted, his smile froze upon his lips, his
whole face assumed an incredibly harsh expression; but it was a matter
of a moment. The faces of these fashionable physicians become very
expert in lying, by the bedsides of their wealthy patients. With his
most affectionate, most cordial manner, and showing a row of dazzling
teeth, he replied:

"What I promised shall be done, Madame Jenkins. Now, go in at once and
close your window. The mist is cold this morning."

Yes, the mist was cold, but white as snow; and, hovering outside the
windows of the comfortable coupé, it lighted up with soft reflections
the newspaper in the doctor's hands. Over yonder in the dark, crowded,
populous quarters, in the Paris of tradesmen and workmen, they know
nothing of the pretty morning mist that loiters on the broad avenues;
the bustle of the waking hours, the passing and repassing of
market-gardeners' wagons, omnibuses, drays loaded with old iron, soon
chop it and rend it and scatter it. Each passer-by carries away a
little of it on a threadbare coat, a worn muffler, or coarse gloves
rubbing against each other. It drenches the shivering blouses, the
waterproofs thrown over working dresses; it blends with all the
breaths, hot with insomnia or alcohol, buries itself in the depths of
empty stomachs, penetrates the shops which are just opening their
doors, dark courtyards, staircases, where it stands on the balusters
and walls, and fireless garrets. That is why so little of it remains
out-of-doors. But in that open, stately portion of Paris where Dr.
Jenkins' patients lived, on those broad tree-lined boulevards, those
deserted quays, the mist soared immaculate, in innumerable waves, as
light and fleecy as down. It was compact, discreet, almost luxurious,
because the sun, slothful in his rising, was beginning to diffuse soft,
purplish tints, which gave to the mist that enveloped everything, even
the roofs of the rows of mansions, the aspect of a sheet of white
muslin spread over scarlet cloth. One would have said that it was a
great curtain sheltering the long, untroubled sleep of wealth, a thick
curtain behind which nothing could be heard save the soft closing of a
porte-cochère, the rattling of the milkmen's tin cans, the bells of a
herd of asses trotting by, followed by the short, panting breath of
their conductor, and the rumbling of Jenkins' coupé beginning its daily
round.

First of all, to the hôtel de Mora. On the Quai d'Orléans, beside the
Spanish embassy, stood a superb palace with its principal entrance on
Rue de Lille, and a door on the riverside, and long terraces which
formed a continuation of those of the embassy. Between two high,
ivy-covered walls, connected by imposing stone arches, the coupé flew
like an arrow, announced by two strokes of a clanging bell, which
aroused Jenkins from the trance in which the perusal of his newspaper
seemed to have plunged him. Then the wheels rolled less noisily over
the gravel of a vast courtyard and stopped, after a graceful sweep, at
the front steps, above which was spread a circular awning. One could
see indistinctly through the mist half a score of carriages in a line,
and the silhouettes of English grooms leading the duke's saddle-horse
up and down an avenue of acacias, all leafless at that season and
standing naked in their bark. Everything revealed well-ordered,
pompous, assured luxury.

"It makes no difference how early I come, others are always here before
me," said Jenkins, glancing at the line in which his coupé took its
place; but, certain of not being compelled to wait, with head erect and
a tranquil air of authority, he went up the official steps, over which
so many trembling ambitions, so many stumbling anxieties passed every
day.

Even in the reception-room, high-studded, and resonant as a church,
which two huge fires filled with gleaming life, notwithstanding the
great stoves burning day and night, the magnificence of the
establishment burst upon one in warm and heady puffs. There was a
suggestion of the hot-house and the drying-room as well. Great heat and
abundant light; white wainscoting, white marble statues, immense
windows, nothing confined or close, and yet an equable atmosphere well
fitted to encompass the existence of some delicate, over-refined,
nervous mortal. Jenkins expanded in that factitious sunlight of wealth;
he saluted with a "good-morning, boys," the powdered Swiss with the
broad gilt baldric and the footmen in short clothes and blue and gold
livery, all of whom had risen in his honor, touched lightly with his
finger the great cage of monkeys capering about with shrill cries, and
darted whistling up the white marble stairs covered with a carpet soft
and dense as a lawn, to the duke's apartments. Although he had been
coming to the hôtel de Mora for six months, the good doctor had not yet
become hardened to the purely physical impression of cheerfulness and
lightness of heart caused by the atmosphere of that house.

Although it was the abode of the highest functionary of the Empire,
there was nothing to suggest the departments or their boxes of dusty
documents. The duke had consented to accept the exalted post of
Minister of State and President of the Council only on condition that
he need not leave his house; that he should go to the department only
an hour or two a day, long enough to affix his signatures to documents
that required it, and that he should hold his audiences in his bedroom.
At that moment, although it was so early, the salon was full. There
were serious, anxious faces, provincial prefects with shaven lips and
administrative whiskers, something less arrogant in that reception-room
than in their prefectures; magistrates, stern of manner, dignified of
gesture; deputies full of importance, shining lights of finance,
substantial manufacturers from the country; and among them could be
distinguished, here and there, the thin ambitious face of a deputy
councillor to some prefecture, in the garb of a solicitor, black coat
and white cravat; and one and all, standing or seated, alone or in
groups, silently forced with a glance the lock of that lofty door,
closed upon their destinies, from which they would come forth in a
moment, triumphant or crestfallen. Jenkins walked rapidly through the
crowd, and every one followed with an envious eye this new arrival,
whom the usher, in his chain of office, frigid and correct in his
bearing, seated at a table beside the door, greeted with a smile that
was both respectful and familiar.

"Who is with him?" the doctor inquired, pointing to the duke's room.

With the end of his lips, and not without a slightly ironical twinkle
of the eye, the usher murmured a name, which, if they had heard it,
would have angered all those exalted personages who had been waiting an
hour for the _costumier_ of the opera to finish his audience.

A murmur of voices, a flash of light--Jenkins had entered the duke's
presence; _he_ never waited.

Standing with his back to the fire, dressed in a blue fur-trimmed
jacket, which heightened by its soft reflection the strength and
haughtiness of his face, the President of the Council was
superintending the drawing of a Pierrette's costume for the duchess to
wear at her next ball, and giving directions with as much gravity as if
he were dictating the draft of a law.

"Have very fine pleats on the ruff and none at all on the
sleeves.--Good-morning, Jenkins. At your service."

Jenkins bowed and stepped forward into the enormous room, whose
windows, opening on a garden that extended to the Seine, commanded one
of the loveliest views in all Paris, the bridges, the Tuileries, the
Louvre, interlaced with trees as black as if they were drawn in India
ink on the wavering background of the mist. A broad, very low bed on a
platform a few steps above the floor, two or three small lacquer
screens with vague fanciful decorations in gold, denoting, as did the
double doors and the heavy woollen carpet, a dread of cold carried to
excess, chairs of various styles, long chairs and low chairs, placed at
random, all well-stuffed and of lazy or voluptuous shapes, composed the
furniture of that famous room, where the most momentous and the most
trivial questions were discussed with the same gravity of tone and
manner. There was a beautiful portrait of the duchess on the wall; and
on the mantel a bust of the duke, the work of Felicia Ruys, which had
received the honor of a medal of the first class at the recent Salon.

"Well, Jenkins, how goes it this morning?" said His Excellency, walking
to meet the doctor, while the costumer was collecting his fashion
plates, which were strewn about over all the chairs.

"And you, my dear duke? I fancied that you were a little pale last
night at the Variétés."

"Nonsense! I was never so well. Your pills have a most amazing effect
on me. I feel so lively, so vigorous. When I think how completely
foundered I was six months ago!"

Jenkins, without speaking, had put his great head against the
minister's jacket, at the spot where the heart beats in the majority of
mankind. He listened a moment while His Excellency continued to talk in
the indolent, listless tone which was one of his chief claims to
distinction.

"Whom were you with last night, doctor? That great bronzed Tartar who
laughed so loud at the front of your box?"

"That was the Nabob, Monsieur le Duc. The famous Jansoulet, who is so
much talked about just now."

"I might have suspected it. The whole audience was looking at him. The
actresses played at him all the time. Do you know him? What sort of a
man is he?"

"I know him. That is, I am treating him. Thanks, my dear duke, that's
all. Everything is all right there. When he arrived in Paris a month
ago, the change of climate disturbed him a little. He sent for me, and
since then has taken a great fancy to me. All that I know of him is
that he has a colossal fortune, made in Tunis, in the Bey's service,
that he has a loyal heart, a generous mind in which ideas of
humanity--"

"At Tunis?" the duke interposed, being naturally far from sentimental
and humanitarian. "Then, why the name of Nabob?"

"Bah! Parisians don't look so deep as that. In their eyes every rich
stranger is a nabob, no matter where he comes from. This one, however,
has just the physique for the part, coppery complexion, eyes like coals
of fire, and in addition a gigantic fortune, of which he makes, I have
no hesitation in saying, a most noble and most intelligent use. I owe
it to him"--here the doctor assumed an air of modesty--"I owe it to him
that I have succeeded at last in inaugurating the Work of Bethlehem for
nursing infants, which a morning newspaper that I was looking over just
now--the _Messager_, I think,--calls 'the great philanthropic idea of
the century.'"

The duke glanced in an absent-minded way at the sheet the doctor handed
him. He was not the man to be taken in by paid puffs.

"This Monsieur Jansoulet must be very wealthy," he said coldly. "He is
a partner in Cardailhac's theatre. Monpavon persuades him to pay his
debts, Bois-l'Héry stocks his stable for him and old Schwalbach
furnishes a picture gallery. All that costs money."

Jenkins began to laugh.

"What can you expect, my dear duke; you are an object of great interest
to the poor Nabob. Coming to Paris with a firm purpose to become a
Parisian, a man of the world, he has taken you for his model in
everything, and I do not conceal from you that he would be very glad to
study his model at closer quarters."

"I know, I know, Monpavon has already asked leave to bring him here.
But I prefer to wait and see. One must be on one's guard with these
great fortunes that come from such a distance. _Mon Dieu_, I don't
say, you know, that if I should meet him elsewhere than in my own
house, at the theatre, or in somebody's salon--"

"It happens that Madame Jenkins intends to give a little party next
month. If you would do us the honor--"

"I shall be very glad to go to your house, my dear doctor, and if the
Nabob should be there, I should not object to his being presented to
me."

At that moment the usher opened the door.

"Monsieur le Ministre de l'Intérieur is in the blue salon. He has but a
word to say to Your Excellency. Monsieur le Préfet de Police is still
waiting below, in the gallery."

"Very good," said the duke, "I will go to him. But I should like to
make a definite arrangement about this costume first. Let us see,
friend What's-your-name, what do we decide about those ruffs? _Au
revoir_, doctor. Nothing to do but keep on with the pearls, is there?"

"Keep on with the pearls," said Jenkins, bowing; and he took his leave,
radiant over the two bits of good fortune that fell to his lot at the
same time--the honor of entertaining the duke, and the pleasure of
gratifying his dear Nabob. The crowd of petitioners through whom he
passed in the ante-chamber was even greater than when he entered; new
arrivals had joined the patient waiters of the first hour, others were
hurrying upstairs, pale-faced and full of business, and in the
courtyard carriages continued to arrive, to range themselves gravely
and solemnly in a double circle, while the question of ruffed sleeves
was discussed upstairs with no less solemnity.

"To the club," said Jenkins to his coachman.

                         *        *        *

The coupé rolled along the quays, recrossed the bridges, and turned
into Place de la Concorde, which already wore a different aspect from
that it had worn a short time before. The mist had lifted in the
direction of the Garde-Meuble and the Greek temple of the Madeleine,
revealing here and there the white spray of a fountain, the arcade of a
palace, the top of a statue, the shrubbery of the Tuileries, shivering
by the gates. The veil, not raised but rent in spots, discovered
patches of blue sky: and, on the avenue leading to the Arc de Triomphe,
one could see breaks driving swiftly along, filled with coachmen and
jockeys, dragoons of the Empress's corps, body-guards in gorgeous
fur-lined coats riding two by two in long lines, with a great clanking
of bits and spurs and neighing of fresh horses, all in the light of a
still invisible sun, emerging from the vague depths of the mist,
plunging into it again in masses, like a swiftly-vanishing vision of
the morning splendor of that quarter.

Jenkins alighted at the corner of Rue Royale. From roof to cellar of
the great gambling-house servants were bustling about, shaking rugs,
airing the salons where the odor of cigar-smoke still lingered, where
heaps of fine ashes were blowing about in the fireplaces, while on the
green tables, still quivering with the games of the night, the candles
were still burning in silver candelabra, the flame ascending straight
into the pallid light of day. The uproar and the going and coming
ceased on the third floor, where several members of the club had their
apartments. Of the number was the Marquis de Monpavon, to whose door
Jenkins bent his steps.

"Ah! is it you, doctor? Deuce take it! What time is it, pray? I'm not
at home."

"Not even to the doctor?"

"Oh! not to anybody. A question of costume, my dear fellow. Never mind,
come in all the same. Toast your feet a moment while François finishes
my hair."

Jenkins entered the bedroom, which was as prosaic a place as all
furnished apartments are, and approached the fire, where curling-tongs
of all dimensions were heating, while from the adjoining laboratory,
separated from the bedroom by an Algerian curtain, the Marquis de
Monpavon submitted to the manipulations of his valet. Odors of
patchouli, cold cream, burned horn and burned hair escaped from the
restricted quarters; and from time to time, when François came out to
take a fresh pair of tongs, Jenkins caught a glimpse of an enormous
dressing-table laden with innumerable little instruments of ivory,
steel, and mother-of-pearl, files, scissors, powder-puffs and brushes,
phials, cups, cosmetics, labelled, arranged in lines, and amid all that
rubbish, petty ironmongery and dolls' playthings, a hand, the hand of
an old man, awkward and trembling, dry and long, with nails as
carefully kept as a Japanese painter's.

While making up his face, the longest and most complicated of his
matutinal occupations, Monpavon chatted with the doctor, told him of
his aches and pains and of the good effect of the pearls, which were
making him younger, he said. And listening to him thus, at a little
distance, without seeing him, one would have believed he was the Duc de
Mora, he had so faithfully copied his way of speaking. There were the
same unfinished sentences, ending in a _ps_--_ps_--_ps_--uttered
between the teeth. "What's-his-names" and "What-d'ye-call-'ems" at
every turn, a sort of lazy, bored, aristocratic stammer, in which one
divined profound contempt for the vulgar art of speech. In the duke's
circle everybody strove to copy that accent, those disdainful
intonations, in which there was an affectation of simplicity.

Jenkins, finding the session a little tedious, rose to go.

"Adieu, I am going. Shall I see you at the Nabob's?"

"Yes, I expect to breakfast there--promised to take What's-his-name,
Thingumbob, you know, about our great affair--ps--ps--ps. Weren't for
that, I'd stay away--downright menagerie, that house."

The Irishman, despite his kindly feeling, agreed that the society at
his friend's house was a little mixed. But what of that! they must not
blame him for that. He didn't know any better, poor man.

"Doesn't know and won't learn," said Monpavon sourly. "Instead of
consulting men of experience--ps--ps--ps--takes the first sycophant
that comes. Did you see the horses Bois-l'Héry bought for him?
Downright swindle, those beasts. And he paid twenty thousand francs for
them. I'll wager Bois-l'Héry got 'em for six thousand."

"Oh! fie, fie--a gentleman!" said Jenkins, with the indignation of a
noble soul refusing to believe in evil.

Monpavon went on, as if he did not hear:

"And all because the horses came from Mora's stable!"

"To be sure, the dear Nabob's heart is set on the duke. So that I shall
make him very happy when I tell him--"

The doctor stopped, in some embarrassment.

"When you tell him what, Jenkins?"

Jenkins, looking decidedly sheepish, was forced to admit that he had
obtained permission from His Excellency to present his friend
Jansoulet. He had hardly finished his sentence when a tall spectre with
flabby cheeks and multicolored hair and whiskers darted from the
dressing-room into the chamber, holding together with both hands at his
skinny but very straight neck, a dressing-gown of light silk with
violet dots, in which he had enveloped himself like a bonbon in its
paper wrapper. The most salient feature in that heroi-comic countenance
was a great arched nose shining with cold cream, and a keen, piercing
eye, too youthful, too clear for the heavy, wrinkled lid that covered
it. All of Jenkins' patients had that same eye.

Verily Monpavon must have been deeply moved to show himself thus shorn
of all prestige. In fact it was with white lips and in a changed voice
that he now addressed the doctor, without the affected stammer,
speaking rapidly and without stopping to breathe:--

"Come, come, my dear fellow, there's no nonsense between us, is there?
We have met in front of the same porringer; but I let you have your
share and I propose that you shall let me have mine." Jenkins' air of
amazement did not check him. "Let it be understood once for all. I
promised the Nabob that I'd present him to the duke as I presented you
long ago. Don't you interfere in what concerns me and me alone."

Jenkins, with his hand upon his heart, protested his innocence. He had
never had any such intention. Of course Monpavon was too close a friend
of the duke for any one else to--How could he have imagined such a
thing?

"I imagine nothing," said the old nobleman, more subdued, but still
very cold. "I simply wanted to have a perfectly frank explanation with
you on this subject."

The Irishman held out his broad open palm.

"My dear marquis, explanations are always frank between men of honor."

"Honor is a great word, Jenkins. Let us say men of good-breeding. That
is sufficient."

And as that same good-breeding, which he put forward as a supreme guide
of conduct, suddenly reminded him of his absurd plight, the marquis
offered a finger for his friend's demonstrative grasp and passed
hastily behind his curtain, while the other took his leave, in haste to
continue his round of visits.

                         *        *        *

What a magnificent practice this Jenkins had, to be sure! Nothing but
princely mansions, halls comfortably heated and filled with flowers on
every floor, downy, silk-lined alcoves, wherein disease became quiet
and refined, where nothing suggested the brutal hand that tosses upon a
bed of misery those who cease to work only to die. To tell the truth,
these clients of Dr. Jenkins were not patients at all. They would not
have been received at a hospital. As their organs had not even strength
enough to feel a shock, it was impossible to find the seat of their
trouble, and the physician leaning over them would have listened in
vain for the palpitation of suffering in those bodies which were
already inhabited by the inertia and silence of death. They were
weakened, exhausted, anæmic, consumed by their absurd mode of life, and
yet so attached to it that they strove desperately to prolong it. And
the Jenkins Pearls became famous just because of the lashing they
administered to jaded constitutions.

"Doctor, I implore you, let me go to the ball this evening!" a young
woman would say, as she lay, utterly prostrated, in her invalid's
chair, her voice hardly more than a breath.

"You shall go, my dear child."

And go she would, and look lovelier than ever before.

"Doctor, at any price, even if it's the death of me, I must be at the
council of ministers to-morrow morning."

He would be there and would win new triumphs by his eloquence and
ambitious diplomacy. And afterward--oh! afterward, indeed. But no
matter! to their last day Jenkins' patients went about, showed
themselves, deceived the consuming selfishness of the multitude. They
died on their feet, like men and women of the world.

After innumerable turns on the Chaussée d'Antin and Champs-Élysées,
after visiting all the millionaires and titled personages in Faubourg
Saint-Honoré, the doctor drew up at the corner of Cours-la-Reine and
Rue François I., before a house with a swell front which stood at
the corner of the quay, and entered an apartment on the ground floor
which in no wise resembled those he had visited since the morning.
Immediately upon entering, the tapestries that covered the walls, the
old stained glass windows intersecting with their lead sashes the soft,
many-hued light, a gigantic saint in carved wood facing a Japanese
monster with bulging eyes and back covered with highly polished scales,
indicated the imaginative and eccentric taste of an artist. The small
servant who opened the door held in leash an Arabian greyhound larger
than himself.

"Madame Constance is at mass," he said, "and mademoiselle is in the
studio, alone. We have been working since six o'clock this morning,"
the child added, with a terrible yawn, which the dog caught on the
wing, and which caused him to open wide his red mouth with its rows of
sharp teeth.

Jenkins, whom we have seen enter the private apartments of the Minister
of State with such perfect tranquillity, trembled slightly as he raised
the portière that hid the open doorway of the studio. It was a
magnificent sculptor's workroom, the rounded front being entirely of
glass, with columns at either side: a large bay-window flooded with
light and at that moment tinged with opal by the mist. More ornate than
the majority of these workrooms, to which the daubs of plaster, the
modelling tools, the clay scattered about and the splashes of water
give something of the appearance of a mason's yard, this one blended a
little coquetry with its artistic equipment. Green plants in every
corner, a few good pictures hanging on the bare wall, and here and
there--on oak pedestals--two or three of the works of Sébastien Ruys,
whose very last work, not exhibited until after his death, was covered
with black gauze.

The mistress of the establishment, Felicia Ruys, daughter of the famous
sculptor, and already known to fame herself by two masterpieces, the
bust of her father and that of the Duc de Mora, stood in the centre of
the studio, at work modelling a figure. Dressed in a blue cloth
riding-habit with long folds, a scarf of China silk twisted around her
neck like a boy's cravat, her fine, black hair, gathered carelessly on
top of her little Grecian head, Felicia was working with extreme zeal,
which added to her beauty by the condensation, so to speak, the
concentration of all her features in a scrutinizing and satisfied
expression. But it changed abruptly on the doctor's arrival.

"Ah! it's you, is it?" she said brusquely, as if waking from a dream.
"Did you ring? I did not hear."

And in the ennui, the weariness that suddenly overspread that lovely
face, only the eyes retained their expression and brilliancy, eyes in
which the factitious gleam of the Jenkins Pearls was heightened by a
natural fierceness.

Oh! how humble and condescending the doctor's voice became, as he
replied:

"Your work absorbs you completely, does it not, my dear Felicia? Is it
something new that you're doing? I should say that it is very pretty."

He drew near to the still formless sketch in which a group of two
animals could be vaguely distinguished, one of them, a greyhound,
flying over the ground at a truly extraordinary pace.

"The idea came to me last night. I began to work by lamplight. My poor
Kadour doesn't find it amusing," said the girl, looking with a
caressing expression of affection at the greyhound, whose paws the
small servant was trying to separate in order to force him into the
proper pose.

Jenkins observed with a fatherly air that she did wrong to tire herself
so, and added, taking her wrist with ecclesiastical precautions:

"Let us see, I am sure that you are feverish."

At the touch of that hand Felicia had a feeling of something very like
repulsion.

"Let me alone--let me alone--your pearls can do nothing for me. When I
am not working, I am bored, bored to death, so bored that I could kill
myself; my ideas are of the color of that thick, brackish water flowing
yonder. To be just at the beginning of life and to be disgusted with
it! It's hard. I am reduced to the point of envying my poor Constance,
who passes her days in her chair, never opening her mouth, but smiling
all by herself at her memories of the past. I have not even that, not
even any pleasant memories to recall. I have nothing but work--work!"

[Illustration: _In Felicia's Studio_]

As she spoke, she worked fiercely, sometimes with the tool, sometimes
with her fingers, which she wiped from time to time on a little sponge
kept on the wooden frame on which the group stood; so that her
complaints, her lamentations, inexplicable in a mouth of twenty years
which had in repose the purity of a Grecian smile, seemed to be uttered
at random, and addressed to no one in particular. And yet Jenkins
seemed anxious and disturbed, notwithstanding the apparent interest he
displayed in the artist's work, or rather in the artist herself, in the
queenly grace of that mere girl, whose style of beauty seemed to have
predestined her to the study of the plastic arts.

Annoyed by that admiring glance, which she felt like a weight, Felicia
resumed:

"By the way, do you know that I saw your Nabob? He was pointed out to
me at the Opera, Friday."

"Were you at the Opera, Friday?"

"Yes. The duke sent me his box."

Jenkins changed color.

"I persuaded Constance to go with me. It was the first time in twenty
years, since her farewell performance, that she had entered the Opera.
It made a great impression on her. During the ballet especially, she
trembled, she beamed, all her former triumphs sparkled in her eyes. How
fortunate one is to have such emotions. A perfect type of his class,
that Nabob. You must bring him to see me. It would amuse me to do his
head."

"What! why he is frightful! You can't have had a good look at him."

"Indeed I did, on the contrary. He was opposite us. That white
Ethiopian visage would be superb in marble. And not commonplace, at all
events. Moreover, if he's so ugly as all that, you won't be so unhappy
as you were last year when I was doing Mora's bust. What a wicked face
you had at that time, Jenkins!"

"Not for ten years of life," muttered Jenkins in a threatening voice,
"would I go through those hours again. But it amuses you to see people
suffer."

"You know very well that nothing amuses me," she said, shrugging her
shoulders with supreme impertinence.

Then, without looking at him, without another word, she plunged into
one of those periods of intense activity by means of which true artists
escape from themselves and all their surroundings.

Jenkins took a few hurried steps, deeply moved, his lip swollen with
avowals that dared not come forth, and began two or three sentences
that met with no reply; at last, feeling that he was dismissed, he took
his hat and walked toward the door.

"It's understood then, is it? I am to bring him here?"

"Who, pray?"

"Why, the Nabob. Only a moment ago you said yourself--"

"Oh! yes," said the strange creature, whose caprices were not of long
duration, "bring him if you choose; I don't care particularly about
it."

And her musical, listless voice, in which something seemed to have
broken, the utter indifference of her whole bearing showed that it was
true, that she cared for nothing on earth.

Jenkins went away in sore perplexity, with clouded brow. But as soon as
he had passed the door he resumed his smiling, cordial manner, being
one of those men who wear a mask on the street. The mist, still visible
in the neighborhood of the Seine, was reduced to a few floating shreds,
which gave an air of vapory unsubstantiality to the houses on the quay,
to the steam-boats of which only the paddle-wheels could be seen, and
to the distant horizon, where the dome of the Invalides hovered like a
gilded balloon, whose netting shed rays of light. The increasing
warmth, the activity in the quarter indicated that noon was not far
away and that it would soon be announced by the ringing of all the
bells.

Before calling upon the Nabob, however, Jenkins had another call to
make. But it seemed to be a great nuisance to him. However, as he had
promised! So he said, with sudden decision, as he jumped into the
carriage:

"68 Rue Saint-Ferdinand, aux Ternes."

Joe, the coachman, was scandalized and made his master repeat the
address; even the horse showed some little hesitation, as if the
valuable beast and the spotless new livery were disgusted at having to
visit a faubourg so far away, outside the restricted but brilliant
circle in which their master's patients were grouped together. They
arrived, however, without hindrance, at the end of an unfinished
provincial street, and at the last of its houses, a five-story
building, which the street seemed to have sent out to reconnoitre and
ascertain if it could safely continue in that direction, isolated as it
was between desolate tracts of land awaiting prospective buildings or
filled with the materials of demolished structures, with blocks of
stone, old blinds with no rooms to shelter, boards with hanging hinges,
a vast boneyard of a whole demolished quarter.

Innumerable signs swayed in the wind over the door, which was adorned
with a large case of photographs, white with dust, before which Jenkins
paused for a moment. Had the illustrious physician come so far to have
his picture taken? One might have thought so from the interest which
detained him in front of that case, containing fifteen or twenty
photographs representing the same family in different groups and
attitudes and with different expressions: an old gentleman with his
chin supported by a high white stock, and a leather satchel under his
arm, surrounded by a bevy of maidens with their hair arranged in braids
or in curls. Sometimes the old gentleman had sat with only two of his
daughters; or perhaps one of those pretty, graceful figures appeared
alone, her elbow resting on a truncated column, her head bending over a
book, in a natural and unstudied pose. But it was always the same
motive with variations, and there was no other male figure in the case
but the old gentleman in the white cravat, and no other female figures
than those of his numerous daughters.

"Studios on the fifth floor," said a sign over the case. Jenkins
sighed, measured with his eye the distance from the ground to the
little balcony up among the clouds; then he made up his mind to enter.
In the hall he passed a white cravat and a majestic leather satchel,
evidently the old gentleman of the showcase. Upon being questioned, he
replied that M. Maranne did in fact live on the fifth floor. "But," he
added with an engaging smile, "the floors are not high." With that
encouragement the Irishman started up an entirely new and narrow
staircase, with landings no larger than a stair, a single door on each
floor and windows which afforded glimpses of a melancholy paved
courtyard and other stairways, all empty: one of those horrible modern
houses, built by the dozen by contractors without a son, their greatest
disadvantage consisting in the thinness of the partitions, which forces
all the lodgers to live together as in a Fourierite community. For the
moment that disadvantage was not of serious consequence, only the
fourth and fifth floors being occupied, as if the tenants had fallen
from the sky.

On the fourth, behind a door bearing a copper plate with the words: M.
JOYEUSE, _Expert in Handwriting_, the doctor heard the sound of fresh,
young laughter and conversation and active footsteps, which accompanied
him to the door of the photographic establishment above.

These little industries, perching in out-of-the-way corners, and
seeming to have no communication with the outer world, are one of the
surprises of Paris. We wonder how people live who take to them for a
living. What scrupulous providence, for instance, could send customers
to a photographer on a fifth floor among waste lands, at the far end of
Rue Ferdinand, or documents for examination to the expert on the floor
below. Jenkins, as he made that reflection, smiled a pitying smile,
then entered without ceremony as he was invited to do by this
inscription: "Walk in without knocking." Alas! the permission was not
abused.--A tall youth in spectacles, who was writing at a small table,
his legs wrapped in a traveling shawl, rose hurriedly to greet the
visitor, whom his short-sightedness prevented him from recognizing.

"Good-morning, André," said the doctor, extending his hand cordially.

"Monsieur Jenkins!"

"I am a good fellow as always, you see. Your conduct to us, your
persistence in living apart from your relatives, commended to my
dignity the utmost reserve in dealing with you; but your mother wept.
And here I am."

As he was speaking, he glanced about the poor little studio, where the
bare walls, the scanty furniture the brand-new photographic apparatus,
the little fireplace _à la prussienne_, also new, which had never seen
a fire, were disastrously apparent in the bright light that fell from
the glass roof. The drawn features and straggling beard of the young
man, whose very light eyes, high, narrow forehead, and long fair hair
thrown back in disorder gave him the appearance of a visionary, all
were accentuated in the uncompromising light; and so was the dogged
will expressed in that limpid glance which met Jenkins' eye coldly, and
offered in anticipation an unconquerable opposition to all his
arguments, all his protestations.

But the excellent Jenkins pretended not to notice it.

"You know how it is, my dear André. From the day that I married your
mother, I have looked upon you as my son. I expected to leave you my
office, my practice, to place your foot in a golden stirrup, and I was
overjoyed to see you follow a career devoted to the welfare of mankind.
Suddenly, without a word of explanation, without a thought for the
effect such a rupture might produce in the eyes of the world, you cut
loose from us, you dropped your studies and renounced your future
prospects, to embark in some degrading mode of life, to adopt an absurd
trade, the refuge and the pretext of all those who are shut out from
the society to which they belong."

"I am working at this trade for a living. It's a means of earning my
bread while I wait."

"Wait for what?--literary renown?"

He glanced contemptuously at the papers scattered over the table.

"But all this does not touch the question; this is what I came here to
say to you: an opportunity is offered you, a door thrown wide open to
the future. The Work of Bethlehem is founded. The noblest of my
humanitarian dreams has taken shape. We have bought a magnificent villa
at Nanterre in which to install our first branch. The superintendence,
the management of that establishment is what it has occurred to me to
offer to you, as to another myself. A princely house to live in, the
salary of a major-general, and the satisfaction of rendering a service
to the great human family. Say the word and I will take you to see the
Nabob, the noble-hearted man who pays the expenses of our undertaking.
Do you accept?"

"No," said the author, so abruptly that Jenkins was disconcerted.

"That's it. I expected a refusal when I came here, but I came none the
less. I took for my motto, 'Do what is right, without hope.' And I am
faithful to my motto. So, it's understood, is it--that you prefer a
life dependent on chance, without prospects and without dignity, to the
honorable, dignified, useful life that I offer you?"

André made no reply; but his silence spoke for him.

"Beware--you know to what this decision of yours will lead, a final
estrangement; but you have always desired it. I need not tell you,"
continued Jenkins, "that to break with me is to break with your mother
also. She and I are one."

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

"If my mother cares to come and see me here, I shall certainly be very
happy--but my determination to remain apart from you, to have nothing
in common with you, is irrevocable."

"At least, you will tell me why?"

He made a gesture signifying, "no," that he would not tell him.

For the moment the Irishman was really angry. His whole face assumed a
savage, cunning expression which would have greatly surprised those who
knew only the good-humored, open-hearted Jenkins; but he was careful to
go no farther in the direction of an explanation, which he dreaded
perhaps no less than he desired it.

"Adieu," he said from the doorway, half turning his head. "Never apply
to us."

"Never," replied his stepson in a firm voice.

This time, when the doctor said to Joe: "Place Vendôme," the horse, as
if he understood that they were going to call on the Nabob, proudly
shook his shining curb, and the coupé drove away at full speed,
transforming the hub of each of its wheels into a gleaming sun. "To
come such a distance to meet with such a reception! One of the
celebrities of the day treated so by that Bohemian! This comes of
trying to do good!" Jenkins vented his wrath in a long monologue in
that vein; then suddenly exclaimed with a shrug: "Oh! pshaw!" And such
traces of care as remained on his brow soon vanished on the pavement of
Place Vendôme. On all sides the clocks were striking twelve in the
sunshine. Emerging from her curtain of mist, fashionable Paris, awake
and on her feet, was beginning her day of giddy pleasure. The
shop-windows on Rue de la Paix shone resplendent. The mansions on the
square seemed to be drawn up proudly in line for the afternoon
receptions; and, at the end of Rue Castiglione with its white arcades,
the Tuileries, in the glorious sunlight of winter, marshalled its
shivering statues, pink with cold, among the leafless quincunxes.




II.

A BREAKFAST ON PLACE VENDÔME.


There were hardly more than a score of persons that morning in the
Nabob's dining-room, a dining-room finished in carved oak, supplied
only the day before from the establishment of some great
house-furnisher, who furnished at the same time the four salons which
could be seen, one beyond the other, through an open door: the
hangings, the objects of art, the chandeliers, even the plate displayed
on the sideboards, even the servants who served the breakfast. It was
the perfect type of the establishment improvised, immediately upon
alighting from the railway train, by a parvenu of colossal wealth, in
great haste to enjoy himself. Although there was no sign of a woman's
dress about the table, no bit of light and airy material to enliven the
scene, it was by no means monotonous, thanks to the incongruity, the
nondescript character of the guests, gathered together from all ranks
of society, specimens of mankind culled from every race in France, in
Europe, in the whole world, from top to bottom of the social scale.
First of all, the master of the house, a sort of giant--sunburned,
swarthy, with his head between his shoulders--to whom his short nose,
lost in the puffiness of the face, his woolly hair massed like an
Astrakhan cap over a low, headstrong forehead, his bristling eyebrows
with eyes like a wild cat's in ambush, gave the ferocious aspect of a
Kalmuk, of a savage on the frontiers of civilization, who lived by war
and marauding. Luckily the lower part of the face, the thick, double
lips which parted readily in a fascinating, good-humored smile,
tempered with a sort of Saint Vincent de Paul expression that uncouth
ugliness, that original countenance, so original that it forgot to be
commonplace. But his inferior extraction betrayed itself in another
direction by his voice, the voice of a Rhone boatman, hoarse and
indistinct, in which the southern accent became rather coarse than
harsh, and by two broad, short hands, with hairy fingers, square at the
ends and with almost no nails, which, as they rested on the white table
cloth, spoke of their past with embarrassing eloquence. Opposite the
host, on the other side of the table, at which he was a regular guest,
was the Marquis de Monpavon, but a Monpavon who in no wise resembled
the mottled spectre whom we saw in the last chapter; a man of superb
physique, in the prime of life, with a long, majestic nose, the haughty
bearing of a great nobleman, displaying a vast breastplate of spotless
linen, which cracked under the continuous efforts of the chest to bend
forward, and swelled out every time with a noise like that made by a
turkey gobbling, or a peacock spreading his tail. His name Monpavon was
well suited to him.[1]

      [1] Paon_, peacock--from Latin pavo, pavonis_.

Belonging to a great family, with wealthy kindred, the Duc de Mora's
friendship had procured for him a receiver-generalship of the first
class. Unfortunately his health had not permitted him to retain that
fine berth--well-informed persons said that his health had nothing to
do with it--and he had been living in Paris for a year past, waiting
until he should be cured, he said, to return to his post. The same
persons asserted that he would never find it again, and that, were it
not for the patronage of certain exalted personages--Be that as it may,
he was the important guest at the breakfast; one could see that by the
way in which the servants waited upon him, by the way in which the
Nabob consulted him, calling him "Monsieur le Marquis," as they do at
the Comédie Française, less from humility than from pride because of
the honor that was reflected on himself. Filled with disdain for his
fellow-guests, Monsieur le Marquis talked little, but with a very lofty
manner, as if he were obliged to stoop to those persons whom he honored
with his conversation. From time to time he tossed at the Nabob, across
the table, sentences that were enigmatical to everybody.

"I saw the duke yesterday. He talked a good deal about you in
connection with that matter of--you know, What's-his-name,
Thingumbob--Who is the man?"

"Really! He talked about me?" And the honest Nabob, swelling with
pride, would look about him, nodding his head in a most laughable way,
or would assume the meditative air of a pious woman when she hears the
name of Our Lord.

"His Excellency would be pleased to have you go into
the--ps--ps--ps--the thing."

"Did he tell you so?"

"Ask the governor--he heard it as well as I."

The person referred to as the governor, Paganetti by name, was an
energetic, gesticulatory little man, tiresome to watch, his face
assumed so many different expressions in a minute. He was manager of
the _Caisse Territoriale_ of Corsica, a vast financial enterprise, and
was present in that house for the first time, brought by Monpavon; he
also occupied a place of honor. On the Nabob's other side was an old
man, buttoned to the chin in a frock-coat without lapels and with a
standing collar, like an oriental tunic, with a face marred by
innumerable little gashes, and a white moustache trimmed in military
fashion. It was Brahim Bey, the most gallant officer of the regency of
Tunis, _aide-de-camp_ to the former bey, who made Jansoulet's fortune.
This warrior's glorious exploits were written in wrinkles, in the scars
of debauchery, on his lower lip which hung down helplessly as if the
spring were broken, and in his inflamed, red eyes, devoid of lashes.
His was one of the faces we see in the felon's dock in cases that are
tried behind closed doors. The other guests had seated themselves
pell-mell, as they arrived, or beside such acquaintances as they
chanced to meet, for the house was open to everybody, and covers were
laid for thirty every morning.

There was the manager of the theatre in which the Nabob was a sleeping
partner,--Cardailhac, almost as renowned for his wit as for his
failures, that wonderful carver, who would prepare one of his _bons
mots_ as he detached the limbs of a partridge, and deposit it with a
wing in the plate that was handed him. He was a sculptor rather than an
_improvisateur_, and the new way of serving meats, having them carved
beforehand in the Russian fashion, had been fatal to him by depriving
him of all excuse for a preparatory silence. So it was generally said
that he was failing. He was a thorough Parisian, a dandy to his
fingers' ends, and as he himself boasted, "not full to bursting with
superstition," which fact enabled him to give some very piquant details
concerning the women in his theatrical company to Brahim Bey, who
listened to him as one turns the pages of an obscene book, and to talk
theology to his nearest neighbor, a young priest, curé of some little
Southern village, a thin, gaunt fellow, with a complexion as dark
as his cassock, with glowing cheek-bones, pointed nose, all the
characteristics of an ambitious man, who said to Cardailhac, in a very
loud voice, in a tone of condescension, of priestly authority:

"We are very well satisfied with Monsieur Guizot. He is doing well,
very well--it's a victory for the Church."

Beside that pontiff with the starched band, old Schwalbach, the famous
dealer in pictures, displayed his prophet's beard, yellow in spots like
a dirty fleece, his three mouldy-looking waistcoats and all the
slovenly, careless attire which people forgave him in the name of art,
and because he had the good taste to have in his employ, at a time when
the mania for galleries kept millions of money in circulation, the one
man who was most expert in negotiating those vainglorious transactions.
Schwalbach did not talk, contenting himself with staring about through
his enormous lens-shaped monocle, and smiling in his beard at the
extraordinary juxtapositions to be observed at that table, which stood
alone in all the world. For instance Monpavon had very near him--and
you should have seen how the disdainful curve of his nose was
accentuated at every glance in his direction--Garrigou the singer, a
countryman of Jansoulet, distinguished as a ventriloquist, who sang
_Figaro_ in the patois of the South and had not his like for imitating
animals. A little farther on, Cabassu, another fellow-countryman, a
short, thick-set man, with a bull-neck, a biceps worthy of Michel
Angelo, who resembled equally a Marseillais hair-dresser and the
Hercules at a country fair, a _masseur_, pedicurist, manicurist and
something of a dentist, rested both elbows on the table with the
assurance of a quack whom one receives in the morning and who knows the
petty weaknesses, the private miseries of the house in which he happens
to be. M. Bompain completed that procession of subalterns, all
classified with reference to some one specialty. Bompain, the
secretary, the steward, the man of confidence, through whose hands all
the business of the establishment passed; and a single glance at that
stupidly solemn face, that vague expression, that Turkish fez poised
awkwardly on that village schoolmaster's head, sufficed to convince one
what manner of man he was to whom interests like the Nabob's had been
entrusted.

Lastly, to fill the gaps between the figures we have sketched, Turks of
every variety! Tunisians, Moors, Egyptians, Levantines; and, mingled
with that exotic element, a whole multicolored Parisian Bohemia of
decayed gentlemen, squinting tradesmen, penniless journalists,
inventors of strange objects, men from the South landed in Paris
without a sou--all the tempest-tossed vessels to be revictualled, all
the flocks of birds whirling about in the darkness, that were attracted
by that great fortune as by the light of a lighthouse. The Nabob
received that motley crew at his table through kindness of heart,
generosity, weakness, and entire lack of dignity, combined with
absolute ignorance, and partly as a result of the same exile's
melancholy, the same need of expansion that led him to receive, in his
magnificent palace on the Bardo in Tunis, everybody who landed from
France, from the petty tradesman and exporter of small wares, to the
famous pianist on a tour and the consul-general.

