Chapter XII: Part 12

It was a concise, clear, and rapid summary of their fortnight’s proceedings, in which they found their ideas so well expressed that they had great difficulty in recognising them. Then, as two or three among them considered the report too favourable, that it passed too lightly over certain protests that had reached the committee, the examiner addressed the meeting with an astonishing assurance, with the prolixity, the verbosity of his own people, demonstrated that a deputy ought not to be held responsible beyond a certain point for the imprudence of his election agents, that no election, otherwise, would bear a minute examination, and since in reality it was his own cause that he was pleading, he brought to the task a conviction, an irresistible enthusiasm, taking care to let out now and then one of those long, dull substantives with a thousand feet, such as the committee loved.

The others listened to him thoughtfully, communicating their sentiments to each other by nods of the head, making flourishes, in order the better to concentrate their attention, and drawing heads on their blotting-pads--a proceeding which harmonized well with the schoolboyish noises in the corridors, a murmur of lessons in course of repetition, and those droves of sparrows which you could hear chirping under the casements in a flagged court-yard, just like the court-yard of a school. The report having been adopted, M. Sarigue was summoned in order that he might offer some supplementary explanations. He arrived, pale, emaciated, stuttering like a criminal before conviction, and you would have laughed to see with what an air of authority and protection Jansoulet encouraged and reassured him. “Calm yourself, my dear colleague.” But the members of Committee No. 8 did not laugh. They were all, or nearly all, Sarigues in their way, two or three of them being absolutely broken down, stricken by partial paralysis. So much assurance, such great eloquence, had moved them to enthusiasm.

When Jansoulet issued from the legislative assembly, reconducted to his carriage by his grateful colleague, it was about six o’clock. The splendid weather--a beautiful sunset over the Seine, which lay stretching away like molten gold on the Trocadero side--was a temptation to a walk for this robust plebeian, on whom it was imposed by the conventions that he should ride in a carriage and wear gloves, but who escaped such encumbrances as often as he possibly could. He dismissed his servants, and, with his portfolio under his arm, set forth across the Pont de la Concorde.

Since the first of May he had not experienced such a sense of well-being. With rolling gait, hat a little to the back of his head, in the position in which he had seen it worn by overworked politicians harassed by pressure of business, allowing all the laborious fever of their brain to evaporate in the coolness of the air, as a factory discharges its steam into the gutter at the end of a day’s work, he moved forward among other figures like his own, evidently coming too from that colonnaded temple which faces the Madeleine above the fountains of the _Place_. As they passed, people turned to look after them, saying, “Those are deputies.” And Jansoulet felt the delight of a child, a plebeian joy, compounded of ignorance and naive vanity.

“Ask for the _Messenger_, evening edition.”

The words came from a newspaper kiosk at the corner of the bridge, full at that hour of fresh printed sheets in heaps, which two women were quickly folding, and which smelt of the damp press--late news, the success of the day or its scandal.

Nearly all the deputies bought a copy as they passed, and glanced over it quickly in the hope of finding their name. Jansoulet, for his part, feared to see his in it and did not stop. Then suddenly he reflected: “Must not a public man be above these weaknesses? I am strong enough now to read everything.” He retraced his steps and took a newspaper like his colleagues. He opened it, very calmly, right at the place usually occupied by Moessard’s articles. As it happened, there was one. Still the same title: “_Chinoiseries_,” and an _M._ for signature.

“Ah! ah!” said the public man, firm and cold as marble, with a fine smile of disdain. Mora’s lesson still rung in his ears, and, had he forgotten it, the air from _Norma_ which was being slowly played in little ironical notes not far off would have sufficed to recall it to him. Only, after all calculations have been made amid the fleeting happenings of our existence, there is always the unforeseen to be reckoned with; and that is how it came that the poor Nabob suddenly felt a wave of blood blind him, a cry of rage strangle itself in the sudden contraction of his throat. This time his mother, his old Frances, had been dragged into the infamous joke of the “Bateau de fleurs.” How well he aimed his blows, this Moessard, how well he knew the really sensitive spots in that heart, so frankly exposed!

“Be quiet, Jansoulet; be quiet.”

It was in vain that he repeated the words to himself again and again: anger, a wild anger, that intoxication of the blood that demands blood, took possession of him. His first impulse was to hail a cab, that he might escape from the irritating street, free his body from the preoccupation of walking and maintaining a physical composure--to hail a cab as for a wounded man. But the carriages which thronged the square at that hour of general home-going were victorias, landaus, private broughams, hundreds of them, passing down from the lurid splendour of the Arc de Triomphe towards the violet shadows of the Tuileries, rushing, it seemed, one over another, in the sloping perspective of the avenue, down to the great square where the motionless statues, with their circular crowns on their brows, watched them as they separated towards the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the Rue Royale and the Rue de Rivoli.

