"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 theCaisse 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 thesplendoresof 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 theCaisse 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 theMessager; 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 thatNobbema. 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, themasseur, 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, therakiand 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 Ètat 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—"
"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 hisParisian footand 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 theTerritoriale; 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,MoussiouPassajon."
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 theCaisse Territorialewould 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 himFleur-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 theCaisse Territoriale, including the Governor and the dandy Moëssard, manager of theVérité Financière; but really there are less than half that number. In the first place, since theVéritéceased 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 theCaisse; 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. TheCaisse Territorialeis entering upon a new phase of its existence."
With that he began to tell us about a superbcombinazione—that is his favorite word, and he says it in such an insinuating tone!—acombinazionein which the famous Nabob of whom all the papers are talking is to have a part. Thus theCaisse Territorialewould 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 newcombinazione, 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. Thecombinazionehas fallen through.Pechero!thecombinazionehas 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 theCaisse Territorialedid 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 theCaisse 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 littlecombinazionienabled 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 theTerritoriale. 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 theCaisse Territorialenever 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 theVérité 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 DÈBUT 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 anah!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 theMagic 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-mindedbravoto 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.
His Excellency, the Due de Mora!
"'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 themouchir, 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.