Listening to those different voices, those foreign accents, incisive or
stammering, glancing at those varying types of countenance, some
uncivilized, passionate, unrefined, others over-civilized, faded, of
the type that haunts the boulevards, over-ripe as it were, and
observing the same varieties in the corps of servants, where
"flunkeys," taken the day before from some office, insolent fellows,
with the heads of dentists or bath-attendants, bustled about among the
motionless Ethiopians, who shone like black marble torch-holders,--it
was impossible to say exactly where you were; at all events, you would
never have believed that you were on Place Vendôme, at the very heart
and centre of the life of our modern Paris. On the table there was a
similar outlandish collection of foreign dishes, sauces with saffron or
anchovies, elaborately spiced Turkish delicacies, chickens with fried
almonds; all this, taken in conjunction with the commonplace
decorations of the room, the gilded wainscotings and the shrill jangle
of the new bells, gave one the impression of a table-d'hôte in some
great hotel in Smyrna or Calcutta, or of the gorgeous saloon of a
trans-Atlantic liner, the _Péreire_ or the _Sinai_.

It would seem that such a variety of guests--I had almost said of
passengers--would make the repast animated and noisy. Far from it. They
all ate nervously, in silence, watching one another out of the corner
of the eye; and even the most worldly, those who seemed most at ease,
had in their eyes the wandering, distressed expression indicating a
persistent thought, a feverish anxiety which caused them to speak
without answering, to listen without understanding a word of what was
said.

Suddenly the door of the dining-room was thrown open.

"Ah! there's Jenkins," exclaimed the Nabob, joyfully. "Hail, doctor,
hail! How are you, my boy?"

A circular smile, a vigorous handshake for the host, and Jenkins took
his seat opposite him, beside Monpavon and in front of a plate which a
servant brought in hot haste, exactly as at a table-d'hôte. Amid those
preoccupied, feverish faces, that one presented a striking contrast
with its good-humor, its expansive smile, and the loquacious,
flattering affability which makes the Irish to a certain extent the
Gascons of Great Britain. And what a robust appetite! with what energy,
what liberty of conscience, he managed his double row of white teeth,
talking all the while.

"Well, Jansoulet, did you read it?"

"Read what, pray?"

"What! don't you know? Haven't you read what the _Messager_ said
about you this morning?"

Beneath the thick tan on his cheeks the Nabob blushed like a child, and
his eyes sparkled with delight as he replied:

"Do you mean it? The _Messager_ said something about me?"

"Two whole columns. How is it that Moëssard didn't show it to you?"

"Oh!" said Moëssard modestly, "it wasn't worth the trouble."

He was a journalist in a small way, fair-haired and spruce, a pretty
fellow enough, but with a face marked by the faded look peculiar to
waiters at all-night restaurants, actors and prostitutes, made up of
conventional grimaces and the sallow reflection of the gas. He was
reputed to be the plighted lover of an exiled queen of very easy
virtue. That rumor was whispered about wherever he went, and gave him
an envied and most contemptible prominence in his circle.

Jansoulet insisted upon reading the article, being impatient to hear
what was said of him. Unfortunately Jenkins had left his copy at the
duke's.

"Let some one go at once and get me a _Messager_," said the Nabob
to the servant behind his chair.

Moëssard interposed:

"That isn't necessary; I must have the thing about me."

And with the free and easy manner of the tap-room habitué, 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, Moëssard took back his proof and
began to read aloud the WORK OF BETHLEHEM AND M. BERNARD JANSOULET, a
long deliverance in favor of artificial nursing, written from Jenkins'
notes, which were recognizable by certain grandiloquent phrases of the
sort that the Irishman affected: "the long martyrology of infancy--the
venality of the breast--the goat, the beneficent nurse,"--and
concluding, after a turgid description of the magnificent establishment
at Nanterre, with a eulogy of Jenkins and the glorification of
Jansoulet: "O Bernard Jansoulet, benefactor of infancy!"

You should have seen the annoyed, scandalized faces of the guests. What
a schemer that Moëssard was! What impudent sycophancy! And the same
envious, disdainful smile distorted every mouth. The devil of it was
that they were forced to applaud, to appear enchanted, as their host's
sense of smell was not surfeited by the odor of incense, and as he took
everything very seriously, both the article and the applause that it
called forth. His broad face beamed during the reading. Many and many a
time, far away in Africa, he had dreamed of being thus belauded in the
Parisian papers, of becoming a person of some consequence in that
society, the first of all societies, upon which the whole world has its
eyes fixed as upon a beacon-light. Now that dream was fulfilled. He
gazed at all those men around his table, at that sumptuous dessert, at
that wainscoted dining-room, certainly as high as the church in his
native village; he listened to the dull roar of Paris, rumbling and
tramping beneath his windows, with the unspoken thought that he was
about to become a great wheel in that ever-active, complicated
mechanism. And thereupon, while he sat, enjoying the sense of
well-being that follows a substantial meal, between the lines of that
triumphant apology he evoked, by way of contrast, the panorama of his
own life, his wretched childhood, his haphazard youth, no less
distressing to recall, the days without food, the nights without a
place to lay his head. And suddenly, when the reading was at an end, in
the midst of a veritable overflow of joy, of one of those outbursts of
Southern effusiveness which compel one to think aloud, he cried,
protruding his thick lips toward the guests in his genial smile:

"Ah! my friends, my dear friends, if you knew how happy I am, how proud
I feel!"

It was barely six weeks since he landed in France. With the exception
of two or three compatriots, he had known these men whom he called his
friends hardly more than a day, and only from having loaned them money.
Wherefore that sudden expansiveness seemed decidedly strange; but
Jansoulet, too deeply moved to notice anything, continued:

"After what I have just heard, when I see myself here in this great
city of Paris, surrounded by all the illustrious names and
distinguished minds within its limits, and then recall my father's
peddler's stall! For I was born in a peddler's stall. My father sold
old iron at a street corner in Bourg-Saint-Andéol! It was as much as
ever if we had bread to eat every day, and stew every Sunday. Ask
Cabassu. He knew me in those days. He can tell you if I am lying. Oh!
yes, I have known what poverty is." He raised his head in an outburst
of pride, breathing in the odor of truffles with which the heavy
atmosphere was impregnated. "I have known poverty, genuine poverty too,
and for a long time. I have been cold, I have been hungry, and horribly
hungry, you know, the kind of hunger that makes you stupid, that twists
your stomach, makes your head go round, and prevents you from seeing,
just as if some one had dug out the inside of your eyes with an
oyster-knife. I have passed whole days in bed for lack of a coat to
wear; lucky when I had a bed, which I sometimes hadn't. I have tried to
earn my bread at every trade; and the bread cost me so much suffering,
it was so hard and tough that I still have the bitter, mouldy taste of
it in my mouth. And that's the way it was till I was thirty years old.
Yes, my friends, at thirty--and I'm not fifty yet--I was still a
beggar, without a sou, with no future, with my heart full of remorse
for my poor mother who was dying of hunger in her hovel down in the
provinces, and to whom I could give nothing."

The faces of the people who surrounded that strange host as he told the
story of his evil days were a curious spectacle. Some seemed disgusted,
especially Monpavon. That display of old rags seemed to him in
execrable taste, and to denote utter lack of breeding. Cardailhac, that
sceptic and man of refined taste, a foe to all emotional scenes, sat
with staring eyes and as if hypnotized, cutting a piece of fruit with
the end of his fork into strips as thin as cigarette papers. The
Governor, on the contrary, went through a pantomime expressive of
perfunctory admiration, with exclamations of horror and compassion;
while, in striking contrast to him, and not far away, Brahim Bey, the
thunderbolt of war, in whom the reading of the article, followed by
discussion after a substantial repast, had induced a refreshing nap,
was sleeping soundly, with his mouth like a round O in his white
moustache, and with the blood congested in his face as a result of the
creeping up of his gorget. But the general expression was indifference
and ennui. What interest had they, I ask you, in Jansoulet's childhood
at Bourg-Saint-Andéol, in what he had suffered, and how he had been
driven from pillar to post? They had not come there for such stuff as
that. So it was that expressions of feigned interest, eyes that counted
the eggs in the ceiling or the crumbs of bread on the table-cloth, lips
tightly compressed to restrain a yawn, betrayed the general impatience
caused by that untimely narrative. But he did not grow weary. He took
pleasure in the recital of his past suffering, as the sailor in a safe
haven delights in recalling his voyages in distant seas, and the
dangers, and the terrible shipwrecks. Next came the tale of his good
luck, the extraordinary accident that suddenly started him on the road
to fortune. "I was wandering about the harbor of Marseille, with a
comrade as out-at-elbows as myself, who also made his fortune in the
Bey's service, and, after being my chum, my partner, became my
bitterest enemy. I can safely tell you his name, _pardi_! He is well
enough known, Hemerlingue. Yes, messieurs, the head of the great
banking-house of Hemerlingue and Son hadn't at that time the money to
buy two sous' worth of crabs on the quay. Intoxicated by the air of
travel that you breathe in those parts, it occurred to us to go and
seek a living in some sunny country, as the foggy countries were so
cruel to us. But where should we go? We did what sailors sometimes do
to decide what den they shall squander their wages in. They stick a bit
of paper on the rim of a hat. Then they twirl the hat on a cane, and
when it stops, they go in the direction in which the paper points. For
us the paper needle pointed to Tunis. A week later I landed at Tunis
with half a louis in my pocket, and I return to-day with twenty-five
millions."

There was a sort of electric shock around the table, a gleam in every
eye, even in those of the servants. Cardailhac exclaimed: "Mazette!"
Monpavon's nose subsided.

"Yes, my children, twenty-five millions in available funds, to say
nothing of all that I've left in Tunis, my two palaces on the Bardo, my
vessels in the harbor of La Goulette, my diamonds and my jewels, which
are certainly worth more than twice that. And you know," he added, with
his genial smile, in his hoarse, unmusical voice, "when it's all gone,
there will still be some left."

The whole table rose, electrified.

"Bravo! Ah! bravo!"

"Superb."

"Very _chic_--very _chic_."

"Well said."

"A man like that ought to be in the Chamber."

"He shall be, _per Bacco!_ my word for it," exclaimed the Governor, in
a voice of thunder; and, carried away by admiration, not knowing how to
manifest his enthusiasm, he seized the Nabob's great hairy hand and
impulsively put it to his lips. Everybody was standing; they did not
resume their seats.

Jansoulet, radiant with pleasure, had also risen.

"Let us have our coffee," he said, throwing down his napkin.

Immediately the party circulated noisily through the salons, enormous
rooms, in which the light, the decoration, the magnificence consisted
of gold alone. It fell from the ceiling in blinding rays, oozed from
the walls in fillets, window-sashes and frames of all sorts. One
retained a little of it on one's hands after moving a chair or opening
a window; and even the hangings, having been dipped in that Pactolus,
preserved upon their stiff folds the rigidity and sheen of metal. But
there was nothing individual, homelike, dainty. It was the monotonous
splendor of the furnished apartment. And this impression of a flying
camp, of a temporary establishment, was heightened by the idea of
travelling that hovered about that fortune drawn from distant sources,
like a cloud of uncertainty or a threat.

The coffee was served in the Oriental fashion, with all the grounds, in
small filigreed silver cups, and the guests stood around in groups,
drinking hastily, burning their tongues, watching one another
furtively, and keeping especially close watch on the Nabob, in order to
grasp the favorable moment to jump upon him, drag him into a corner of
one of those huge rooms, and arrange their loan at last. For it was
that for which they had been waiting for two hours, that was the object
of their visit, and the fixed idea that gave them that distraught,
falsely attentive air, during the breakfast. But now there was no more
embarrassment, no more grimacing. Everybody in that strange company
knew that, in the Nabob's crowded existence, the coffee hour alone was
left free for confidential audiences, and as every one wished to take
advantage of it, as they had all come for the purpose of tearing a
handful of wool from that golden fleece which offered itself to them so
good-naturedly, they no longer talked or listened, they attended
strictly to business.

Honest Jenkins is the one who begins. He has led his friend Jansoulet
into a window-recess and is submitting to him the drawings for the
house at Nanterre. A pretty outlay, by heaven! One hundred and fifty
thousand francs for the property, and, in addition, the very
considerable expense of installation, the staff, the bedding, the goats
for nurses, the manager's carriage, the omnibuses to meet the children
at every train. A great deal of money--But how comfortable the dear
little creatures will be there! what a service to Paris, to mankind!
The Government cannot fail to reward with a bit of red ribbon such
unselfish philanthropy. "The Cross, the 15th of August." With those
magic words Jenkins can obtain whatever he wants. With his hoarse,
cheerful voice, which seems to be hailing a vessel in the fog, the
Nabob calls, "Bompain." The man in the fez, tearing himself away from
the cellaret, crosses the salon majestically, whispers, goes away and
returns with an inkstand and a check-book, the leaves of which come out
and fly away of themselves. What a fine thing is wealth! To sign a
check for two hundred thousand francs on his knee costs Jansoulet no
more than to take a louis from his pocket.

The others, with their noses in their cups and rage in their hearts,
watch this little scene from afar. And when Jenkins takes his leave,
bright and smiling, and waving his hand to the different groups,
Monpavon seizes the Governor: "Now, it's our turn." And they pounce
together upon the Nabob, lead him to a divan, force him to sit down,
and squeeze him between them with a savage little laugh that seems to
mean: "What are we going to do to him?" Extract money from him, as much
of it as possible. It must be had in order to float the _Caisse
Territorial_, which has been aground for years, buried in sand to her
masthead. A magnificent operation, this of floating her again, if we
are to believe these two gentlemen; for the buried craft is full of
ingots, of valuable merchandise, of the thousand varied treasures of a
new country of which every one is talking and of which no one knows
anything. The aim of Paganetti of Porto-Vecchio in founding that
unrivalled establishment was to monopolize the exploitation of Corsica:
iron mines, sulphur mines, copper mines, marble quarries, chalybeate
and sulphur springs, vast forests of lignum vitæ and oak; and to
facilitate that exploitation by building a network of railroads
throughout the island, and establishing a line of steamboats. Such was
the gigantic enterprise to which he has harnessed himself. He has sunk
a large amount of money in it, and the new-comer, the laborer of the
eleventh hour, will reap the whole profit.

While the Corsican with his Italian accent, his frantic gestures,
enumerates the _splendores_ of the affair, Monpavon, dignified and
haughty, nods his head with an air of conviction, and from time to
time, when he deems the moment propitious, tosses into the conversation
the name of the Duc de Mora, which always produces its effect on the
Nabob.

"Well, what is it that you need?"

"Millions," says Monpavon superbly, in the tone of a man who is not
embarrassed by any lack of persons to whom to apply. "Yes, millions.
But it's a magnificent opening. And, as His Excellency said, it would
afford a capitalist an opportunity to attain a lofty position, even a
political position. Just consider a moment! in that penniless country.
One might become a member of the General Council, a Deputy--" The Nabob
starts. And little Paganetti, feeling the bait tremble on his hook,
continues: "Yes, a Deputy; you shall be one when I choose. At a word
from me all Corsica is at your service." Thereupon he launches out on a
bewildering extemporization, counting up the votes at his disposal, the
cantons which will rise at his summons. "You bring me your funds--I
give you a whole people." The affair is carried by storm.

"Bompain! Bompain!" calls the Nabob in his enthusiasm. He has but one
fear, that the thing will escape him; and to bind Paganetti, who does
not conceal his need of money, he hastens to pour a first instalment
into the _Caisse Territoriale_. Second appearance of the man in the red
cap with the check-book, which he holds solemnly against his breast,
like a choir-boy carrying the Gospel. Second affixture of Jansoulet's
signature to a check, which the Governor stows away with a negligent
air, and which effects a sudden transformation of his whole person.
Paganetti, but now so humble and unobtrusive, walks away with the
self-assurance of a man held in equilibrium by four hundred thousand
francs, while Monpavon, carrying his head even higher than usual,
follows close upon his heels and watches over him with a more than
paternal solicitude.

"There's a good stroke of business well done," says the Nabob to
himself, "and I'll go and drink my coffee." But ten borrowers are lying
in wait for him. The quickest, the most adroit, is Cardailhac, the
manager, who hooks him and carries him off into an empty salon. "Let us
talk a bit, my good friend. I must set before you the condition of our
theatre." A very complicated condition, no doubt; for here comes
Monsieur Bompain again, and more sky-blue leaves fly away from the
check-book. Now, whose turn is it? The journalist Moëssard 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 curé asks for funds to rebuild his church, and takes
his check by assault with the brutality of a Peter the Hermit. And now
old Schwalbach approaches, with his nose in his beard, winking
mysteriously. "Sh! he has vound ein bearl," for monsieur's gallery, an
Hobbema from the Duc de Mora's collection. But several people have
their eye on it. It will be difficult to obtain. "I must have it at any
price," says the Nabob, allured by the name of Mora. "You understand,
Schwalbach, I must have that _Nobbema_. Twenty thousand francs for you
if you hit it off."

"I vill do mein best, Monsieur Jansoulet."

And the old knave, as he turns away, calculates that the Nabob's twenty
thousand, added to the ten thousand the duke has promised him if he
gets rid of his picture, will make a very pretty little profit for him.

While these fortunate ones succeed one another, others prowl about
frantic with impatience, biting their nails to the quick; for one and
all have come with the same object. From honest Jenkins, who headed the
procession, down to Cabassu, the _masseur_, who closes it, one and
all lead the Nabob aside. But however far away they take him in that
long file of salons, there is always some indiscreet mirror to reflect
the figure of the master of the house, and the pantomime of his broad
back. That back is so eloquent! At times it straightens up indignantly.
"Oh! no, that is too much!" Or else it collapses with comical
resignation. "Very well, if you will have it so." And Bompain's fez
always lurking in some corner of the landscape.

When these have finished, others arrive; they are the small fish that
follow in the wake of the great sharks in the savage hunting in the
sea. There is constant going and coming through those superb white and
gold salons, a slamming of doors, an unbroken current of insolent
extortion of the most hackneyed type, attracted from the four corners
of Paris and the suburbs by that enormous fortune and that incredible
gullibility.

For these small sums, this incessant doling out of cash, he did not
have recourse to the checkbook. In one of his salons the Nabob kept a
commode, an ugly little piece of furniture representing the savings of
some concierge; it was the first article Jansoulet bought when he was
in a position to renounce furnished apartments, and he had kept it ever
since like a gambler's fetish; its three drawers always contained two
hundred thousand francs in current funds. He resorted to that
never-failing supply on the days of his great audiences, ostentatiously
plunging his hands in the gold and silver, stuffing it into his pockets
to produce it later with the gesture of a cattle-dealer, a certain
vulgar way of raising the skirts of his coat and sending his hand "down
to the bottom of the pile." A tremendous inroad must have been made
upon the little drawers to-day.

                         *        *        *

After so many whispered conferences, requests more or less clearly
stated, anxious entrances and triumphant exits, the last client
dismissed, the commode drawers locked, the apartment on Place Vendôme
was left in solitude in the fading light of four o'clock, the close of
the November days which are prolonged so far beyond that hour by the
aid of artificial light. The servants removed the coffee cups, the
_raki_ and the open, half-emptied boxes of cigars. The Nabob, thinking
that he was alone, drew a long breath of relief: "Ouf! that's all
over." But no. A figure emerges from a corner already in shadow, and
approaches with a letter in his hand.

"Another!"

Thereupon the poor man instinctively repeated his eloquent
horse-dealer's gesture. At that the visitor, also instinctively,
recoiled so quickly and with such an insulted air that the Nabob
realized that he was in error and took the trouble to observe the young
man who stood before him, simply but correctly dressed, with a sallow
complexion, absolutely no beard, regular features, perhaps a little too
serious and determined for his years, which fact, with his extremely
light hair, curling tightly all over his head like a powdered wig, gave
him the aspect of a young deputy of the Tiers État 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 "Château de Saint-Romans" at the top.

    "MY DEAR SON,--This letter will be handed to you by the oldest of
    Monsieur de Géry's children, the former justice of the peace at
    Bourg-Saint-Andéol, who was so kind to us--"

The Nabob interrupted himself to say:

"I ought to have known you, Monsieur de Géry. 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 Géry family had
formerly rendered them, she commended Monsieur Paul to him. An orphan,
with his two young brothers to support, he had been admitted to
practice as an advocate in the South and was starting for Paris to seek
his fortune. She implored Jansoulet to assist him, "for he sorely
needed it, poor fellow." And she signed: "Your mother, who is dying
for a sight of you, FRANÇOISE."

That letter from his mother, whom he had not seen for six years, the
Southern forms of expression in which he recognized familiar
intonations, the coarse handwriting which drew for him a beloved face,
all wrinkled and sunburned and furrowed, but smiling still beneath a
peasant's cap, made a profound impression upon the Nabob. During the
six weeks he had been in France, immersed in the eddying whirl of
Paris, of his installation, he had not once thought of the dear old
soul; and now he saw her in every line. He stood for a moment gazing at
the letter, which shook in his fat fingers.

Then, his emotion having subsided, "Monsieur de Géry," he said, "I am
happy to have the opportunity to repay a little of the kindness your
family has showered upon mine. This very day, if you agree, I take you
into my service. You are well educated, you seem intelligent, you can
be of very great service to me. I have innumerable plans, innumerable
matters in hand. I have been drawn into a multitude of large industrial
undertakings. I need some one to assist me, to take my place at need.
To be sure, I have a secretary, a steward, that excellent Bompain; but
the poor fellow knows nothing of Paris. You will say that you are fresh
from the provinces. But that's of no consequence. Well educated as you
are, a Southerner, open-eyed and adaptable, you will soon get the hang
of the boulevard. At all events, I'll undertake your education in that
direction myself. In a few weeks you shall have a foot as thoroughly
Parisian as mine, I promise you."

Poor man! It was touching to hear him talk about his _Parisian foot_
and his experience, when he was fated never to be more than a beginner.

"Well, it's a bargain, eh? I take you for my secretary. You shall have
a fixed salary which we will agree upon directly; and I will give you a
chance to make your fortune quickly."

And as de Géry, suddenly relieved of all his anxieties as a new-comer,
a petitioner, a neophyte, did not stir for fear of waking from a dream,
the Nabob added in a softer tone:

"Now come and sit here by me, and let us talk a little about mamma."




III.

MEMOIRS OF A CLERK.--A CASUAL GLANCE AT THE "CAISSE TERRITORIALE."


I had just finished my humble morning meal, and, as my custom is, had
bestowed the balance of my provisions in the safe in the directors'
room, a magnificent safe with a secret lock, which has served as my
pantry during the four years, or nearly that, of my employment in the
_Territoriale_; suddenly the Governor enters the office, red as a
turkey-cock, his eyes inflamed as if he were fresh from a feast,
breathing noisily, and says to me in vulgar phrase, with his Italian
accent:

"There's a horrible smell here, _Moussiou_ Passajon."

There was not a horrible smell, if you please. But--shall I say it?--I
had sent out for a few onions to put around a bit of knuckle of veal,
brought down to me by Mademoiselle Séraphine, the cook on the second
floor, whose accounts I write up every evening. I tried to explain to
the Governor; but he worked himself into a rage, saying that in his
opinion there was no sense in poisoning offices in that way, and that
it wasn't worth while to pay twelve thousand francs a year for a suite
of rooms with eight windows on the front, in the best part of Boulevard
Malesherbes, to cook onions in. I don't know what he didn't say to me
in his effervescent state. For my part, I was naturally vexed to be
spoken to in that insolent tone. The least one can do is to be polite
to people whom one neglects to pay, deuce take it! So I retorted that
it was too bad, really; but, if the _Caisse Territoriale_ would pay
what they owe me, to wit my arrears of salary for four years, plus
seven thousand francs advanced by me to the Governor to pay for
carriages, newspapers, cigars and American drinks on the days the
council met, I would go and eat like a Christian at the nearest cheap
alehouse, and should not be reduced to cooking for myself, in the
directors' room, a wretched stew which I owed to the public compassion
of cooks. And there you are!

In speaking thus I gave way to an indignant impulse very excusable in
the eyes of anybody who is acquainted with my position here. However, I
had said nothing unseemly, but had kept within the limits of language
suited to my age and education. (I must have stated somewhere in these
memoirs that I passed more than thirty of my sixty-five years as
apparitor to the Faculty of Letters at Dijon. Hence my taste for
reports and memoirs, and those notions of academic style of which
traces will be found in many passages of this lucubration.) I had, I
repeat, expressed myself to the Governor with the greatest reserve,
refraining from employing any of those insulting words with which every
one here regales him during the day, from our two censors, M. de
Monpavon, who laughingly calls him _Fleur-de-Mazas_, whenever he comes
here, and M. de Bois-l'Héry of the Trompettes Club, who is as vulgar in
his language as a groom, and always says to him by way of adieu: "To
your wooden bed, flea!" From those two down to our cashier, whom I have
heard say to him a hundred times, tapping his ledger: "There's enough
in here to send you to the galleys whenever I choose." And yet, for all
that, my simple observation produced a most extraordinary effect upon
him. The circles around his eyes turned bright yellow, and he said,
trembling with anger, the wicked anger of his country: "Passajon,
you're a blackguard! One word more and I discharge you." I was struck
dumb with amazement. Discharge me--me! And what about my four years'
arrears, and my seven thousand francs of advances! As if he read my
thoughts as they entered my head, the Governor replied that all the
accounts were to be settled, including mine. "By the way," he added,
"just call all the clerks to my office. I have some great news to tell
them." With that he entered his office and slammed the door behind him.

That devil of a man! No matter how well you may know him, know what a
liar he is and what an actor, he always finds a way to put you off with
his palaver. My account! Why, I was so excited that my legs ran away
with me while I was going about to notify the staff.

Theoretically there are twelve of us at the _Caisse Territoriale_,
including the Governor and the dandy Moëssard, manager of the _Vérité
Financière_; but really there are less than half that number. In the
first place, since the _Vérité_ ceased to appear--that was two years
ago--M. Moëssard hasn't once set foot inside our doors. It seems that
he is swimming in honors and wealth, that he has for a dear friend a
queen, a real queen, who gives him all the money he wants. Oh! what a
Babylon this Paris is! The others look in occasionally to see if by
chance there is anything new at the _Caisse_; and, as there never is,
weeks pass without our seeing them. Four or five faithful ones, poor
old fellows all, like myself, persist in appearing regularly every
morning, at the same hour, as a matter of habit, because they have
nothing else to do, and are at a loss to know what to turn their hand
to; but they all busy themselves with matters that have no connection
whatever with the office. One must live, there's no doubt of that! And
then a man cannot pass his day lounging from chair to chair, from
window to window, to look out (eight front windows on the boulevard).
So we try to get such work as we can. For my part, I write for
Mademoiselle Séraphine and another cook in the house. Then I write
up my memoirs, which takes no small amount of time. Our receiving
teller--there's a fellow who hasn't a very laborious task with
us--makes netting for a house that deals in fishermen's supplies. One
of our two copyists, who writes a beautiful hand, copies plays for a
dramatic agency; the other makes little toys worth a sou, which are
sold by hucksters at the street corners toward New Year's Day, and in
that way succeeds in keeping himself from starving to death the rest of
the year. Our cashier is the only one who does no outside work. He
would think that he had forfeited his honor. He is a very proud man,
who never complains, and whose only fear is that he may seem to be
short of linen. Locked into his office, he employs his time from
morning till night, making shirt-fronts, collars and cuffs out of
paper. He has attained very great skill, and his linen, always
dazzlingly white, would deceive any one, were it not that, at the
slightest movement, when he walks, when he sits down, it cracks as if
he had a pasteboard box in his stomach. Unluckily all that paper does
not feed him; and he is so thin, he has such a gaunt look, that one
wonders what he can live on. Between ourselves, I suspect him of
sometimes paying a visit to my pantry. That's an easy matter for him;
for, in his capacity of cashier, he has the "word" that opens the
secret lock, and I fancy that, when my back is turned, he does a little
foraging among my supplies.

Surely this is a most extraordinary, incredible banking-house. And yet
what I am writing is the solemn truth, and Paris is full of financial
establishments of the same sort as ours. Ah! if I ever publish my
memoirs. But let me take up the interrupted thread of my narrative.

When we were all assembled in his office, the manager said to us with
great solemnity:

"Messieurs and dear comrades, the time of our trials is at an end. The
_Caisse Territoriale_ is entering upon a new phase of its existence."

With that he began to tell us about a superb _combinazione_--that is
his favorite word, and he says it in such an insinuating tone!--a
_combinazione_ in which the famous Nabob of whom all the papers are
talking is to have a part. Thus the _Caisse Territoriale_ would be able
to discharge its obligation to its loyal servants, to reward those who
had shown devotion to its service and lop off those who were useless.
This last for me, I imagine. And finally: "Make up your accounts. They
will all be settled to-morrow." Unfortunately he has so often soothed
our feelings with lying words that his discourse produced no effect.
Formerly those fine promises of his always succeeded. On the
announcement of a new _combinazione_, we used to caper about and weep
with joy in the offices, and embrace one another like shipwrecked
sailors at sight of a sail.

Everyone prepared his account for the next day, as he had told us. But
the next day, no Governor. The next day but one, still no Governor. He
had gone on a little journey.

At last, when we were all together, exasperated beyond measure, putting
out our tongues, crazy for the water that he had held to our mouths,
the Governor arrived, dropped into a chair, hid his face in his hands,
and, before we had time to speak to him, exclaimed: "Kill me, kill me!
I am a miserable impostor. The _combinazione_ has fallen through.
_Pechero!_ the _combinazione_ has fallen through!" And he cried and
sobbed, threw himself on his knees, tore out his hair by handfuls and
rolled on the carpet; he called us all by our nicknames, begged us to
take his life, spoke of his wife and children, whom he had utterly
ruined. And not one of us had the courage to complain in the face of
such despair. What do I say? We ended by sharing it. No, never since
theatres existed, has there been such an actor. But to-day, it is all
over, our confidence has departed. When he had gone everybody gave a
shrug. I must confess, however, that for a moment I was shaken. The
assurance with which he talked about discharging me, and the name of
the Nabob, who was so wealthy--

"Do you believe that?" said the cashier. "Why, you'll always be an
innocent, my poor Passajon. Never you fear! The Nabob's in it just
about as much as Moëssard's queen was."

And he went back to his shirt-fronts.

His last remark referred back to the time when Moëssard was paying
court to his queen and had promised the Governor that, in case he was
successful, he would induce Her Majesty to invest some funds in our
enterprise. All of us in the office were informed of that new prospect
and deeply interested, as you may imagine, in its speedy realization,
since our money depended on it. For two months that fable kept us in
breathless suspense. We were consumed with anxiety, we scrutinized
Moëssard's face; we thought that the effects of his association with
the lady were very visible there; and our old cashier, with his proud,
serious air, would reply gravely from behind his grating, when we
questioned him on the subject: "There's nothing new," or: "The affair's
in good shape." With that everybody was content and we said to each
other: "It's coming along, it's coming along," as if it were a matter
in the ordinary course of business. No, upon my word, Paris is the
only place in the world where such things can be seen. It positively
makes one's head spin sometimes. The upshot of it was that, one fine
morning, Moëssard stopped coming to the office. He had succeeded, it
seems; but the _Caisse Territoriale_ did not seem to him a sufficiently
advantageous investment for his dear friend's funds. That was
honorable, wasn't it?

However, the sentiment of honor is so easily lost that one can scarcely
believe it. When I think that I, Passajon, with my white hair, my
venerable appearance, my spotless past--thirty years of academic
service--have accustomed myself to living amid these infamies and base
intrigues like a fish in water! One may well ask what I am doing here,
why I remain here, how I happened to come here.

How did I happen to come here? Oh! bless your soul, in the simplest way
you can imagine. Nearly four years ago, my wife being dead and my
children married, I had just accepted my retiring pension as apparitor
to the Faculty, when an advertisement in the newspaper happened to
come to my notice. "WANTED, a clerk of mature age at the _Caisse
Territoriale_, 56 Boulevard Malesherbes. Good references." Let me make
a confession at once. The modern Babylon had always tempted me. And
then I felt that I was still vigorous, I could see ten active years
before me, during which I might earn a little money, much perhaps, by
investing my savings in the banking-house I was about to enter. So I
wrote, inclosing my photograph by Crespon, Place De Marché, in which I
am represented with a clean-shaven chin, a bright eye under my heavy
white eyebrows, wearing my steel chain around my neck, my insignia as
an academic official, "with the air of a conscript father on his curule
chair!" as our dean, M. Chalmette, used to say. (Indeed he declared
that I looked very much like the late Louis XVIII., only not so heavy.)

So I furnished the best of references, the most flattering
recommendations from the gentlemen of the Faculty. By return mail the
Governor answered my letter to the effect that my face pleased him--I
should think so, _parbleu!_ a reception room guarded by an imposing
countenance like mine is a tempting bait to the investor,--and that I
might come when I chose. I ought, you will tell me, to have made
inquiries on my own account. Oh! of course I ought. But I had so much
information to furnish about myself that it never occurred to me to ask
them for any about themselves. Moreover, how could one have a feeling
of distrust after seeing these superb quarters, these lofty ceilings,
these strong-boxes, as large as wardrobes, and these mirrors in which
you can see yourself from head to foot? And then the sonorous
prospectuses, the millions that I heard flying through the air, the
colossal enterprises with fabulous profits. I was dazzled, fascinated.
I must say, also, that at that time the establishment had a very
different look from that it has to-day. Certainly affairs were going
badly--they have always gone badly, have our affairs--and the journal
appeared only at irregular intervals. But one of the Governor's little
_combinazioni_ enabled him to save appearances.

He had conceived the idea, if you please, of opening a patriotic
subscription to erect a statue to General Paolo Paoli, a great man of
his country. The Corsicans are not rich, but they are as vain as
turkeys. So money poured into the _Territoriale_. But unfortunately it
did not last. In two months the statue was devoured, before it was
erected, and the succession of protests and summonses began again.
To-day I am used to it. But when I first came from my province, the
notices posted by order of the court, the bailiffs at the door, made a
painful impression upon me. Inside, no attention was paid to them. They
knew that at the last moment a Monpavon or a Bois-l'Héry was certain to
turn up to appease the bailiffs; for all those gentlemen, being deeply
involved in the affair, are interested to avoid a failure. That is just
what saves our evil-minded little Governor. The others run after their
money--everyone knows what that means in gambling--and they would not
be pleased to know that all the shares they have in their hands are
worth nothing more than their weight as old paper.

From the smallest to the greatest, all of us in the house are in that
plight. From the landlord, to whom we owe two years' rent and who keeps
us on for nothing for fear of losing it all, down to us poor clerks, to
myself, who am in for seven thousand francs of savings and my four
years' back pay, we are all running after our money. That is why I
persist in remaining here.

Doubtless, notwithstanding my advanced age, I might have succeeded, by
favor of my education, my general appearance and the care I have always
taken of my clothes, in getting a place in some other office. There is
a very honorable person of my acquaintance, M. Joyeuse, bookkeeper for
Hemerlingue and Son, the great bankers on Rue Saint-Honoré, who never
fails to say to me whenever he meets me:

"Passajon, my boy, don't stay in that den of thieves. You make a
mistake in staying on there; you'll never get a sou out of it. Come to
Hemerlingue's. I'll undertake to find some little corner for you. You
will earn less, but you'll receive very much more."

I feel that he is right, the honest fellow. But it's stronger than I
am, I cannot make up my mind to go. And yet this is not a cheerful life
that I lead here in these great cold rooms where no one ever comes,
where every one slinks into a corner without speaking. What would you
have? We know one another too well, that's the whole of it. Up to last
year we had meetings of the council of supervision, meetings of
stockholders, stormy, uproarious meetings, genuine battles of savages,
whose yells could be heard at the Madeleine. And subscribers used to
come too, several times a week, indignant because they had never heard
anything from their money. Those were the times when our Governor came
out strong. I have seen people go into his office, monsieur, as fierce
as wolves thirsty for blood, and come out, after a quarter of an hour,
milder than sheep, satisfied, reassured, and their pockets comforted
with a few bank-notes. For there was the cunning of the thing: to ruin
with money the poor wretches who came to demand it. To-day the
shareholders of the _Caisse Territoriale_ never stir. I think that they
are all dead or resigned to their fate. The council never meets. We
have sessions only on paper; it is my duty to make up a so-called
balance-sheet--always the same--of which I make a fresh copy every
three months. We never see a living soul, except that at rare intervals
some subscriber to the Paoli statue drops down on us from the wilds of
Corsica, anxious to know if the monument is progressing; or perhaps
some devout reader of the _Vérité Financière_, which disappeared more
than two years ago, comes with an air of timidity to renew his
subscription, and requests that it be forwarded a little more
regularly, if possible. There is a confidence which nothing weakens.
When one of those innocent creatures falls in the midst of our
half-starved band, it is something terrible. We surround him, we
embrace him, we try to get his name on one of our lists, and, in case
he resists, if he will subscribe neither to the Paoli monument nor to
the Corsican railways, then those gentry perform what they call--my pen
blushes to write it--what they call "the drayman trick."

This is how it is done: we always have in the office a package prepared
beforehand, a box tied with stout string which arrives, presumably from
some railway station, while the visitor is there. "Twenty francs cartage,"
says the one of us who brings in the package. (Twenty francs, or some
times thirty, according to the victim's appearance.) Every one at once
begins to fumble in his pocket. "Twenty francs cartage! I haven't
it."--"Nor I--What luck!" Some one runs to the counting-room.--Closed!
They look for the cashier. Gone out. And the hoarse voice of the
drayman waxing impatient in the ante-room: "Come, come, make haste." (I
am generally selected for the drayman's part, because of my voice.)
What is to be done? Send back the package? the Governor won't like
that. "Messieurs, I beg you to allow me," the innocent victim ventures
to observe, opening his purse.--"Ah! monsieur, if you would."--He pays
his twenty francs, we escort him to the door, and as soon as his back
is turned we divide the fruit of the crime, laughing like brigands.

Fie! Monsieur Passajon. Such performances at your time of life! Oh!
_Mon Dieu_! I know all about it. I know that I should honor myself
much more if I left this vile place. But, what then? why, I must
abandon all that I have at stake here. No, it is not possible. It is
urgently necessary that I remain, that I keep a close watch, that I am
always on hand to have the advantage of a windfall, if one should come.
Oh! I swear by my ribbon, by my thirty years of academic service, if
ever an affair like this of the Nabob makes it possible for me to
recoup my losses, I will not wait a moment, I will take myself off in
hot haste to look after my little vineyard near Monbars, cured forever
of my speculative ideas. But alas! that is a very chimerical
hope,--played out, discredited, well known as we are on 'Change, with
our shares no longer quoted at the Bourse, our obligations fast
becoming waste paper, such a wilderness of falsehood and debts, and the
hole that is being dug deeper and deeper. (We owe at this moment three
million five hundred thousand francs. And yet that three millions is
not what embarrasses us. On the other hand it is what keeps us up; but
we owe the concierge a little bill of a hundred and twenty five francs
for postage stamps, gas and the like. That's the dangerous thing.) And
they would have us believe that a man, a great financier like this
Nabob, even though he was just from the Congo or had come from the moon
this very day, is fool enough to put his money in such a trap.
Nonsense! Is it possible? Tell that story elsewhere, my dear Governor.




IV.

A DÉBUT IN SOCIETY.


"Monsieur Bernard Jansoulet!"

That plebeian name, proudly announced by the liveried footman in a
resounding voice, rang through Jenkins's salons like the clash of
cymbals, like one of the gongs that announce fantastic apparitions in a
fairy play. The candles paled, flames flashed from every eye, at the
dazzling prospect of Oriental treasures, of showers of pearls and
sequins let fall by the magic syllables of that name, but yesterday
unknown.

Yes, it was he, the Nabob, the richest of the rich, the great Parisian
curiosity, flavored with that spice of adventure that is so alluring to
surfeited multitudes. All heads were turned, all conversation was
interrupted; there was a grand rush for the door, a pushing and
jostling like that of the crowds on the quay at a seaport, to watch the
arrival of a felucca with a cargo of gold.

Even the hospitable Jenkins, who was standing in the first salon to
receive his guests, despite his usual self-possession abruptly left the
group of men with whom he was talking and bore away to meet the
galleons.

"A thousand times, a thousand times too kind. Madame Jenkins will be
very happy, very proud. Come and let me take you to her."

And in his haste, in his vainglorious delight, he dragged Jansoulet
away so quickly that the latter had no time to present his companion,
Paul de Géry, whom he was introducing into society. The young man was
well pleased to be overlooked. He glided into the mass of black coats
which was forced farther and farther back by every new arrival, and was
swallowed up in it, a prey to the foolish terror that every young
provincial feels on his first appearance in a Parisian salon,
especially when he is shrewd and intelligent and does not wear the
imperturbable self-assurance of the bumpkin like a coat of mail beneath
his linen buckler.

You, Parisians of Paris, who, ever since you were sixteen have
exhibited your youth at the receptions of all classes of society, in
your first black coat with your crush-hat on your hip,--you, I say,
have no conception of that anguish, compounded of vanity, timidity and
recollections of romantic books, which screws our teeth together,
embarrasses our movements, makes us for a whole evening a statue
between two doors, a fixture in a window-recess, a poor, pitiful,
wandering creature, incapable of making his existence manifest
otherwise than by changing his position from time to time, preferring
to die of thirst rather than go near the sideboard, and going away
without having said a word, unless we may have stammered one of those
incoherent absurdities which we remember for months, and which makes
us, when we think of it at night, utter an _ah!_ of frantic shame and
bury our face in the pillow.

Paul de Géry was a martyr of that type. In his province he had always
lived a very retired life, with a pious, melancholy old aunt, until the
time when, as a student of law, originally destined for a profession in
which his father had left an excellent reputation, he had been induced
to frequent the salons of some of the counsellors of the court,
old-fashioned, gloomy dwellings, with dingy hangings, where he made a
fourth hand at whist with venerable ghosts. Jenkins' evening party was
therefore a début in society for that provincial, whose very ignorance
and Southern adaptability made him first of all a keen observer.