Jansoulet, his newspaper in his hand, traversed this tumult without giving it a thought, carried by force of habit towards the club where he went every day for his game of cards from six to seven. A public man, he was that still; but excited, speaking aloud, muttering oaths and threats in a voice that had suddenly grown tender again at the memory of the dear old woman. To have dragged her into that--her also! Oh, if she should read it, if she should understand! What punishment could he invent for such an infamy? He had reached the Rue Royale, up which were disappearing with the speed of horses that knew they were going home and with glancings of shining axles, visions of veiled women, heads of fair-haired children, equipages of all kinds returning from the Bois, depositing a little genuine earth upon the Paris pavement, and bringing odours of spring mingled with the scent of _poudre de riz_.

Opposite the Ministry of Marine, a very high phaeton on light wheels, rather like a great spider, its body represented by the little groom hanging on to the box and the two persons occupying the front seat, just missed a collision with the curb as it turned the corner.

The Nabob raised his head and stifled a cry.

Beside a painted woman, with red hair and wearing a tiny hat with wide strings, who, perched on her leathern cushion, sat leaning stiffly forward, hands, eyes, her whole factitious person intent on driving the horse, there sat, pink and made-up also, grown fat with the same vices, Moessard, the handsome Moessard--the harlot and the journalist; and of the two, it was not the woman who had sold herself the most. High above those women reclining in their open carriages, those men opposite them half buried beneath the flounces of their gowns, all those poses of fatigue and weariness which the overfed exhibit in public as in contempt of pleasure and riches, they lorded it insolently, she very proud to be seen driving with the lover of the Queen, and he without the least shame in sitting beside a creature who hooked men in the drives of the Bois with the lash of her whip, removed on her high-perched seat from all fear of the salutary raids of the police. Perhaps, in order to whet the appetite of his royal mistress, he chose to parade beneath her windows in company of Suzanne Bloch, known as Suze the Red.

“Hep! hep, then!”

The horse, a high trotter with slim legs, just such a horse as a _cocotte_ would care to own, recovered from its swerve and resumed its proper place with dancing steps, graceful pawings executed on the same spot without advancing. Jansoulet let fall his portfolio, and as though he had dropped with it all his gravity, his prestige as a public man, he made a terrible spring, and dashed to the bit of the animal, which he held firm with his strong, hairy hands.

A carriage forcibly stopped in the Rue Royale, and in broad daylight--only this Tartar would have dared such a stroke as that!

“Get down!” said he to Moessard, whose face had turned green and yellow when he saw him. “Get down immediately!”

“Will you let go my horse, you bloated idiot! Whip up Suzanne; it is the Nabob.”

She tried to gather up the reins, but the animal, held firmly, reared so sharply that a little more and like a sling the fragile vehicle would have sent everybody in it flying far away. At this, furious with one of those plebeian rages which in women of her kind shatter all the veneer of their luxury, she dealt the Nabob two stinging lashes with her whip, which left little trace on his tanned and hardened face, but which brought there a ferocious expression, accentuated by the short nose which had turned white and was slit at the end like that of a sporting terrier.

“Come down, or, by God, I will upset the whole thing!”

Amid an eddy of carriages arrested by the block in the traffic, or that passed slowly round the obstacle, with thousands of curious eyes, amid cries of coachmen and clinking of bits, two wrists of iron shook the entire vehicle.

“Jump--but jump, I tell you! Don’t you see he will have us over? What a grip!”

And the woman looked at the Hercules with interest.

Hardly had Moessard set foot to the ground, and before he could take refuge on the pavement, whither the black military caps of policemen could be seen hastening, Jansoulet threw himself upon him, lifted him by the back of the neck like a rabbit, and, careless of his protestations and his terrified stammerings:

“Yes, yes, I will give you satisfaction, you blackguard! But, first, I intend to do to you what is done to dirty beasts to prevent them from repeating the same offence.”

And roughly he set to work rubbing his nose and face all over with his newspaper, which he had rolled into a ball, stifling him, blinding him with it, and making scratches from which the blood trickled over his skin. The man was dragged from his hands, crimson, suffocated. A little more and he would have killed him.

The struggle over, pulling down his sleeves, adjusting his crumpled linen, picking up his portfolio out of which the papers of the Sarigue election were flying scattered even to the gutter, the Nabob answered the policemen who were asking him for his name in order to draw up a summons:

“Bernard Jansoulet, Deputy for Corsica.”

A public man!

Only then did he remember that he was one. Who would have suspected it, seeing him breathless and bare-headed, like a porter after a street fight, under the eager, coldly mocking glances of the crowd?

