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The Nabob, Vol. 1 (of 2)

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Title: The Nabob, Vol. 1 (of 2)

Author: Alphonse Daudet

Commentator: Brander Matthews

Translator: George Burnham Ives


        
Release date: February 22, 2007 [eBook #20646]
                Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

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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, wi

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