From the place where he stood he watched the interesting procession,
still in progress at midnight, of Jenkins' guests, the whole body of
the fashionable physician's patients; the very flower of society, a
large sprinkling of politics and finance, bankers, deputies, a few
artists, all the jaded ones of Parisian high life, pale and wan, with
gleaming eyes, saturated with arsenic like gluttonous mice, but
insatiably greedy of poison and of life. Through the open salon and the
great reception-room, the doors of which had been removed, he could see
the stairway and landing, profusely decorated with flowers along the
sides, where the long trains were duly spread, their silky weight
seeming to force back the décolleté busts of their wearers in that
graceful ascending motion which caused them to appear, little by
little, until they burst upon one in the full bloom of their splendor.
As the couples reached the top of the stairs they seemed to make their
entrance on the stage; and that was doubly true, for every one left on
the last step the frowns, the wrinkles of deep thought the air of
weariness and all traces of anger or depression, to display a tranquil
countenance, a smile playing over the placid features. The men
exchanged hearty grasps of the hand, warm fraternal greetings; the
women, thinking only of themselves, with little affected shrugs, with a
charming simper and abundant play of the eyes and shoulders, murmured a
few meaningless words of greeting:

"Thanks! Oh! thanks--how kind you are."

Then the couples separated, for an evening party is no longer, as it
used to be, an assemblage of congenial persons, in which the wit of the
women compelled the force of character, the superior knowledge, the
very genius of the men to bow gracefully before it, but a too numerous
mob in which the women, who alone are seated, whisper together like
captives in the harem, and have no other enjoyment than that of being
beautiful or of seeming to be. De Géry, after wandering through the
doctor's library, the conservatory and the billiard room, where there
was smoking, tired of dull, serious conversation, which seemed to him
to be out of keeping in such a festal scene and in the brief hour of
pleasure--some one had asked him carelessly and without looking at him,
what was doing at the Bourse that day--approached the door of the main
salon, which was blockaded by a dense mass of black coats, a surging
sea of heads packed closely together and gazing.

An enormous room, handsomely furnished, with the artistic taste
characteristic of the master and mistress of the house. A few old
pictures against the light background of the draperies. A monumental
chimney-piece, decorated with a fine marble group, "The Seasons" by
Sébastien Ruys, about which long green stalks, with lacelike edges, or
of the stiffness of carved bronze, bent toward the mirror as toward a
stream of limpid water. On the low chairs groups of women crowded
together, blending the vaporous hues of their dresses, forming an
immense nosegay of living flowers, above which gleamed bare white
shoulders, hair studded with diamonds, drops of water on the brunettes,
glistening reflections on the blondes, and the same intoxicating
perfume, the same confused, pleasant buzzing, made by waves of heat and
intangible wings, that caresses all the flowers in the garden in
summer. At times a little laugh, ascending in that luminous atmosphere,
a quicker breath, made plumes and curls tremble, and attracted
attention to a lovely profile. Such was the aspect of the salon.

A few men were there, very few, all persons of distinction, laden with
years and decorations, talking on the arm of a divan or leaning over
the back of a chair with the condescending air we assume in conversing
with children. But amid the placid murmur of the private conversations,
one voice rang out, loud and discordant, the voice of the Nabob, who
was threading his way through that social conservatory with the
self-assurance due to his immense fortune and a certain contempt for
woman which he had brought with him from the Orient.

At that moment, sprawling upon a chair, with his great yellow-gloved
hands awkwardly clasped, he was talking with a very beautiful woman,
whose unusual face--much animation upon features of a severe cast--was
noticeable by reason of its pallor among the surrounding pretty faces,
just as her dress, all white, classic in its draping and moulded to her
graceful, willowy figure, contrasted with much richer costumes, not one
of which had its character of bold simplicity. De Géry, from his
corner, gazed at that smooth, narrow forehead beneath the fringe of
hair brushed low, those long, wide-open eyes of a deep blue, an abysmal
blue, that mouth which ceased to smile only to relax its classic
outline in a weary, spiritless expression. All in all, the somewhat
haughty aspect of an exceptional being.

Some one near him mentioned her name--Felicia Ruys. Thereupon he
understood the rare attraction of that girl, inheritress of her
father's genius, whose new-born celebrity had reached as far as his
province, with the halo of a reputation for great beauty. While he was
gazing at her, admiring her slightest movement, a little puzzled by the
enigma presented by that beautiful face, he heard a whispered
conversation behind him.

"Just see how affable she is with the Nabob! Suppose the duke should
come!"

"Is the Duc de Mora expected?"

"To be sure. The party is given for him; to have him meet Jansoulet."

"And you think that the duke and Mademoiselle Ruys--"

"Where have you come from? It's a liaison known to all Paris. It dates
from the last Salon, for which she did his bust."

"And what about the duchess?"

"Pshaw! she has seen many others. Ah! Madame Jenkins is going to sing."

There was a commotion in the salon, a stronger pressure in the crowd
toward the door, and conversation ceased for a moment. Paul de Géry
drew a long breath. The words he had just overheard had oppressed his
heart. He felt as if he himself were spattered, sullied by the mud
unsparingly thrown upon the ideal he had formed for himself of that
glorious youth, ripened in the sun of art and endowed with such
penetrating charm. He moved away a little, changed his position. He
dreaded to hear some other calumny. Madame Jenkins' voice did him good,
a voice famous in Parisian salons, a voice that, with all its
brilliancy, was in no sense theatrical, but seemed like speech,
thrilling with emotion, striking resonant, unfamiliar chords. The
singer, a woman of from forty to forty-five years of age, had
magnificent hair of the color of ashes, refined, somewhat weak
features, and an expression of great amiability. Still beautiful, she
was dressed with the costly taste of a woman who has not abandoned the
idea of pleasing. Nor had she abandoned it; she and the doctor--she was
then a widow--had been married some ten years, and they seemed still to
be enjoying the first months of their joint happiness. While she sang a
Russian folk-song, as wild and sweet as the smile of a Slav, Jenkins
artlessly manifested his pride without attempt at concealment, his
broad face beamed expansively; and she, every time that she leaned
forward to take breath, turned in his direction a timid, loving glance
which sought him out over the music she held in her hand. And when she
had finished, amid a murmur of delight and admiration, it was touching
to see her secretly press her husband's hand, as if to reserve for
herself a little corner of private happiness amid that great triumph.
Young de Géry was taking comfort in the sight of that happy couple,
when suddenly a voice murmured by his side--it was not the same voice
that had spoken just before:

"You know what people say--that the Jenkinses are not married."

"What nonsense!"

"True, I assure you--it seems that there's a genuine Madame Jenkins
somewhere, but not this one who has been exhibited to us. By the way,
have you noticed--"

The conversation continued in an undertone. Madame Jenkins approached,
bowing and smiling, while the doctor, stopping a salver as it passed,
brought her a glass of bordeaux with the zeal of a mother, an
impresario, a lover. Slander, slander, ineffaceable stain! Now Jenkins'
attentions seemed overdone to the provincial. He thought that there was
something affected, studied in them, and at the same time he fancied
that he noticed in the thanks she expressed to her husband in a low
tone a dread, a submissiveness derogatory to the dignity of a lawful
wife, happy and proud in an unassailable position. "Why, society is a
hideous thing!" said de Géry to himself in dismay, his hands as cold as
ice. The smiles that encompassed him seemed to him like mere grimacing.
He was ashamed and disgusted. Then suddenly his soul rose in revolt:
"Nonsense! it isn't possible!" And, as if in answer to that
exclamation, the voice of slander behind him continued carelessly:
"After all, you know, I am not sure. I simply repeat what I hear. Look,
there's Baronne Hemerlingue. He has all Paris here, this Jenkins."

The baroness came forward on the doctor's arm; he had rushed forward to
meet her, and, despite his perfect control over his features, he seemed
a little perturbed and disconcerted. It had occurred to the excellent
Jenkins to take advantage of his party to make peace between his friend
Hemerlingue and his friend Jansoulet, his two wealthiest patients, who
embarrassed him seriously with their internecine warfare. The Nabob
asked nothing better. He bore his former chum no malice. Their rupture
had come about as a result of Hemerlingue's marriage with one of the
favorites of the former bey. "A woman's row, in fact," said Jansoulet;
and he would be very glad to see the end of it, for any sort of
ill-feeling was burdensome to that exuberant nature. But it seemed that
the baron was not anxious for a reconciliation; for, notwithstanding
the promise he had given Jenkins, his wife appeared alone, to the
Irishman's great chagrin.

She was a tall, thin, fragile personage, with eyebrows like a bird's
feathers, a youthful, frightened manner, thirty years striving to seem
twenty, with a head-dress of grasses and grain drooping over jet black
hair thickly strewn with diamonds. With her long lashes falling over
white cheeks of the wax-like tint of women who have lived long in the
seclusion of a cloister, a little embarrassed in her Parisian garb, she
bore less resemblance to a former occupant of a harem than to a nun who
had renounced her vows and returned to the world. A touch of devotion,
of sanctity in her carriage, a certain ecclesiastical trick of walking
with downcast eyes, elbows close to the sides and hands folded, manners
which she had acquired in the ultra-religious environment in which she
had lived since her conversion and her recent baptism, completed the
resemblance. And you can imagine whether worldly curiosity was rampant
around that ex-odalisque turned fervent Catholic, as she entered the
room, escorted by a sacristan-like figure with a livid face and
spectacles, Maître 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 Géry, who had watched
the whole scene from a distance, saw them talking earnestly together
with a preoccupied air.

The attempt had miscarried. The reconciliation, so cleverly planned,
would not take place. Hemerlingue did not want it. If only the duke did
not break his word! It was getting late. La Wauters, who was to sing
the "Night" aria from the _Magic Flute_, after the performance at
her theatre, had just arrived all muffled up in her lace hood.

And the minister did not come.

But it was a promise and everything was understood. Monpavon was to
take him up at the club. From time to time honest Jenkins drew his
watch, as he tossed an absent-minded _bravo_ to the bouquet of limpid
notes that gushed from La Wauters' fairy lips, a bouquet worth three
thousand francs, and absolutely wasted, in common with the other
expenses of the festivity, if the duke did not come.

Suddenly both wings of the folding-doors were thrown open:

"His Excellency the Duc de Mora!"

A prolonged thrill of excitement greeted him, respectful curiosity
drawn up in a double row, instead of the brutal crowding that had
impeded the passage of the Nabob.

No one could be more skilled than he in the art of making his
appearance in society, of walking gravely across a salon, ascending the
tribune with smiling face, imparting solemnity to trifles and treating
serious matters lightly; it was a résumé of his attitude in life, a
paradoxical distinction. Still handsome, despite his fifty-six
years,--a beauty attributable to refined taste and perfect proportion,
in which the grace of the dandy was intensified by something of a
soldierly character in the figure and the haughty expression of the
face,--he appeared to admirable advantage in the black coat, whereon,
in Jenkins' honor, he had placed a few of his decorations, which he
never displayed except on days of official functions. The sheen of the
linen and the white cravat, the unpolished silver of the decorations,
the softness of the thin, grayish hair, gave added pallor to the face,
the most bloodless of all the bloodless faces assembled that evening
under the Irishman's roof.

He led such a terrible life! Politics, gambling in every form, on the
Bourse and at baccarat, and the reputation of a lady-killer which he
must maintain at any price. Oh! he was a typical patient of Jenkins,
and he certainly owed that visit in princely state to the inventor of
the mysterious Pearls, which gave to his eyes that glance of flame, to
his whole being that extraordinary pulsing vivacity.

[Illustration: "'_His Excellency, the Due de Mora!_'"]

"My dear duke, allow me to present to you--"

Monpavon, solemn of face, with padded calves, attempted to make the
introduction so anxiously expected; but His Excellency, in his
preoccupation, did not hear and kept on toward the large salon, borne
onward by one of those electric currents that break the monotony of
social life. As he passed, and while he paid his respects to the fair
Madame Jenkins, the women leaned forward with alluring glances, soft
laughter, intent upon making a favorable impression. But he saw only
one, Felicia, who stood in the centre of a group of men, holding forth
as if in her own studio, and tranquilly sipping a sherbet as she
watched the duke's approach. She welcomed him with perfect naturalness.
Those who stood by discreetly withdrew. But, in spite of what de Géry
had overheard concerning their alleged relations, there seemed to be
only a good-fellowship entirely of the mind between them, a playful
familiarity.

"I called at your house, Mademoiselle, on my way to the Bois."

"So I understood. You even went into the studio."

"And I saw the famous group--my group."

"Well?"

"It is very fine. The greyhound runs like a mad dog. The fox is
admirably done. But I didn't quite understand. You told me that it was
the story of us two."

"And so it is! Look carefully. It's a fable that I read in--You don't
read Rabelais, Monsieur le Duc?"

"Faith, no. He is too vulgar."

"Well, I have learned to read him. Very ill-bred, you know! Oh! very.
My fable, then, is taken from Rabelais. This is it: Bacchus has made a
wonderful fox that cannot possibly be overtaken. Vulcan, for his part,
has given a dog of his making the power to overtake any animal that he
pursues. 'Now,' as my author says, 'suppose that they meet.' You see
what a wild and interminable race will result. It seems to me, my dear
duke, that destiny has brought us face to face in like manner, endowed
with contrary qualities, you, who have received from the gods the gift
of reaching all hearts, and I, whose heart will never be taken."

She said this, looking him fairly in the face, almost laughing, but
slim and erect in her white tunic, which seemed to protect her person
against the liberties of his wit. He, the conqueror, the irresistible,
had never met one of that audacious, self-willed race. So he enveloped
her in all the magnetic currents of his seductive charm, while around
them the murmur of the fête, the flute-like laughter, the rustling of
satins and strings of pearls played an accompaniment to that duet of
worldly passion and juvenile irony.

In a moment he rejoined:

"But how did the gods extricate themselves from that scrape?"

"By changing the two coursers to stone."

"By heaven," said he, "that is a result which I refuse to accept. I
defy the gods to turn my heart to stone."

A flame darted from his eyes, extinguished instantly at the thought
that people were looking at them.

In truth many people were looking at them, but no one with such deep
interest as Jenkins, who prowled around them, impatient and chafing, as
if he were angry with Felicia for monopolizing the important guest of
the evening. The girl laughingly remarked upon the fact to the duke:

"They will say that I am appropriating you."

She pointed to Monpavon standing expectantly by the Nabob, who, from
afar, bestowed upon His Excellency the submissive, imploring gaze of a
great faithful dog. Thereupon the Minister of State remembered what had
brought him there. He bowed to Felicia and returned to Monpavon, who
was able at last to present "his honorable friend, Monsieur Bernard
Jansoulet." His Excellency bowed; the parvenu humbled himself lower
than the earth; then they conversed for a moment.

It was an interesting group to watch. Jansoulet, tall and strongly
built, with his vulgar manners, his tanned skin, his broad back, bent
as if it had become rounded for good and all in the salaams of Oriental
sycophancy, his short fat hands bursting through his yellow gloves, his
abundant pantomime, his Southern exuberance causing him to cut off his
words as if with a machine. The other, of noble birth, a thorough man
of the world, elegance itself, graceful in the least of his gestures,
which were very rare by the way, negligently letting fall incomplete
sentences, lighting up his grave face with a half smile, concealing
beneath the most perfect courtesy his boundless contempt for men and
women; and that contempt was the main element of his strength. In an
American parlor the antithesis would have been less offensive. The
Nabob's millions would have established equilibrium and even turned the
scale in his favor. But Paris does not as yet place money above all the
other powers, and, to be convinced of that fact, one had only to see
that stout merchant frisking about with an amiable smile before the
great nobleman, and spreading beneath his feet, like the courtier's
ermine cloak, his dense parvenu's pride.

From the corner in which he had taken refuge, de Géry was watching the
scene with interest, knowing what importance his friend attached to
this presentation, when chance, which had so cruelly given the lie all
the evening to his artless neophyte's ideas, brought to his ears this
brief dialogue, in that sea of private conversations in which every one
hears just the words that are of interest to him:

"The least that Monpavon can do is to introduce him to some decent
people. He has introduced him to so many bad ones. You know that he's
just tossed Paganetti and his whole crew into his arms."

"The poor devil! Why, they'll devour him."

"Pshaw! it's only fair to make him disgorge a little. He stole so much
down there among the Turks."

"Really, do you think so?"

"Do I think so! I have some very precise information on that subject
from Baron Hemerlingue, the banker who negotiated the last Tunisian
loan. He knows some fine stories about this Nabob. Just fancy--"

And the stream of calumny began to flow. For fifteen years Jansoulet
had plundered the late bey shamefully. They mentioned the names of
contractors and cited divers swindles characterized by admirable
coolness and effrontery; for instance, the story of a musical
frigate--yes, it really played tunes--intended as a dining-room
ornament, which he bought for two hundred thousand francs and sold
again for ten millions; a throne sold to the bey for three millions,
whereas the bill could be seen on the books of a house furnisher of
Faubourg Saint-Honoré, and amounted to less than a hundred thousand
francs; and the most comical part of it was that the bey's fancy
changed and the royal seat, having fallen into disgrace before it had
even been unpacked, was still in its packing-case at the custom-house
in Tripoli.

Furthermore, aside from these outrageous commissions on the sale of the
most trivial playthings, there were other far more serious accusations,
but equally authentic, as they all came from the same source. In
addition to the seraglio there was a harem of European women, admirably
equipped for His Highness by the Nabob, who should be a connoisseur in
such matters, as he had been engaged in the most extraordinary
occupations in Paris before his departure for the Orient: ticket
speculator, manager of a public ball at the barrier, and of a house of
much lower reputation. And the whispering terminated in a stifled
laugh,--the coarse laugh of two men in private conversation.

The young provincial's first impulse, on hearing those infamous
slanders, was to turn and cry out:

"You lie!"

A few hours earlier he would have done it without hesitation, but since
he had been there he had learned to be suspicious, sceptical. He
restrained himself therefore and listened to the end, standing in the
same spot, having in his heart an unconfessed desire to know more of
the man in whose service he was. As for the Nabob, the perfectly
unconscious subject of that ghastly chronicle, he was quietly playing a
game of écarté with the Due de Mora in a small salon to which the blue
hangings and two shaded lamps imparted a meditative air.

O wonderful magic of the galleon! The son of the dealer in old iron
alone at a card-table with the first personage of the Empire! Jansoulet
could hardly believe the Venetian mirror in which were reflected his
resplendent, beaming face and that august cranium, divided by a long
bald streak. So it was that, in order to show his appreciation of that
great honor, he strove to lose as many thousand-franc notes as he
decently could, feeling that he was the winner none the less, and proud
as Lucifer to see his money pass into those aristocratic hands, whose
every movement he studied while they were cutting, dealing, or holding
the cards.

A circle formed around them, but at a respectful distance, the ten
paces required for saluting a prince; that was the audience of the
triumph at which the Nabob was present as if in a dream, intoxicated by
the fairy-like strains slightly muffled in the distance, the songs that
reached his ears in detached phrases, as if they passed over a resonant
sheet of water, the perfume of the flowers that bloom so strangely
toward the close of Parisian balls, when the late hour, confusing all
notions of time, and the weariness of the sleepless night communicate
to brains which have become more buoyant in a more nervous atmosphere a
sort of youthful giddiness. The robust nature of Jansoulet, that
civilized savage, was more susceptible than another to these strange
refinements; and he had to exert all his strength to refrain from
inaugurating with a joyful hurrah an unseasonable out-pouring of words
and gestures, from giving way to the impulse of physical buoyancy which
stirred his whole being; like the great mountain dogs which are thrown
into convulsions of epileptic frenzy by inhaling a single drop of a
certain essence.

                         *        *        *

"It is a fine night and the sidewalks are dry. If you like, my dear
boy, we will send away the carriage and go home on foot," said
Jansoulet to his companion as they left Jenkins' house.

De Géry eagerly assented. He needed to walk, to shake off in the sharp
air the infamies and lies of that society comedy which left his heart
cold and oppressed, while all his life-blood had taken refuge in his
temples, of whose swollen veins he could hear the beating. He walked
unsteadily, like a poor creature who has been operated on for cataract
and in the first terror of recovered vision dares not put one foot
before the other. But with what a brutal hand the operation had been
performed! And so that great artist with the glorious name, that pure,
wild beauty, the mere sight of whom had agitated him like a
supernatural apparition, was simply a courtesan. Madame Jenkins, that
imposing creature, whose manner was at once so proud and so sweet, was
not really Madame Jenkins. That illustrious scientist, so frank of
feature and so hospitable, had the impudence to live publicly in
shameless concubinage. And Paris suspected it, yet that did not prevent
Paris from attending their parties. Last of all, this Jansoulet, so
kind-hearted and generous, for whom he felt such a burden of gratitude
in his heart, had to his knowledge fallen into the hands of a crew of
bandits, being himself a bandit, and quite worthy of the scheme devised
to make him disgorge his millions.

Was it possible; must he believe it?

A sidelong glance at the Nabob, whose huge frame filled the whole
sidewalk, suddenly revealed to him something low and common that he had
not before noticed in that gait to which the weight of the money in his
pockets gave a decided lurch. Yes, he was the typical adventurer from
the South, moulded of the slime that covers the quays of Marseille,
trodden hard by all the vagabonds who wander from seaport to seaport.
Kind-hearted, generous, forsooth! as prostitutes are, and thieves. And
the gold that flowed into that luxurious and vicious receptacle,
spattering everything, even the walls, seemed to him now to bring with
it all the dregs, all the filth of its impure and slimy source. That
being so, there was but one thing for him, de Géry, to do, and that was
to go, to leave as soon as possible the place where he ran the risk of
compromising his name, all that there was of his patrimony. Of course.
But there were the two little brothers down yonder in the
provinces,--who would pay for their schooling? Who would keep up the
modest home miraculously restored by the handsome salary of the oldest
son, the head of the family? The words "head of the family" cast him at
once into one of those inward combats in which self-interest and
conscience are the contending parties--the one strong, brutal,
attacking fiercely with straight blows, the other retreating, breaking
the measure by suddenly withdrawing its weapon--while honest Jansoulet,
the unconscious cause of the conflict, strode along beside his young
friend, inhaling the fresh air delightedly with the lighted end of his
cigar.

He had never been so happy that he was alive. And that evening at
Jenkins', his own début in society as well as Paul's, had left upon him
an impression of arches erected as if for a triumph, of a curious
crowd, of flowers thrown in his path. So true is it that things exist
only through the eyes that see them. What a success! The duke, just as
they parted, urging him to come and see his gallery; which meant that
the doors of the hôtel de Mora would be open to him within a week.
Felicia Ruys consenting to make a bust of him, so that at the next
exposition the junk-dealer's son would have his portrait in marble by
the same great artist whose name was appended to that of the Minister
of State. Was not this the gratification of all his childish vanities?

Revolving thus their thoughts, cheerful or sinister, they walked on
side by side, preoccupied, distraught, so that Place Vendôme, silent
and flooded by a cold, blue light, rang beneath their feet before they
had spoken a word.

"Already!" said the Nabob. "I would have liked to walk a little
farther. What do you say?" And as they walked around the square two or
three times, he emitted in puffs the exuberant joy with which he was
full to overflowing.

"How fine it is! What pleasure to breathe! God's thunder! I wouldn't
give up my evening for a hundred thousand francs. What a fine fellow
that Jenkins is! Do you like Felicia Ruys' type of beauty? For my part,
I dote on it. And the duke, what a perfect great nobleman! so simple,
so amiable. That is fashionable Paris, eh, my son?"

"It's too complicated for me--it frightens me," said Paul de Géry in a
low voice.

"Yes, yes, I understand," rejoined the other, with adorable conceit.
"You aren't used to it yet, but one soon gets into it, you know! See
how perfectly at my ease I am after only a month."

"That's because you had been in Paris before. You used to live here."

"I? Never in my life. Who told you that?"

"Why, I thought so," replied the young man, and added, as a multitude
of thoughts came crowding into his mind:

"What have you ever done to this Baron Hemerlingue? There seems to be a
deadly hatred between you."

The Nabob was taken aback for a moment. That name Hemerlingue, suddenly
obtruded upon his joy, reminded him of the only unpleasant episode of
the evening.

"To him, as to everybody else," he said in a sad voice, "I never did
anything but good. We began life together in a miserable way. We grew
and prospered side by side. When he attempted to fly with his own wings
I always assisted him, supported him as best I could. It was through me
that he had the contract for supplying the fleet and army for ten
years; almost the whole of his fortune comes from that. And then one
fine morning that idiot of a cold-blooded Bearnese must go and fall in
love with an odalisque whom the bey's mother had turned out of the
harem! She was a handsome, ambitious hussy; she made him marry her, and
naturally, after that excellent marriage, Hemerlingue had to leave
Tunis. They had made him believe that I egged the bey on to forbid him
the country. That is not true. On the contrary, I persuaded His
Highness to allow the younger Hemerlingue--his first wife's child--to
remain at Tunis to look after their interests there, while the father
came to Paris to establish his banking-house. But I was well repaid for
my kindness. When my poor Ahmed died and the _mouchir_, his brother,
ascended the throne, the Hemerlingues, being restored to favor, never
ceased to try to injure me in the eyes of the new master. The bey was
always pleasant with me, but my influence was impaired. Ah well! in
spite of all that, in spite of all the tricks Hemerlingue has played on
me and is playing on me still, I was ready to offer him my hand
to-night. Not only did the villain refuse it, but he sent his wife to
insult me,--an uncivilized, vicious beast, who can never forgive me for
refusing to receive her at Tunis. Do you know what she called me there
to-night when she passed me? 'Robber and son of a dog.' The harlot had
the face to call me that. As if I didn't know my Hemerlingue, who's as
cowardly as he is fat. But, after all, let them say what they choose. I
snap my fingers at 'em. What can they do against me? Destroy my credit
with the bey? That makes no difference to me. I have no more business
in Tunis, and I shall get away from there altogether as soon as
possible. There's only one city, one country in the world, and that is
Paris, hospitable, open-hearted Paris, with no false modesty, where any
intelligent man finds room to do great things. And, you see, de Géry, I
propose to do great things. I've had enough of business life. I have
worked twenty years for money; now I am greedy for respect, glory,
renown. I mean to be a personage of some consequence in the history of
my country, and that will be an easy matter for me. With my great
fortune, my knowledge of men and of affairs, with what I feel here in
my head, I can aspire to anything and reach any eminence. So take my
advice, my dear boy, don't leave me,"--one would have said he was
answering his young companion's secret thought,--"stick loyally to my
ship. The spars are stanch and the hold is full of coal. I swear to you
that we will sail far and fast, damme!"

The artless Southerner thus discharged his plans into the darkness with
an abundance of expressive gestures, and from time to time, as they
paced the vast, deserted square, majestically surrounded by its
tightly-closed silent palaces, he looked up toward the bronze man on
the column, as if calling to witness that great upstart, whose presence
in the heart of Paris justifies the most extravagant ambitions and
renders all chimeras probable.

There is in youth a warmth of heart, a craving for enthusiasm which are
aroused by the slightest breath. As the Nabob spoke, de Géry felt his
suspicions vanishing and all his sympathy reviving with an infusion of
pity. No, surely that man was no vile knave, but a poor deluded mortal
whose fortune had gone to his head, like a wine too powerful for a
stomach that has long slaked its thirst with water. Alone in the midst
of Paris, surrounded by enemies and sharpers, Jansoulet reminded him of
a pedestrian laden with gold passing through a wood haunted by thieves,
in the dark and unarmed. And he thought that it would be well for the
protégé to watch over the patron without seeming to do so, to be the
clear-sighted Telemachus of that blind Mentor, to point out the
pitfalls to him, to defend him against the brigands, in short to assist
him to fight in that swarm of nocturnal ambuscades which he felt to be
lurking savagely about the Nabob and his millions.




V.

THE JOYEUSE FAMILY.


Every morning in the year, at precisely eight o'clock, a new and almost
uninhabited house in an out-of-the-way quarter of Paris was filled with
shouts and cries and happy laughter that rang clear as crystal in the
desert of the hall.

"Father, don't forget my music."

"Father, my embroidery cotton."

"Father, bring us some rolls."

And the father's voice calling from below:

"Yaia, throw down my bag."

"Well, upon my word! he's forgotten his bag."

Thereupon there was joyous haste from top to bottom of the house, a
running to and fro of all those pretty faces, heavy-eyed with sleep, of
all those touzled locks which they put in order as they ran, up to the
very moment when a half-dozen of young girls, leaning over the rail,
bade an echoing farewell to a little old gentleman neatly dressed and
well brushed, whose florid face and slight figure disappeared at last
in the convolutions of the staircase. M. Joyeuse had gone to his
office. Thereupon the whole flock of fugitives from the bird-cage ran
quickly up to the fourth floor, and, after locking the door, gathered
at an open window to catch another glimpse of the father. The little
man turned, kisses were exchanged at a distance, then the windows were
closed; the new, deserted house became quiet once more except for the
signs dancing their wild saraband in the wind on the unfinished street,
as if they too were stirred to gayety by all that manoeuvring. A moment
later the photographer on the fifth floor came down to hang his
show-case at the door, always the same, with the old gentleman in the
white cravat surrounded by his daughters in varied groups; then he went
upstairs again in his turn, and the perfect calm succeeding that little
matutinal tumult suggested the thought that "the father" and his young
ladies had returned to the show-case, where they would remain
motionless and smiling, until evening.

From Rue Saint-Ferdinand to Messieurs Hemerlingue and Son's, his
employers, M. Joyeuse had a walk of three-quarters of an hour. He held
his head erect and stiff, as if he were afraid of disarranging the
lovely bow of his cravat, tied by his daughters, or his hat, put on by
them; and when the oldest, always anxious and prudent, turned up the
collar of his overcoat just as he was going out, to protect him against
the vicious gust of wind at the street corner, M. Joyeuse, even when
the temperature was that of a hothouse, never turned it down until he
reached the office, like the lover fresh from his mistress's embrace,
who dares not stir for fear of losing the intoxicating perfume.

The excellent man, a widower for some years, lived for his children
alone, thought only of them, went out into the world surrounded by
those little blond heads, which fluttered confusedly around him as in a
painting of the Assumption. All his desires, all his plans related to
"the young ladies" and constantly returned to them, sometimes after
long detours; for M. Joyeuse--doubtless because of his very short neck
and his short figure, in which his bubbling blood had but a short
circuit to make--possessed an astonishingly fertile imagination. Ideas
formed in his mind as rapidly as threshed straw collects around the
hopper. At the office the figures kept his mind fixed by their
unromantic rigidity; but once outside, it took its revenge for that
inexorable profession. The exercise of walking and familiarity with a
route of which he knew by heart the most trivial details, gave entire
liberty to his imaginative faculties, and he invented extraordinary
adventures, ample material for twenty newspaper novels.

Suppose, for example, that M. Joyeuse were walking through Faubourg
Saint-Honoré, on the right hand sidewalk--he always chose that
side--and espied a heavy laundress's cart going along at a smart trot,
driven by a countrywoman whose child, perched on a bundle of linen, was
leaning over the side.

"The child!" the good man would exclaim in dismay, "look out for the
child!"

His voice would be lost in the clatter of the wheels and his warning in
the secret design of Providence. The cart would pass on. He would look
after it for a moment, then go his way; but the drama begun in his mind
would go on unfolding itself there with numberless sudden changes. The
child had fallen. The wheels were just about to pass over him. M.
Joyeuse would dart forward, save the little creature on the very brink
of death, but the shaft would strike himself full in the breast, and he
would fall, bathed in his blood. Thereupon he would see himself carried
to the druggist's amid the crowd that had collected. They would place
him on a litter and carry him home, then suddenly he would hear the
heart-rending cry of his daughters, his beloved daughters, upon seeing
him in that condition. And that cry would go so straight to his heart,
he would hear it so distinctly, so vividly: "Papa, dear papa!" that he
would repeat it himself in the street, to the great surprise of the
passers-by, in a hoarse voice which would wake him from his
manufactured nightmare.

Would you like another instance of the vagaries of that prodigious
imagination? It rains, it hails; beastly weather. M. Joyeuse has taken
the omnibus to go to his office. As he takes his seat opposite a
species of giant, with brutish face and formidable biceps, M. Joyeuse,
an insignificant little creature, with his bag on his knees, draws in
his legs to make room for the enormous pillars that support his
neighbor's monumental trunk. In the jolting of the vehicle and the
pattering of the rain on the windows, M. Joyeuse begins to dream. And
suddenly the colossus opposite, who has a good-natured face enough, is
amazed to see the little man change color and glare at him with fierce,
murderous eyes, gnashing his teeth. Yes, murderous eyes in truth, for
at that moment M. Joyeuse is dreaming a terrible dream. One of his
daughters is sitting there, opposite him, beside that annoying brute,
and the villain is putting his arm around her waist under her cloak.

"Take your hand away, monsieur," M. Joyeuse has already said twice. The
other simply laughs contemptuously. Now he attempts to embrace Élise.

"Ah! villain!"

Lacking strength to defend his daughter, M. Joyeuse, foaming with rage,
feels in his pocket for his knife, stabs the insolent knave in the
breast, and goes away with head erect, strong in the consciousness of
his rights as an outraged father, to make his statement at the nearest
police-station.

"I have just killed a man in an omnibus!"

The poor fellow wakes at the sound of his own voice actually uttering
those sinister words, but not at the police-station; he realizes
from the horrified faces of the passengers that he must have spoken
aloud, and speedily avails himself of the conductor's call:
"Saint-Philippe--Panthéon--Bastille," to alight, in dire confusion and
amid general stupefaction.

That imagination, always on the alert, gave to M. Joyeuse's face a
strangely feverish, haggard expression, in striking contrast to the
faultlessly correct dress and bearing of the petty clerk. He lived
through so many passionate existences in a single day. Such waking
dreamers as he, in whom a too restricted destiny holds in check
unemployed forces, heroic faculties, are more numerous than is
generally supposed. Dreaming is the safety valve through which it all
escapes, with a terrible spluttering, an intensely hot vapor and
floating images which instantly disappear. Some come forth from these
visions radiant, others downcast and abashed, finding themselves once
more on the commonplace level of everyday life. M. Joyeuse was of the
former class, constantly soaring aloft to heights from which one cannot
descend without being a little shaken by the rapidity of the journey.

Now, one morning when our _Imaginaire_ had left his house at the usual
hour and under the usual circumstances, he started upon one of his
little private romances as he turned out of Rue Saint-Ferdinand. The
end of the year was close at hand, and, perhaps it was the sight of a
board shanty under construction in the neighboring woodyard that made
him think of "New Year's gifts." And thereupon the word _bonus_
planted itself in his mind, as the first landmark in an exciting story.
In the month of December all Hemerlingue's clerks received double pay,
and in small households, you know, a thousand ambitious or generous
projects are based upon such windfalls,--presents to be given, a piece
of furniture to be replaced, a small sum tucked away in a drawer for
unforeseen emergencies.

The fact is that M. Joyeuse was not rich. His wife, a Mademoiselle de
Saint-Amand, being tormented with aspirations for worldly grandeur, had
established the little household on a ruinous footing, and in the three
years since her death, although _Grandmamma_ had managed affairs so
prudently, they had not been able as yet to save anything, the burden
of the past was so heavy. Suddenly the excellent man fancied that the
honorarium would be larger than usual that year on account of the
increased work necessitated by the Tunisian loan. That loan was a very
handsome thing for his employers, too handsome indeed, for M. Joyeuse
had taken the liberty to say at the office that on that occasion
"Hemerlingue and Son had shaved the Turk a little too close."

"Yes, the bonus will certainly be doubled," thought the visionary as he
walked along; and already he saw himself, a month hence, ascending the
staircase leading to Hemerlingue's private office, with his
fellow-clerks, for their New Year's call. The banker announced the good
news; then he detained M. Joyeuse for a private interview. And lo! that
employer, usually so cold, and encased in his yellow fat as in a bale
of raw silk, became affectionate, fatherly, communicative. He wished to
know how many daughters Joyeuse had.

"I have three--that is to say, four, Monsieur le Baron. I always get
confused about them. The oldest one is such a little woman."

How old were they?

"Aline is twenty, Monsieur le Baron. She's the oldest. Then we have
Élise who is eighteen and preparing for her examination, Henriette who
is fourteen, and Zaza or Yaia who is only twelve."

The pet name Yaia amused Monsieur le Baron immensely; he also inquired
as to the resources of the family.

"My salary, Monsieur le Baron, nothing but that. I had a little money
laid by, but my poor wife's sickness and the girls' education--"

"What you earn is not enough, my dear Joyeuse. I raise you to a
thousand francs a month."

"Oh! Monsieur le Baron, that is too much!"

But, although he had uttered this last phrase aloud, in the face of a
policeman who watched with a suspicious eye the little man who
gesticulated and shook his head so earnestly, the poor visionary did
not awake. He joyously imagined himself returning home, telling the
news to his daughters, and taking them to the theatre in the evening to
celebrate that happy day. God! how pretty the Joyeuse girls were,
sitting in the front of their box! what a nosegay of rosy cheeks! And
then, on the next day, lo and behold the two oldest are sought in
marriage by--Impossible to say by whom, for M. Joyeuse suddenly found
himself under the porch of the Hemerlingue establishment, in front of a
swing-door surmounted by the words, "Counting Room" in gold letters.

"I shall always be the same," he said to himself with a little laugh,
wiping his forehead, on which the perspiration stood in beads.

Put in good humor by his fancy, by the blazing fires in the long line
of offices, with inlaid floors and wire gratings, keeping the secrets
confided to them in the subdued light of the ground floor, where one
could count gold pieces without being dazzled by them, M. Joyeuse bade
the other clerks a cheery good-morning, and donned his working-coat and
black velvet cap. Suddenly there was a whistle from above; and the
cashier, putting his ear to the tube, heard the coarse, gelatinous
voice of Hemerlingue, the only, the genuine Hemerlingue--the other, the
son, was always absent--asking for M. Joyeuse. What! was he still
dreaming? He was greatly excited as he took the little inner stairway,
which he had ascended so jauntily just before, and found himself in the
banker's office, a narrow room with a very high ceiling, and with no
other furniture than green curtains and enormous leather arm-chairs,
proportioned to the formidable bulk of the head of the house. He was
sitting there at his desk, which his paunch prevented him from
approaching, corpulent, puffing, and so yellow that his round face with
its hooked nose, the face of a fat, diseased owl, shone like a beacon
light in that solemn, gloomy office. A coarse, Moorish merchant
mouldering in the dampness of his little courtyard. His eyes gleamed an
instant beneath his heavy slow-moving eyelids when the clerk entered;
he motioned to him to approach, and slowly, coldly, with frequent
breaks in his breathless sentences, instead of: "M. Joyeuse, how many
daughters have you?" he said this:

"Joyeuse, you have assumed to criticize in our offices our recent
operations on the market in Tunis. No use to deny it. What you said has
been repeated to me word for word. And as I can't allow such things
from one of my clerks, I notify you that with the end of this month you
will cease to be in my employ."

The blood rushed to the clerk's face, receded, returned, causing each
time a confused buzzing in his ears, a tumult of thoughts and images in
his brain.

His daughters!

What would become of them?

Places are so scarce at that time of year!

Want stared him in the face, and also the vision of a poor devil
falling at Hemerlingue's feet, imploring him, threatening him, leaping
at his throat in an outburst of desperate frenzy. All this agitation
passed across his face like a gust of wind which wrinkles the surface
of a lake, hollowing out shifting caverns of all shapes therein; but he
stood mute on the same spot, and at a hint from his employer that he
might withdraw, went unsteadily down to resume his task in the
counting-room.

That evening, on returning to Rue Saint-Ferdinand, M. Joyeuse said
nothing to his daughters. He dared not. The thought of casting a shadow
upon that radiant gayety, which was the whole life of the house, of
dimming with great tears those sparkling eyes, seemed to him
unendurable. Moreover he was timid and weak, one of those who always
say: "Let us wait till to-morrow." So he waited before speaking, in the
first place until the month of November should be at an end, comforting
himself with the vague hope that Hemerlingue might change his mind, as
if he did not know that unyielding will, like the flabby, tenacious
grasp of a mollusk clinging to its gold ingot. Secondly, when his
accounts were settled and another clerk had taken his place at the tall
desk at which he had stood so long, he hoped speedily to find something
else and to repair the disaster before he was obliged to avow it.

Every morning he pretended to start for the office, allowed himself to
be equipped and escorted to the door as usual, his great leather bag
all ready for the numerous parcels he was to bring home at night.
Although he purposely forgot some of them because of the approach of
the perplexing close of the month, he no longer lacked time in which to
do his daughters' errands. He had his day to himself, an interminable
day, which he passed in running about Paris in search of a place. They
gave him addresses and excellent recommendations. But in that month of
December, when the air is so cold and the days are so short, a month
overburdened with expenses and anxieties, clerks suffer in patience and
employers too. Every one tries to end the year in tranquillity,
postponing to the month of January, when time takes a great leap onward
toward another station, all changes, ameliorations, attempts to lead a
new life.

Wherever M. Joyeuse called, he saw faces suddenly turn cold as soon as
he explained the purpose of his visit. "What! you are no longer with
Hemerlingue and Son? How does that happen?" He would explain the
condition of affairs as best he could, attributing it to a caprice of
his employer, that violent-tempered Hemerlingue whom all Paris knew;
but he was conscious of a cold, suspicious accent in the uniform reply:
"Come and see us after the holidays." And, timid as he was at best, he
reached a point at which he hardly dared apply anywhere, but would walk
back and forth twenty times in front of the same door, nor would he
ever have crossed the threshold but for the thought of his daughters.
That thought alone would grasp his shoulder, put heart into his legs
and send him to opposite ends of Paris in the same day, to exceedingly
vague addresses given him by comrades, to a great bone-black factory at
Aubervilliers, for instance, where they made him call three days in
succession, and all for nothing.

Oh! the long walks in the rain and frost, the closed doors, the
employer who has gone out or has visitors, the promises given and
suddenly retracted, the disappointed hopes, the enervating effect of
long suspense, the humiliation in store for every man who asks for
work, as if it were a shameful thing to be without it. M. Joyeuse
experienced all those heartsickening details, and he learned too how
the will becomes weary and discouraged in the face of persistent
ill-luck. And you can imagine whether the bitter martyrdom of "the man
in search of a place" was intensified by the fantasies of his
imagination, by the chimeras which rose before him from the pavements
of Paris, while he pursued his quest in every direction.