THE APPARITION

If you want simple and sincere feeling, if you would see overflowing affection, tenderness, laughter--the laughter born of great happiness which, at a tiny movement of the lips, is brought to the verge of tears--and the beautiful wild joy of youth illumined by bright eyes transparent to the very depths of the souls behind them--all these things you may find this Sunday morning in a house that you know of, a new house, down yonder, right at the end of the old faubourg. The glass door on the ground floor shines more brightly than usual. More gaily than ever dance the letters over the door, and from the open windows comes the sound of glad cries, flowing from a stream of happiness.

“Accepted! it is accepted! Oh, what good luck! Henriette, Elise, do come here! M. Maranne’s play is accepted!”

Andre heard the news yesterday. Cardailhac, the manager of the _Nouveautes_, sent for him to inform him that his play was to be produced immediately--that it would be put on next month. They passed the evening discussing scenic arrangements and the distribution of parts; and, as it was too late to knock at his neighbour’s door when he got home from the theatre, the happy author waited for the morning in feverish impatience, and then, as soon as he heard people stirring below and the shutters open with a click against the house-front, he made haste to go down to announce the good news to his friends. Just now they are all assembled together, the young ladies in pretty _deshabille_, their hair hastily twisted up, and M. Joyeuse, whom the announcement had surprised in the midst of shaving, presenting under his embroidered night-cap a strange face divided into two parts, one side shaved, the other not. But Andre Maranne is the most excited, for you know what the acceptance of _Revolt_ means for him; what was agreed between them and Bonne Maman. The poor fellow looks at her as if to find an encouragement in her eyes; and the rather mischievous, kind eyes seem to say, “Make the experiment, in any case. What is the risk?” To give himself courage he looks also at Mlle. Elise, pretty as a flower, with her long eyelashes drooped. At last, making up his mind:

“M. Joyeuse,” said he thickly, “I have a very serious communication to make to you.”

M. Joyeuse expresses astonishment.

“A communication? Ah, _mon Dieu_, you alarm me!”

And lowering his voice:

“Are the girls in the way?”

“No. Bonne Maman knows what I mean. Mlle. Elise also must have some suspicion of it. It is only the children.”

Mlle. Henriette and her sister are asked to retire, which they immediately do, the one with a dignified and annoyed air, like a true daughter of the Saint-Amands, the other, the young Chinese Yaia, hardly hiding a wild desire to laugh.

Thereupon a great silence; after which, the lover begins his little story.

I quite believe that Mlle. Elise has some suspicion in her mind, for as soon as their young neighbour spoke of a communication, she drew her _Ansart et Rendu_ from her pocket and plunged precipitately into the adventures of somebody surnamed the Hutin, thrilling reading which makes the book tremble in her hands. There is reason for trembling, certainly, before the bewilderment, the indignant stupefaction into which M. Joyeuse receives this request for his daughter’s hand.

“Is it possible? How has it happened? What an extraordinary event! Who could ever have suspected such a thing?”

And suddenly the good old man burst into a great roar of laughter. Well, no, it is not true. He had heard of the affair; knew about it, a long time ago.

Her father knew all about it! Bonne Maman had betrayed them then! And before the reproachful glances cast in her direction, the culprit comes forward smiling:

“Yes, my dears, it is I. The secret was too much for me. I found I could not keep it to myself alone. And then, father is so kind--one cannot hide anything from him.”

As she says this she throws her arms round the little man’s neck; but there is room enough for two, and when Mlle. Elise in her turn takes refuge there, there is still an affectionate, fatherly hand stretched out towards him whom M. Joyeuse considers thenceforward as his son. Silent embraces, long looks meeting each other full of emotion, blessed moments that one would like to hold forever by the fragile tips of their wings. There is chat, and gentle laughter when certain details are recalled. M. Joyeuse tells how the secret was revealed to him in the first instance by tapping spirits, one day when he was alone in Andre’s apartment. “How is business going, M. Maranne?” the spirits had inquired, and he himself had replied in Maranne’s absence: “Fairly well, for the season, Sir Spirit.” The little man repeats, “Fairly well for the season,” in a mischievous way, while Mlle. Elise, quite confused at the thought that it was with her father that she talked that day, disappears under her fair curls.

After the first stress of emotion they talk more seriously. It is certain that Mme. Joyeuse, _nee_ de Saint-Amand, would never have consented to this marriage. Andre Maranne is not rich, still less noble; but the old accountant, luckily, has not the same ideas of grandeur that his wife possessed. They love each other; they are young, healthy, and good-looking--qualities that in themselves constitute fine dowries, without involving any heavy registration fees at the notary’s. The new household will be installed on the floor above. The photography will be continued, unless _Revolt_ should produce enormous receipts. (The Visionary may be trusted to see to that.) In any case, the father will still remain near them; he has a good place at his stockbroker’s office, some expert business in the courts; provided that the little ship continue to sail in deep enough water, all will go well, with the aid of wave, wind, and star.