For a whole month he was like one of those pitiful marionettes who
soliloquize and gesticulate on the sidewalks, and from whom the
slightest jostling on the part of the crowd extorts a somnambulistic
ejaculation: "I said as much," or "Don't you doubt it, monsieur." You
pass on, you almost laugh, but you are moved to pity at the
unconsciousness of those poor devils, possessed by a fixed idea, blind
men led by dreams, drawn on by an invisible leash. The terrible feature
of it all was this, that when M. Joyeuse returned home, after those
long, cruel days of inaction and fatigue, he must enact the comedy of
the man returning from work, must describe the events of the day, tell
what he had heard, the gossip of the office, with which he was always
accustomed to entertain the young ladies.

In humble households there is always one name that comes to the lips
more frequently than others, a name that is invoked on days of
disaster, that plays a part in every wish, in every hope, even in the
play of the children, who are permeated with the idea of its
importance, a name that fills the rôle of a sub-providence in the
family, or rather of a supernatural household god. It is the name of
the employer, the manager of the factory, the landlord, the minister,
the man, in short, who holds in his powerful hand the welfare, the very
existence of the family. In the Joyeuse household it was Hemerlingue,
always Hemerlingue; ten, twenty times a day the name was mentioned in
the conversation of the girls, who associated it with all their plans,
with the most trivial details of their girlish ambitions: "If
Hemerlingue would consent. It all depends on Hemerlingue." And nothing
could be more delightful than the familiar way in which those children
spoke of the wealthy boor whom they had never seen.

They asked questions about him. Had their father spoken to him? Was he
in good humor? To think that all of us, however humble we may be,
however cruelly enslaved by destiny, have always below us some poor
creature more humble, more enslaved than ourselves, in whose eyes we
are great, in whose eyes we are gods, and, as gods, indifferent,
scornful or cruel.

We can fancy M. Joyeuse's torture when he was compelled to invent
incidents, to manufacture anecdotes concerning the villain who had
dismissed him so heartlessly after ten years of faithful service.
However, he played his little comedy in such way as to deceive them all
completely. They had noticed only one thing, and that was that their
father, on returning home at night, always had a hearty appetite for
the evening meal. I should say as much! Since he had lost his place,
the poor man had ceased to eat any luncheon.

The days passed. M. Joyeuse found nothing. Yes, he was offered a
clerkship at the _Caisse Territoriale_, which he declined, being too
well acquainted with the banking operations, with all the nooks and
corners of financial Bohemia in general and the _Caisse Territoriale_
in particular, to step foot in that den.

"But," said Passajon--for it was Passajon, who, happening to meet the
good man and finding that he was unemployed, had spoken to him of
taking service with Paganetti--"but I tell you again that it's all
right. We have plenty of money. We pay our debts. I have been paid;
just see what a dandy I am."

In truth, the old clerk had a new livery, and his paunch protruded
majestically beneath his tunic with silver buttons. For all that, M.
Joyeuse had withstood the temptation, even after Passajon, opening wide
his bulging eyes, had whispered with emphasis in his ear these words
big with promise:

"The Nabob is in it."

Even after that, M. Joyeuse had had the courage to say no. Was it not
better to die of hunger than to enter the service of an unsubstantial
house whose books he might some day be called upon to examine as an
expert before a court of justice?

So he continued to wander about; but he was discouraged and had
abandoned his search for employment. As it was necessary for him to
remain away from home, he loitered in front of the shop-windows on the
quays, leaned for hours on the parapets, watching the river and the
boats discharging their cargoes. He became one of those idlers whom we
see in the front rank of all street crowds, taking refuge from a shower
under porches, drawing near the stoves on which the asphalters boil
their tar in the open air, to warm themselves, and sinking on benches
along the boulevard when their feet can no longer carry them.

What an excellent way of lengthening one's days, to do nothing!

On certain days, however, when M. Joyeuse was too tired or the weather
too inclement, he waited at the end of the street until the young
ladies had closed their window, then went back to the house, hugging
the walls, hurried upstairs, holding his breath as he passed his own
door, and took refuge with the photographer, André Maranne, who, being
aware of his catastrophe, offered him the compassionate welcome which
poor devils extend to one another. Customers are rare so near the
barriers. He would sit for many hours in the studio, talking in an
undertone, reading by his friend's side, listening to the rain on the
window-panes or the wind whistling as in mid-ocean, rattling the old
doors and window-frames in the graveyard of demolished buildings below.
On the next floor he heard familiar sounds, full of charm for him,
snatches of song accompanying the work of willing hands, a chorus of
laughter, the piano lesson given by _Grandmamma_, the tic-tac of the
metronome, a delicious domestic hurly-burly that warmed his heart. He
lived with his darlings, who certainly had no idea that they had him so
near at hand.

Once, while Maranne was out, M. Joyeuse, acting as a faithful custodian
of the studio and its brand-new equipment, heard two little taps on the
ceiling of the fourth floor, two separate, very distinct taps, then a
cautious rumbling like the scampering of a mouse. The intimacy between
the photographer and his neighbors justified this prisoner-like method
of communication, but what did that mean? How should he answer what
seemed like a call? At all hazards he repeated the two taps, the soft
drumming sound, and the interview stopped there. When André Maranne
returned, he explained it. It was very simple: sometimes, during the
day, the young ladies, who never saw their neighbor except in the
evening, took that means of inquiring for his health and whether
business was improving. The signal he had heard signified: "Is business
good to-day?" and M. Joyeuse had instinctively but unwittingly replied:
"Not bad for the season." Although young Maranne blushed hotly as he
said it, M. Joyeuse believed him. But the idea of frequent
communication between the two households made him fear lest his secret
should be divulged, and thereafter he abstained from what he called his
"artistic days." However, the time was drawing near when he could no
longer conceal his plight, for the end of the month was at hand,
complicated by the end of the year.

Paris was already assuming the usual festal aspect of the last weeks of
December. That is about all that is left in the way of national or
popular merrymaking. The revels of the carnival died with Gavarni, the
religious festivals, the music of which we scarcely hear above the din
of the streets, seclude themselves behind the heavy church doors, the
Fifteenth of August has never been aught but the Saint-Charlemagne of
the barracks; but Paris has retained its respect for the first day of
the year.

Early in December a violent epidemic of childishness is apparent in the
streets. Wagons pass, laden with gilded drums, wooden horses,
playthings by the score. In the manufacturing districts, from top to
bottom of the five-story buildings, former palaces of the Marais, where
the shops have such lofty ceilings and stately double doors, people
work all night, handling gauze, flowers and straw, fastening labels on
satin-covered boxes, sorting out, marking and packing; the innumerable
details of the toy trade, that great industry upon which Paris places
the sign-manual of its refined taste. There is a smell of green wood,
of fresh paint, of glistening varnish, and in the dust of the garrets,
on the rickety stairways where the common people deposit all the mud
through which they have tramped, chips of rosewood are strewn about,
clippings of satin and velvet, bits of tinsel, all the débris of the
treasures employed to dazzle childish eyes. Then the shop-windows array
themselves. Behind the transparent glass the gilt binding of gift-books
ascends like a gleaming wave under the gas-lights, rich stuffs of
kaleidoscopic, tempting hues display their heavy, graceful folds, while
the shop-girls, with their hair piled high upon their heads and ribbons
around their necks, puff their wares with the little finger in the air,
or fill silk bags, into which the bonbons fall like a shower of pearls.

But face to face with this bourgeois industry, firmly established and
intrenched behind its gorgeous shop fronts, is the ephemeral industry
carried on in the stalls built of plain boards, open to the wind from
the street, standing in a double row which gives the boulevard the
aspect of a foreign market place. There are to be found the real
interest, the poetry of New Year's gifts. Luxurious in the Madeleine
quarter, less ostentatious toward Boulevard Saint-Denis, cheaper and
more tawdry as you approach the Bastille, these little booths change
their character to suit their customers, estimate their chances of
success according to the condition of the purses of the passers-by.
Between them stand tables covered with trifles, miracles of the petty
Parisian trades, made of nothing, fragile and insignificant, but
sometimes whirled away by fashion in one of its fierce gusts, because
of their very lightness. And lastly, along the sidewalks, lost in the
line of vehicles which brush against them as they stroll along, the
orange-women put the final touch to this ambulatory commerce, heaping
up the sun-colored fruit under their red lanterns, and crying: "La
Valence!" in the fog, the uproar, the excessive haste with which Paris
rushes to meet the close of the year.

Ordinarily M. Joyeuse made a part of the happy crowd that throngs the
streets with a jingling of money in the pockets and packages in every
hand. He would run about with _Grandmamma_ in quest of presents for the
young ladies, stopping in front of the booths of the small shopkeepers
whom the slightest indication of a customer excites beyond measure, for
they are unfamiliar with the art of selling and have based upon that
brief season visions of extraordinary profits. And there would be
consultations and meditations, a never-ending perplexity as to the
final selection in that busy little brain, always in advance of the
present and of the occupation of the moment.

But that year, alas! there was nothing of the sort. He wandered sadly
through the joyous city, sadder and more discouraged by reason of all
the activity around him, jostled and bumped like all those who impede
the circulation of the industrious, his heart beating with constant
dread, for _Grandmamma_, for several days past, had been making
significant, prophetic remarks at table on the subject of New Year's
gifts. For that reason he avoided being left alone with her and had
forbidden her coming to meet him at the office. But, struggle as he
would, the time was drawing near, he felt it in his bones, when further
mystery would be impossible and his secret would be divulged. Was this
_Grandmamma_ of whom M. Joyeuse stood in such fear such a terrible
creature, pray? _Mon Dieu_, no! A little stern, that was all, with a
sweet smile which promised instant pardon to every culprit. But M.
Joyeuse was naturally cowardly and timid; twenty years of housekeeping
with a masterful woman, "a person of gentle birth," had enslaved him
forever, like those convicts who are subjected to surveillance for a
certain period after their sentences have expired. And he was subjected
to it for life.

One evening the Joyeuse family was assembled in the small salon, the
last relic of its splendor, where there still were two stuffed
arm-chairs, an abundance of crochet-work, a piano, two Carcel lamps
with little green caps, and a small table covered with trivial
ornaments.

The true family exists only among the lowly.

For economy's sake only one fire was lighted for the whole house, and
only one lamp around which all their occupations, all their diversions
were grouped; an honest family lamp, whose old-fashioned shade--with
night scenes, studded with brilliant points--had been the wonder and
the delight of all the girls in their infancy. Emerging gracefully from
the shadow of the rest of the room, four youthful faces, fair or dark,
smiling or engrossed, bent forward in the warm, cheerful rays, which
illumined them to the level of the eyes and seemed to feed the fire of
their glances, the radiant youth beneath their transparent brows, to
watch over them, to shelter them, to protect them from the black cold
wind without, from ghosts, pitfalls, misery and terror, from all the
sinister things that lurk in an out-of-the-way quarter of Paris on a
winter's night.

Thus assembled in a small room near the top of the deserted house, in
the warmth and security of its neatly kept and comfortable home, the
Joyeuse family resembles a family of birds in a nest at the top of a
tall tree. They sew and read and talk a little. A burst of flame, the
crackling of the fire, are the only sounds to be heard, save for an
occasional exclamation from M. Joyeuse, who sits just outside of his
little circle, hiding in the shadow his anxious brow and all the
vagaries of his imagination. Now he fancies that, in the midst of the
distress by which he is overwhelmed, the absolute necessity of
confessing everything to his children to-night, to-morrow at latest,
unforeseen succor comes to him. Hemerlingue, seized with remorse, sends
to him, to all the others who worked on the Tunisian loan, the
accustomed December bonus. It is brought by a tall footman: "From
Monsieur le Baron." The _Imaginaire_ says this aloud. The pretty faces
turn to look at him; they laugh and move about, and the poor wretch
wakes with a start.

Oh! how he reviles himself now for his delay in confessing everything,
for the fallacious security which he has encouraged in his home and
which he will have to destroy at one blow. Why need he have criticised
that Tunisian loan? He even blames himself now for having declined a
position at the _Caisse Territoriale_. Had he the right to decline it?
Ah! what a pitiful head of a family, who lacked strength to maintain
or to defend the welfare of his dear ones. And, in presence of the
charming group sitting within the rays of the lamp, whose tranquil
aspect is in such glaring contrast to his inward agitation, he is
seized with remorse, which assails his feeble mind so fiercely that
his secret comes to his lips, is on the point of escaping him in
an outburst of sobs, when a ring at the bell--not an imaginary
ring--startles them all and checks him as he is about to speak.

Who could have come at that hour? They had lived in seclusion since the
mother's death, receiving almost no visitors. André Maranne, when he
came down to pass a few moments with them, knocked familiarly after the
manner of those to whom a door is always open. Profound silence in the
salon, a long colloquy on the landing. At last the old servant--she had
been in the family as long as the lamp--introduced a young man, a
perfect stranger, who stopped suddenly, spellbound, at sight of the
charming picture presented by the four darlings grouped about the
table. He entered with an abashed, somewhat awkward air. However, he
set forth very clearly the purpose of his call. He was recommended to
apply to M. Joyeuse by a worthy man of his acquaintance, old Passajon,
to give him lessons in book-keeping. A friend of his was involved in
some large financial enterprises, a stock company of some size. He was
anxious to be of service to him by keeping an eye upon the employment
of his funds and the rectitude of his associates' operations; but he
was a lawyer, with a very imperfect knowledge of financial matters and
the vernacular of the banking business. Could not M. Joyeuse, in a few
months, with three or four lessons a week--"

"Why, yes indeed, monsieur, yes indeed," stammered the father, dazed by
this unhoped-for chance; "I will willingly undertake to fit you in a
month or two for this work of examining accounts. Where shall we have
the lessons?"

"Here, if you please," said the young man, "for I am anxious that
nobody should know that I am working at it. But I shall be very sorry
if I am to put everybody to flight every time I appear, as I seem to
have done this evening."

It was a fact that, as soon as the visitor opened his mouth, the four
curly heads had disappeared, with much whispering and rustling of
skirts, and the salon appeared very bare now that the great circle of
white light was empty.

Always quick to take alarm where his daughters were concerned, M.
Joyeuse replied that "the young ladies always retired early," in a
short, sharp tone which said as plainly as could be: "Let us confine
our conversation to our lessons, young man, I beg."

Thereupon they agreed upon the days and the hours in the evening.

As for the terms, that would be for monsieur to determine.

Monsieur named a figure.

The clerk turned scarlet; it was what he earned at Hemerlingue's.

"Oh! no, that is too much."

But the other would not listen; he hemmed and hawed and rolled his
tongue around as if he were trying to say something that it was very
difficult to say; then with sudden resolution:

"Here is your first month's pay."

"But, monsieur--"

The young man insisted. He was a stranger. It was fair that he should
pay in advance. Evidently Passajon had told him. M. Joyeuse understood
and said, beneath his breath: "Thanks, oh! thanks!" so deeply moved
that words failed him. Life, it meant life for a few months, time to
turn around, to find a situation. His darlings would be deprived of
nothing. They would have their New Year's gifts. O Providence!

"Until Wednesday, then, Monsieur Joyeuse."

"Until Wednesday, Monsieur--?"

"De Géry--Paul de Géry."

They parted, equally dazzled, enchanted, one by the appearance of that
unexpected saviour, the other by the lovely tableau of which he had
caught a glimpse, all those maidens grouped around the table covered
with books and papers and skeins, with an air of purity, of
hard-working probity. That sight opened up to de Géry a whole new
Paris, brave, domestic, very different from that with which he was
already familiar, a Paris of which the writers of feuilletons and the
reporters never speak, and which reminded him of his province, with an
additional element, namely, the charm which the surrounding hurly-burly
and turmoil impart to the peaceful shelter that they do not reach.




VI.

FELICIA RUYS.


"By the way, what have you done with your son, Jenkins? Why do we never
see him at your house now? He was an attractive boy."

As she said this in the tone of disdainful acerbity in which she always
addressed the Irishman, Felicia was at work on the bust of the Nabob
which she had just begun, adjusting her model, taking up and putting
down the modelling tool, wiping her hands with a quick movement on the
little sponge, while the light and peace of a lovely Sunday afternoon
flooded the circular glass-walled studio. Felicia "received" every
Sunday, if receiving consisted in leaving her door open and allowing
people to come and go and sit down a moment, without stirring from her
work for them, or even breaking off a discussion she might have begun,
to welcome new arrivals. There were artists with shapely heads and
bright red beards, and here and there the white poll of an old man,
sentimental friends of the elder Ruys; then there were connoisseurs,
men of the world, bankers, brokers, and some young swells who came
rather to see the fair sculptress than her sculpture, so that they
would have the right to say that evening at the club: "I was at
Felicia's to-day." Among them Paul de Géry, silent, engrossed by an
admiration which sank a little deeper in his heart day by day, strove
to comprehend the beautiful sphinx, arrayed in purple cashmere and
unbleached lace, who worked bravely away in the midst of her clay, a
burnisher's apron--reaching nearly to the neck--leaving naught visible
save the proud little face with those transparent tones, those gleams
as of veiled rays with which intellect and inspiration give animation
to the features. Paul never forgot what had been said of her in his
presence, he tried to form an opinion for himself, was beset by doubt
and perplexity, yet fascinated; vowed every time that he would never
come again, yet never missed a Sunday. There was another fixture,
always in the same spot, a little woman with gray, powdered hair and a
lace handkerchief around her pink face; a pastel somewhat worn by
years, who smiled sweetly in the discreet light of a window recess, her
hands lying idly upon her lap, in fakir-like immobility. Jenkins,
always in good humor, with his beaming face, his black eyes, and his
apostolic air, went about from one to another, known and loved by all.
He too never missed one of Felicia's days; and in very truth he
displayed great patience, for all the sharp words of the artist and of
the pretty woman as well were reserved for him alone. Without seeming
to notice it, with the same smiling indulgent serenity, he continued to
court the society of the daughter of his old friend Ruys, of whom he
had been so fond and whom he had attended until his last breath.

On this occasion, however, the question that Felicia propounded to him
on the subject of his son seemed to him extremely disagreeable; and
there was a frown upon his face, a genuine expression of ill-humor, as
he replied:

"Faith, I know no more than you as to what has become of him. He has
turned his back upon us altogether. He was bored with us. He cares for
nothing but his Bohemia--"

Felicia gave a bound which made them all start, and with flashing eye
and quivering nostril retorted:

"That is too much. Look you, Jenkins, what do you call Bohemia? A
charming word, by the way, which should evoke visions of long wandering
jaunts in the sunlight, halting in shady nooks, the first taste of
luscious fruits and sparkling fountains, taken at random on the
highroads. But since you have made of the word with all the charm
attaching to it a stigma and an insult, to whom do you apply it? To
certain poor long-haired devils, in love with freedom in rags and
tatters, who starve to death on fifth floors, looking at the sky at too
close quarters, or seeking rhymes under tiles through which the rain
drips; to those idiots, fewer and fewer in number, who in their horror
of the conventional, the traditional, of the dense stupidity of life,
have taken a standing jump over the edge. But that's the way it used to
be, I tell you. That's the Bohemia of Murger, with the hospital at the
end, the terror of children, the comfort of kindred, Little Red Riding
Hood eaten by the wolf. That state of things came to an end a long
while ago. To-day you know perfectly well that artists are the most
well-behaved people on earth, that they earn money, pay their debts and
do their best to resemble the ordinary man. There is no lack of genuine
Bohemians, however; our society is made up of them, but they are found
more particularly in your circle. _Parbleu!_ they are not labelled
on the outside, and no one distrusts them; but so far as the
uncertainty of existence and lack of order are concerned, they have no
reason to envy those whom they so disdainfully call 'irregulars.' Ah!
if one knew all the baseness, all the unheard-of, monstrous experiences
that may be masked by a black coat, the most correct of your horrible
modern garments! Jenkins, at your house the other evening, I amused
myself counting all those adventurers of high--"

The little old lady, pink-cheeked and powdered, said to her softly from
her seat:

"Felicia--take care--"

But she went on without listening to her:

"Who is this Monpavon, Doctor? And Bois-l'Héry? And Mora himself?
And--"

She was on the point of saying, "And the Nabob?" but checked herself.

"And how many others! Oh! really, I advise you to speak contemptuously
of Bohemia. Why, your clientage as a fashionable physician, O sublime
Jenkins, is made up of nothing else. Bohemia of manufacturing, of
finance, of politics; fallen stars, the tainted of all castes, and the
higher you go the more of them there are, because high rank gives
impunity and wealth closes many mouths."

She spoke with great animation, harshly, her lip curling in fierce
disdain. The other laughed a false laugh and assumed an airy,
condescending tone. "Ah! madcap! madcap!" And his glance, anxious and
imploring, rested upon the Nabob, as if to beseech his forgiveness for
that flood of impertinent paradoxes.

But Jansoulet, far from appearing to be vexed,--he who was so proud to
pose for that lovely artist, so puffed up by the honor conferred upon
him--nodded his head approvingly.

"She is right, Jenkins," he said, "she is right. We are the real
Bohemia. Look at me, for instance, and Hemerlingue, two of the greatest
handlers of money in Paris. When I think where we started from, all the
trades that we tried our hands at! Hemerlingue, an old regimental
sutler; and myself, who carried bags of grain on the wharves at
Marseille for a living. And then the strokes of luck by which our
fortunes were made, as indeed all fortunes are made nowadays. Bless my
soul! Just look under the peristyle at the Bourse from three to five.
But I beg your pardon, mademoiselle, with my mania for gesticulating
when I talk, I've spoiled my pose--let's see, will this do?"

"It's of no use," said Felicia, throwing down her modelling-tool with
the gesture of a spoiled child. "I can do nothing more to-day."

She was a strange girl, this Felicia. A true child of an artist, a
genial and dissipated artist, according to the romantic tradition, such
as Sébastien Ruys was. She had never known her mother, being the fruit
of one of those ephemeral passions which suddenly enter a sculptor's
bachelor life, as swallows enter a house of which the door is always
open, and go out again at once, because they cannot build nests there.

On that occasion the lady, on taking flight, had left with the great
artist, then in the neighborhood of forty, a beautiful child whom he
had acknowledged and reared, and who became the joy and passion of his
life. Felicia had remained with her father until she was thirteen,
importing a childish, refining element into that studio crowded with
idlers, models, and huge greyhounds lying at full length on divans.
There was a corner set aside for her, for her attempts at sculpture, a
complete equipment on a microscopic scale, a tripod and wax; and old
Ruys would say to all who came in:

"Don't go over there. Don't disturb anything. That's the little one's
corner."

The result was that at ten years of age she hardly knew how to read and
handled the modelling-tool with marvellous skill. Ruys would have liked
to keep the child, who never annoyed him in any way, with him
permanently, a tiny member of the great brotherhood. But it was a
pitiful thing to see the little maid exposed to the free and easy
manners of the habitués of the house, the incessant going and coming of
models, the discussions concerning an art that is purely physical, so
to speak; and at the uproarious Sunday dinner-table, too, sitting in
the midst of five or six women, with all of whom her father was on the
most intimate terms, actresses, dancers, singers, who, when dinner was
at an end, smoked with the rest, their elbows on the table, revelling
in the salacious anecdotes so relished by the master of the house.
Luckily, childhood is protected by the resistant power of innocence, a
polished surface over which all forms of pollution glide harmlessly.
Felicia was noisy, uproarious, badly brought up, but was untainted by
all that passed over her little mind because it was so near the ground.

Every summer she went to pass a few days with her godmother, Constance
Crenmitz, the elder Crenmitz, who was for so long a time called by all
Europe the "illustrious dancer," and who was living quietly in
seclusion at Fontainebleau.

The arrival of the "little devil" introduced into the old lady's life,
for a time, an element of excitement from which she had the whole year
to recover. The frights that the child caused her with her audacious
exploits in leaping and riding, the passionate outbreaks of that
untamed nature, made the visit both a delight and a terrible trial to
her,--a delight, because she worshipped Felicia, the only domestic tie
left the poor old salamander, retired after thirty years of _battus_ in
the glare of the footlights; a trial, because the demon pitilessly
pillaged the ex-dancer's apartments, which were as dainty and neat and
sweet-smelling as her dressing-room at the Opéra, and embellished with
a museum of souvenirs dated from all the theatres in the world.

Constance Crenmitz was the sole feminine element in Felicia's
childhood. Frivolous, shallow, having all her life kept her mind
enveloped in pink swaddling-clothes, she had at all events a dainty
knack at housekeeping, and agile fingers clever at sewing,
embroidering, arranging furniture, and leaving the trace of their deft,
painstaking touch in every corner of a room. She alone undertook to
train that wild young plant, and to awaken with care the womanly
instincts in that strange creature, on whose figure cloaks and furs,
all the elegant inventions of fashion, fell in folds too stiff, or
performed other strange antics.

It was the dancer again--surely the little Ruys must not be
abandoned--who, triumphing over the paternal selfishness, compelled the
sculptor to assent to a necessary separation, when Felicia was twelve
or thirteen years old; furthermore, she assumed the responsibility of
finding a suitable boarding school, and purposely selected a very rich
but very bourgeois establishment, pleasantly situated in a
sparsely-settled faubourg, in a huge old-fashioned mansion, surrounded
by high walls and tall trees,--a sort of convent, minus the restraint
and contempt for serious studies.

Indeed, a great deal of hard work was done at Madame Belin's
establishment, with no opportunities to go out except on great
festivals, and no communication with the outside world except a visit
from one's relatives on Thursday, in a little garden of flowering
shrubs, or in the vast parlor with the carved and gilded panels above
the doors. Felicia's first appearance in that almost monastic
institution caused considerable commotion; her costume, selected by the
Austrian ballet-dancer, her curly hair falling to the waist, her
ungainly, boyish bearing, gave rise to some ill-natured remarks; but
she was a Parisian and readily adapted herself to all situations, to
all localities. In a few days she wore more gracefully than any of the
others the little black apron, to which the most coquettish attached
their watches, the straight skirt--a stern and cruel requirement at
that period, when the prevailing fashion enlarged the circumference of
woman with an infinite number of ruffles and flounces--and the
prescribed arrangement of the hair, in two braids fastened together
well down on the neck, after the fashion of Roman peasants.

Strangely enough, the assiduous work of the classes, their tranquil
regularity, suited Felicia's nature, all intelligence and animation, in
which a taste for study was enlivened by an overflow of childish
spirits in the hours of recreation. Every one loved her. Among those
children of great manufacturers, Parisian notaries and gentleman-farmers,
a substantial little world by themselves, somewhat inclined to
stiffness and formality, the well-known name of old Ruys, and the
respect which is universally manifested in Paris for a high reputation
as an artist, gave to Felicia a position apart from the rest and
greatly envied; a position made even more brilliant by her success in
her studies, by a genuine talent for drawing, and by her beauty, that
element of superiority which produces its effect even upon very young
girls.

In the purer atmosphere of the boarding-school, she felt the keenest
pleasure in making herself womanly, in resuming her true sex, in
learning order, regularity, in a different sense from that inculcated
by the amiable dancer, whose kisses always retained a taste of rouge,
and whose embraces always left an impression of unnaturally round arms.
Père Ruys was enchanted, every time that he went to see his daughter,
to find her more of a young lady, able to enter and walk about and
leave a room with the pretty courtesy that made all of Madame Belin's
boarders long for the _frou-frou_ of a long train.

At first he came often, then, as he lacked time for all the commissions
accepted and undertaken, the advances upon which helped to pay for the
disorder and heedlessness of his life, he was seen less frequently in
the parlor. At last disease took a hand. Brought to earth by hopeless
anæmia, for weeks he did not leave the house, nor work. He insisted
upon seeing his daughter; and from the peaceful, health-giving shadow
of the boarding-school Felicia returned to her father's studio, still
haunted by the same cronies, the parasites that cling to every
celebrity, among whom sickness had introduced a new figure in the
person of Dr. Jenkins.

That handsome, open face, the air of frankness and serenity diffused
over the whole person of that already well known physician, who talked
of his art so freely, yet performed miraculous cures, and his assiduous
attentions to her father, made a deep impression on the girl. Jenkins
soon became the friend, the confidant, a vigilant and gentle guardian.
Sometimes in the studio, when some one--the father himself most
frequently--made a too equivocal remark or a ribald jest, the Irishman
would frown and make a little noise with his lips, or else would divert
Felicia's attention. He often took her to pass the day with Madame
Jenkins, exerting himself to prevent her from becoming once more the
wild creature of the ante-boarding school days, or indeed the something
worse than that which she threatened to become, in the moral
abandonment, the saddest of all forms of abandonment, in which she was
left.

But the girl had a more powerful protector than the irreproachable but
worldly example of the fair Madame Jenkins: the art which she adored,
the enthusiasm it aroused in her essentially open nature, the sentiment
of beauty, of truth, which passed from her thoughtful brain, teeming
with ideas, into her fingers with a little quiver of the nerves, a
longing to see the thing done, the image realized. All day she worked
at her sculpture, gave shape to her reveries, with the happy tact of
instinct-guided youth, which imparts so much charm to first works; that
prevented her from regretting too keenly the austere régime of the
Belin institution, which was as perfect a safeguard and as light as the
veil of a novice who has not taken her vows; and it also shielded her
from perilous conversations to which in her one absorbing preoccupation
she paid no heed.

Ruys was proud of the talent springing up by his side. As he grew
weaker from day to day, having already reached the stage at which the
artist regrets his vanishing powers, he followed Felicia's progress as
a consolation for the close of his own career. The modelling-tool,
which trembled in his hand, was seized at his side with virile firmness
and self-assurance, tempered by all of the innate refinement of her
being that a woman can apply to the realization of her ideal of an art.
A curious sensation is that twofold paternity, that survival of genius,
which abandons the one who is going away to pass into the one who is
coming, like the lovely domestic birds which, on the eve of a death,
desert the threatened roof for a more cheerful dwelling.

In the last days of her father's life, Felicia--a great artist, and
still a child--did half of her father's work for him, and nothing could
be more touching than that collaboration of the father and daughter, in
the same studio, sculptors of the same group. Things did not always run
smoothly. Although she was her father's pupil, Felicia's individuality
was already inclined to rebel against any arbitrary guidance. She had
the audacity of beginners, the presentiment of a great future felt only
by youthful geniuses, and, in opposition to the romantic traditions of
Sébastien Ruys, a tendency toward modern realism, a feeling that she
must plant that glorious old flag upon some new monument.

Then there would be terrible scenes, disputes from which the father
would come forth vanquished, annihilated by his daughter's logic,
amazed at the rapid progress children make on the highroads, while
their elders, who have opened the gates for them, remain stationary at
the point of departure. When she was working for him Felicia yielded
more readily; but concerning her own work she was intractable. For
instance, the _Joueur de Boules_, her first exhibited work, which
made such a tremendous hit at the Salon of 1862, was the occasion of
violent disputes between the two artists, of such fierce controversy
that Jenkins had to intervene and to superintend the removal of the
figure, which Ruys had threatened to break.

Aside from these little dramas, which had no effect upon the love of
their hearts, those two worshipped each other, with the presentiment
and, as the days passed, the cruel certainty of an impending
separation; when suddenly there came a horrible episode in Felicia's
life. One day Jenkins took her home to dinner with him, as he often
did. Madame Jenkins and her son were away for two days; but the
doctor's years, his semi-paternal intimacy, justified him in inviting
to his house, even in his wife's absence, a girl whose fifteen years,
the fifteen years of an Eastern Jewess resplendent with premature
beauty, left her still almost a child.

The dinner was very lively, Jenkins cordial and agreeable as always.
Then they went into the doctor's office; and suddenly, as they sat on
the divan, talking in the most intimate and friendly way concerning her
father, his health and their joint work, Felicia had a feeling as of
the cold blast from an abyss between herself and that man, followed by
the brutal embrace of a satyr's claw. She saw a Jenkins totally unknown
to her, wild-eyed, stammering, with brutish laugh and insulting hands.
In the surprise, the unexpectedness of that outbreak of the animal
instinct, any other than Felicia, any child of her years, but genuinely
innocent, would have been lost. The thing that saved her, poor child,
was her knowledge. She had heard so many stories at her father's table!
And then her art, her life at the studio. She was no _ingénue_. She at
once understood what that embrace meant, she squirmed and struggled,
then, finding that she was not strong enough, screamed. He was
frightened, released her, and suddenly she found herself on her feet,
free, with the man at her knees, weeping and imploring forgiveness. He
had yielded to an attack of frenzy. She was so lovely, he loved her so
dearly. He had struggled for months. But now it was all over--never
again, oh! never again. He would not even touch the hem of her dress.
She did not reply, but tremblingly rearranged her hair and her clothes
with frenzied fingers. Go, she must go at once, alone. He sent a
servant with her, and whispered, as she entered the carriage: "Above
all things, not a word of this at home. It would kill your father." He
knew her so well, he was so sure of closing her mouth by that thought,
the villain, that he came the next day as if nothing had happened,
effusive as always and with the same ingenuous face. She never did
mention the incident to her father or to anybody else. But from that
day a change took place in her, as if the springs of her pride were
relaxed. She became capricious, had fits of lassitude, a curl of
disgust in her smile, and sometimes she yielded to sudden outbursts of
wrath against her father, and cast scornful glances upon him, rebuking
him for his failure to watch over her.

"What is the matter with her?" Père Ruys would ask; and Jenkins, with
the authority of a physician, would attribute it to her age and a
physical trouble. He himself avoided speaking to the girl, relying upon
time to efface the sinister impression, and not despairing of obtaining
what he desired, for he desired more eagerly than ever, being in the
grasp of the insane passion of a man of forty-seven, the incurable
passion of maturity; and that was the hypocrite's punishment. His
daughter's strange state caused the sculptor genuine distress; but it
was of brief duration. Ruys suddenly expired, fell to pieces all at
once, like all those whom Jenkins attended. His last words were:

"Jenkins, I place my daughter in your care."

The words were so ironical in all their mournfulness that Jenkins, who
was present at the last, could not avoid turning pale.

Felicia was even more stupefied than sorrowful. To the feeling of
amazement at death, which she had never seen before, and which appeared
in a guise so dear to her, was added the feeling of a terrible
loneliness surrounded by darkness and perils.

Several friends of the sculptor assembled in a family council to
deliberate concerning the future of the unfortunate, penniless orphan.
They had found fifty francs in the catch-all in which Sébastien kept
his money on a little commode in the studio, well known to his needy
friends, who had recourse to it without scruple. No other patrimony, in
cash at all events; only a most superb collection of artistic objects
and curios, a few valuable pictures and some scattered outstanding
claims hardly sufficient to cover his innumerable debts. They talked of
a sale at auction. Felicia, on being consulted, replied that it was a
matter of indifference to her whether they sold all or none, but that
she begged them, for God's sake, to leave her in peace.

The sale did not take place, however, thanks to the godmother, the
excellent Crenmitz, who suddenly made her appearance, as tranquil and
gentle as always:

"Don't listen to them, my child, sell nothing. Your old Constance has
fifteen thousand francs a year which were intended for you. You shall
have the benefit of them now, that's all. We will live together here. I
will not be in the way, you will see. You can work at your sculpture,
while I keep the house. Does that suit you?"

It was said so affectionately, in the childish accent of foreigners
expressing themselves in French, that the girl was deeply moved. Her
stony heart opened, a burning flood poured from her eyes and she threw
herself, buried herself in the ex-dancer's arms: "Oh! godmother, how
good you are! Yes, yes; don't leave me again--stay with me always. Life
frightens and disgusts me. I see so much hypocrisy and lying!" And when
the old woman had made herself a silky, embroidered nest in the house,
which resembled a traveller's camp filled with the treasures of all
lands, those two widely different natures took up their life together.

It was no small sacrifice that Constance had made to the little demon,
to leave her retreat at Fontainebleau for Paris, which she held in
horror. From the day when the ballet-dancer, once famous for her
extravagant caprices, who squandered princely fortunes between her five
parted fingers, had descended from the realm of apotheoses with a last
remnant of their dazzling glare still lingering in her eyes, and had
tried to resume the life of ordinary mortals, to administer her little
income and her modest household, she had been subjected to a multitude
of unblushing attempts at extortion and schemes which were readily
successful in view of the ignorance of that poor butterfly, who was
afraid of reality and constantly coming in contact with all its unknown
difficulties. In Felicia's house the responsibility became far more
serious, because of the extravagant methods long ago inaugurated by the
father and continued by the daughter, both artists having the utmost
contempt for economy. She had other difficulties, too, to overcome. She
could not endure the studio, with its permanent odor of tobacco smoke,
with the cloud, impenetrable to her, in which artistic discussions and
ideas, expressed in their baldest form, were confounded in vague eddies
of glowing vapor which invariably gave her the sick headache. The
_blague_ was especially terrifying to her. Being a foreigner, a former
divinity of the ballet greenroom, fed upon superannuated compliments,
gallantries _à la Dorat_ she was unable to understand it, and was
dismayed at the wild exaggerations, the paradoxes of those Parisians
whose wits were sharpened by the liberty of the studio.

She whose wit had consisted entirely in the agility of her feet was
awed by her new surroundings and relegated to the position of a simple
companion; and to see that amiable old creature, silent and smiling,
sitting in the bright light of the rounded window, her knitting on her
knees, like one of Chardin's bourgeoises, or walking quickly up the
long Rue de Chaillot where the nearest market was situated, with her
cook at her side, one would never have dreamed that the worthy woman
had once held kings, princes, all the susceptible portion of the
nobility and the world of finance, subject to the whim of her toes and
her gauze skirts.

Paris is full of these extinct stars which have fallen back into the
crowd.

Some of these celebrities, these conquerors of a former time, retain a
gnawing rage in their hearts; others, on the contrary, dwell blissfully
upon the past, ruminate in ineffable content all their glorious, bygone
joys, seeking only repose, silence and obscurity, wherein they may
remember and meditate, so that, when they die, we are amazed to learn
that they were still living.

Constance Crenmitz was one of those happy mortals. But what a strange
artists' household was that of those two women, equally childlike,
contributing to the common stock inexperience and ambition, the
tranquillity of an accomplished destiny and the feverish activity of a
life in its prime, all the differences indeed that were indicated by
the contrast between that blonde, white as a withered rose, who seemed
to be dressed, beneath her fair complexion, in a remnant of Bengal
fire, and that brunette, with the regular features, who almost
invariably enveloped her beauty in dark stuffs, simply made, as if with
a semblance of masculinity.

Unforeseen emergencies, caprice, ignorance of even the most trivial
things, led to extreme confusion in the management of the household,
from which they were sometimes unable to extricate themselves except by
enforced privations, by dismissing servants, by reforms laughable in
their exaggeration. During one of those crises Jenkins made delicate,
carefully veiled offers of assistance which were repelled with scorn by
Felicia.

"It isn't right," said Constance, "to be so rude to that poor doctor.
After all, there was nothing insulting in what he said. An old friend
of your father's."

"That man, anybody's friend! Oh! what a superb Tartuffe!"

And Felicia, hardly able to contain herself, twisted her wrath into
irony, mimicked Jenkins, the affected gestures, the hand on the heart;
then, puffing out her cheeks, said in a hoarse, whistling voice, full
of false effusiveness:

"We must be kind, we must be humane. To do good without hope of
reward!--that is the secret."

Constance laughed, in spite of herself, till the tears ran down her
cheeks, the resemblance was so perfect.

"Never mind, you were too harsh--you will end by driving him away."

"Oh! indeed!" said a shake of the girl's head.

In truth, he continued to come to the house, always affable and sweet,
dissembling his passion, which was visible only when he became jealous
of new-comers, overwhelming with attentions the ex-ballet-dancer, to
whom his pleasant manners were gratifying in spite of everything, and
who recognized in him a man of her own time, of the time when men paid
their respects to women by kissing their hand, with a complimentary
remark as to their appearance.

                         *        *        *

One morning, Jenkins, having looked in during his round of visits,
found Constance alone and unoccupied in the reception room.

"I am mounting guard, Doctor, as you see," she said calmly.

"How does that happen?"

"Why, Felicia's at work. She doesn't want to be disturbed and the
servants are so stupid. I am carrying out her orders myself."

Then, as she saw the Irishman walk toward the studio, she added:

"No, no, don't go there. She gave me strict orders not to let any one
go in."

"Very good, but I--"

"I beg you not--you will get me a scolding."

Jenkins was about to withdraw, when a peal of laughter from Felicia
reached their ears through the portière and made him raise his head.

"So she isn't alone?"

"No. The Nabob is with her. They are having a sitting--for the bust."

"But why this mystery? It's very strange."

He strode back and forth, raging inwardly, but holding himself back.

At last he broke out.

It was improper beyond expression to allow a girl to be closeted in
that way with a man.

He was astonished that so serious-minded, so devout a person as
Constance--What did it look like?

The old lady gazed at him in stupefaction. As if Felicia were like
other girls! And then, what danger could there be with the Nabob, such
a serious man and so ugly? Moreover, Jenkins ought to know well enough
that Felicia never consulted anybody, that she did only what she chose.

"No, no, it's impossible; I cannot allow this," exclaimed the Irishman.

And, paying no further heed to the dancer, who threw up her arms to
call heaven to witness what was taking place, he walked toward the
studio; but, instead of entering at once, he opened the door gently and
raised a corner of the hanging, so that a part of the room, just that
part where the Nabob was posing, was visible to him, although at a
considerable distance.

Jansoulet was seated, without a cravat, with his waistcoat thrown open,
talking excitedly, in an undertone. Felicia answered in laughing
whispers. The sitting was very animated. Then there was a pause, a
rustling of skirts, and the artist, going up to her model, turned his
linen collar back all the way around, with a familiar gesture, letting
her hand run lightly over the tanned skin.

That Ethiopian face, in which the muscles quivered with the
intoxication of supreme content, with its great eyelids lowered like
those of a sleeping beast being tickled with a straw, the bold outline
of the girl as she leaned over that outlandish face to verify its
proportions, and then a violent, irresistible gesture, seizing the
slender hand as it passed and pressing it to two thick, trembling
lips,--Jenkins saw all this in a red glare.

The noise that he made in entering caused the two to resume their
respective positions, and in the bright light which dazzled his prying,
catlike eyes, he saw the girl standing before him, indignant,
dumfounded: "What is this? Who has dared?" and the Nabob on his
platform, with his collar turned back, petrified, monumental.

Jenkins, somewhat abashed, dismayed by his own audacity, stammered some
words of apology. He had something very urgent to say to M. Jansoulet,
very important information which could not be delayed. He knew from a
reliable source that there would be a distribution of crosses on March
16th. The Nabob's face, momentarily contracted, at once relaxed.

"Ah! really?"

He abandoned his pose. The matter was well worth considering, deuce
take it! M. de La Perrière, one of the Empress's secretaries, had been
directed by her to visit the shelter of Bethlehem. Jenkins had come to
take the Nabob to the secretary's office at the Tuileries and make
inquiries. That visit to Bethlehem meant a cross for him.

"Come, let us be off; I am with you, my dear doctor."

He bore Jenkins no ill-will for disturbing him, and he feverishly tied
his cravat, forgetting under the stress of his new emotion the
agitation of a moment before, for with him ambition took precedence of
everything.

While the two men talked together in undertones, Felicia, standing
before them, with quivering nostrils and lip curling in scorn, watched
them as if to say: "Well! I am waiting."

Jansoulet apologized for being obliged to interrupt the sitting; but a
visit of the utmost importance--She smiled pityingly.

"Go, go. At the point where we are now, I can work without you."

"Oh! yes," said the doctor, "the bust is almost finished. It's a fine
piece of work," he added, with the air of a connoisseur.

And, relying on the compliment to cover his retreat, he was slinking
away, crestfallen; but Felicia fiercely called him back:

"Stay, you. I have something to say to you."

He saw by her expression that he must comply, under pain of an
outbreak.

"With your permission, my friend? Mademoiselle has a word to say to me.
My coupé is at the door. Get in, I will be with you in a moment."

When the studio door closed upon those heavy departing footsteps, they
looked each other in the face.

"You must be either drunk or mad to venture to do such a thing. What!
you presume to enter my studio when I do not choose to receive? Why
this violence? By what right?"

"By the right that desperate, unconquerable passion gives."

"Be quiet, Jenkins; those are words that I do not wish to hear. I let
you come here through pity, through habit, because my father was fond
of you. But never speak to me again of your--love"--she said the word
very low, as if it were a disgrace--"or you will see me no more, even
though I should be driven to die in order to escape you for good and
all."

A child taken in fault does not bend his head more humbly than Jenkins
as he replied:

"True--I was wrong. A moment of madness, of blindness. But why do you
take pleasure in tearing my heart as you do?"

"As if I were thinking of you!"

"Whether you are thinking of me or not, I am here, I see what is going
on, and your coquetry pains me terribly."

A slight flush rose in her cheeks at that reproach.

"I, a coquette! With whom?"

"With him," said the Irishman, pointing to the superb apelike bust.

She tried to laugh.

"The Nabob. What nonsense!"

"Do not lie. Do you think I am blind, that I don't understand all your
manoeuvres? You stay alone with him a long while. I was at the door
just now. I saw you." He lowered his voice as if his breath had failed
him. "What are you after, in heaven's name, you strange, heartless
child? I have seen you repel the handsomest, the noblest, the greatest.
That little de Géry devours you with his eyes, but you pay no heed to
him. Even the Duc de Mora has not succeeded in reaching your heart. And
this man, a shocking, vulgar creature, who isn't thinking of you, who
has something very different from love in his head--you saw how he went
away just now! What are you aiming at? What do you expect from him?"

"I intend--I intend that he shall marry me. There."

Coolly, in a softer tone, as if the confession had drawn her nearer to
the man she despised so bitterly, she set forth her reasons. She had
luxurious, extravagant tastes, unmethodical habits which nothing could
overcome and which would infallibly lead her to poverty and
destitution, and good Crenmitz too, who allowed herself to be ruined
without a word. In three years, four years at most, it would be all
over. And then would come debts and desperate expedients, the ragged
gowns and old shoes of poor artists' households. Or else the lover, the
keeper, that is to say slavery and degradation.

"Nonsense," said Jenkins. "What of me, am I not here?"

"Anything rather than you," she said, drawing herself up. "No, what I
must have, what I will have, is a husband to protect me from others and
from myself, to keep me from a mass of black things of which I am
afraid when life becomes a bore to me, from abysses into which I feel
that I may plunge,--some one who will love me while I work, and will
relieve my poor old exhausted fairy from doing sentry duty. That man
suits me and I have had my eye on him ever since I first saw him. He is
ugly to look at, but he seems kind; and then he is absurdly rich, and
wealth, in that degree, must be amusing. Oh! I know all about it. There
probably is some black spot in his life which has brought him good
luck. All that gold can't have been honestly come by. But tell me
truly, Jenkins, with your hand on that heart which you invoke so often,
do you think that I am a very tempting wife for an honest man?
Consider: of all these young men who ask as a favor to be allowed to
come here, what one has ever thought of asking for my hand? Never a
single one. De Géry no more than the rest. I charm, but I terrify. That
is easily understood. What can anyone expect of a girl brought up as I
was, with no mother or family, tossed in a heap with my father's models
and mistresses? Such mistresses, great God! And Jenkins for my only
protector. Oh! when I think of it! When I think of it!"

And, with the memory of that already distant episode, thoughts came to
her mind which inflamed her wrath. "Oh! yes, I am a child of chance,
and this adventurer is just the husband for me."[2]

      [2] Je suis une fille _d'aventure_, et cet _aventurier_ est bien
      le mari qu'il me faut.

"At least you will wait until he's a widower," retorted Jenkins
tranquilly. "And in that case you may have to wait a long while, for
his Levantine looks to be in excellent health."

Felicia Ruys became livid.

"He is married?"

"Married, why, to be sure, and father of a lot of children. The whole
outfit landed here two days ago."

She stood for a moment, speechless, her cheeks quivering.

In front of her the Nabob's broad visage, in shining clay, with its
flat nose, its sensual good-humored mouth, seemed to cry aloud in its
fidelity to life. She gazed at it a moment, then stepped toward it, and
with a gesture of disgust overturned the high, wooden stand and the
gleaming, greasy block itself, which fell to the floor a shapeless mass
of mud.




VII.

JANSOULET AT HOME.


Married he had been for twelve years, but had never mentioned the fact
to any one of his Parisian acquaintances, by virtue of an acquired
Oriental habit, the habit that Oriental peoples have of maintaining
silence concerning their female relations. Suddenly it was learned that
Madame was coming, that apartments must be made ready for her, her
children and her women. The Nabob hired the whole second floor of the
house on Place Vendôme, the previous tenant being sacrificed to Nabob
prices. The stables were increased in size, the staff of servants was
doubled; and then, one day, coachmen and carriages went to the Lyon
station to fetch Madame, who arrived with a retinue of negresses,
little negroes and gazelles, completely filling a long train that had
been heated expressly for her all the way from Marseille.

She alighted in a terrible state of prostration, exhausted and
bewildered by her long railroad journey, the first in her life, for she
had been taken to Tunis as a child and had never left it. Two negroes
carried her from the carriage to her apartments in an armchair, which
was always kept in the vestibule thereafter, ready for that difficult
transportation. Madame Jansoulet could not walk upstairs, for it made
her dizzy; she would not have an elevator because her weight made it
squeak; besides, she never walked. An enormous creature, so bloated
that it was impossible to assign her an age, but somewhere between
twenty-five and forty, with rather a pretty face, but features all
deformed by fat, lifeless eyes beneath drooping lids grooved like
shells, trussed up in exported gowns, loaded with diamonds and jewels
like a Hindoo idol, she was a most perfect specimen of the transplanted
Europeans who are called Levantines. A strange race of obese Creoles,
connected with our society by naught save language and dress, but
enveloped by the Orient in its stupefying atmosphere, the subtle
poisons of its opium-laden air, in which everything becomes limp and
nerveless, from the tissues of the skin to the girdle around the waist,
ay, even to the mind itself and the thought.

She was the daughter of an enormously wealthy Belgian, a dealer in
coral at Tunis, in whose establishment Jansoulet had been employed for
several months on his first arrival in the country. Mademoiselle
Afchin, at that time a fascinating doll, with dazzling complexion and
hair, and perfect health, came often to the counting-room for her
father, in the great chariot drawn by mules which conveyed them to
their beautiful villa of La Marse in the outskirts of Tunis. The child,
always _décolleté_, with gleaming white shoulders seen for a moment in
a luxurious frame, dazzled the adventurer; and years after, when he had
become rich, the favorite of the bey, and thought of settling down, his
mind reverted to her. The child had changed into a stout, heavy, sallow
girl. Her intellect, never of a high order, had become still more
obtuse in the torpor of such a life as dormice lead, in the neglect of
a father whose whole time and thought were given to business, and in
the use of tobacco saturated with opium and of sweetmeats,--the torpor
of her Flemish blood conjoined with Oriental indolence; and with all
the rest, ill-bred, gluttonous, sensual, arrogant, a Levantine trinket
brought to perfection.

But Jansoulet saw nothing of all that.

In his eyes she was then, she was always, down to the time of her
arrival in Paris, a superior being, a person of the highest refinement,
a Demoiselle Afchin; he spoke to her with respect, maintained a
slightly humble and timid attitude toward her, gave her money without
counting it, indulged her most extravagant caprices, her wildest whims,
all the strange conceits of a Levantine's brain distracted by ennui and
idleness. A single word justified everything; she was a Demoiselle
Afchin. And yet they had nothing in common; he was always at the Kasbah
or the Bardo, in attendance on the bey, paying his court to him, or
else in his counting-room; she passed her day in bed, on her head a
diadem of pearls worth three hundred thousand francs, which she never
laid aside, brutalizing herself by smoking, living as in a harem,
admiring herself in the mirror, arraying herself in fine clothes, in
company with several other Levantines, whose greatest joy consisted in
measuring with their necklaces the girth of arms and legs which
rivalled one another in corpulency, bringing forth children with whom
she never concerned herself, whom she never saw, who had never even
caused her suffering, for she was delivered under the influence of
chloroform. A "bale" of white flesh perfumed with musk. And Jansoulet
would say with pride: "I married a Demoiselle Afchin!"

Under Parisian skies and in the cold light of the capital, his
disillusionment began. Having determined to set up a regular
establishment, to receive, to give entertainments, the Nabob had sent
for his wife, in order to place her at the head of his house. But when
he saw that mass of stiff, crackling dry-goods, of Palais-Royal finery,
alight at his door, and all the extraordinary outfit that followed her,
he had a vague impression of a Queen Pomare in exile. The difficulty
was that he had seen some genuine women of fashion and he made
comparisons. He had planned a grand ball to celebrate her arrival, but
he prudently abstained. Indeed Madame Jansoulet refused to receive any
one. Her natural indolence was augmented by the homesickness which the
cold yellow fog and the pouring rain had brought upon her as soon as
she landed. She passed several days in bed, crying aloud like a child,
declaring that they had brought her to Paris to kill her, and even
rejecting the slightest attentions from her women. She lay there
roaring among her lace pillows, her hair in a tangled mass around her
diadem, the windows closed and curtains tightly drawn, lamps lighted
day and night, crying out that she wanted to go away--ay, to go
away--ay; and it was a pitiful thing to see, in that tomb-like
darkness, the half-filled trunks scattered over the carpet, the
frightened gazelles, the negresses crouching around their hysterical
mistress, groaning in unison, with haggard eyes, like the dogs of
travellers in polar countries which go mad when they cannot see the
sun.

The Irish doctor, upon being admitted to that distressing scene, had no
success with his fatherly ways, his fine superficial phrases. Not at
any price would the Levantine take the pearls with arsenical base, to
give tone to her system. The Nabob was horrified. What was he to do?
Send her back to Tunis with the children? That was hardly possible. He
was definitively in disgrace there. The Hemerlingues had triumphed. A
last insult had filled the measure to overflowing: on Jansoulet's
departure the bey had commissioned him to have several millions of gold
coined after a new pattern at the Paris Mint; then the commission had
been abruptly withdrawn and given to Hemerlingue. Jansoulet, being
publicly insulted, retorted with a public manifesto, offering all his
property for sale, his palace on the Bardo presented to him by the
former bey, his villas at La Marse, all of white marble, surrounded by
magnificent gardens, his counting rooms, the most commodious and most
sumptuously furnished in the city, and instructing the intelligent
Bompain to bring his wife and children to Paris in order to put the
seal of finality to his departure. After such a display, it would be
hard to return; that is what he tried to make Mademoiselle Afchin
understand, but she replied only by prolonged groans. He strove to
comfort her, to amuse her, but what form of distraction could be made
to appeal to that abnormally apathetic nature? And then, could he
change the skies of Paris, give back to the wretched Levantine her
marble-tiled _patio_, where she used to pass long hours in a cool,
delicious state of drowsiness, listening to the plashing of the water
in the great alabaster fountain with three basins one above the other,
and her gilded boat, covered with a purple awning and rowed by eight
supple, muscular Tripolitan oarsmen over the lovely lake of El-Baheira,
when the sun was setting? Sumptuous as were the apartments on Place
Vendôme, they could not supply the place of those lost treasures. And
she plunged deeper than ever in her despair. One habitué of the house
succeeded, however, in drawing her out of it, Cabassu, who styled
himself on his cards "professor of massage;" a stout dark thick-set
man, redolent of garlic and hair-oil, square-shouldered, covered with
hair to his eyes, who knew stories of Parisian seraglios, trivial
anecdotes within the limited range of Madame's intellect. He came once
to rub her, and she wished to see him again, detained him. He was
obliged to abandon all his other customers and to become the _masseur_
of that able-bodied creature, at a salary equal to that of a senator,
her page, her reader, her body-guard. Jansoulet, overjoyed to see that
his wife was contented, was not conscious of the disgusting absurdity
of the intimacy.

Cabassu was seen in the Bois, in the enormous and sumptuous calèche
beside the favorite gazelle, at the back of the theatre boxes which the
Levantine hired, for she went abroad now, revivified by her masseur's
treatment and determined to be amused. She liked the theatre,
especially farces or melodramas. The apathy of her unwieldy body was
minimized in the false glare of the footlights. But she enjoyed
Cardailhac's theatre most of all. There the Nabob was at home. From the
first manager down to the last box-opener, the whole staff belonged to
him. He had a key to the door leading from the corridor to the stage;
and the salon attached to his box, decorated in Oriental fashion, with
the ceiling hollowed out like a bee-hive, divans upholstered in camel's
hair, the gas-jet enclosed in a little Moorish lantern, was admirably
adapted for a nap during the tedious _entr'actes_: a delicate
compliment from the manager to his partner's wife. Nor had that monkey
of a Cardailhac stopped at that: detecting Mademoiselle Afchin's liking
for the stage, he had succeeded in persuading her that she possessed an
intuitive knowledge of all things pertaining to it, and had ended by
asking her to cast a glance in her leisure moments, the glance of an
expert, upon such pieces as he sent to her. An excellent way of binding
the partnership more firmly.

Poor manuscripts in blue or yellow covers, which hope has tied with
slender ribbons, ye who take flight swelling with ambition and with
dreams, who knows what hands will open you, turn your leaves, what
prying fingers will deflower your unknown charm, that shining dust
stored up by every new idea? Who passes judgment on you, and who
condemns you? Sometimes, before going out to dinner, Jansoulet, on
going up to his wife's room, would find her smoking in her easy-chair,
with her head thrown back and piles of manuscript by her side, and
Cabassu, armed with a blue pencil, reading in his hoarse voice and with
his Bourg-Saint-Andéol intonation some dramatic lucubration which he
cut and slashed remorselessly at the slightest word of criticism from
the lady. "Don't disturb yourselves," the good Nabob's wave of the hand
would say, as he entered the room on tiptoe. He would listen and nod
his head admiringly as he looked at his wife. "She's an astonishing
creature," he would say to himself, for he knew nothing of literature,
and in that direction at all events he recognized Mademoiselle Afchin's
superiority.

"She had the theatrical instinct," as Cardailhac said; but as an
offset, the maternal instinct was entirely lacking. She never gave a
thought to her children, abandoning them to the hands of strangers,
and, when they were brought to her once a month, contenting herself
with giving them the flabby, lifeless flesh of her cheeks to kiss,
between two puffs of a cigarette, and never making inquiries concerning
the details of care and health which perpetuate the physical bond of
motherhood, and make the true mother's heart bleed in sympathy with her
child's slightest suffering.

They were three stout, heavy, apathetic boys, of eleven, nine, and
seven years, with the Levantine's sallow complexion and premature
bloated appearance, and their father's velvety, kindly eyes. They were
as ignorant as young noblemen of the Middle Ages; in Tunis M. Bompain
had charge of their studies, but in Paris the Nabob, intent upon giving
them the benefit of a Parisian education, had placed them in the most
stylish and most expensive boarding school, the Collège Bourdaloue,
conducted by excellent Fathers, who aimed less at teaching their pupils
than at moulding them into well-bred, reflecting men of the world, and
who succeeded in producing little monstrosities, affected and
ridiculous, scornful of play, absolutely ignorant, with no trace of
spontaneity or childishness, and despairingly pert and forward. The
little Jansoulets did not enjoy themselves overmuch in that hothouse
for early fruits, notwithstanding the special privileges accorded to
their immense wealth; they were really too neglected. Even the Creoles
in the institution had correspondents and visitors; but they were never
called to the parlor, nor was any relative of theirs known to the
school authorities; from time to time they received baskets of
sweetmeats or windfalls of cake, and that was all. The Nabob, as he
drove through Paris, would strip a confectioner's shop-window for their
benefit and send the contents to the college with that affectionate
impulsiveness blended with negro-like ostentation which characterized
all his acts. It was the same with their toys, always too fine, too
elaborate, of no earthly use, the toys which are made only for show and
which the Parisian never buys. But the thing to which above all others
the little Jansoulets owed the respectful consideration of pupils and
masters was their well-filled purse, always ready for collections, for
professorial entertainments, and for the charitable visits, the famous
visits inaugurated by the Collège Bourdaloue, one of the tempting items
on the programme of the institution, the admiration of impressionable
minds.

Twice a month, turn and turn about, the pupils belonging to the little
Society of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, established at the college on the
model of the great society of that name, went in small detachments,
unattended, like grown men, to carry succor and consolation to the
farthest corners of the thickly-peopled faubourgs. In that way it was
sought to teach them charity by experience, the art of finding out the
wretchedness, the necessities of the people and of dressing their
sores, always more or less repulsive, with a balsam of kind words and
ecclesiastical maxims. To console, to convert the masses by the aid of
childhood, to disarm religious incredulity by the youth and innocence
of the apostles; such was the purpose of that little society, a purpose
that failed absolutely of realization, by the way. The children,
well-dressed, well-fed, in excellent health, went only to addresses
designated beforehand and found respectable poor people, sometimes a
little ailing, but far too clean, already enrolled and relieved by the
rich charitable organizations of the Church. They never happened upon
one of those loathsome homes, where hunger, mourning, abject poverty,
all forms of misery, physical and moral, are written in filth on the
walls, in indelible wrinkles on the faces. Their visit was arranged in
advance like that of the sovereign to the guard-house to taste the
soldier's soup; the guard-house is notified and the soup seasoned for
the royal palate. Have you seen those pictures in religious books,
where a little communicant, with his bow on his arm and his taper in
his hand, all combed and curled, goes to assist a poor old man lying on
his wretched pallet with the whites of his eyes turned up to the sky?
These charitable visits had the same conventional stage-setting and
accent. The machine-like gestures of the little preachers with arms too
short for the work, were answered by words learned by rote, so false as
to set one's teeth on edge. The comical words of encouragement, the
"consolation lavishly poured forth" in prize-book phrases by voices
suggestive of young roosters with the influenza, called forth emotional
blessings, the whining, sickening mummery of a church porch after
vespers. And as soon as the young visitors' backs were turned, what an
explosion of laughter and shouting in the garret, what a dancing around
the offerings brought, what an overturning of armchairs in which they
have been feigning illness, what a pouring of boluses into the fire, a
fire of ashes, very artistically arranged! When the little Jansoulets
went to visit their parents, they were placed in charge of the man with
the red fez, Bompain the indispensable. It was Bompain who took them to
the Champs-Élysées, arrayed in English jackets, silk hats of the latest
style--at seven years!--and with little canes dangling from the ends of
their dogskin gloves. It was Bompain who superintended the victualling
of the break on which he went with the children to the races,
race-cards stuck in their hats around which green veils were twisted,
wonderfully like the characters in lilliputian pantomimes whose
comicality consists solely in the size of their heads compared with
their short legs and dwarfish movements. They smoked and drank
outrageously. Sometimes the man in the fez, himself hardly able to
stand, brought them home horribly ill. And yet Jansoulet loved his
little ones, especially the youngest, who, with his long hair and his
doll-like aspect, reminded him of little Afchin in her carriage. But
they were still at the age when children belong to the mother, when
neither a stylish tailor nor accomplished masters nor a fashionable
boarding-school nor the ponies saddled for the little men in the
stable, when nothing in short takes the place of the watchful and
attentive hand, the warmth and gayety of the nest. The father was
unable to give them that in any event; and then he was so busy!

A thousand matters, the _Caisse Territoriale_, the arrangement of
the picture gallery, races at Tattersall's with Bois-l'Héry, some
gimcrack to go and see, here or there, at the houses of collectors to
whom Schwalbach recommended him, hours passed with trainers, jockeys,
dealers in curiosities, the occupied, varied existence of a bourgeois
gentleman in modern Paris. In all this going and coming he succeeded in
Parisianizing himself a little more each day, was admitted to
Monpavon's club, made welcome in the green-room at the ballet, behind
the scenes at the theatre, and continued to preside at his famous
bachelor breakfasts, the only entertainments possible in his
establishment. His existence was really very full, and yet de Géry
relieved him from the most difficult part of it, the complicated
department of solicitations and contributions.

The young man was now a witness, as he sat at his desk, of all the
audacious and burlesque inventions, all the heroi-comic schemes of that
mendicancy of a great city, organized like a ministerial department and
in numbers like an army, which subscribes to the newspapers and knows
its _Bottin_ by heart. It was his business to receive the fair-haired
lady, young, brazen-faced and already faded, who asks for only a
hundred louis, threatening to throw herself into the water immediately
upon leaving the house if they are not forthcoming, and the stout
matron, with affable, unceremonious manners, who says on entering the
room: "Monsieur, you do not know me. Nor have I the honor of knowing
you; but we shall soon know each other. Be kind enough to sit down and
let us talk." The tradesman in difficulties, on the brink of
insolvency--it is sometimes true--who comes to entreat you to save his
honor, with a pistol all ready for suicide bulging out the pocket of
his coat--sometimes it is only the bowl of his pipe. And oftentimes
cases of genuine distress, prolix and tiresome, of people who do not
even know how to tell how unfitted they are to earn their living.
Besides such instances of avowed mendicancy, there were others in
disguise: charity, philanthropy, good works, encouragement of artists,
house-to-house collections for children's hospitals, parish churches,
penitentiaries, benevolent societies or district libraries. And lastly
those that array themselves in a worldly mask: tickets to concerts,
benefit performances, tickets of all colors, "platform, front row,
reserved sections." The Nabob's orders were that no one should be
refused, and it was a decided gain that he no longer attended to such
matters in person. For a long time he had deluged all this hypocritical
scheming with gold, with lordly indifference, paying five hundred
francs for a ticket to a concert by some Wurtemberg zither-player, or
Languedocian flutist, which would have been quoted at ten francs at the
Tuileries or the Due de Mora's. On some days young de Géry went out
from these sessions actually nauseated. All his youthful honesty rose
in revolt; he attempted to induce the Nabob to institute some reforms;
but he, at the first word, assumed the bored expression characteristic
of weak natures when called upon to give an opinion, or else replied
with a shrug of his great shoulders: "Why this is Paris, my dear child.
Don't you be alarmed, but just let me alone. I know where I'm going and
what I want."

He wanted two things at that time,--a seat in the Chamber of Deputies
and the cross of the Legion of Honor. In his view those were the first
two stages of the long ascent which his ambition impelled him to
undertake. He certainly would be chosen a deputy through the _Caisse
Territoriale_, at the head of which he was. Paganetti from
Porto-Vecchio often said to him:

"When the day comes, the island will rise as one man and vote for you."

But electors were not the only thing it was necessary to have; there
must be a vacant seat in the Chamber, and the delegation from Corsica
was full. One member, however, old Popolasca, being infirm and in no
condition to perform his duties, might be willing to resign on certain
conditions. It was a delicate matter to negotiate, but quite
practicable, for the good man had a large family, estates which
produced almost nothing, a ruined palace at Bastia, where his children
lived on _polenta_, and an apartment at Paris, in a furnished
lodging-house of the eighteenth order. By not haggling over one or two
hundred thousand francs, they might come to terms with that famished
legislator who, when sounded by Paganetti, did not say yes or no, being
allured by the magnitude of the sum but held back by the vainglory of
his office. The affair was in that condition and might be decided any
day.

With regard to the Cross, the prospect was even brighter. The Work of
Bethlehem had certainly created a great sensation at the Tuileries.
Nothing was now wanting but M. de La Perrière's visit and his report,
which could not fail to be favorable, to ensure the appearance on the
list of March 16th, the date of an imperial anniversary, of the
glorious name of Jansoulet. The 16th of March, that is to say, within a
month. What would old Hemerlingue say to that signal distinction?--old
Hemerlingue, who had had to be content with the Nisham for so long. And
the bey, who had been made to believe that Jansoulet was under the ban
of Parisian society, and the old mother, down at Saint-Romans, who was
always so happy over her son's successes! Was not all that worth a few
millions judiciously distributed and strewn by that road leading to
renown, along which the Nabob walked like a child, with no fear of
being devoured at the end? And was there not in these external joys,
these honors, this dearly bought consideration, a measure of
compensation for all the chagrins of that Oriental won back to European
life, who longed for a home and had naught but a caravansary, who
sought a wife and found naught but a Levantine?




VIII.

THE WORK OF BETHLEHEM.


Bethlehem! Why did that legendary name, sweet to the ear, warm as the
straw in the miraculous stable, give you such a cold shudder when you
saw it in gilt letters over that iron gateway? The feeling was due
perhaps to the melancholy landscape, the vast, desolate plain that
stretches from Nanterre to Saint-Cloud, broken only by an occasional
clump of trees or the smoke from some factory chimney. Perhaps, too, in
a measure, to the disproportion between the humble hamlet of Judæa and
that grandiose structure, that villa in the style of Louis XIII., built
of small stones and mortar, and showing pink through the leafless
branches of the park, where there were several large ponds with a
coating of green slime. Certain it is that on passing the place one's
heart contracted. When one entered the grounds it was much worse. An
oppressive, inexplicable silence hovered about the house, where the
faces at the windows had a depressing aspect behind the small
old-fashioned, greenish panes. The she-goats, straying along the paths,
languidly cropped the first shoots of grass, with occasional "baas" in
the direction of their keeper, who seemed as bored as they, and
followed visitors with a listless eye. There was an air of mourning,
the deserted, terrified aspect of a plague-stricken spot. Yet that had
once been an attractive, cheerful property, and there had been much
feasting and revelry there not long before. It had been laid out for
the famous singer who had sold it to Jenkins, and it exhibited traces
of the imaginative genius peculiar to the operatic stage, in the bridge
across the pond, where there was a sunken wherry filled with
water-soaked leaves, and in its summer-house, all of rockwork, covered
with climbing ivy. It had seen some droll sights, had that
summer-house, in the singer's time, and now it saw some sad ones, for
the infirmary was located there.

To tell the truth, the whole establishment was simply one huge
infirmary. The children fell sick as soon as they arrived, languished
and finally died unless their parents speedily removed them to the safe
shelter of their homes. The curé of Nanterre went so often to Bethlehem
with his black vestments and his silver crucifix, the undertaker had so
many orders for coffins for the house, that it was talked about in the
neighborhood, and indignant mothers shook their fists at the model
nursery, but only at a safe distance if they happened to have in their
arms a little pink and white morsel of humanity to shelter from all the
contagions of that spot. That was what gave the miserable place such a
heart-rending look. A house where children die cannot be cheerful; it
is impossible for the trees to bloom there, or the birds to nest, or
the water to flow in laughing ripples of foam.

The institution seemed to be fairly inaugurated. Jenkins' idea,
excellent in theory, was extremely difficult, almost impracticable, in
practice. And yet God knows that the affair had been carried through
with an excess of zeal as to every detail, even the most trifling, and
that all the money and attendants necessary were forthcoming. At the
head of the establishment was one of the most skilful men in the
profession, M. Pondevèz, a graduate of the Paris hospitals; and
associated with him, to take more direct charge of the children, a
trustworthy woman, Madame Polge. Then there were maids and seamstresses
and nurses. And how perfectly everything was arranged and systematized,
from the distribution of the water through fifty faucets, to the
omnibus with its driver in the Bethlehem livery, going to the station
at Rueil to meet every train, with a great jingling of bells. And the
magnificent goats, goats from Thibet, with long silky coats and
bursting udders. Everything was beyond praise in the organization of
the establishment; but there was one point at which everything went to
pieces. This artificial nursing, so belauded in the prospectus, did not
agree with the children. It was a strange obstinacy, as if they
conspired together with a glance, the poor little creatures, for they
were too young to speak--most of them were destined never to speak--"If
you say so, we won't suck the goats." And they did not, they preferred
to die one after another rather than to suck them. Was Jesus of
Bethlehem nursed by a goat in his stable? Did he not, on the contrary,
nestle against a woman's breast, soft and full, on which he fell asleep
when his thirst was satisfied? Who ever saw a goat among the legendary
oxen and asses on that night when the beasts spoke? In that case, why
lie, why call it Bethlehem?

The manager was touched at first by so many deaths. This Pondevèz, a
waif and estray of the life of the Quarter, a twentieth year student
well known in all the fruit-shops of Boulevard Saint-Michel under the
name of Pompon, was not a bad man. When he realized the failure of
artificial nursing, he simply hired four or five buxom nurses in the
neighborhood, and nothing more was needed to revive the children's
appetites. That humane impulse was near costing him his place.

"Nurses at Bethlehem," said Jenkins in a rage, when he came to pay his
weekly visit. "Are you mad? Upon my word! why the goats then, and the
lawns to feed them, and my idea, and the pamphlets about my idea? What
becomes of all these? Why, you're going against my system, you're
stealing the founder's money."

"But, my dear master," the student tried to reply, passing his hands
through his long red beard, "but--as they don't like that food--"

"Very well! let them go hungry, but let the principle of artificial
nursing be respected. Everything depends on that. I don't wish to have
to tell you so again. Send away those horrible nurses. For bringing up
our children we have goat's milk and cow's milk in a great emergency;
but I can't concede anything beyond that."

He added, with his apostolic air:

"We are here to demonstrate a grand philanthropic idea. It must
triumph, even at the cost of some sacrifices. Look to it."

Pondevèz did not insist. After all, it was a good place, near enough to
Paris to permit descents upon Nanterre from the Quarter on Sunday, or a
visit by the manager to his favorite breweries. Madame Polge--whom
Jenkins always called "our intelligent overseer," and whom he had in
fact placed there to oversee everything, the manager first of all--was
not so austere as her duties would lead one to believe, and readily
yielded to the charm of a _petit verre_ or two of "right cognac," or
to a game of bezique for fifteen hundred points. So he dismissed the
nurses and tried to harden himself against whatever might happen. What
did happen? A genuine Massacre of the Innocents. So that the few
parents who were possessed of any means at all, mechanics or tradesmen
of the faubourgs, who had been tempted by the advertisements to part
with their children, speedily took them away, and there remained in the
establishment only the wretched little creatures picked up under
porches or in the fields, or sent by the hospitals, and doomed from
their birth to all manner of ills. As the mortality constantly
increased, even that source of supply failed, and the omnibus that had
departed at full speed for the railway station returned as light and
springy as an empty hearse. How could that state of affairs last? How
long would it take to kill off the twenty-five or thirty little ones
who were left? That is what the manager, or, as he had christened
himself, the register of deaths, Pondevèz, was wondering one morning
after breakfast, as he sat opposite Madame Polge's venerable curls,
taking a hand at that lady's favorite game.

"Yes, my dear Madame Polge, what is to become of us? Things cannot go
on long like this. Jenkins won't give in, the children are as obstinate
as mules. There's no gainsaying it, they'll all pass out of our hands.
There's that little Wallachian--I mark the king, Madame Polge--who may
die any minute. Poor little brat, just think, it's three days since
anything went into his stomach. I don't care what Jenkins says; you
can't improve children, like snails, by starving them. It's a
distressing thing not to be able to save a single one. The infirmary
hasn't unlimited capacity. In all earnestness this is a pitiful
business. Bezique, forty."

Two strokes of the bell at the main entrance interrupted his monologue.
The omnibus was returning from the station and its wheels ground into
the gravel in unaccustomed fashion.

"What an astonishing thing!" said Pondevèz, "the carriage isn't empty."

In truth the vehicle drew up at the steps with a certain pride, and the
man who alighted crossed the threshold at a bound. It was an express
from Jenkins with important news; the doctor would be there in two
hours to inspect the asylum, with the Nabob and a gentleman from the
Tuileries. He gave strict injunctions that everything should be ready
for their reception. The plan was formed so suddenly that he had not
had time to write; but he relied on M. Pondevèz to make the necessary
arrangements.

"Deuce take him and his necessary arrangements! muttered Pondevèz in
dismay. It was a critical situation. That momentous visit came at the
worst possible moment, when the system was rapidly going to pieces.
Poor Pompon, in dire perplexity, tugged at his beard and gnawed the
ends of it.

"Come, come," he said abruptly to Madame Polge, whose long face had
grown still longer between her false curls. "There is only one thing
for us to do. We must clear out the infirmary, carry all the sick ones
into the dormitory. They'll be no better nor worse for spending half a
day there. As for the scrofulous ones, we'll just put them out of
sight. They're too ugly, we won't show them. Come, off we go! all hands
on deck!"

The dinner-bell rang the alarm and everybody hurried to the spot.
Seamstresses, nurses, maid-servants, came running from every side,
jostling one another in the corridors, hurrying across the yards.
Orders flew hither and thither, and there was a great calling and
shouting; but above all the other noises soared the noise of a grand
scrubbing, of rushing water, as if Bethlehem had been surprised by a
conflagration. And the wailing of sick children torn from their warm
beds, all the whimpering little bundles carried through the damp park,
with a fluttering of bedclothes among the branches, strengthened the
impression of a fire. In two hours, thanks to the prodigious activity
displayed, the whole house from top to bottom was ready for the
impending visit, all the members of the staff at their posts, the fire
lighted in the stove, the goats scattered picturesquely through the
park. Madame Polge had put on her green dress, the manager's attire was
a little less slovenly than usual, but so simple as to exclude any idea
of premeditation. Let the Empress's secretary come!

And here he is.

He alights with Jenkins and Jansoulet from a magnificent carriage with
the Nabob's red and gold livery. Feigning the utmost astonishment,
Pondevèz rushes forward to meet his visitors.

"Ah! Monsieur Jenkins, what an honor! What a surprise!"

Salutations are exchanged on the stoop, reverences, handshakings,
introductions. Jenkins, his coat thrown back from his loyal breast,
indulges in his heartiest, most engaging smile; but a meaning furrow
lies across his brow. He is anxious concerning the surprises that the
establishment may have in store, for he knows its demoralized
condition. If only Pondevèz has taken proper precautions! It begins
well, however. The somewhat theatrical aspect of the approach to the
house, the white fleeces gambolling among the shrubbery, have enchanted
M. de La Perrière, who, with his innocent eyes, his straggling white
beard and the constant nodding of his head, is not himself unlike a
goat escaped from its tether.

"First of all, messieurs, the most important room in the house, the
Nursery," says the manager, opening a massive door at the end of the
reception-room. The gentlemen follow him, descend a few steps and find
themselves in an enormous basement room, with tiled floor, formerly the
kitchen of the château. The thing that impresses one on entering is a
huge, high fireplace of the old pattern, in red brick, with two stone
benches facing each other under the mantel, and the singer's crest--an
immense lyre with a roll of music--carved on the monumental pediment.
The effect was striking; but there came from it a terrible blast of
air, which, added to the cold of the floor, to the pale light falling
through the windows on a level with the ground, made one shudder for
the well-being of the children. What would you have? They were obliged
to use that unhealthy apartment for the Nursery because of the
capricious, country-bred nurses who were accustomed to the
unconstrained manners of the stable; one had only to see the pools of
milk, the great reddish spots drying on the floor, to inhale the acrid
odor that assailed your nostrils as you entered, mingled with whey and
moist hair and many other things, to be convinced of that absolute
necessity.

The dark walls of the room were so high that at first the visitors
thought that the Nursery was deserted. They distinguished, however, at
the farther end, a bleating, whining, restless group. Two countrywomen,
with surly, brutish, dirty faces, two "dry-nurses," who well deserved
their name, were sitting on mats with their nurslings in their arms,
each having a large goat before her, with legs apart and distended
udders. The manager seemed to be agreeably surprised:

"On my word, messieurs, this is a lucky chance. Two of our children are
having a little lunch. We will see how nurses and nurslings agree."

"What's the matter with the man? He is mad," said Jenkins to himself,
in dire dismay.

But the manager was very clear-headed, on the contrary, and had himself
shrewdly arranged the scene, selecting two patient, good-natured
beasts, and two exceptional subjects, two little idiots who were
determined to live at any price, and opened their mouths to nourishment
of any sort, like little birds still in the nest.

"Come, messieurs, and see for yourselves."

The cherubs were really nursing. One of them, cuddled under the goat's
belly, went at it so heartily that you could hear the _glou-glou_ of
the warm milk as it went down, down into his little legs, which
quivered with satisfaction. The other, more calm, lay indolently in his
Auvergnat nurse's lap, and required some little encouragement from her.

"Come, suck, I tell you, suck, _bougri_!"

At last, as if he had formed a sudden resolution, he began to drink so
greedily that the woman, surprised by his abnormal appetite, leaned
over him and exclaimed, with a laugh;

"Ah! the scamp, what a mischievous trick! it's his thumb he's sucking
instead of the goat."

He had thought of that expedient, the angel, to induce them to leave
him in peace. The incident produced no ill effect; on the contrary, M.
de La Perrière was much amused at the nurse's idea that the child had
tried to play a trick on them. He left the Nursery highly delighted.
"Positively de-de-delighted," he repeated as they ascended the grand
echoing staircase, decorated with stags' antlers, which led to the
dormitory.

Very light and airy was that great room, occupying the whole of one
side of the house, with numerous windows, cradles at equal intervals,
with curtains as white and fleecy as clouds. Women were passing to and
fro in the broad passage-way in the centre, with piles of linen in
their arms, keys in their hands, overseers or "movers." Here they had
tried to do too much, and the first impression of the visitors was
unfavorable. All that white muslin, that waxed floor, in which the
light shone without blending, the clean window-panes reflecting the
sky, which wore a gloomy look at sight of such things, brought out more
distinctly the thinness, the sickly pallor of those little
shroud-colored, moribund creatures. Alas! the oldest were but six
months, the youngest barely a fortnight, and already, upon all those
faces, those embryotic faces, there was an expression of disgust, an
oldish, dogged look, a precocity born of suffering, visible in the
numberless wrinkles on those little bald heads, confined in linen caps
edged with tawdry hospital lace. From what did they suffer? What
disease had they? They had everything, everything that one can have;
diseases of children and diseases of adults. Offspring of poverty and
vice, they brought into the world when they were born ghastly phenomena
of heredity. One had a cleft palate, another great copper-colored
blotches on his forehead, and all were covered with humor. And then
they were starving to death. Notwithstanding the spoonfuls of milk and
sugared water that were forced into their mouths, and the
sucking-bottle that was used more or less in spite of the prohibition,
they were dying of inanition. Those poor creatures, exhausted before
they were born, needed the freshest, the most strengthening food; the
goats might perhaps have supplied it, but they had sworn not to suck
the goats. And that was what made the dormitory lugubrious and silent,
without any of the little outbursts of anger emphasized by clenched
fists, without any of the shrieks that show the even red gums, whereby
the child makes trial of his strength and of his lungs; only an
occasional plaintive groan, as if the soul were tossing and turning
restlessly in a little diseased body, unable to find a place to rest.

Jenkins and the manager, noticing the unfavorable impression produced
upon their guests by the visit to the dormitory, tried to enliven the
situation by talking very loud, with a good-humored, frank,
well-satisfied manner. Jenkins shook hands warmly with the overseer.

"Well, Madame Polge, are our little pupils getting on?"

"As you see, Monsieur le Docteur," she replied, pointing to the beds.

Very funereal in her green dress was tall Madame Polge, the ideal of
dry nurses; she completed the picture.

But where had the Empress's secretary gone? He was standing by a
cradle, which he was scrutinizing sadly, shaking his head.

"_Bigre de Bigre!_" whispered Pompon to Madame Polge. "It's the
Wallachian."

The little blue card, hanging above the cradle as in hospitals, set
forth the nationality of the child within: "Moldo-Wallachian." What
cursed luck that Monsieur le Secrétaire's eye should happen to light
upon him! Oh! the poor little head lying on the pillow, with cap all
awry, nostrils contracted, lips parted by a short, panting breath, the
breath of those who are just born and of those who are about to die.

"Is he ill?" the secretary softly asked the manager, who had drawn
near.

"Not in the least," replied the audacious Pompon, and he walked to the
cradle, poked the little one playfully with his finger, rearranged the
pillow, and said in a hearty, affectionate voice, albeit a little
roughly: "Well, old fellow?" Roused from his stupor, emerging from the
torpor which already enveloped him, the little fellow opened his eyes
and looked at the faces bending over him, with sullen indifference,
then, returning to his dream which he deemed more attractive, clenched
his little wrinkled hands and heaved an inaudible sigh. Oh! mystery!
Who can say for what purpose that child was born? To suffer two months
and to go away without seeing or understanding anything, before anyone
had heard the sound of his voice!

"How pale he is!" muttered M. de La Perrière, himself as pale as death.
The Nabob, too, was as white as a sheet. A cold breath had passed over
them. The manager assumed an indifferent air.

"It's the reflection. We all look green."

"To be sure--to be sure," said Jenkins, "it's the reflection of the
pond. Just come and look, Monsieur le Secrétaire." And he led him to
the window to point out the great sheet of water in which the willows
dipped their branches, while Madame Polge hastily closed the curtains
of his cradle upon the little Wallachian's never-ending dream.

They must proceed quickly to inspect other portions of the
establishment in order to do away with that unfortunate impression.

First they show M. de La Perrière the magnificent laundry, with
presses, drying machines, thermometers, huge closets of polished walnut
full of caps and nightgowns, tied together and labelled by dozens. When
the linen was well warmed the laundress passed it out through a little
wicket in exchange for the number passed in by the nurse. As you see,
the system was perfect, and everything, even to the strong smell of
lye, combined to give the room a healthy, country-like aspect. There
were garments enough there to clothe five hundred children. That was
the capacity of Bethlehem, and everything was provided on that basis:
the vast dispensary, gleaming with glass jars and Latin inscriptions,
with marble pestles in every corner; the hydropathic arrangements with
the great stone tanks, the shining tubs, the immense apparatus
traversed by pipes of all lengths for the ascending and descending
_douches_, in showers, in jets, and in whip-like streams; and the
kitchens fitted out with superb graduated copper kettles, with
economical coal and gas ovens. Jenkins had determined to make it a
model establishment; and it was an easy matter for him, for he had
worked on a grand scale, as one works when funds are abundant. One
could feel everywhere, too, the experience and the iron hand of "our
intelligent overseer," to whom the manager could not forbear to do
public homage. That was the signal for general congratulations. M. de
La Perrière, delighted with the equipment of the establishment,
congratulated Dr. Jenkins upon his noble creation, Jenkins
congratulated his friend Pondevèz, who in his turn thanked the
secretary for having condescended to honor Bethlehem with a visit. The
good Nabob chimed in with that concert of laudation and had a pleasant
word for every one, but was somewhat astonished all the same that no
one congratulated him too, while they were about it. To be sure, the
best of all congratulations awaited him on the 16th of March at the
head of the _Journal Officiel_, in a decree which gleamed before his
eyes in anticipation and made him squint in the direction of his
buttonhole.

These pleasant words were exchanged as they walked through a long
corridor where their sententious phrases were repeated by the echoes;
but suddenly a horrible uproar arrested their conversation and their
footsteps. It was like the miaouwing of frantic cats, the bellowing of
wild bulls, the howling of savages dancing the war-dance--a frightful
tempest of human yells, repeated and increased in volume and prolonged
by the high, resonant arches. It rose and fell, stopped suddenly, then
began again with extraordinary intensity. The manager was disturbed,
and started to make inquiries. Jenkins' eyes were inflamed with rage.

"Let us go on," said the manager, really alarmed this time; "I know
what it is."

He did know what it was; but M. de La Perrière proposed to know, too,
and before Pondevèz could raise his hand, he pushed open the heavy door
of the room whence that fearful concert proceeded.

In a vile kennel which the grand scouring had passed by, for they had
no idea of exhibiting it, some half score little monstrosities lay
stretched on mattresses laid side by side on the floor, under the
guardianship of a chair unoccupied save by an unfinished piece of
knitting, and a little cracked kettle, full of hot wine, boiling over a
smoking wood fire. They were the leprous, the scrofulous, the outcasts
of Bethlehem, who had been hidden away in that retired corner--with
injunctions to their dry nurse to amuse them, to pacify them, to sit on
them if necessary, so that they should not cry--but whom that stupid,
inquisitive countrywoman had left to themselves while she went to look
at the fine carriage standing in the courtyard. When her back was
turned the urchins soon wearied of their horizontal position; and all
the little, red-faced, blotched _croûte-levés_ lifted up their robust
voices in concert, for they, by some miracle, were in good health,
their very disease saved and nourished them. As wild and squirming as
cockchafers thrown on their backs, struggling to rise with the aid of
knees and elbows,--some unable to recover their equilibrium after
falling on their sides, others sitting erect, bewildered, their little
legs wrapped in swaddling-clothes, they spontaneously ceased their
writhings and their cries when they saw the door open; but M. de La
Perrière's shaking beard reassured them, encouraged them to fresh
efforts, and in the renewed uproar the manager's explanation was almost
inaudible: "Children that are kept secluded--contagion--skin diseases."
Monsieur le Secrétaire inquired no farther; less heroic than Bonaparte
when he visited the plague-stricken wretches at Jaffa, he rushed to the
door, and in his confusion and alarm, anxious to say something and
unable to think of anything appropriate, he murmured, with an ineffable
smile: "They are cha-arming."

The inspection concluded, they all assembled in the salon on the ground
floor, where Madame Polge had prepared a little collation. The cellars
of Bethlehem were well stocked. The sharp air of the high land, the
going upstairs and downstairs had given the old gentleman from the
Tuileries such an appetite as he had not had for many a day, so that he
talked and laughed with true rustic good-fellowship, and when they were
all standing, the visitors being about to depart, he raised his glass,
shaking his head the while, to drink this toast: "To Be-Be-Bethlehem!"

The others were much affected, there was a clinking of glasses, and
then the carriage bore the party swiftly along the avenue of lindens,
where a cold, red, rayless sun was setting. Behind them the park
relapsed into its gloomy silence. Great dark shadows gathered at the
foot of the hedges, invaded the house, crept stealthily along the paths
and across their intersections. Soon everything was in darkness save
the ironical letters over the entrance gate, and, at a window on the
ground-floor, a flickering red glimmer, the flame of a taper burning by
the pillow of the dead child.

    "_By decree of March 12, 1865, promulgated at the recommendation
    of the Minister of the Interior, Monsieur le Docteur Jenkins,
    founder and president of the Work of Bethlehem, is appointed
    chevalier of the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honor. Exemplary
    devotion to the cause of humanity._"

When he read these lines on the first page of the _Journal Officiel_,
on the morning of the 16th, the poor Nabob had an attack of vertigo.

Was it possible?

Jenkins decorated and not he!

He read the announcement twice, thinking that his eyes must have
deceived him. There was a buzzing in his ears. The letters, two of
each, danced before his eyes with the red circles caused by looking at
the sun. He had been so certain of seeing his name in that place; and
Jenkins--only the day before--had said to him so confidently: "It is
all settled!" that it still seemed to him that he must be mistaken. But
no, it was really Jenkins. It was a deep, heart-sickening, prophetic
blow, like a first warning from destiny, and was the more keenly felt
because, for years past, the man had been unaccustomed to
disappointments, had lived above humanity. All the good that there was
in him learned at that moment to be distrustful.

"Well," he said to de Géry, entering his room, as he did every morning,
and surprising him with the paper in his hand and evidently deeply
moved, "I suppose you have seen,--my name is not in the _Officiel_?"

He tried to smile, his features distorted like those of a child
struggling to restrain his tears. Then, suddenly, with the frankness
that was so attractive in him, he added: "This makes me feel very
badly,--I expected too much."

As he spoke, the door opened and Jenkins rushed into the room,
breathless, panting, intensely agitated.

"It's an outrage--a horrible outrage. It cannot, shall not be."

The words rushed tumultuously to his lips, all trying to come out at
once; then he seemed to abandon the attempt to express his thoughts and
threw upon the table a little shagreen box and a large envelope, both
bearing the stamp of the chancellor's office.

"There are my cross and my letters patent," he said. "They are yours,
my friend, I cannot keep them."

In reality that did not mean much. Jansoulet arraying himself in
Jenkins' ribbon would speedily be punished for unlawfully wearing a
decoration. But a _coup de théâtre_ is not necessarily logical; this
particular one led to an effusion of sentiment, embraces, a generous
combat between the two men, the result being that Jenkins restored the
objects to his pocket, talking about protests, letters to the
newspapers. The Nabob was obliged to stop him again.

"Do nothing of the kind, you rascal. In the first place, it would
stand in my way another time. Who knows? perhaps on the 15th of next
August--"

"Oh! I never thought of that," cried Jenkins, jumping at the idea. He
put forth his arm, as in David's _Serment_: "I swear it by my sacred
honor!"

The subject dropped there. At breakfast the Nabob did not refer to it
and was as cheerful as usual. His good humor lasted through the day;
and de Géry, to whom that scene had been a revelation of the real
Jenkins, an explanation of the satirical remarks and restrained wrath
of Felicia Ruys when she spoke of the doctor, asked himself to no
purpose how he could open his dear master's eyes concerning that
scheming hypocrite. He should have known, however, that the men of the
South, all effusiveness on the surface, are never so utterly blind, so
deluded as to resist the wise results of reflection. That evening the
Nabob opened a shabby little portfolio, badly worn at the corners, in
which for ten years past he had manoeuvred his millions, minuting his
profits and his expenses in hieroglyphics comprehensible to himself
alone. He calculated for a moment, then turned to de Géry.

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

"No, monsieur."

"I have just been reckoning"--and his mocking glance, eloquent of his
Southern origin, belied his good-humored smile--"I have just been
reckoning that I have spent four hundred and thirty thousand francs to
obtain that decoration for Jenkins."

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




IX.

GRANDMAMMA.


Three times a week, in the evening, Paul de Géry appeared to take his
lesson in bookkeeping in the Joyeuse dining-room, not far from the
small salon where the little family had burst upon him at his first
visit; so that, while he was being initiated into all the mysteries of
"debit and credit," with his eyes fixed on his white-cravated
instructor, he listened in spite of himself to the faint sounds of the
toilsome evening on the other side of the door, longing for the vision
of all those pretty heads bending over around the lamp. M. Joyeuse
never mentioned his daughters. As jealous of their charms as a dragon
standing guard over lovely princesses in a tower, aroused to vigilance
by the fanciful imaginings of his doting affection, he replied dryly
enough to his pupil's questions concerning "the young ladies," so that
the young man ceased to mention them to him. He was surprised, however,
that he never happened to see this "Grandmamma" whose name recurred
constantly in M. Joyeuse's conversation upon every subject, in the most
trivial details of his existence, hovering over the house like the
symbol of its perfect orderliness and tranquillity.

Such extreme reserve, on the part of a venerable lady, who in all
probability had passed the age at which the adventurous spirit of a
young man is to be feared, seemed to him exaggerated. But the lessons
were very practical, given in very clear language, and the professor
had an excellent method of demonstration, marred by a single fault, a
habit of relapsing into fits of silence, broken by starts and
interjections that went off like bombs. Outside of that he was the best
of masters, intelligent, patient and faithful. Paul learned to find his
way through the complicated labyrinth of books of account and resigned
himself to the necessity of asking nothing further.

One evening, about nine o'clock, as the young man rose to go, M.
Joyeuse asked him if he would do him the honor to take a cup of tea
_en famille_, a custom of the time of Madame Joyeuse, born Saint-Amand,
who used to receive her friends on Thursdays. Since her death, and the
change in their financial position, their friends had scattered; but
they had retained that little "weekly extra." Paul having accepted, the
good man opened the door and called:

"Grandmamma."

A light step in the hall and a face of twenty years, surrounded by a
nimbus of abundant, fluffy brown hair, abruptly made its appearance. De
Géry looked at M. Joyeuse with an air of stupefaction:

"Grandmamma?"

"Yes, it's a name we gave her when she was a little girl. With her
frilled cap, and her authoritative older-sister expression, she had a
funny little face, so wise-looking. We thought that she looked like her
grandmother. The name has clung to her."

From the worthy man's tone, it was evident that to him it was the most
natural thing in the world, that grandmotherly title bestowed upon such
attractive youth. Every one in the household thought as he did, and the
other Joyeuse girls, who ran to their father and grouped themselves
about him somewhat as in the show-case on the ground-floor, and the old
servant, who brought and placed upon the table in the salon, whither
they had adjourned, a magnificent tea-service, a relic of the former
splendor of the establishment, all called the girl "Grandmamma," nor
did she once seem to be annoyed by it, for the influence of that
blessed name imparted to the affection of them all a touch of deference
that flattered her and gave to her imaginary authority a singular
attractiveness, as of a protecting hand.

It may have been because of that title, which he had learned to cherish
in his infancy, but de Géry found an indescribable fascination in the
girl. It did not resemble the sudden blow he had received from another,
full in the heart, the perturbation mingled with a longing to fly, to
escape an obsession, and the persistent melancholy peculiar to the day
after a fête, extinguished candles, refrains that have died away,
perfumes vanished in the darkness. No, in the presence of that young
girl, as she stood looking over the family table, making sure that
nothing was lacking, letting her loving, sparkling eyes rest upon her
children, her little children, he was assailed by a temptation to know
her, to be to her as an old friend, to confide to her things that he
confessed to none but himself; and when she offered him his cup, with
no worldly airs, no society affectations, he would have liked to say
like the others a "Thanks, Grandmamma," in which he might put his whole
heart.

Suddenly a cheery, vigorous knock made everybody jump.

"Ah! there's Monsieur André. Quick, Élise, a cup. Yaia, the little
cakes." Meanwhile, Mademoiselle Henriette, the third of the Joyeuse
girls,--who had inherited from her mother, born Saint-Amand, a certain
worldly side,--in view of the crowded condition of the salons that
evening, rushed to light the two candles on the piano.

"My fifth act is done," cried the newcomer, as he entered the room; then
he stopped short. "Ah! excuse me," and his face took on a discomfited
expression at sight of the stranger. M. Joyeuse introduced them to
each other: "Monsieur Paul de Géry--Monsieur André Maranne,"--not
without a certain solemnity of manner. He remembered his wife's
receptions long ago; and the vases on the mantel, the two great lamps,
the work-table, the armchairs arranged in a circle, seemed to share
the illusion, to shine brighter as if rejuvenated by that unusual
throng.

"So your play is finished?"

"Finished, Monsieur Joyeuse, and I mean to read it to you one of these
days."

"Oh! yes, Monsieur André. Oh! yes," said all the girls in chorus.

Their neighbor wrote for the stage and no one of them entertained a
doubt of his success. Photography held out less promise of profit, you
know. Customers were very rare, the passers-by disinclined to patronize
him. To keep his hand in and get his new apparatus into working order,
Monsieur André 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 André Maranne, with the
inexhaustible resources of his high forehead, stored with illusions,
explained without bitterness the indifference of the public. Either the
weather was unfavorable or else every one complained of the wretched
condition of business, and he ended always with the same consoling
refrain: "Wait until _Révolte_ has been acted!" _Révolte_ was the title
of his play.

"It's a surprising thing," said the fourth of the Joyeuse girls, a
child of twelve with her hair in a pigtail, "it's a surprising thing
that you do so little business with such a splendid balcony!"

"And then there's a great deal of passing through the quarter," added
Élise confidently. Grandmamma smilingly reminded her that there was
even more on Boulevard des Italiens.

"Ah! if it were Boulevard des Italiens--" said M. Joyeuse dreamily,
and away he went on his chimera, which was suddenly brought to a
stand-still by a gesture and these words, uttered in a piteous tone:
"closed because of failure." In an instant the terrible _Imaginaire_
had installed his friend in a splendid apartment on the boulevard,
where he earned an enormous amount of money, increasing his expenses
at the same time so disproportionately, that a loud "_pouf_" swallowed
up photographer and photography in a few months. They laughed heartily
when he gave that explanation; but they all agreed that Rue
Saint-Ferdinand, although less showy, was much more reliable than
Boulevard des Italiens. Moreover, it was very near the Bois de
Boulogne, and if the fashionable world should once begin to pass that
way--That fashionable society which her mother so affected was
Mademoiselle Henriette's fixed idea; and she was amazed that the
thought of receiving _high-life_ in his little fifth-floor studio,
about as large as a diving-bell, should make their neighbor laugh. Why,
only a week or two before, a carriage came there with servants in
livery. Sometimes, too, he had had a "very swell" visitor.

"Oh! a real great lady," Grandmamma chimed in. "We were at the window
waiting for father. We saw her leave the carriage and look at the
frame; we thought surely she came to see you."

"She did come to see me," said André, a little embarrassed.

"For a moment we were afraid she would go on as so many others do, on
account of your five flights. So we all four did our best to stop her,
to magnetize her with our four pairs of wide-open eyes. We pulled her
very gently by the feathers in her hat and the lace on her cape. 'Come
upstairs, pray, madame, pray come upstairs,' and finally she came.
There is so much magnetism in eyes that want a thing very much!"

Surely she had magnetism enough, the dear creature, not only in her
eyes, which were of uncertain hue, veiled or laughing like the sky of
her Paris, but in her voice, in the folds of her dress, in everything,
even to the long curl that shaded her straight, graceful statue-like
neck and attracted you by its tapering shaded point, deftly curled over
a supple finger.

The tea being duly served, while the gentlemen continued their talking
and drinking--Père Joyeuse was always very slow in everything that he
did, because of his abrupt excursions into the moon--the girls resumed
their work, the table was covered with wicker baskets, embroidery,
pretty wools whose brilliant coloring brightened the faded flowers in
the old carpet, and the group of the other evening was formed anew in
the luminous circle of the lamp shade, to the great satisfaction of
Paul de Géry. It was the first evening of that sort he had passed in
Paris; it reminded him of other far-away evenings, cradled by the same
innocent mirth, the pleasant sound of scissors laid upon the table, of
the needle piercing the cotton, or the rustling of the leaves of a book
as they are turned, and dear faces, vanished forever, clustered in the
same way around the family lamp, alas! so suddenly extinguished.

Once admitted into that charming domestic circle, he was not excluded
from it again, but took his lessons among the girls, and made bold to
talk with them when the good man closed his ledger. There everything
tended to give him grateful repose from the seething life in which the
Nabob's luxurious worldliness involved him; he bathed in that
atmosphere of honesty and simplicity, and strove to cure there the
wounds with which a hand more indifferent than cruel was mercilessly
riddling his heart.

                         *        *        *

"Women have hated me, other women have loved me. She who did me the
most harm never had either love or hate for me." Paul had fallen in,
with the woman of whom Heinrich Heine speaks. Felicia was very
hospitable and cordial to him. There was no one whom she welcomed more
graciously. She reserved for him a special smile, in which there was
the pleased expression of an artist's eye resting upon a type which
attracts it, and the satisfaction of a _blasé_ mind which is amused by
anything new, however simple it may seem to be. She liked that reserve,
most alluring in a Southerner, the straightforwardness of that
judgment, entirely free from artistic or worldly formulas and enlivened
by a touch of local accent. It was a change for her from the zigzag
movement of the thumb, drawing flattery in outline with the gestures of
a studio fag, from the congratulations of comrades on the way in which
she silenced some poor fellow, and from the affected admiration, the
"chawming--veay pretty," with which the young dandies honored her as
they sucked the handles of their canes. He, at all events, said nothing
of that sort to her. She had nicknamed him Minerva, because of his
apparent tranquillity and the regularity of his profile; and as soon as
he appeared, she would say: "Ah! there's Minerva. Hail, lovely Minerva.
Take off your helmet and let us have a talk."

But that familiar, almost fraternal, tone convinced the young man of
the hopelessness of his love. He realized that he could not hope to
make any further progress in that feminine good-fellowship in which
affection was lacking, and that he should lose something every day of
his charm as an unfamiliar type in the eyes of that creature who was
born bored, and who seemed to have lived her life already and to find
the insipidity of repetition in everything that she heard or saw.
Felicia was suffering from ennui. Only her art had the power to divert
her, to take her out of herself, to transport her to a fairyland of
dazzling beauty from which she returned all bruised and sore, always
surprised at the awakening, which resembled a fall. She compared
herself to the jelly-fish, whose transparent brilliancy in the coolness
and constant movement of the waves, vanishes on the shore in little
gelatinous pools. During those intervals of idleness, when the absence
of thought leaves the hand inert upon the modelling tool, Felicia,
deprived of the sole moral nerve of her intellect, became savage,
unapproachable, sullen beyond endurance,--the revenge of paltry human
qualities upon great tired brains. After she had brought tears to the
eyes of all those whom she loved, had striven to evoke painful memories
or paralyzing anxieties, and had reached the brutal, murderous climax
of her fatigue,--as it was always necessary, where she was concerned,
that something ridiculous should be mingled even with the saddest
things, she would blow away the remains of her ennui with a cry like
that of a dazed wild beast, a sort of yawning roar which she called
"the cry of the jackal in the desert," and which would drive the blood
from the excellent Crenmitz's cheeks, taking her by surprise in her
torpid placidity.

Poor Felicia! Her life was in very truth a ghastly desert when her art
did not enliven it with its visions, a dismal, unrelieved desert, where
everything was crushed and flattened beneath the same monotonous
immensity, the ingenuous love of a boy of twenty and the caprice of an
amorous duke, where everything was covered with dry sand blown about by
the scorching winds of destiny. Paul was conscious of that void, he
tried to escape from it; but something detained him, like a weight
which unwinds a chain, and, notwithstanding the evil things he heard,
notwithstanding the strange creature's peculiarities, he hovered about
her with a delicious sense of enjoyment, under pain of carrying naught
away from that long amorous contemplation save the despair of a
believer reduced to the adoration of images.

The place of refuge was in yonder out-of-the-way quarter, where the
wind blew so hard without preventing the flame from burning white and
straight,--it was in the domestic circle presided over by Grandmamma.
Oh! she did not suffer from ennui, she never uttered "the cry of the
jackal in the desert." Her life was too well filled: the father to
comfort and encourage, the children to teach, all the material cares of
a household in which the mother was lacking, the engrossing thoughts
which wake with the dawn and which the night puts to sleep, unless it
renews them in dreams--one of those instances of indefatigable but
apparently effortless devotion, very convenient for poor human
selfishness, because it dispenses with all gratitude and hardly makes
itself felt, its touch is so light. She was not one of the courageous
girls who work to support their parents, give lessons from morning to
night and forget the annoyances of the household in the excitement of
an engrossing occupation. No, she had formed a different conception of
her duty, she was a sedentary bee confining her labors to the hive,
with no buzzing around outside in the fresh air and among the flowers.
A thousand and one functions to perform: tailor, milliner, mender,
keeper of accounts as well,--for M. Joyeuse, being incapable of any
sort of responsibility, left the disposition of the family funds
absolutely in her hands,--teacher and music mistress.

As is often the case in families which were originally in comfortable
circumstances, Aline, being the eldest, had been educated in one of the
best boarding-schools in Paris, Élise had remained there two years with
her; but the two younger ones, having come too late, had been sent to
little day-schools in the quarter and had all their studies to
complete; and it was no easy matter, for the youngest laughed on every
pretext, an exuberant, healthy, youthful laugh, like the warbling of a
lark drunken on green wheat, and flew away out of sight of desk and
symbols, while Mademoiselle Henriette, always haunted by her ideas of
grandeur, her love of "the substantial," was none too eager for study.
That young person of fifteen, to whom her father had bequeathed
something of his imaginative faculty, was already arranging her life in
anticipation, and declared formally that she should marry some one of
birth and should never have more than three children: "A boy for the
name, and two little girls--so that I can dress them alike."

"Yes, that's right," Grandmamma would say, "you shall dress them alike.
Meanwhile, let us see about our participles."

But the most troublesome of all was Élise with her thrice unsuccessful
examination in history, always rejected and preparing herself anew,
subject to attacks of profound terror and self-distrust which led her
to carry that unfortunate handbook of French history with her wherever
she went, and to open it at every instant, in the omnibus, in the
street, even at the breakfast table; but, being already a young woman
and very pretty, she no longer had the mechanical memory of childhood
in which dates and events are incrusted forever. Amid her other
preoccupations the lesson would fly away in a moment, despite the
pupil's apparent application, her long lashes concealing her eyes, her
curls sweeping the page, and her rosy mouth twitching slightly at the
corners as she repeated again and again: "Louis le Hutin, 1314-1316.
Philippe V, le Long, 1316-1322--1322.--Oh! Grandmamma, I am lost. I
shall never learn them." Thereupon Grandmamma would take a hand, help
her to fix her attention, to store away some of those barbarous dates
in the Middle Ages, as sharp-pointed as the helmets of the warriors of
those days. And in the intervals of those manifold tasks, of that
general and constant superintendence, she found time to make pretty
things, to take from her work-basket some piece of knitting or
embroidery, which clung to her as steadfastly as young Élise to her
history of France. Even when she was talking, her fingers were never
unemployed for one moment.

"Do you never rest?" de Géry asked her while she counted in a whisper
the stitches of her embroidery, "three, four, five," in order to vary
the shades.

"Why, this work is rest," she replied. "You men have no idea how useful
needlework is to a woman's mind. It regularizes the thought, fixes with
a stitch the passing moment and what it carries with it. And think of
the sorrows that are soothed, the anxieties forgotten by the help of
this purely physical attention, this constant repetition of the same
movement, in which you find--and find very quickly, whether you will or
no--that your equilibrium is entirely restored. It does not prevent me
from hearing all that is said in my neighborhood, from listening to you
even more attentively than I should if I were idle--three, four, five."

Oh! yes, she listened. That was plain from the animation of her face,
from the way in which she would suddenly straighten herself up, with
her needle in the air and the thread stretched over her raised little
finger. Then she would suddenly resume her work, sometimes interjecting
a shrewd, thoughtful word, which as a general rule agreed with what
friend Paul thought. A similarity in their natures and in their
responsibilities and duties brought those two young people together,
made them mutually interested each in those things that the other had
most at heart. She knew the names of his two brothers, Pierre and
Louis, and his plans for their future when they should leave school.
Pierre wanted to be a sailor. "Oh! no, not a sailor," said Grandmamma,
"it would be much better for him to come to Paris with you." And when
he admitted that he was afraid of Paris for them, she laughed at his
fears, called him a provincial, for she was full of affection for the
city where she was born, where she had grown chastely to womanhood, and
which gave her in return the vivacity, the natural refinement, the
sprightly good-humor which make one think that Paris, with its rains,
its fogs, its sky which is no sky, is the true fatherland of woman,
whose nerves it spares and whose patient and intelligent qualities it
develops.

Each day Paul de Géry appreciated Mademoiselle Aline more
thoroughly--he was the only one in the house who called her by that
name--and, strangely enough, it was Felicia who finally cemented their
intimacy. What connection could there be between that artist's
daughter, fairly launched in the most exalted spheres, and that
bourgeois maiden lost to sight in the depths of a suburb? Connections
of childhood and friendship, common memories, the great courtyard of
the Belin establishment, where they had played together for three
years. Such meetings are very common in Paris. A name mentioned at
random in conversation suddenly calls forth the amazed question:

"What! do you know her?"

"Do I know Felicia? Why we sat at adjoining desks in the first class.
We had the same garden. Such a dear, lovely, clever girl!"

And, noticing how pleased he was to listen to her, Aline recalled the
days, still so near, which already formed part of the past to her,
fascinating and melancholy like all pasts. She was quite alone in life,
was little Felicia. On Thursday, when they called out the names in the
parlor, there was never any one for her; except now and then an old
woman, a nice old woman, if she was a little ridiculous, a former
ballet-dancer it was said, whom Felicia called the Fairy. She had pet
names like that for everybody of whom she was fond, and she transformed
them all in her imagination. They used to see each other during the
vacations. Madame Joyeuse, although she refused to send Aline to M.
Ruys's studio, invited Felicia for whole days,--very short days, made
up of work and music, of joint dreams and unrestrained youthful
chatter. "Oh! when she talked to me about her art, with the ardor which
she put into everything, how delighted I was to hear her! How many
things she enabled me to understand of which I never should have had
the slightest idea! Even now, when we go to the Louvre with papa, or to
the Exhibition of the first of May, the peculiar emotion that one feels
at the sight of a beautiful bit of sculpture or a fine painting, makes
me think instantly of Felicia. In my young days she represented art,
and it went well with her beauty, her somewhat reckless but so kindly
nature, in which I was conscious of something superior to myself, which
carried me away to a great height without frightening me. Suddenly we
ceased to see each other. I wrote to her--no reply. Then fame came to
her, great sorrow and engrossing duties to me. And of all that
friendship, and very deep-rooted it must have been, for I cannot speak
of it without--three, four, five--nothing is left but old memories to
be poked over like dead ashes."

Leaning over her work, the brave girl hastily counted her stitches,
concealing her grief in the fanciful designs of her embroidery, while
de Géry, deeply moved to hear the testimony of those pure lips in
contradiction of the calumnies of a few disappointed dandies or jealous
rivals, felt relieved of a weight and once more proud of his love. The
sensation was so sweet to him that he came very often to seek to renew
it, not only on lesson evenings, but on other evenings as well, and
almost forgot to go and see Felicia for the pleasure of hearing Aline
speak of her.

One evening, when he left the Joyeuse apartment, he found waiting for
him on the landing M. André, the neighbor, who took his arm feverishly.

"Monsieur de Géry," he said, in a trembling voice, his eyes flashing
fire behind their spectacles, the only part of his face one could see
at night, "I have an explanation to demand at your hands. Will you come
up to my room a moment?"

Between that young man and himself there had been only the usual
relations of two frequent visitors at the same house, who are attached
by no bond, who seem indeed to be separated by a certain antipathy
between their natures and their modes of life. What could there be for
them to explain? Sorely puzzled, he followed André.

The sight of the little studio, cold and cheerless under its glass
ceiling, the empty fireplace, the wind blowing as it blows outside, and
making the candle flicker, the only light that shone upon that vigil of
a penniless recluse, reflected upon scattered sheets all covered with
writing,--in a word, that atmosphere of inhabited cells wherein the
very soul of the inhabitants exhales,--enabled de Géry to comprehend at
once the impassioned André Maranne, his long hair thrown back and
flying in the wind, his somewhat eccentric appearance, very excusable
when one pays for it with a life of suffering and privations; and his
sympathy instantly went out to the courageous youth, whose militant
pride he fully divined at a single glance. But the other was too
excited to notice this transition. As soon as the door was closed, he
said, with the accent of a stage hero addressing the perjured seducer:

"Monsieur de Géry, I am not a Cassandra yet." And, as he observed his
interlocutor's unbounded amazement, he added: "Yes, yes, we understand
each other. I see perfectly clearly what attracts you to M. Joyeuse's,
nor has the warm welcome you receive there escaped me. You are rich,
you are of noble birth, no one can hesitate between you and the poor
poet who carries on an absurd trade in order to gain time to attain
success, which will never come perhaps. But I won't allow my happiness
to be stolen from me. We will fight, monsieur, we will fight," he
repeated, excited by his rival's unruffled tranquillity. "I have loved
Mademoiselle Joyeuse a long while. That love is the aim, the joy, and
the strength of a very hard life, painful in many respects. I have
nothing but that in the world, and I should prefer to die rather than
to renounce it."

What a strange combination is the human heart! Paul was not in love
with the charming Aline. His whole heart belonged to another. He
thought of her simply as a friend, the most adorable of friends. And
yet the idea that Maranne was thinking of her, that she undoubtedly
responded to his lover-like attentions, caused him a thrill of jealous
anger, and his tone was very sharp when he asked if Mademoiselle
Joyeuse were aware of this feeling of André's and had in any way
authorized him to proclaim his rights.

"Yes, monsieur, Mademoiselle Élise knows that I love her, and before
your frequent visits--"

"Élise--is it Élise you're talking about?"

"Why, who should it be, pray? The other two are too young."

He entered thoroughly into the traditions of the family. In his eyes
Grandmamma's twenty years, her triumphant charm, were concealed by a
respectful _sobriquet_ and by her providential qualities.

A very brief explanation having allayed André Maranne's excitement, he
offered his apologies to de Géry, invited him to take a seat in the
carved wooden armchair in which his customers posed, and their
conversation speedily assumed an intimate and confidential character,
attributable to the earnest avowal with which it began. Paul confessed
that he too was in love, and that his only purpose in coming so often
to M. Joyeuse's was to talk about his beloved with Grandmamma, who had
known her long before.

"It's the same with me," said André. "Grandmamma knows all my secrets;
but we have not dared say anything to her father yet. My position is
too uncertain. Ah! when _Révolte_ has been brought out!"

Thereupon they talked about _Révolte_! the famous drama on which he had
been at work day and night for six months, which had kept him warm all
through the winter, a very hard winter, whose rigor was tempered,
however, by the magic power of composition in the little garret, which
it completely transformed. There, in that confined space, all the
heroes of his play had appeared to the poet, like familiar sprites
falling through the roof or riding on the moonbeams, and with them the
high-warp tapestries, the gleaming chandeliers, the vast parks with
gateways flooded with light, all the usual magnificence of stage-setting,
as well as the glorious uproar of the first performance, the applause
being represented by the rain beating on the windows and the signs
flapping against the door, while the wind, whistling through the
melancholy lumber-yard below with a vague murmur of voices brought from
afar and carried far, resembled the murmur from the boxes opening into
the lobby, allowing his triumph to circulate amid the chattering and
confusion of the audience. It was not simply the renown and the money
that that blessed play were to bring to him, but something far more
precious. How carefully, therefore, did he turn the pages of the
manuscript contained in five great books in blue covers, such books as
the Levantine spread out upon the divan on which she took her siestas,
and marked with her managerial pencil.

Paul having drawn near the table in his turn, in order to examine the
masterpiece, his eyes were attracted by a portrait of a woman in a
handsome frame, which seemed, being so near the artist's work, to have
been stationed there to stand guard over it. Élise, of course? Oh! no,
André had no right as yet to take his young friend's photograph away
from its protecting environment. It was a woman of about forty, fair,
with a sweet expression, and dressed in the height of fashion. When he
saw the face, de Géry could not restrain an exclamation.

"Do you know her?" said André Maranne.

"Why, yes--Madame Jenkins, the Irish doctor's wife. I took supper with
them last winter."

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

"Madame Maranne married Dr. Jenkins for her second husband. You are
surprised, are you not, to find me in such destitution when my parents
are living in luxury? But, as you know, chance sometimes brings very
antipathetic natures together in the same family. My father-in-law and
I could not agree. He wanted to make a doctor of me, whereas I had no
taste for anything but writing. At last, in order to avoid the constant
disputes, which were a source of pain to my mother, I preferred to
leave the house and dig my furrow all alone, without assistance from
any one. It was a hard task! money was lacking. All the property is in
the hands of that--of M. Jenkins. It was a question of earning my
living, and you know what a difficult matter that is for persons like
ourselves, well brought up as it is termed. To think that, with all the
knowledge included in what it is fashionable to call a thorough
education, I could find nothing but this child's play which gave me any
hope of being able to earn my bread! Some little savings from my
allowance as a young man sufficed to buy my first outfit, and I opened
a studio far away, at the very end of Paris, in order not to annoy my
parents. Between ourselves, I fancy that I shall never make my fortune
in photography. The first weeks especially were very hard. No one came,
or if by any chance some poor devil did toil up the stairs, I missed
him, I spread him out on my plate in a faint, blurred mixture like a
ghost. One day, very early in my experience, there came a wedding
party, the bride all in white, the husband with a waistcoat--oh! such a
waistcoat! And all the guests in white gloves which they insisted upon
having included in the photograph, because of the rarity of the
sensation. Really, I thought I should go mad. Those black faces, the
great white daubs for the dress, the gloves and the orange flowers, the
unfortunate bride in the guise of a Zulu queen, under her wreath which
melted into her hair! And all so overflowing with good-nature, with
encouragement for the artist. I tried them at least twenty times, kept
them until five o'clock at night. They left me only when it was dark,
to go and dine! Fancy that wedding-day passed in a photograph gallery!"

While André thus jocosely narrated the melancholy incidents of his
life, Paul recalled Felicia's outburst on the subject of Bohemians, and
all that she said to Jenkins concerning their exalted courage, their
thirst for privations and trials. He thought also of Aline's passionate
fondness for her dear Paris, of which he knew nothing but the unhealthy
eccentricities, whereas the great city concealed so much unknown
heroism, so many noble illusions in its folds. The sensation he had
previously felt in the circle of the Joyeuses' great lamp, he was even
more keenly conscious of in that less warm, less peaceful spot, whither
art brought its desperate or glorious uncertainty; and it was with a
melting heart that he listened while André Maranne talked to him of
Élise, of the examination she was so long in passing, of the difficult
trade of photography, of all the unforeseen hardships of his life,
which would surely come to an end "when _Révolte_ should have been
brought out," a fascinating smile playing about the poet's lips as they
gave utterance to that hope, so often expressed, which he made haste to
ridicule himself, as if to deprive others of the right to ridicule it.




X.

MEMOIRS OF A CLERK.--THE SERVANTS.


Really the wheel of fortune in Paris revolves in a way to make one's
head swim!

To have seen the _Caisse Territoriale_ as I have seen it, fireless
rooms, never swept, covered with the dust of the desert, notices of
protest piled high on the desks, a notice of sale on execution at the
door every week, and my ragout diffusing the odor of a poor man's
kitchen over it all; and to witness now the rehabilitation of our
Society in its newly-furnished salons, where it is my duty to light
ministerial fires, in the midst of a busy throng, with whistles,
electric bells, piles of gold pieces so high that they topple over--it
borders on the miraculous. To convince myself that it is all true, I
have to look at myself in the glass, to gaze at my iron-gray coat
trimmed with silver, my white cravat, my usher's chain such as I used
to wear at the Faculty on council days. And to think that, to effect
this transformation, to bring back to our brows the gayety that is the
mother of concord, to restore to our paper its value ten times over and
to our dear Governor the esteem and confidence of which he was so
unjustly deprived, it only needed one man, that supernatural Croesus
whom the hundred voices of fame designate by the name of the Nabob.

Oh! the first time that he came into the offices, with his fine
presence, his face, a little wrinkled perhaps but so distinguished, the
manners of an habitué of courts, on familiar terms with all the princes
of the Orient, in a word with the indescribable touch of
self-confidence and grandeur that great fortune gives, I felt my heart
swell in my waistcoat with its double row of buttons. They may say all
they choose about their equality and fraternity, there are some men who
are so much above others, that you feel like falling on your face
before them and inventing new formulæ of adoration to compel them to
pay some attention to you. Let me hasten to add that I had no need of
anything of the sort to attract the attention of the Nabob. When I rose
as he passed--deeply moved but dignified: you can always trust
Passajon--he looked at me with a smile and said in an undertone to the
young man who accompanied him: "What a fine head, like--" then a word
that I did not hear, a word ending in _ard_, like leopard. But no,
it could not be that, for I am not conscious of having a head like a
leopard. Perhaps he said like Jean-Bart, although I do not see the
connection. However, he said: "What a fine head, like--" and his
condescension made me proud. By the way, all the gentlemen are very
kind, very polite to me. It seems that there has been a discussion in
regard to me, whether they should keep me or send me away like our
cashier, that crabbed creature who was always talking about sending
everybody to the galleys, and whom they requested to go and make his
economical shirt-fronts somewhere else. Well done! That will teach him
to use vulgar language to people.

When it came to me, the Governor was kind enough to forget my rather
hasty words in consideration of my certificates of service at the
_Territoriale_ and elsewhere; and after the council meeting he said to
me with his musical accent: "Passajon, you are to stay on with us." You
can imagine whether I was happy, whether I lost myself in expressions
of gratitude. Just consider! I should have gone away with my few sous,
with no hope of ever earning any more, obliged to go and cultivate my
little vineyard at Montbars, a very narrow field for a man who has
lived among all the financial aristocracy of Paris and the bold strokes
of financiering that make fortunes. Instead of that, here I am
established all anew in a superb position, my wardrobe replenished, and
my savings, which I actually held in my hand for a whole day, intrusted
to the fostering care of the Governor, who has undertaken to make them
yield a handsome return. I rather think that he is the man who knows
how to do it. And not the slightest occasion for anxiety. All
apprehensions vanish before the word that is all the fashion at this
moment in all administrative councils, at all meetings of the
shareholders, on the Bourse, on the boulevards, everywhere: "The Nabob
is in the thing." That is to say, we are running over with cash, the
worst _combinazioni_ are in excellent shape.

That man is so rich!

Rich to such a degree that one cannot believe it. Why, he has just
loaned fifteen millions off-hand to the Bey of Tunis. Fifteen millions,
I say! That was rather a neat trick on Hemerlingue, who tried to make
trouble between him and that monarch and to cut the grass from under
his feet in those lovely Oriental countries, where it grows tall and
thick and golden-colored. It was an old Turk of my acquaintance,
Colonel Brahim, one of our council at the _Territoriale_, who arranged
the loan. Naturally the bey, who was very short of pocket money, it
seems, was greatly touched by the Nabob's zeal to accommodate him, and
he sent him by Brahim a letter of acknowledgment in which he told him
that on his next trip to Vichy he would pass two days with him at the
magnificent Château de Saint-Romans, which the former bey, this one's
brother, once honored with a visit. Just think what an honor! To
receive a reigning prince! The Hemerlingues are in a frenzy. They had
manoeuvred so skilfully, the son in Tunis, the father in Paris, to
bring the Nabob into disfavor. To be sure, fifteen millions is a large
sum of money. But do not say: "Passajon is gulling us." The person who
told me the story had in his hands the paper sent by the bey in a green
silk envelope stamped with the royal seal. His only reason for not
reading it was that it was written in Arabic; otherwise he would have
taken cognizance of it as he does of all the Nabob's correspondence.
That person is his valet de chambre, M. Noël, to whom I had the honor
to be presented last Friday at a small party of persons in service,
which he gave to some of his friends. I insert a description of that
festivity in my memoirs, as one of the most interesting things I have
seen during my four years' residence in Paris.

I supposed at first, when M. Francis, Monpavon's valet de chambre,
mentioned the affair to me, that it was to be one of the little
clandestine junkets such as they sometimes have in the attic rooms on
our boulevard, with the leavings sent up by Mademoiselle Séraphine and
the other cooks in the house, where they drink stolen wine and stuff
themselves, sitting on trunks, trembling with fear, by the light of two
candles which they put out at the slightest noise in the corridors.
Such underhand performances are repugnant to my character. But when I
received an invitation on pink paper, written in a very fine hand, as
if for a ball given by the people of the house:

    _M. Noël pri M.--de se randre à sa soire du 25 couran._

    _On soupra._[3]

      [3] M. Noël requests the pleasure of M. ----'s company on the
      evening of the 25th instant. Supper.

I saw, notwithstanding the defective orthography, that it was a
serious, authoritative function; so I arrayed myself in my newest frock
coat and my finest linen, and betook myself to Place Vendôme, to the
address indicated by the invitation.

M. Noël had selected for his party the evening of a first performance
at the Opéra, which society attended _en masse_, so that the whole
household had the bit in their teeth until midnight, and the entire
house at their disposal. Nevertheless, our host had preferred to
receive us in his room in the upper part of the house, and I strongly
approved his judgment, being therein of the opinion of the good man who
said:

    Fi du plaisir
    Que la crainte peut corrompre![4]

      [4]

          A fig for the pleasure
          Which fear can destroy!

But talk to me about the attics on Place Vendôme! 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. Noël, very dark skinned,
with mutton-chop whiskers, and dressed in a black coat, came forward to
meet us.

"Welcome, Monsieur Passajon," he said; and taking my cap with silver
ornaments, which, as I entered the room, I held in my right hand
according to custom, he handed it to an enormous negro in red and gold
livery.

"Here, Lakdar, take this--and this," he said, by way of jest, giving
him a kick in a certain portion of the back.

There was much laughter at that sally, and we began to converse most
amicably. An excellent fellow, that M. Noël, with his Southern accent,
his determined bearing, the frankness and simplicity of his manners. He
reminded me of the Nabob, minus his master's distinguished mien,
however. Indeed, I noticed that evening that such resemblances are of
common occurrence in valets de chambre, who, as they live on intimate
terms with their masters, by whom they are always a little dazzled, end
by adopting their peculiarities and their mannerisms. For instance, M.
Francis has a certain habit of drawing himself up and displaying his
linen shirtfront, a mania for raising his arms to pull down his cuffs,
which is Monpavon to the life. But there is one who does not resemble
his master in the least, that is Joe, Dr. Jenkins' coachman. I call him
Joe, but at the party everybody called him Jenkins; for in that circle
the stable folk among themselves call one another by their employers'
names, plain Bois-l'Héry, Monpavon and Jenkins. Is it to debase the
superiors, to exalt the servant class? Every country has its customs;
nobody but a fool ought to be astonished by them. To return to Joe
Jenkins--how can the doctor, who is such an amiable man, so perfect in
every respect, keep in his service that _gin_ and _porter_-soaked
brute, who sits silent for hours at a time, and then, the instant that
the liquor goes to his head, begins to roar and wants to box
everybody--witness the scandalous scene that had just taken place when
we arrived.

The marquis's little tiger, Tom Bois-l'Héry, as they call him here,
undertook to joke with that Irish beast, who--at some Parisian gamin's
jest--retorted by a terrible Belfast knock-down blow in the middle of
the face.

"Come on, Humpty-Dumpty! Come on, Humpty-Dumpty!" roared the coachman,
choking with rage, while they carried his innocent victim into the
adjoining room, where the ladies, young and old, were engaged in
bandaging his nose. The excitement was soon allayed, thanks to our
arrival, thanks also to the judicious words of M. Barreau, a man of
mature years, sedate and majestic, of my own type. He is the Nabob's
cook, formerly _chef_ at the Café Anglais, and M. Cardailhac, manager
of the Nouveautés, secured him for his friend. To see him in his black
coat and white cravat, with his handsome, full, clean-shaven face, you
would take him for one of the great functionaries of the Empire. To be
sure, a cook in a house where the table is set for thirty people every
morning, in addition to Madame's table, and where everyone is fed on
the best and the extra best, is no ordinary cook-shop artist. He
receives a colonel's salary, with board and lodging, and then the
perquisites! No one has any idea of what the perquisites amount to in a
place like that. So every one addressed him with great respect, with
the consideration due to a man of his importance: "Monsieur Barreau"
here, "my dear Monsieur Barreau" there. You must not imagine that the
servants in a house are all chums and social equals. Nowhere is the
hierarchy more strictly observed than among them. For instance, I
noticed at M. Noël's party that the coachmen did not fraternize with
their grooms, nor the valets de chambre with the footmen and
out-riders, any more than the steward and butler mingled with the
scullions; and when M. Barreau cracked a little joke, no matter what it
was, it was a pleasure to see how amused his underlings seemed to be. I
have no fault to find with these things. Quite the contrary. As our
dean used to say: "A society without a hierarchy is a house without a
stairway." But the fact seemed to me worth noting in these memoirs.

The party, I need not say, lacked something of its brilliancy until the
return of its fairest ornaments, the ladies who had gone to look after
little Tom; ladies' maids with glossy, well-oiled hair, housekeepers in
beribboned caps, negresses, governesses, among whom I at once acquired
much prestige, thanks to my respectable appearance and the nickname "my
uncle" which the youngest of those attractive females were pleased to
bestow upon me. I tell you there was no lack of second-hand finery,
silk and lace, even much faded velvet, eight-button gloves cleaned
several times and perfumery picked up on Madame's toilet-table; but
their faces were happy, their minds given over to gayety, and I had no
difficulty in forming a very lively little party in one corner--always
perfectly proper, of course--that goes without saying--and entirely
befitting a person in my position. But that was the general tone of the
occasion. Not until toward the close of the collation did I hear any of
the unseemly remarks, any of the scandalous anecdotes that amuse the
gentlemen of our council so highly; and it gives me pleasure to state
that Bois-l'Héry the coachman, to cite no other instance, is very
differently brought up from Bois-l'Héry the master.

M. Noël alone, by his familiar tone and the freedom of his repartees,
overstepped the limit. There's a man who does not scruple to call
things by their names. For instance, he said to M. Francis, so loud
that he could be heard from one end of the salon to the other: "I say,
Francis, your old sharper played still another trick on us last week."
And as the other threw out his chest with a dignified air, M. Noël
began to laugh. "No offence, old girl. The strong box is full. You'll
never get to the bottom of it." And it was then that he told us about
the loan of fifteen millions I mentioned above.

Meanwhile I was surprised to see no signs of preparation for the supper
mentioned on the invitations, and I expressed my anxiety in an
undertone to one of my lovely nieces, who replied:

"We are waiting for M. Louis."

"M. Louis?"

"What! Don't you know M. Louis, the Duc de Mora's valet de chambre?"

Thereupon I was enlightened on the subject of that influential
personage, whose good offices are sought by prefects, senators, even by
ministers, and who evidently makes them pay roundly for them, for, with
his salary of twelve hundred francs from the duke, he has saved enough
to have an income of twenty-five thousand francs, has his daughters at
the boarding-school of the Sacred Heart, his son at Bourdaloue College,
and a châlet in Switzerland to which the whole family go for the
vacation.

At that juncture the personage in question arrived; but there was
nothing in his appearance that would have led me to guess his position,
which has not its like in Paris. No majesty in his bearing, a waistcoat
buttoned to the chin, a mean, insolent manner, and a fashion of
speaking without opening his lips, very unpleasant to those who are
listening to him.

He saluted the company with a slight nod, offered a finger to M. Noël,
and there we sat, staring at each other, congealed by his grand
manners, when a door was thrown open at the end of the room and the
supper made its appearance--all kinds of cold meats, pyramids of fruit,
bottles of every shape, beneath the glare of two candelabra.

"Now, messieurs, escort the ladies."

In a moment we were in our places, the ladies seated, with the oldest
or most important of us men, the others standing, passing dishes,
chattering, drinking out of all the glasses, picking a mouthful from
every plate. I had M. Francis for my neighbor, and I was obliged to
listen to his spiteful remarks against M. Louis, of whom he is jealous
because he has such a fine situation in comparison with that he himself
holds in his played-out nobleman's household.

"He's a parvenu," he said to me in an undertone. "He owes his fortune
to his wife, to Madame Paul."

It seems that this Madame Paul is a housekeeper who has been twenty
years in the duke's service, and who understands, as no one else does,
how to make a certain pomade for certain infirmities that he has. Mora
cannot do without her. Remarking that fact, M. Louis paid his court to
the old woman, married her, although he is much younger than she; and,
in order not to lose his nurse _aux pommades_, His Excellency took
the husband for his valet de chambre. In my heart, notwithstanding what
I may have said to M. Francis, I considered that marriage perfectly
proper and in conformity with the healthiest morality, as both the
mayor and the curé had a hand in it. Moreover, that excellent repast,
consisting of choice and very expensive dishes which I did not even
know by name, had disposed my mind to indulgence and good humor. But
everybody was not in the same mood, for I heard M. Barreau's baritone
voice on the other side of the table, grumbling:

"Why does he meddle? Do I stick my nose into his business? In the first
place, it's a matter that concerns Bompain, not him. And what does it
amount to? What is it that he finds fault with me for? The butcher
sends me five baskets of meat every morning. I use only two and sell
the other three. Where's the chef who doesn't do that? As if he
wouldn't do better to keep an eye on the big leakage above stairs,
instead of coming and spying about my basement. When I think that the
first-floor clique has smoked twenty-eight thousand francs' worth of
cigars in three months! Twenty-eight thousand francs! Ask Noël if I
lie. And on the second floor, in Madame's apartments, there's a fine
mess of linen, dresses thrown aside after one wearing, jewels by the
handful, and pearls so thick that you crush 'em as you walk. Oh! you
just wait a bit, and I'll take a twist on that little fellow."

I understood that he was talking about M. de Géry, the Nabob's young
secretary, who often comes to the _Territoriale_, where he does
nothing but rummage among the books. Very polite certainly, but a very
proud youngster who does not know how to make the most of himself.
There was nothing but a chorus of maledictions against him around the
table. Even M. Louis delivered himself on that subject, with his high
and mighty air:

"Our cook, my dear Monsieur Barreau, has recently had an experience
similar to yours with His Excellency's chief secretary, who presumed to
indulge in some observations concerning the household expenses. The
cook ran up to the duke's study post-haste, in his professional
costume, and said, with his hand on his apron string: 'Your Excellency
may choose between Monsieur and me.' The duke did not hesitate. One can
find as many secretaries as one wants; whereas the good cooks are all
known. There are just four in Paris. I include you, my dear Barreau. We
dismissed our chief secretary, giving him a prefecture of the first
class as a consolation; but we kept our chief cook."

"Ah! that's the talk," said M. Barreau, who was delighted to hear that
anecdote. "That's what it is to be in a great nobleman's service. But
parvenus are parvenus, what do you expect?"

"And Jansoulet is nothing more than that," added M. Francis, pulling
down his cuffs. "A man who was once a porter at Marseille."

At that M. Noël bristled up.

"I say there, old Francis, you're glad enough to have the porter of La
Cannebière pay for your roastings at _bouillotte_ all the same. You
won't find many parvenus like us, who loan millions to kings, and whom
great noblemen like Mora don't blush to receive at their table."

"Oh! in the country," sneered M. Francis, showing his old fangs.

The other rose, red as fire, on the point of losing his temper, but
M. Louis made a sign with his hand that he had something to say, and
M. Noël at once sat down, putting his hand to his ear, like the rest
of us, in order to lose none of the august words.

"It is true," said the great personage, speaking with the ends of
his lips and sipping his wine slowly; "it is true that we received
the Nabob at Grandbois some weeks ago. Indeed, a very amusing
thing happened there. We have a great many mushrooms in the
second park, and His Excellency sometimes amuses himself by picking
them. At dinner a great dish of mushrooms was served. There was
What-d'ye-call-him--Thingamy--What's-his-name--Marigny, the Minister
of the Interior, Monpavon, and your master, my dear Noël. The
mushrooms made the round of the table,--they looked very inviting,
and the gentlemen filled their plates, all except Monsieur le Duc,
who can't digest them and thought that politeness required him to say
to his guests: 'Oh! it isn't that I am afraid of them, you know. They
are all right,--I picked them with my own hand.'

"'_Sapristi!_' said Monpavon, laughingly, 'in that case, my dear
Auguste, excuse me if I don't taste them,' Marigny, being less at home,
looked askance at his plate.

"'Why, Monpavon, upon my word, these mushrooms look very healthy. I am
really sorry that I am no longer hungry.'

"The duke remained perfectly serious.

"'Come, Monsieur Jansoulet, I trust that you won't insult me as they
have done. Mush-rooms selected by myself!'

"'Oh! your Excellency, the idea! Why, I would eat them with my eyes
closed.'

"I leave it to you, if that wasn't great luck for the poor Nabob, the
first time that he ate a meal with us. Duperron, who was waiting
opposite him, told us about it in the butler's pantry. It seems that it
was the most comical thing in the world to see Jansoulet stuff himself
with mushrooms, rolling his eyes in terror, while the others watched
him curiously without touching their plates. It made him sweat, poor
devil! And the best part of it was that he took a second portion; he
had the courage to take more. But he poured down bumpers of wine
between every two mouthfuls. Well! shall I tell you what I think? That
was a very shrewd move on his part, and I am no longer surprised that
that fat ox-driver has been the favorite of sovereigns. He knows how to
flatter them, in the little things that they don't talk about. In fact,
the duke has doted on him since that day."

That little story caused much hilarity, and scattered the clouds
collected by a few imprudent words. And thereupon, as the wine had
loosened all our tongues, and as we all knew one another better, we
rested our elbows on the table and began to talk about masters and
places where we had worked, and the amusing things we had seen. Ah! I
heard some fine stories and had a glimpse at some domestic scenes!
Naturally, I produced my little effect with the story of my pantry at
the _Territoriale_, of the time when I used to put my ragout in the
empty safe, which did not prevent our cashier, a great stickler for
routine, from changing the combination every two days, as if it
contained all the treasures of the Bank of France. M. Louis seemed to
enjoy my story. But the most astonishing thing was what little
Bois-l'Héry, with his Parisian street-arab's accent, told us of the
home life of his employers.

Marquis and Marquise de Bois-l'Héry, second floor, Boulevard Haussmann.
Furniture like the Tuileries, blue satin on all the walls, pictures,
mantel ornaments, curiosities, a genuine museum, I tell you!
overflowing on to the landings. Service very stylish: six servants,
chestnut-colored livery in winter, nankeen livery in summer. You see
those people everywhere,--at the small Monday parties, at the races, at
first nights, at ambassadors' balls, and their names always in the
newspapers, with remarks as to Madame's fine toilets and Monsieur's
amazing _chic_. Well! all that is nothing but flim-flam, veneer,
outside show, and if the marquis needed a hundred sous, no one would
loan them to him on his worldly possessions. The furniture is hired by
the fortnight from Fitily, the cocottes' upholsterer. The curiosities,
the pictures, belong to old Schwalbach, who sends his customers there
and makes them pay double price, because a man doesn't haggle when
he thinks he is buying from a marquis, an amateur. As for the
marchioness's dresses, the milliner and dress-maker furnish her with
them for exhibition every season, make her wear the new styles, a
little ridiculous sometimes, but instantly adopted by society, because
Madame is still a very beautiful woman, and of high repute in the
matter of fashion; she is what is called a _lanceuse_. And the
servants! Provisional like all the rest, changed every week at the
pleasure of the intelligence office, which sends them there to give
them practice before taking serious positions. They may have neither
sponsors nor certificates; they may have just come from prison or
elsewhere. Glanard, the great place-broker on Rue de la Paix, supplies
Boulevard Haussmann. The servants stay there one week, two weeks, long
enough to purchase recommendations from the marquis, who, mark you,
pays nothing and barely feeds them; for in that house the kitchen ovens
are cold most of the time, as Monsieur and Madame dine out almost every
evening, or attend balls at which supper is served. It is a positive
fact that there are people in Paris who take the buffet seriously, and
eat their first meal of the day after midnight. The Bois-l'Hérys are
well posted as to houses where there is a buffet. They will tell you
that you get a very good supper at the Austrian embassy, that the
Spanish embassy is a little careless in the matter of wines, and that
the Minister of Foreign Affairs gives you the best _chaud-froid de
volailles_. Such is the life of that curious household. Nothing of all
they have is sewn on; everything is basted or pinned. A gust of wind,
and away it all goes. But at all events they are sure of losing
nothing. That is what gives the marquis that _blagueur_, Père
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'Héry."

You see, you must have been to a servants' party before you can believe
all that one learns there, and what a curious thing Parisian society is
when you look at it thus from below, from the basement. For instance,
happening to be between M. Francis and M. Louis, I caught this scrap of
confidential conversation concerning Sire de Monpavon. M. Louis said:

"You are doing wrong, Francis, you are in funds just now. You ought to
take advantage of it to return that money to the Treasury."

"What can you expect?" replied M. Francis, disconsolately. "Play is
consuming us."

"Yes, I know. But beware. We shall not always be at hand. We may die or
go out of the government. In that case you will be called to account
over yonder. It will be a terrible time."

I had often heard a whisper of the marquis's forced loan of two hundred
thousand francs from the State, at the time when he was
receiver-general; but the testimony of his valet de chambre was the
worst of all. Ah! if the masters suspected what the servants know, all
that they tell in their quarters, if they could hear their names
dragged about in the sweepings of the salons and the kitchen refuse,
they would never again dare to say so much as: "Close the door," or
"Order the carriage." There's Dr. Jenkins, for example, with the
richest practice in Paris, has lived ten years with a magnificent wife,
who is eagerly welcomed everywhere; he has done everything he could to
conceal his real position, announced his marriage in the newspapers in
the English style, and hired only foreign servants who know barely
three words of French, but all to no purpose. With these few words,
seasoned with faubourg oaths and blows on the table, his coachman Joe,
who detests him, told us his whole history while we were at supper.

"She's going to croak, his Irishwoman, his real wife. Now we'll see if
he'll marry the other one. Forty-five years old Mistress Maranne is,
and not a shilling. You ought to see how afraid she is that he'll turn
her out. Marry her, not marry her--_kss-kss_--what a laugh we'll have."
And the more they gave him to drink, the more he told, speaking of his
unfortunate mistress as the lowest of the low. For my part, I confess
that she excited my interest, that false Madame Jenkins, who weeps in
every corner, implores her husband as if he were the headsman, and is
in danger of being sent about her business when all society believes
her to be married, respectable, established for life. The others did
nothing but laugh, especially the women. _Dame!_ it is amusing when one
is in service to see that these ladies of the upper ten have their
affronts too, and tormenting cares which keep them awake.

At that moment our party presented a most animated aspect, a circle of
merry faces turned toward the Irishman, who carried off the palm by his
anecdote. That aroused envy; every one rummaged his memory and dragged
out whatever he could find there of old scandals, adventures of
betrayed husbands, all the domestic secrets that are poured out on the
kitchen table with the remains of dishes and the dregs of bottles. The
champagne was beginning to lay hold of its victims among the guests.
Joe insisted on dancing a jig on the cloth. The ladies, at the
slightest suggestion that was a trifle broad, threw themselves back
with the piercing laughter of a person who is being tickled, letting
their embroidered skirts drag under the table, which was piled with
broken victuals, and covered with grease. M. Louis had prudently
withdrawn. The glasses were filled before they were emptied; a
chambermaid dipped a handkerchief in hers, which was full of water, and
bathed her forehead with it because her head was going round, she said.
It was time that it should end; in fact, an electric bell, ringing
loudly in the hall, warned us that the footman on duty at the theatre
had called the coachmen. Thereupon Monpavon proposed a toast to the
master of the house, thanking him for his little party. M. Noël
announced that he would repeat it at Saint-Romans, during the
festivities in honor of the bey, to which most of those present would
probably be invited. And I was about to rise in my turn, being
sufficiently familiar with banquets to know that on such occasions the
oldest of the party is expected to propose a toast to the ladies, when
the door was suddenly thrown open and a tall footman, all muddy,
breathless and perspiring, with a dripping umbrella in his hand, roared
at us, with no respect for the guests:

"Come, get out of here, you pack of cads; what are you doing here?
Don't I tell you it's done!"




XI.

THE FÊTES IN HONOR OF THE BEY.


In the regions of the South, of the civilization of long ago, the
historic châteaux still standing are very few. At rare intervals some
old abbey rears its tottering and dismantled façade 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 _férigoule_ perfume the air. Amid
all these ruins the château 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 Montélimart,
in a neighborhood where the railroad runs straight along the Rhone, at
the base of the hills of Beaume, Rancoule and Mercurol, the whole
glowing vintage of the Hermitage, spread out over five leagues of vines
growing in close, straight lines in the vineyards, which seem to the
eye like fields of fleece, and extend to the very brink of the river,
as green and full of islands at that spot as the Rhine near Bâle, 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 château
is so huge, extends so far along the neighboring slope, that it seems
to follow the wild race of the train and fixes in your eyes forever the
memory of its flights of steps, its balcony-rails, its Italian
architecture, two rather low stones surmounted by a terrace with little
pillars, flanked by two wings with slated roofs, and overlooking the
sloping banks, where the water from the cascades rushes down to the
river, the network of gravelled paths, the vista formed by hedges of
great height with a white statue at the end sharply outlined against
the blue sky as against the luminous background of a stained-glass
window. Far up, among the vast lawns whose brilliant verdure defies the
blazing climate, a gigantic cedar rears, terrace-like, its masses of
green foliage, with its swaying dark shadows,--an exotic figure, which
makes one think, as he stands before that sometime abode of a
farmer-general of the epoch of Louis XIV., of a tall negro carrying a
courtier's umbrella.

From Valence to Marseille, throughout the valley of the Rhone,
Saint-Romans de Bellaigue is as famous as a fairy palace; and a genuine
fairyland in those regions, scorched by the mistral, is that oasis of
verdure and of lovely, gushing water.

"When I am rich, mamma," Jansoulet, when he was a mere urchin, used to
say to his mother whom he adored, "I'll give you Saint-Romans de
Bellaigue."

And as that man's life seemed the realization of a tale of the
_Thousand and One Nights_, as all his wishes were gratified, even
the most unconscionable, as his wildest chimeras took definite shape
before him, and licked his hands like docile pet spaniels, he had
purchased Saint-Romans in order to present it to his mother, newly
furnished and gorgeously restored. Although ten years had passed since
then, the good woman was not yet accustomed to that magnificent
establishment. "Why, you have given me Queen Jeanne's palace, my dear
Bernard," she wrote to her son; "I shall never dare to live in it." As
a matter of fact she never had lived in it, having installed herself in
the steward's house, a wing of modern construction at the end of the
main buildings, conveniently situated for overlooking the servants'
quarters and the farm, the sheepfolds and the oil-presses, with their
rustic outlook of grain in stacks, of olive-trees and vines stretching
out over the fields as far as the eye could see. In the great château
she would have fancied herself a prisoner in one of those enchanted
dwellings where sleep seizes you in the fulness of your joy and does
not leave you for a hundred years. Here at all events the peasant
woman, who had never been able to accustom herself to that colossal
fortune, which had come too late, from too great a distance and like a
thunderbolt, felt in touch with real life by virtue of the going and
coming of the laborers, the departure and return of the cattle, their
visits to the watering-place, all the details of pastoral life, which
awakened her with the familiar crowing of the roosters, the shrill
cries of the peacocks, and sent her down the winding staircase before
daybreak. She deemed herself simply a trustee of that magnificent
property, of which she had charge for her son's benefit, and which she
proposed to turn over to him in good condition on the day when,
considering himself wealthy enough and weary of living among the
_Turs_, he should come, as he had promised, and live with her
beneath the shade of Saint-Romans.

Imagine then her untiring, all-pervading watchfulness.

In the twilight of early dawn, the farm servants heard her hoarse,
husky voice:

"Olivier--Peyrol--Audibert--Come! It's four o'clock." Then a dive into
the huge kitchen, where the maids, heavy with sleep, were warming the
soup over the bright, crackling peat fire. They gave her her little
plate of red Marseille earthenware, filled with boiled chestnuts, the
frugal breakfast of an earlier time which nothing could induce her to
change. Off she went at once with long strides, the keys jingling on
the great silver key-ring fastened to her belt, her plate in her hand,
held in equilibrium by the distaff which she held under her arm as if
ready for battle, for she spun all day long, and did not stop even to
eat her chestnuts. A glance, as she passed, at the stable, still dark,
where the horses were sluggishly moving about, at the stifling
cow-shed, filled with heads impatiently stretched toward the door; and
the first rays of dawn, stealing over the courses of stone that
supported the embankment of the park, fell upon the old woman running
through the dew with the agility of a girl, despite her seventy years,
verifying exactly each morning all the treasures of the estate, anxious
to ascertain whether the night had stolen the statues and urns,
uprooted the centenary trees, dried up the sparkling fountains that
plashed noisily in their bowls. Then the bright southern sun, humming
and vibrating, outlined upon the gravel of a path, or against the white
supporting wall of a terrace, that tall old woman's figure, slender and
straight as her distaff, picking up pieces of dead wood, breaking off a
branch from a shrub that was out of line, heedless of the scorching
reflection which affected her tough skin no more than an old stone
bench. About that hour another promenader appeared in the park, less
active, less bustling, dragging himself along rather than walking,
leaning on the walls and railings, a poor bent, palsied creature, with
a lifeless face to which one could assign no age, who, when he was
tired, uttered a faint, plaintive cry to call the servant, who was
always at hand to assist him to sit down, to huddle himself up on some
step, where he would remain for hours, motionless and silent, his mouth
half-open, blinking his eyes, soothed by the strident monotony of the
locusts, a human blot on the face of the superb landscape.

He was the _oldest_, Bernard's brother, the cherished darling of the
Jansoulets, father and mother, the hope and the glory of the family of
the junk-dealer, who, faithful like so many more in the South to the
superstition concerning the right of primogeniture, had made every
conceivable sacrifice to send that handsome, ambitious youth to Paris;
and he had started with four or five marshals' batons in his trunk, the
admiration of all the girls in the village; but Paris--after it had
beaten and twisted and squeezed that brilliant Southern rag in its
great vat for ten years, burned him in all its acids, rolled him in all
its mire--relegated him at last to the state of battered flotsam and
jetsam, embruted, paralyzed, which had killed his father with grief and
compelled his mother to sell everything in her house and to live by
domestic service in the well-to-do families of the neighborhood.
Luckily, just about the time that that relic of Parisian hospitals,
sent back to his home by public charity, appeared in Bourg-Saint-Andéol,
Bernard,--who was called Cadet, as in all the half-Arab Southern
families, where the eldest son always takes the family name and the
last comer the name of Cadet,--Bernard was already in Tunis, in process
of making his fortune, and sending money home regularly. But what
remorse it caused the poor mother to owe everything, even life itself,
and the comfort of the wretched invalid, to the brave, energetic lad,
of whom his father and she had always been fond, but without genuine
tenderness, and whom, from the time he was five years old, they had
been accustomed to treat as a day-laborer, because he was very strong
and hairy and ugly, and was already shrewder than any one else in the
house in the matter of dealing in old iron. Ah! how she would have
liked to have her Cadet with her, to repay him a little of all he was
doing for her, to pay in one sum all the arrears of affection, of
motherly cosseting that she owed him.

But, you see, these kingly fortunes have the burdens, the vexations of
kingly existences. Poor Mother Jansoulet, in her dazzling surroundings,
was much like a genuine queen, having undergone the long banishments,
the cruel separations and trials which atone for earthly grandeur; one
of her sons in a state of stupid lethargy for all time, the other far
away, writing little, engrossed by his great interests, always saying,
"I will come," and never coming. In twelve years she had seen him but
once, in the confusion of the bey's visit at Saint-Romans: a bewildering
succession of horses, carriages, fireworks, and festivities. Then he
had whirled away again behind his sovereign, having had hardly time to
embrace his old mother, who had retained naught of that great joy, so
impatiently awaited, save a few newspaper pictures, in which Bernard
Jansoulet was exhibited arriving at the château with Ahmed and
presenting his aged mother to him,--is not that the way in which kings
and queens have their family reunions illustrated in the journals?--plus
a cedar of Lebanon, brought from the end of the world,--a great
_caramantran_ of a tree, which was as costly to move and as much in the
way as the obelisk--being hoisted and planted by force of men and money
and horses; a tree which had wrought confusion among the shrubbery as
the price of setting up a souvenir commemorative of the royal visit. On
his present trip to France, at least, knowing that he had come for
several months, perhaps forever, she hoped to have her Bernard all to
herself. And lo! he swooped down upon her one fine evening, enveloped
in the same triumphant splendor, in the same official pomp, surrounded
by a multitude of counts, marquises, fine gentlemen from Paris, who
with their servants filled the two great breaks she had sent to meet
them at the little station of Giffas, on the other side of the Rhone.

"Come, come, embrace me, my dear mamma. There's no shame in hugging
your boy, whom you haven't seen for years, close to your heart.
Besides, all these gentlemen are friends of ours. This is Monsieur le
Marquis de Monpavon, and Monsieur le Marquis de Bois-l'Héry. 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
Géry--he, with my old friend Cardailhac, whom I introduce to you, make
up the first batch. But others are coming. Prepare for a terrible
how-d'ye-do. We receive the bey in four days."

"The bey again!" said the good woman in dismay. "I thought he was
dead."

Jansoulet and his guests could but laugh at her comical alarm,
heightened by her Southern accent.

"But there's another, mamma. There are always beys--luckily for me,
_sapristi_! But don't you be afraid. You won't have so much trouble on
your hands. Friend Cardailhac has undertaken to look after things.
We're going to have some superb fêtes. Meanwhile give us some dinner
quick, and show us our rooms. Our Parisian friends are tired out."

"Everything is ready, my son," said the old woman simply, standing
stiffly erect in her cap of Cambrai linen, with points yellowed by age,
which she never laid aside even on great occasions. Wealth had not
changed _her_. She was the typical peasant of the Rhone valley,
independent and proud, with none of the cunning humility of the rustics
described by Balzac, too simple, too, to be puffed up by wealth. Her
only pride was to show her son with what painstaking zeal she had
acquitted herself of her duties as care-taker. Not an atom of dust, not
a trace of dampness on the walls. The whole magnificent ground-floor,
the salons with the silk draperies and upholstery of changing hue,
taken at the last moment from their coverings; the long summer
galleries, with cool, resonant inlaid floors, which the Louis XV.
couches, with cane seats and backs upholstered with flowered stuffs,
furnished with summer-like coquetry; the enormous dining-hall,
decorated with flowers and branches; even the billiard-room, with its
rows of gleaming balls, its chandeliers and cue-racks,--the whole vast
extent of the château, seen through the long door-windows, wide open
upon the broad seignorial porch, displayed its splendor to the
admiration of the visitors, and reflected the beauty of that marvellous
landscape, lying serene and peaceful in the setting sun, in the
mirrors, the waxed or varnished wainscoting, with the same fidelity
with which the poplars bowing gracefully to each other, and the swans,
placidly swimming, were reproduced on the mirror-like surface of the
ponds. The frame was so beautiful, the general outlook so superb, that
the obtrusive, tasteless luxury melted away, disappeared even to the
most sensitive eye.

"There's something to work with," said Cardailhac the manager, with his
monocle at his eye, his hat on one side, already planning his
stage-setting.

And the haughty mien of Monpavon, who had been somewhat offended at
first by the old lady's head-dress when she received them on the porch,
gave place to a condescending smile. Certainly there was something to
work with, and their friend Jansoulet, under the guidance of men of
taste, could give his Maugrabin Highness a very handsome reception.
They talked about nothing else all the evening. Sitting in the
sumptuous dining-room, with their elbows on the table, warmed by wine
and with full stomachs, they planned and discussed. Cardailhac, whose
views were broad, had his plan all formed.

"Carte blanche, of course, eh, Nabob?"

"Carte blanche, old fellow. And let old Hemerlingue burst with rage."

Thereupon the manager detailed his plans, the festivities to be divided
by days, as at Vaux when Fouquet entertained Louis XIV.; one day a
play, another day Provençal fêtes, _farandoles_, bull-fights, local
music; the third day--And, in his mania for management, he was already
outlining programmes, posters, while Bois-l'Héry, 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 Géry had left them early. He had gone to take refuge with the old
lady--who had known him, and his brothers, too, when they were
children--in the modest parlor in the wing, with the white curtains and
light wall-paper covered with figures, where the Nabob's mother tried
to revive her past as an artisan, with the aid of some relics saved
from the wreck.

Paul talked softly, sitting opposite the handsome old woman with the
severe and regular features, the white hair piled on top of her head
like the flax on her distaff, who sat erect upon her chair, her flat
bust wrapped in a little green shawl;--never in her life had she rested
her back against the back of a chair or sat in an armchair. He called
her Françoise and she called him Monsieur Paul. They were old friends.
And what do you suppose they were talking about? Of her grandchildren,
_pardi!_ of Bernard's three boys whom she did not know, whom she would
have loved so dearly to know.

"Ah! Monsieur Paul, if you knew how I long for them! I should have been
so happy if he had brought me my three little ones instead of all these
fine gentlemen. Just think, I have never seen them, except in those
pictures yonder. Their mother frightens me a bit, she's a great lady
out-and-out, a Demoiselle Afchin. But the children, I'm sure they're
not little coxcombs, but would be very fond of their old _granny_.
It would seem to me as if it was their father a little boy again, and
I'd give them what I didn't give the father--for, you see, Monsieur
Paul, parents aren't always just. They have favorites. But God is just.
You ought to see how He deals with the faces that you paint and fix up
the best, to the injury of the others. And the favoritism of the old
people often does harm to the young."

She sighed as she glanced in the direction of the great alcove, from
which, through the high lambrequins and falling draperies, issued at
intervals a long, shuddering breath like the moan of a sleeping child
who has been whipped and has cried bitterly.

A heavy step on the stairs, an unmelodious but gentle voice, saying in
a low tone: "It's I--don't move,"--and Jansoulet appeared. As everybody
had gone to bed at the château, he, knowing his mother's habits and
that hers was always the last light to be extinguished in the house,
had come to see her, to talk with her a little, to exchange the real
greeting of the heart which they had been unable to exchange in the
presence of others. "Oh! stay, my dear Paul; we don't mind you." And,
becoming a child once more in his mother's presence, he threw his whole
long body on the floor at her feet, with cajoling words and gestures
really touching to behold. She was very happy too to have him by her
side, but she was a little embarrassed none the less, looking upon him
as an all-powerful, strange being, exalting him in her artless
innocence to the level of an Olympian encompassed by thunder-bolts and
lightning-flashes, possessing the gift of omnipotence. She talked to
him, inquired if he was still satisfied with his friends, with the
condition of his affairs, but did not dare to ask the question she had
asked de Géry: "Why didn't you bring me my little grandsons?"--But he
broached the subject himself.

"They're at boarding-school, mamma; as soon as the vacation comes, I'll
send them to you with Bompain. You remember him, don't you, Bompain
Jean-Baptiste? And you shall keep them two whole months. They'll come
to you to have you tell them fine stories, they'll go to sleep with
their heads on your apron, like this--"

And he himself, placing his curly head, heavy as lead, on the old
woman's knees, recalling the happy evenings of his childhood when he
went to sleep that way if he were allowed to do so, if his older
brother's head did not take up all the room--he enjoyed, for the first
time since his return to France, a few moments of blissful repose,
outside of his tumultuous artificial life, pressed against that old
motherly heart which he could hear beating regularly, like the pendulum
of the century-old clock standing in a corner of the room, in the
profound silence of the night, which one can feel in the country,
hovering over the boundless expanse. Suddenly the same long sigh, as of
a child who has fallen asleep sobbing, was repeated at the farther end
of the room.

"Is that--?"

"Yes," she said, "I have him sleep here. He might need me in the
night."

"I should like to see him, to embrace him."

"Come."

The old woman rose, took her lamp, led the way gravely to the alcove,
where she softly drew aside the long curtain and motioned to her son to
come, without making a noise.

He was asleep. And it was certain that something lived in him that was
not there the day before, for, instead of the flaccid immobility in
which he was mired all day, he was shaken at that moment by violent
tremors, and on his expressionless, dead face there was a wrinkle of
suffering life, a contraction as of pain. Jansoulet, profoundly moved,
gazed at that thin, wasted, earth-colored face, on which the beard,
having appropriated all the vitality of the body, grew with surprising
vigor; then he stooped, placed his lips on the forehead moist with
perspiration, and, feeling that he started, he said in a low tone,
gravely, respectfully, as one addresses the head of the family:

"Good-evening, Aîné."

Perhaps the imprisoned mind heard him in the depths of its dark,
degrading purgatory. But the lips moved and a long groan made answer; a
far-off wail, a despairing appeal caused the glance Françoise and her
son exchanged to overflow with impotent tears, and drew from them both
a simultaneous cry in which their sorrows met: _Pécaïré!_ the local
word expressive of all pity, all affection.

                         *        *        *

Early the next morning the uproar began with the arrival of the actors
and actresses, an avalanche of caps, chignons, high boots, short
petticoats, affected screams, veils floating over the fresh coats of
rouge; the women were in a large majority, Cardailhac having reflected
that, where a bey was concerned, the performance was of little
consequence, that one need only emit false notes from pretty lips, show
lovely arms and well-turned legs in the free-and-easy négligé of the
operetta. All the plastic celebrities of his theatre were on hand,
therefore, Amy Férat at their head, a hussy who had already tried her
eye-teeth on the gold of several crowns; also two or three famous comic
actors, whose pallid faces produced the same effect of chalky, spectral
blotches amid the bright green of the hedgerows as was produced by the
plaster statuettes. All that motley crew, enlivened by the journey, the
unfamiliar fresh air, and the copious hospitality, as well as by the
hope of hooking something in that procession of beys, nabobs, and other
purse-bearers, asked nothing better than to caper and sing and make
merry, with the vulgar enthusiasm of a crowd of Seine boatmen ashore on
a lark. But Cardailhac did not propose to have it so. As soon as they
had arrived, made their toilets and eaten their first breakfast, out
came the books; we must rehearse!--There was no time to lose. The
rehearsals took place in the small salon near the summer gallery, where
they were already beginning to build the stage; and the noise of the
hammers, the humming of the refrains, the thin voices supported by the
squeaking of the orchestra leader's violin, mingled with the loud
trumpet-calls of the peacocks on their perches, were blown to shreds in
the mistral, which, failing to recognize the frantic chirping of its
grasshoppers, contemptuously whisked it all away on the whirling tips
of its wings.

Sitting in the centre of the porch, as if it were the proscenium of his
theatre, Cardailhac, while superintending the rehearsals, issued his
commands to a multitude of workmen and gardeners, ordered trees to be
felled which obstructed the view, drew sketches of the triumphal
arches, sent despatches and messengers to mayors, to sub-prefects, to
Arles to procure a deputation of girls of the province in the national
costume, to Barbantane, where the most skilful dancers of the
_farandole_ are to be found, to Faraman renowned for its herds of wild
bulls and Camarguese horses; and as Jansoulet's name blazed forth at
the foot of all these despatches, as the name of the Bey of Tunis also
figured in them, everybody acquiesced with the utmost eagerness, the
telegraphic messages arrived in an endless stream, and that little
Sardanapalus from Porte-Saint-Martin, who was called Cardailhac, was
forever repeating: "There is something to work with;" delighted to
throw gold about like handfuls of seed, to have a stage fifty leagues
in circumference to arrange, all Provence, of which country that
fanatical Parisian was a native, and thoroughly familiar with its
resources in the direction of the picturesque.

Dispossessed of her functions, the old lady seldom appeared, gave her
attention solely to the farm and her invalid, terrified by that crowd
of visitors, those insolent servants whom one could not distinguish
from their masters, those women with brazen, coquettish manners, those
closely-shaven old villains who resembled wicked priests, all those mad
creatures who chased one another through the halls at night with much
throwing of pillows, wet sponges, and curtain tassels which they tore
off to use as projectiles. She no longer had her son in the evening,
for he was obliged to remain with his guests, whose number increased as
the time for the fêtes drew near; nor had she even the resource of
talking about her grandsons with "Monsieur Paul," whom Jansoulet,
always the kindest of men, being a little awed by his friend's
seriousness of manner, had sent away to pass a few days with his
brothers. And the careful housekeeper, to whom some one came every
moment and seized her keys to get spare linen or silverware, to open
another room, thinking of the throwing open of her stores of treasures,
of the plundering of her wardrobes and her sideboards, remembering the
condition in which the visit of the former bey had left the château,
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 curés cleanly shaven,--when Jansoulet, in black coat and
white cravat, surrounded by his guests, went out upon the stoop and
saw, framed in that magnificent landscape, amid flags and arches and
ensigns, that swarm of heads, that sea of brilliant costumes rising
tier above tier on the slopes and thronging the paths; here, grouped
in a nosegay on the lawn, the prettiest girls of Arles, whose little
white faces peeped sweetly forth from lace neckerchiefs; below, the
_farandole_ from Barbantane, its eight tambourines in a line, ready for
the word, hand in hand, ribbons fluttering in the wind, hats over one
ear, the red _taillote_ about the loins; still lower, in the succession
of terraces, the choral societies drawn up in line, all black beneath
their bright-hued caps, the banner-bearer in advance, serious and
resolved, with clenched teeth, holding aloft his carved staff; lower
still, on an immense _rond-point_, black bulls in shackles, and
Camargue gauchos on their little horses with long white manes, their
leggings above their knees, brandishing their spears; and after them
more flags and helmets and bayonets, reaching to the triumphal arch at
the entrance; then, as far as the eye could see on the other side of
the Rhone,--over which two gangs of workmen had just thrown a bridge of
boats, so that they could drive from the station to Saint-Romans in a
straight line,--was an immense crowd, whole villages pouring down from
all the hills, overflowing on the Giffas road in a wilderness of noise
and dust, seated on the edge of the ditches, swarming among the elms,
piled upon wagons, a formidable living lane for the procession to pass
through; and over it all a huge white sun whose arrows a capricious
breeze sent in every direction, from the copper of a tambourine to the
point of a spear and the fringe of a banner, while the mighty Rhone,
high-spirited and free, bore away to the ocean the shifting tableaux of
that royal fête. In presence of those marvels, in which all the gold in
his coffers shone resplendent, the Nabob felt a thrill of admiration
and pride.

"It is fine," he said, turning pale, and his mother, standing behind
him, as pale as he, but from indescribable terror, murmured:

"It is too fine for any man. One would think that God was coming."

The feeling of the devout old peasant woman was much the same as that
vaguely experienced by all those people who had assembled on the roads
as if to watch the passage of a colossal procession on Corpus Christi,
and who were reminded by that visit of an Oriental prince to a child of
the province, of the legends of the Magian kings, the arrival of
Gaspard the Moor bringing to the carpenter's son the myrrh and the
crown.

Amid the heartfelt congratulations that were showered on Jansoulet,
Cardailhac, who had not been seen since morning, suddenly appeared,
triumphant and perspiring.

"Didn't I tell you that there was something to work with! Eh? Isn't
this _chic_? There's a grouping for you! I fancy our Parisians would
pay something handsome to attend a first performance like this."

He lowered his voice because the mother was close by:

"Have you seen our Arles girls? No, look at them more carefully--the
first one, the one standing in front to offer the bouquet."

"Why, that's Amy Férat!"

"_Parbleu!_ you can see yourself, my dear fellow, that if the bey
throws his handkerchief into that bevy of pretty girls, there must be
at least one who knows enough to pick it up. Those innocent creatures
wouldn't know what it meant! Oh! I have thought of everything, you'll
see. It's all mounted and arranged as if it were on the stage. Farm
side, garden side."

At that point, to give an idea of the perfectness of his organization,
the manager raised his cane; his gesture was instantly repeated from
end to end of the park, with the result that all the musical societies,
all the trumpets, all the tambourines burst forth in unison in the
majestic strains of the familiar song of the South: _Grand Soleil de
la Provence_. The voices, the brazen notes ascended into the light,
swelling the folds of the banners, giving the signal to the dancers of
the _farandole_, who began to sway back and forth, to go through their
first antics where they stood, while, on the other side of the river, a
murmur ran through the crowd like a breeze, caused doubtless by the
fear that the bey had arrived unexpectedly from another direction. A
second gesture from the manager and the great orchestra subsided, more
gradually, with _rallentando_ passages and meteoric showers of notes
scattered among the foliage; but nothing better could be expected from
a company of three thousand persons.

Just then the carriages appeared, the state carriages which had figured
in the festivities in honor of the former bey, two great pink and gold
chariots _à la mode de Tunis_, which Mother Jansoulet had taken care of
as precious relics, and which came forth from the carriage-house with
their varnished panels, their hangings and gold fringe as bright and
fresh as when they were new. There again Cardailhac's ingenuity had
exerted itself freely, and instead of horses, which were a little heavy
for those fragile-looking, daintily decorated vehicles, the white reins
guided eight mules with ribbons, plumes, and silver bells upon their
heads, and caparisoned from head to foot with those marvellous
_sparteries_, of which Provence seems to have borrowed the secret
from the Moors and to have perfected the cunning art of manufacturing.
If the bey were not satisfied with that!

The Nabob, Monpavon, the prefect and one of their generals entered the
first carriage, the others took their places in the second and
following ones. The curés and mayors, all excited by the wine they had
drunk, ran to place themselves at the head of the singing societies of
their respective parishes, which were to go to meet the procession; and
the whole multitude set forth on the Giffas road.

It was a superbly clear day, but warm and oppressive, three months in
advance of the season, as often happens in those impetuous regions
where everything is in a hurry, where everything arrives before its
time. Although there was not a cloud to be seen, the deathlike
stillness of the atmosphere, the wind having fallen suddenly as one
lowers a veil, the dazzling expanse, heated white-hot, a solemn silence
hovering over the landscape, all indicated that a storm was brewing in
some corner of the horizon. The extraordinary torpidity of the
surrounding objects gradually affected the persons. Naught could be
heard save the tinkling bells of the mules as they ambled slowly along,
the measured, heavy tread, through the burning dust, of the bands of
singers whom Cardailhac stationed at intervals in the procession, and
from time to time, in the double, swarming line of human beings that
bordered the road as far as the eye could see, a call, the voices of
children, the cry of a peddler of fresh water, the inevitable
accompaniment of all open-air fêtes in the South.

"For heaven's sake, open the window on your side, General, it's
stifling," said Monpavon, with crimson face, fearing for his paint; and
the lowered sashes afforded the worthy populace a view of those exalted
functionaries mopping their august faces, which were terribly flushed
and wore the same agonized expression of anticipation,--anticipation of
the bey's arrival, of the storm, of something.

Another triumphal arch. Giffas and its long stony street strewn with
green palm leaves, its old, dirty houses covered with flowers and
decorations. Outside of the village the station, a square white
structure, planted like a die at the side of the track, a genuine type
of the little country station lost among vineyards, its only room
always empty, except for an occasional old woman with a quantity of
parcels, waiting in a corner, three hours too early for her train.

In the bey's honor the little building was decked with flags and
banners, furnished with rugs and divans and a splendid buffet, on which
was a light lunch and water ices all ready for his Highness. When he
had arrived and alighted from his carriage, the Nabob shook off the
species of haunting disquiet which had oppressed him for a moment past,
without his knowing why. Prefects, generals, deputies, black coats and
embroidered military coats stood on the broad inner platform, in
impressive, solemn groups, with the pursed lips, the shifting from one
foot to the other, the self-conscious starts of a public functionary
who feels that he is being stared at. And you can imagine whether noses
were flattened against window-panes in order to obtain a glimpse of
those hierarchic embroideries, of Monpavon's breastplate, which
expanded and rose like an omelette soufflée, of Cardailhac gasping for
breath as he issued his final orders, and of the beaming face of
Jansoulet, their Jansoulet, whose eyes, sparkling between the bloated,
sunburned cheeks, resembled two great gilt nails in a piece of Cordova
leather. Suddenly the electric bells began to ring. The station-agent
rushed frantically out to the track: "The train is signalled,
messieurs. It will be here in eight minutes." Everybody started. Then a
general instinctive impulse caused every watch to be drawn from its
fob. Only six minutes more. Thereupon, in the profound silence, some
one exclaimed: "Look there!" On the right, in the direction from which
the train was to come, two high vine-covered hills formed a tunnel into
which the track plunged and disappeared, as if swallowed up. At that
moment the whole sky in that direction was as black as ink, obscured by
an enormous cloud, a threatening wall cutting the blue as with a knife,
rearing palisades, lofty cliffs of basalt on which the light broke like
white foam with the pallid gleam of moonlight. In the solemn silence of
the deserted track, along that line of rails where one felt that
everything, so far as the eye could see, stood aside for the passage of
his Highness, that aërial cliff was a terrifying spectacle as it
advanced, casting its shadow before it with that illusion of
perspective which gave to the cloud a slow, majestic movement and to
its shadow the rapid pace of a galloping horse. "What a storm we are
going to have directly!" That was the thought that came to them all;
but they had not time to express it, for an ear-piercing whistle was
heard and the train appeared in the depths of the dark tunnel. A
typical royal train, short and travelling fast, decorated with French
and Tunisian flags, its groaning, puffing locomotive, with an enormous
bouquet of roses on its breast, representing the maid of honor at a
wedding of Leviathans.

It came rushing on at full speed, but slackened its pace as it drew
near. The functionaries formed a group, drawing themselves up,
arranging their swords, adjusting their false collars, while Jansoulet
walked along the track toward the train, the obsequious smile on his
lips and his back already bent for the "Salem alek!" The train
continued to move, very slowly. Jansoulet thought that it had stopped,
and placed his hand on the door of the royal carriage glittering with
gold under the black sky; but the headway was too great, doubtless, for
the train still went forward, the Nabob walking beside it, trying to
open that infernal door which resisted all his efforts, and with the
other hand making a sign of command to the machine. But the machine did
not obey. "Stop, I tell you!" It did not stop. Impatient at the delay,
he sprang upon the velvet-covered step, and with the somewhat
presumptuous impetuosity, which used to please the former bey so much,
he cried out, thrusting his great curly head in at the window:

"Station for Saint-Romans, your Highness!"

You know that sort of vague light peculiar to dreams, that colorless,
empty atmosphere, in which everything assumes a ghostly aspect? well,
Jansoulet was suddenly enveloped, made prisoner, paralyzed by it. He
tried to speak, but the words would not come; his nerveless fingers
clung so feebly to their support that he nearly fell backward. In
heaven's name, what had he seen? Half reclining on a divan which
extended across one end of the car, his fine head with its dead-white
complexion and its long, silky black beard resting on his hand, the
bey, buttoned to the chin in his Oriental frock-coat, without other
ornament than the broad ribbon of the Legion of Honor across his breast
and the diamond clasp in his cap, was fanning himself impassively with
a little fan of _spartum_, embroidered with gold. Two aides-de-camp
were standing near him and an engineer of the French company. Opposite
him, upon another divan, in a respectful attitude, but one indicating
high favor, as they alone remained seated in presence of the bey, both
as yellow as saffron, their long whiskers falling over their white
cravats, sat two owls, one fat, the other thin. They were the
Hemerlingues, father and son, who had reconquered his Highness and were
carrying him in triumph to Paris. A ghastly dream! All those people,
although they knew Jansoulet well, stared coolly at him as if his face
conveyed no idea to them. Pitiably pale, with the perspiration standing
on his brow, he stammered: "But, your Highness, do you not mean to
leave--" A livid flash, like that of a sabre stroke, followed by a
frightful peal of thunder, cut him short. But the flash that shot from
the monarch's eyes seemed far more terrible to him. Rising to his feet
and stretching out his arm, the bey crushed him with these words,
prepared in advance and uttered slowly in a rather guttural voice
accustomed to the harsh Arabic syllables, but in very pure French:

"You may return home, Mercanti. The foot goes where the heart leads it,
mine shall never enter the door of the man who has robbed my country."

Jansoulet tried to say a word. The bey waved his hand: "Begone!" And
the engineer having pressed the button of an electric bell, to which a
whistle replied, the train, which had not come to a full stop,
stretched and strained its iron muscles and started ahead under full
steam, waving its flags in the wind of the storm amid whirling clouds
of dense smoke and sinister flashes.

He stood by the track, dazed, staggering, crushed, watching his fortune
recede and disappear, heedless of the great drops of rain that began to
fall upon his bare head. Then, when the others rushed toward him,
surrounded him and overwhelmed him with questions: "Isn't the Bey going
to stop?" he stammered a few incoherent words: "Court intrigues--infamous
machinations." And suddenly, shaking his fist at the train which had
already disappeared, with bloodshot eyes and the foam of fierce wrath
on his lips, he cried with the roar of a wild beast:

"Vile curs!"

"Courage, Jansoulet, courage."

You can guess who said that, and who, passing his arm through the
Nabob's, tried to straighten him up, to make him throw out his breast
as he did, led him to the carriages amid the stupefied silence of the
braided coats, and helped him to enter, crushed and bewildered, as a
relative of the deceased is hoisted into a mourning carriage at the
close of the lugubrious ceremony. The rain was beginning to fall, the
peals of thunder followed one another rapidly. They crowded into the
carriages, which started hurriedly homeward. Thereupon a heart-rending,
yet comical thing took place, one of those cruel tricks which cowardly
destiny plays upon its victims when they are down. In the fading light,
the increasing obscurity caused by the squall, the crowd that filled
all the approaches to the station believed that it could distinguish a
Royal Highness amid such a profusion of gold lace, and as soon as the
wheels began to revolve, a tremendous uproar, an appalling outcry which
had been brewing in all those throats for an hour past, arose and
filled the air, rebounded from hill to hill and echoed through the
valley: "Vive le Bey!" Warned by that signal, the first flourishes rang
out, the singing societies struck up in their turn, and as the noise
increased from point to point, the road from Giffas to Saint-Romans was
naught but one long, unbroken wave of sound. In vain did Cardailhac,
all the gentlemen, Jansoulet himself, lean out of the windows and make
desperate signs: "Enough! enough!" Their gestures were lost in the
confusion, in the darkness; what was seen of them seemed an
encouragement to shout louder. And I give you my word that it was in no
wise needed. All those Southerners, whose enthusiasm had been kept at
fever heat since morning, excited still more by the tedium of the long
wait and by the storm, gave all that they had of voice, of breath, of
noisy energy, blending with the national hymn of Provence that
oft-repeated cry, which broke in upon it like a refrain: "Vive le Bey!"
The majority had no sort of idea what a bey might be, did not even
picture him to themselves, and gave a most extraordinary pronunciation
to the unfamiliar title, as if it had three _b's_ and ten _y's_. But no
matter, they worked themselves into a frenzy over it, threw up their
hands, waved their hats, and waxed excited over their own antics.
Women, deeply affected, wiped their eyes; and suddenly the piercing cry
of a child came from the topmost branches of an elm: "Mamma, mamma, I
see him!" He saw him! They all saw him for that matter; to this day
they would all take their oath that they saw him.

Confronted with such delirious excitement, finding it impossible to
impose silence and tranquillity upon that mob, there was but one course
for the people in the carriages to pursue: to let them alone, raise the
windows and drive at full speed in order to abridge that unpleasant
martyrdom as much as possible. Then it was terrible. Seeing the cortège
quicken its pace, the whole road began to run with it. The _farandoleurs_
of Barbantane, hand-in-hand, bounded from side to side, to the muffled
wheezing of their tambourines, forming a human garland around the
carriage doors. The singing societies, unable to sing at that breathless
pace, but howling none the less, dragged their banner-bearers along,
the banners thrown over their shoulders; and the stout, red-faced
curés, panting, pushing their huge overburdened paunches before them,
still found strength to shout in the mules' ears, in sympathetic,
effusive tones: "Vive notre bon Bey!" And with it all, the rain, the
rain falling in bucketfuls, in sheets, soiling the pink carriages,
increasing the confusion, giving to that triumphal return the aspect of
a rout, but a laughable rout, compounded of songs, laughter, blasphemy,
frantic embraces and infernal oaths, something like the return from a
Corpus Christi procession in the storm, with cassocks tucked up,
surplices thrown over the head, and the good Lord hastily housed under
a porch.

A dull rumbling announced to the poor Nabob, sitting silent and
motionless in a corner of his carriage, that they were crossing the
bridge of boats. They had arrived.

"At last!" he said, looking out through the dripping windows at the
foam-tipped waves of the Rhone, where the storm seemed to him like
repose after that through which he had passed. But, when the first
carriage reached the triumphal arch at the end of the bridge, bombs
were exploded, the drums beat, saluting the monarch's arrival upon his
faithful subject's domain, and the climax of irony was reached when, in
the half light, a blaze of gas suddenly illuminated the roof of the
château with letters of fire, over which the rain and wind caused great
shadows to run to and fro, but which still displayed very legibly the
legend: "Viv' L' B'Y M'H'MED."

"That's the bouquet," said the unhappy Nabob, unable to restrain a
smile, a very pitiful, very bitter smile. But no, he was mistaken. The
bouquet awaited him at the door of the chateâu; and it was Amy Férat
who came forward to present it to him, stepping out of the group of
maidens from Arles, who were sheltering their watered silk skirts and
figured velvet caps under the marquée, awaiting the first carriage. Her
bunch of flowers in her hand, modestly, with downcast eyes and roguish
ankle, the pretty actress darted to the door and stood almost kneeling
in an attitude of salutation, which she had been rehearsing for a week.
Instead of the bey, Jansoulet stepped out, excited, stiffly erect, and
passed her by without even looking at her. And as she stood there, her
nosegay in her hand, with the stupid expression of a balked fairy,
Cardailhac said to her with the _blague_ of a Parisian who speedily
makes the best of things:

"Take away your flowers, my dear, your affair has fallen through. The
Bey isn't coming--he forgot his handkerchief, and as that's what he
uses to talk to ladies, why, you understand--"

                         *        *        *

Now, it is night. Everybody is asleep at Saint-Romans after the
tremendous hurly-burly of the day. The rain is still falling in
torrents, the banners feebly wave their drenched carcasses, one can
hear the water rushing down the stone steps, transformed into cascades.
Everything is streaming and dripping. A sound of water, a deafening
sound of water. Alone in his magnificently furnished chamber with its
seignorial bed and its curtains of Chinese silk with purple stripes,
the Nabob is still stirring, striding back and forth, revolving bitter
thoughts. His mind is no longer intent upon the affront to himself, the
public affront in the presence of thirty thousand persons, nor upon the
murderous insult that the Bey addressed to him in presence of his
mortal enemies. No, that Southerner with his wholly physical
sensations, swift as the action of new weapons, has already cast away
all the venom of his spleen. Moreover court favorites are always
prepared, by many celebrated precedents, for such overwhelming falls
from grace. What terrifies him is what he can see behind that insult.
He reflects that all his property is over yonder, houses,
counting-rooms, vessels, at the mercy of the bey, in that lawless
Orient, the land of arbitrary power. And, pressing his burning brow
against the streaming glass, with the perspiration standing on his
back, and hands cold as ice, he stares vacantly out into the night, no
darker, no more impenetrable than his own destiny.

Suddenly he hears footsteps, hurried footsteps, at his door.

"Who's there?"

"Monsieur," says Noël, entering the room half-dressed, "a very urgent
despatch sent from the telegraph office by special messenger."

"A despatch!--What is the next thing?"

He takes the blue paper and opens it with trembling hand. The god,
having already been wounded twice, is beginning to feel that he is
vulnerable, to lose his assurance; he experiences the apprehensions,
the nervous tremors of other men. The signature first. _Mora!_ Is it
possible? The duke, the duke telegraph to him! Yes, there is no doubt
about it. _M-o-r-a._

And above:

    _Popolasca is dead. Election in Corsica soon. You are official
    candidate._

A deputy! That means salvation. With that he has nothing to fear. A
representative of the great French nation is not to be treated like a
simple _mercanti_. Down with the Hemerlingues!

"O my duke, my noble duke!"

He was so excited that he could not sign the receipt.

"Where's the man who brought this despatch?" he asked abruptly.

"Here, Monsieur Jansoulet," replied a hearty voice from the hall, in
the familiar Southern dialect.

He was a lucky dog, that messenger.

"Come in," said the Nabob.

And, after handing him his receipt, he plunged his hands into his
pockets, which were always full, grasped as many gold pieces as he
could hold and threw them into the poor devil's cap as he stood there
stammering, bewildered, dazzled by the fortune that had befallen him in
the darkness of that enchanted palace.




XII.

A CORSICAN ELECTION.


    "POZZONEGRO, near Sartène.

    "I am able at last to write you of my movements, my dear Monsieur
    Joyeuse. In the five days that we have been in Corsica we have
    travelled about so much, talked so much, changed carriages and
    steeds so often, riding sometimes on mules, sometimes on asses, and
    sometimes even on men's backs to cross streams, have written so
    many letters, made notes on so many petitions, given away so many
    chasubles and altar-cloths, propped up so many tottering church
    steeples, founded so many asylums, proposed and drunk so many
    toasts, absorbed so much talk and Talano wine and white cheese,
    that I have found no time to send an affectionate word to the
    little family circle around the big table, from which I have been
    missing for two weeks. Luckily my absence will not last much
    longer, for we expect to leave day after to-morrow and travel
    straight through to Paris. So far as the election is concerned, I
    fancy that our trip has been successful. Corsica is a wonderful
    country, indolent and poor, a mixture of poverty and of pride which
    makes both the noble and bourgeois families keep up a certain
    appearance of opulence even at the price of the most painful
    privations. They talk here in all seriousness of the great wealth
    of Popolasca, the indigent deputy whom death robbed of the hundred
    thousand francs his resignation in the Nabob's favor would have
    brought him. All these people have, moreover, a frenzied longing
    for offices, an administrative mania, a craving to wear a uniform
    of some sort and a flat cap on which they can write: "Government
    clerk." If you should give a Corsican peasant his choice between
    the richest farm in Beauce and the baldric of the humblest
    forest-warden, he would not hesitate a moment, he would choose the
    baldric. Under such circumstances you can judge whether a candidate
    with a large fortune and governmental favors at his disposal has a
    good chance of being elected. Elected M. Jansoulet will be,
    therefore, especially if he succeeds in the move which he is making
    at this moment and which has brought us to the only inn of a small
    village called Pozzonegro (Black Well), a genuine well, all black
    with verdure, fifty cottages built of red stone clustered around a
    church of the Italian type, in the bottom of a ravine surrounded by
    steep hills, by cliffs of bright-colored sandstone, scaled by vast
    forests of larches and junipers. Through my open window, at which I
    am writing, I can see a bit of blue sky overhead, the orifice of
    the black well; below, on the little square, shaded by an enormous
    walnut tree, as if the shadows were not dense enough already, two
    shepherds dressed in skins are playing cards on the stone curb of a
    fountain. Gambling is the disease of this country of sloth, where
    the crops are harvested by men from Lucca. The two poor devils
    before me could not find a sou in their pockets; one stakes his
    knife, the other a cheese wrapped in vine leaves, the two stakes
    being placed beside them on the stone. A little curé is watching
    them, smoking his cigar, and apparently taking the liveliest
    interest in their game.

    "And that is all--not a sound anywhere except the regular dropping
    of the water on the stone, the exclamations of one of the gamblers,
    who swears by the _sango del seminario_; and in the common-room of
    the inn, under my chamber, our friend's earnest voice, mingled with
    the buzzing of the illustrious Paganetti, who acts as interpreter
    in his conversation with the no less illustrious Piedigriggio.

    "M. Piedigriggio (Grayfoot) is a local celebrity. He is a tall old
    man of seventy-five, still very erect in his short cloak over which
    his long white beard falls, his brown woollen Catalan cap on his
    hair, which is also white, a pair of scissors in his belt, which he
    uses to cut the great leaves of green tobacco in the hollow of his
    hand; a venerable old fellow in fact, and when he crossed the
    square and shook hands with the curé, with a patronizing smile at
    the two gamblers, I never would have believed that I had before me
    the famous brigand Piedigriggio, who, from 1840 to 1860, _held the
    thickets_ in Monte-Rotondo, tired out gendarmes and troops of the
    line, and who to-day, his seven or eight murders with the rifle or
    the knife being outlawed by lapse of time, goes his way in peace
    throughout the region that saw his crimes, and is a man of
    considerable importance. This is the explanation: Piedigriggio has
    two sons, who, following nobly in his footsteps, have toyed with
    the rifle and now hold the thickets in their turn. Impossible to
    lay hands upon or to find, as their father was for twenty years,
    informed by the shepherds of the movements of the gendarmerie, as
    soon as the gendarmes leave a village, the brigands appear there.
    The older of the two, Scipion, came last Sunday to Pozzonegro to
    hear mass. To say that people are fond of them, and that the grasp
    of the bloodstained hand of these villains is agreeable to all
    those who receive it, would be to calumniate the pacific
    inhabitants of this commune; but they fear them, and their will is
    law.

    "Now it appears that the Piedigriggios have taken it into their
    heads to espouse the cause of our rival in the election, a
    formidable alliance, which may cause two whole cantons to vote
    against us, for the knaves have legs as long, in proportion, as the
    range of their guns. Naturally we have the gendarmes with us, but
    the brigands are much more powerful. As our host said to us this
    morning: 'The gendarmes, they go, but the banditti, they stay.' In
    the face of that very logical reasoning, we realized that there was
    but one thing to do, to treat with the Piedigriggios, and make a
    bargain with them. The mayor said a word to the old man, who
    consulted his sons, and they are discussing the terms of the treaty
    downstairs. I can hear the Governor's voice from here: 'Nonsense,
    my dear fellow, I'm an old Corsican myself, you know.' And then the
    other's tranquil reply, cut simultaneously with his tobacco by the
    grating noise of the great scissors. The 'dear fellow' does not
    seem to have faith; and I am inclined to think that matters will
    not progress until the gold pieces ring on the table.

    "The trouble is that Paganetti is well known in his native country.
    The value of his word is written on the public square at Corte
    which still awaits the monument to Paoli, in the vast crop of
    humbuggery that he has succeeded in planting in this sterile
    Ithacan island, and in the flabby, empty pocket-books of all the
    wretched village curés, petty bourgeois, petty noblemen, whose
    slender savings he has filched by dangling chimerical _combinazioni_
    before their eyes. Upon my word, he needed all his phenomenal
    assurance, together with the financial resources he now has at his
    command to satisfy all demands, to venture to show his face here
    again.

    "After all, how much truth is there in these fabulous works
    undertaken by the _Caisse Territoriale_?

    "None at all.

    "Mines which do not yield, which will never yield, as they exist
    only on paper; quarries which as yet know not pickaxe or powder;
    untilled, sandy moors, which they survey with a gesture, saying,
    'We begin here, and we go way over yonder, to the devil.' It's the
    same with the forests,--one whole densely wooded slope of
    Monte-Rotondo, which belongs to us, it seems, but which it is not
    practicable to cut unless aeronauts should do duty as woodcutters.
    So as to the mineral baths, of which this wretched hamlet of
    Pozzonegro is one of the most important, with its fountain, whose
    amazing ferruginous properties Paganetti is constantly vaunting. Of
    packet-boats, not a trace. Yes, there is an old, half-ruined
    Genoese tower, on the shore of the Bay of Ajaccio, with this
    inscription on a tarnished panel over its hermetically closed door:
    'Paganetti Agency, Maritime Company, Bureau of Information.' The
    bureau is kept by fat gray lizards in company with a screech-owl.
    As for the railroads, I noticed that all the excellent Corsicans to
    whom I mentioned them, replied with cunning smiles, disconnected
    phrases, full of mystery; and not until this morning did I obtain
    the exceedingly farcical explanation of all this reticence.

    "I had read among the documents which the Governor waves before our
    eyes from time to time, like a fan to inflate his _blague_, a deed
    of a marble quarry at a place called Taverna, two hours from
    Pozzonegro. Availing myself of our visit to this place, I jumped on
    a mule this morning, without a word to any one, and, guided by a
    tall rascal, with the legs of a deer,--a perfect specimen of the
    Corsican poacher or smuggler, with his great red pipe between his
    teeth,--I betook myself to Taverna. After a horrible journey among
    cliffs intersected by crevasses, bogs, and abysses of immeasurable
    depth, where my mule maliciously amused himself by walking close to
    the edge, as if he were measuring it with his shoes, we descended
    an almost perpendicular surface to our destination,--a vast desert
    of rocks, absolutely bare, all white with the droppings of gulls
    and mews; for the sea is just below, very near, and the silence of
    the place was broken only by the beating of the waves and the
    shrill cries of flocks of birds flying in circles. My guide, who
    has a holy horror of customs officers and gendarmes, remained at
    the top of the cliff, because of a small custom-house station on
    the shore, while I bent my steps toward a tall red building which
    reared its three stories aloft in that blazing solitude, the
    windows broken, the roof-tiles in confusion, and over the rotting
    door an immense sign: '_Caisse Territoriale. Carr--bre--54._' The
    wind and sun and rain have destroyed the rest.

    "Certainly there has been at some time an attempt made to work the
    mine, for there is a large, square, yawning hole, with cleanly-cut
    edges and patches of red streaked with brown, like leprous spots,
    along its sterile walls; and among the nettles at the bottom
    enormous blocks of marble of the variety known in commerce as
    _griotte_, condemned blocks of which no use can be made for lack of
    a proper road leading to the quarry, or a harbor which would enable
    boats to approach the hill; and, more than all else, for lack of
    sufficient funds to supply either of those needs. So the quarry,
    although within a few cable-lengths of the shore, is abandoned,
    useless, and a nuisance, like Robinson Crusoe's boat, with the same
    drawbacks as to availability. These details of the distressing
    history of our only territorial possession were furnished me by an
    unhappy survivor, shivering with fever, whom I found in the
    basement of the yellow house trying to cook a piece of kid over the
    acrid smoke of a fire of mastic branches.

    "That man, who comprises the whole staff of the _Caisse
    Territoriale_ in Corsica, is Paganetti's foster-father, an
    ex-lighthouse-keeper who does not mind loneliness. The Governor
    leaves him there partly from charity, and also because an
    occasional letter from the Taverna quarry produces a good effect at
    meetings of shareholders. I had great difficulty in extorting any
    information from that three-fourths wild man, who gazed at me
    suspiciously, in ambush behind his goat-skin _pelone_; he did
    tell me, however, unintentionally, what the Corsicans understand by
    the term railroad, and why they assume this mysterious manner when
    they mention it. While I was trying to find out whether he knew
    anything of the scheme for an iron road in the island, the old
    fellow did not put on the cunning smile I had observed in his
    compatriots, but said to me quite naturally, in very good French,
    but in a voice as rusty and stiff as an old lock that is seldom
    used:

    "'Oh! moussiou, no need of railroads here--'

    "'But they are very valuable, very useful to make communication
    easier.'

    "'I don't say that ain't true; but with the gendarmes we don't need
    anything more.'

    "'The gendarmes?'

    "'To be sure.'

    "The misunderstanding lasted fully five minutes, before I finally
    comprehended that the secret police are known here as the
    'railroads.' As there are many Corsican police officials on the
    Continent, they make use of an honest euphemism to describe their
    degrading occupation in their family circle. You ask the kinsmen of
    one of them, 'Where's your brother Ambrosini?' 'What is your Uncle
    Barbicaglia doing?' They will answer, with a little wink: 'He has a
    place on the railroad;' and everybody knows what that means. Among
    the lower classes, the peasants, who have never seen a railroad and
    have no idea what it is, there is a perfectly serious belief that
    the great department of the secret imperial police has no other
    name than that. Our principal agent in the island shares that
    touching innocence; this will give you an idea of the condition of
    the _Line from Ajaccio to Bastia via Bonifacio, Porto Vecchio,
    etc._, which figures on the great books with green backs in the
    Paganetti establishment. In a word, all the assets of the
    territorial bank are comprised in a few desks and two old
    hovels--the whole hardly worthy of a place in the rubbish-yard on
    Rue Saint-Ferdinand, where I hear the weathercocks creaking and the
    old doors slamming every night as I fall asleep.

    "But in that case what has been done, what is being done with the
    enormous sums that M. Jansoulet has poured into the treasury in the
    last five months, to say nothing of what has come from other
    sources attracted by that magic name? I fully agreed with you that
    all these soundings and borings and purchases of land, which appear
    on the books in a fine round hand, were immeasurably exaggerated.
    But how could any one suspect such infernal impudence? That is why
    M. le Gouverneur was so disgusted at the idea of taking me on this
    electoral trip. I have not thought it best to have an explanation
    on the spot. My poor Nabob has enough on his mind with his
    election. But, as soon as we have returned, I shall place all the
    details of my long investigation before his eyes; and I will
    extricate him from this den of thieves by persuasion or by force.
    They have finished their negotiations downstairs. Old Piedigriggio
    is crossing the square, playing with his long peasant's purse,
    which looks to me to be well-filled. The bargain is concluded, I
    suppose. A hasty adieu, my dear Monsieur Joyeuse; remember me to
    the young ladies, and bid them keep a tiny place for me at the
    work-table.

    "PAUL DE GÉRY."

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 Vendôme,
which were thronged from morning till night by the usual crowd,
increased by the constant arrival of little men as dark as carob-beans,
with regular, bearded faces, some noisy, buzzing and chattering, others
silent, self-contained and dogmatic, the two types of the race in which
the same climate produces different results. All those famished
islanders made appointments, in the wilds of their uncivilized
fatherland, to meet one another at the Nabob's table, and his house had
become a tavern, a restaurant, a market-place. In the dining-room,
where the table was always set, there was always some Corsican, newly
arrived, in the act of taking a bite, with the bewildered and greedy
expression of a relation from the country.

The noisy, blatant breed of election agents is the same everywhere; but
these men were distinguished by something more of ardor, a more
impassioned zeal, a turkey-cock vanity heated white-hot. The most
insignificant clerk, inspector, mayor's secretary, or village
schoolmaster talked as if he had a whole canton behind him and the
pockets of his threadbare coat stuffed full of ballots. And it is a
fact, which Jansoulet had had abundant opportunity to verify, that in
the Corsican villages the families are so ancient, of such humble
origin, with so many ramifications, that a poor devil who breaks stones
on the high road finds some way to work out his relationship to the
greatest personages on the island, and in that way wields a serious
influence. As the national temperament, proud, cunning, intriguing,
revengeful, intensifies these complications, the result is that great
care must be taken as to where one puts his foot among the snares that
are spread from one end of the island to the other.

The most dangerous part of it was that all those people were jealous of
one another, detested one another, quarrelled openly at the table on
the subject of the election, exchanging black glances, grasping the
hilts of their knives at the slightest dispute, talking very loud and
all together, some in the harsh, resonant Genoese patois, others in the
most comical French, choking with restrained insults, throwing at one
another's heads the names of unknown villages, dates of local history
which suddenly placed two centuries of family feuds upon the table
between two covers. The Nabob was afraid that his breakfasts would end
tragically, and tried to calm all those violent natures with his
kindly, conciliatory smile. But Paganetti reassured him. According to
him, the vendetta, although still kept alive in Corsica, very rarely
employs the stiletto and the firearm in these days. The anonymous
letter has taken their place. Indeed, unsigned letters were received
every day at Place Vendôme, after the style of this one:--

    "You are so generous, Monsieur Jansoulet, that I can do no less
    than point out to you Sieur Bornalinco (Ange-Marie) as a traitor
    who has gone over to your enemies; I have a very different story to
    tell of his cousin Bornalinco (Louis-Thomas), who is devoted to the
    good cause," etc.

Or else:

    "Monsieur Jansoulet, I fear that your election will be badly
    managed and will come to nothing if you continue to employ Castirla
    (Josué) of the canton of Odessa, while his kinsman, Luciani, is the
    very man you need."

Although he finally gave up reading such missives, the poor candidate
was shaken by all those doubts, by all those passions, being caught in
a network of petty intrigues, his mind full of terror and distrust,
anxious, excited, nervous, feeling keenly the truth of the Corsican
proverb:

"If you are very ill-disposed to your enemy, pray that he may have an
election in his family."

We can imagine that the check-book and the three great drawers in the
mahogany commode were not spared by that cloud of devouring locusts
that swooped down upon "Moussiou Jansoulet's" salons. Nothing could be
more comical than the overbearing way in which those worthy islanders
negotiated their loans, abruptly and with an air of defiance. And yet
they were not the most terrible, except in the matter of boxes of
cigars, which vanished in their pockets so rapidly as to make one think
they proposed to open a _Civette_ on their return to the island. But
just as wounds grow red and inflamed on very hot days, so the election
had caused an amazing recrudescence in the systematic pillage that
reigned in the house. The expenses of advertising were considerable:
Moëssard's articles, sent to Corsica in packages of twenty thousand,
thirty thousand copies, with portraits, biographies, pamphlets, all the
printed clamor that it is possible to raise around a name. And then
there was no diminution in the ordinary consumption of the panting
pumps established around the reservoir of millions. On one side the
Work of Bethlehem, a powerful machine, pumping at regular intervals,
with tremendous energy; the _Caisse Territoriale_, with marvellous
power of suction, indefatigable in its operation, with triple and
quadruple action, of several thousand horse-power; and the Schwalbach
pump, and the Bois-l'Héry pump, and how many more; some of enormous
size, making a great noise, with audacious pistons, others more quiet
and reserved, with tiny valves, bearings skilfully oiled--toy-pumps as
delicately constructed as the probosces of insects whose thirst causes
stings, and which deposit poison on the spot from which they suck their
life; but all working with the same unanimity, and fatally certain to
cause, if not an absolute drought, at all events a serious lowering of
the level.

Already unfavorable reports, vague as yet, were in circulation on the
Bourse. Was it a manoeuvre of the enemy, of that Hemerlingue against
whom Jansoulet was waging ruthless financial war, trying to defeat all
his operations, and losing very considerable sums at the game, because
he had against him his own excitable nature, his adversary's
cool-headedness and the bungling of Paganetti, whom he used as a man of
straw? In any event, the star of gold had turned pale. Paul de Géry
learned as much from Père Joyeuse, who had entered the employ of a
broker as book-keeper, and was thoroughly posted on matters connected
with the Bourse; but what alarmed him more than all else was the
Nabob's strange agitation, the craving for excitement which had
succeeded the admirable calmness of conscious strength, of serenity,
the disappearance of his Southern sobriety, the way in which he
stimulated himself before eating by great draughts of _raki_, talking
loud and laughing uproariously like a common sailor during his watch on
deck. One felt that the man was tiring himself out to escape some
absorbing thought, which was visible nevertheless in the sudden
contraction of all the muscles of his face when it passed through his
mind, or when he was feverishly turning over the pages of his tarnished
little memorandum-book. The serious interview, the decisive explanation
that Paul was so desirous to have with him, Jansoulet would not have at
any price. He passed his evenings at the club, his mornings in bed, and
as soon as he was awake had his bedroom full of people, who talked to
him while he was dressing, and to whom he replied with his face in his
wash-bowl. If, by any miracle, de Géry 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 Géry set before him very clearly all the infamous
schemes, all the speculations by which he was surrounded. He called the
rascals by their names, without circumlocution. There was not one among
the ordinary habitués of the house who was not a suspicious character,
not one who came there for any other purpose than to steal or lie. From
attic to cellar, pillage and waste. Bois-l'Héry's horses were unsound,
the Schwalbach gallery a fraud, Moëssard's articles notorious
blackmail. De Géry 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 Géry 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 Noël as of all the rest. To-night, when I go away, I will hand you
the key. For I am going away, my dear friend and benefactor, I am going
away, overflowing with gratitude for the benefits you have conferred on
me, and in despair because your blind confidence has prevented me from
repaying them in part. My conscience as a man of honor would reproach
me were I to remain longer useless at my post. I am looking on at a
terrible disaster, the pillage of a Summer Palace, which I am powerless
to check; but my heart rises in revolt at all that I see. I exchange
grasps of the hand which dishonor me. I am your friend, and I seem to
be their confederate. And who knows whether, by living on in such an
atmosphere, I might not become so?"

This letter, which he read slowly, thoroughly, even to the spaces
between the words and the lines, made such a keen impression on the
Nabob that, instead of going to bed, he went at once to his young
secretary. Paul occupied a study at the end of the suite of salons,
where he slept on a couch, a provisional arrangement which he had never
cared to change. The whole house was still asleep. As he walked through
the long line of great salons, which were not used for evening
receptions, so that the curtains were always open and at that moment
admitted the uncertain light of a Parisian dawn, the Nabob paused,
impressed by the melancholy aspect that his magnificent surroundings
presented. In the heavy odor of tobacco and various liquors that filled
the rooms, the furniture, the wainscotings, the decorations seemed
faded yet still new. Stains on the crumpled satin, ashes soiling the
beautiful marbles, marks of boots on the carpet reminded him of a huge
first-class railway carriage, bearing the marks of the indolence,
impatience and ennui of a long journey, with the destructive contempt
of the public for a luxury for which it has paid. Amid that stage
scenery, all in position and still warm from the ghastly comedy that
was played there every day, his own image, reflected in twenty cold,
pale mirrors, rose before him, at once ominous and comical, ill-at-ease
in his fashionable clothes, with bloated cheeks and face inflamed and
dirty.

What an inevitable and disenchanting morrow to the insane life he was
leading!

He lost himself for a moment in gloomy thoughts; then, with the
vigorous shrug of the shoulders which was so familiar in him, that
packman's gesture with which he threw off any too painful
preoccupation, he resumed the burden which every man carries with him,
and which causes the back to bend more or less, according to his
courage or his strength, and entered de Géry's room, where he found him
already dressed and standing in front of his open desk, arranging
papers.

"First of all, my boy," said Jansoulet, closing the door softly on
their interview, "answer me this question frankly. Are the motives set
forth in your letter your real motives for resolving to leave me? Isn't
there underneath it all one of these infamous stories that I know are
being circulated against me in Paris? I am sure you would be frank
enough to tell me, and to give me a chance to--to set myself right in
your eyes."

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

"Listen to me then, my child, and I am sure that I shall be able to
keep you. Your letter, eloquent as it was with honesty and sincerity,
told me nothing new, nothing that I had not been convinced of for three
months. Yes, my dear Paul, you were right; Paris is more complicated
than I thought. What I lacked when I arrived here was an honest,
disinterested cicerone to put me on my guard against persons and
things. I found none but people who wanted to make money out of me. All
the degraded scoundrels in the city have left the mud from their boots
on my carpets. I was looking at those poor salons of mine just now.
They need a good thorough sweeping; and I promise you that they shall
have, _jour de Dieu!_ and from no light hand. But I am waiting until I
am a deputy. All these rascals are of service to me in my election; and
the election is too necessary to me for me to throw away the slightest
chance. This is the situation in two words. Not only does the bey not
intend to repay the money I loaned him a month ago; he has met my claim
with a counter-claim for twenty-four millions, the figure at which he
estimates the sums I obtained from his brother. That is infernal
robbery, an impudent slander. My fortune is my own, honestly my own. I
made it in my dealings as a contractor. I enjoyed Ahmed's favor; he
himself furnished me with opportunities for making money. It is very
possible that I have screwed the vise a little hard sometimes. But the
matter must not be judged with the eyes of a European. The enormous
profits that the Levantines make are a well-known and recognized thing
over yonder; they are the ransom of the savages whom we introduce to
western comforts. This wretched Hemerlingue, who is suggesting all this
persecution of me to the bey, has done very much worse things. But
what's the use of arguing? I am in the wolf's jaws. Pending my
appearance to justify myself before his courts--I know all about
justice in the Orient--the bey has begun by putting an embargo on all
my property, ships, palaces and their contents. The affair has been
carried on quite regularly, in pursuance of a decree of the Supreme
Council. I can feel the claw of Hemerlingue Junior under it all. If I
am chosen deputy, it is all a jest. The Council revokes its decree and
my treasures are returned with all sorts of excuses. If I am not
elected, I lose everything, sixty, eighty millions, even the possible
opportunity of making another fortune; it means ruin, disgrace, the
bottomless pit. And now, my son, do you propose to abandon me at such a
crisis? Remember that I have nobody in the world but you. My wife? you
have seen her, you know how much support, how much good advice she
gives her husband. My children? It's as if I had none. I never see
them, they would hardly know me in the street. My ghastly magnificence
has made an empty void around me, so far as affections are concerned,
has replaced them by shameless selfish interests. I have no one to love
but my mother, who is far away, and you, who come to me from my mother.
No, you shall not leave me alone among all the slanders that are
crawling around me. It is horrible--if you only knew! At the club, at
the theatre, wherever I go, I see Baroness Hemerlingue's little snake's
head, I hear the echo of her hissing, I feel the venom of her hatred.
Everywhere I am conscious of mocking glances, conversations broken off
when I appear, smiles that lie, or kindness in which there is a
mingling of pity. And then the defections, the people who move away as
if a catastrophe were coming. For instance, here is Felicia Ruys, with
my bust just finished, alleging some accident or other as an excuse for
not sending it to the Salon. I said nothing, I pretended to believe it.
But I understood that there was some infamy on foot in that quarter,
too,--and it's a great disappointment to me. In emergencies as grave as
that I am passing through, everything has its importance. My bust at
the Exhibition, signed by that famous name, would have been of great
benefit to me in Paris. But no, everything is breaking, everything is
failing me. Surely you see that you must not fail me."


END OF VOL. I.






End of Project Gutenberg's The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2), by Alphonse Daudet