Only one question preoccupies M. Joyeuse: “Will Andre’s parents consent to this marriage? How will Dr. Jenkins, so rich, so celebrated, take it?”

“Let us not speak of that man,” said Andre, turning pale; “he is a wretch to whom I owe nothing--who is nothing to me.”

He stops, embarrassed by this explosion of anger, which he was unable to restrain and cannot explain, and goes on more gently:

“My mother, who comes to see me sometimes in spite of the prohibition laid upon her, was the first to be told of our plans. She already loves Mlle. Elise as her daughter. You will see, mademoiselle, how good she is, and how beautiful and charming. What a misfortune that she belongs to such a wicked man, who tyrannizes over her, and tortures her even to the point of forbidding her to utter her son’s name.”

Poor Maranne heaves a sign that speaks volumes on the great grief which he hides in the depths of his heart. But what sadness would not have been vanquished in presence of that dear face lighted up with its fair curls and the radiant perspective of the future? These serious questions having been settled, they are able to open the door and recall the two exiles. In order to avoid filling their little heads with thoughts above their age, it has been agreed to say nothing about the prodigious event, to tell them nothing except that they have all to make haste and dress, breakfast still more quickly, so as to be able to spend the afternoon in the Bois, where Maranne will read his play to them, before they go on to Suresnes to have dinner at Kontzen’s: a whole programme of delights in honour of the acceptance of _Revolt_, and of another piece of good news which they will hear later.

“Ah, really--what is it, then?” ask the two little girls, with an innocent air.

But if you fancy they don’t know what is in the air, if you think that when Mlle. Elise used to give three raps on the ceiling they imagined that it was for information on business, you are more ingenuous even than _le pere_ Joyeuse.

“That’s all right--that’s all right, children; go and dress, in any case.”

Then there begins another refrain:

“What frock must I put on, Bonne Maman--the gray?”

“Bonne Maman, there is a string off my hat.”

“Bonne Maman, my child, have I no more starched cravats left?”

For ten minutes the charming grandmother is besieged with questions and entreaties. Every one needs her help in some way; it is she who had the keys of everything, she who gives out the pretty, white, fine goffered linen, the embroidered handkerchiefs, the best gloves, all the dainty things which, taken out from drawers and wardrobes, spread over the bed, fill a house with a bright Sunday gaiety.

The workers, the people with tasks to fulfil, alone know that delight which returns each week consecrated by the customs of a nation. For these prisoners of the week, the almanac with its closed prison-like gratings opens at regular intervals into luminous spaces, with breaths of refreshing air. It is Sunday, the day that seems so long to fashionable folk, to the Parisians of the boulevard whose habits it disturbs, so gloomy to people far from their homes and relatives, that constitutes for a multitude of human beings the only recompense, the one aim of the desperate efforts of six days of toil. Neither rain nor hail, nothing makes any difference, nothing will prevent them from going out, from closing behind them the door of the deserted workshop, of the stuffy little lodging. But when the springtime is come, when the May sunshine glitters on it as this morning, and it can deck itself out in gay colours, then indeed Sunday is the holiday of holidays.

If one would know it well, it must be seen especially in the working quarters of the town, in those gloomy streets which it lights up and enlarges by closing the shops, keeping in their sheds the heavy drays and trucks, leaving the space free for wandering bands of children washed and in their Sunday clothes, and for games of battledore and shuttlecock played amid the great circlings of the swallows beneath some porch of old Paris. It must be seen in the densely populated, feverishly toiling suburbs, where, as soon as morning is come, you may feel it hovering, resposeful and sweet, in the silence of the factories, passing with the ringing of church-bells and that sharp whistle of the railways, and filling the horizon, all around the outskirts of the city, with an immense song, as it were, of departure and of deliverance. Then one understands it and loves it.

O Sunday of Paris, Sunday of the toilers and the humble, often have I cursed thee without reason, I have poured whole streams of abusive ink over thy noisy and extravagant joys, over the dust of railway stations filled by thy uproar and the maddening omnibuses that thou takest by assault, over thy tavern songs bawled everywhere from carts adorned with green and pink dresses, on thy barrel-organs grinding out their tunes beneath the balconies of deserted court-yards; but to-day, abjuring my errors, I exalt thee, and I bless thee for all the joy and relief thou givest to courageous and honest labour, for the laughter of the children who greet thee with acclamation, the pride of mothers happy to dress their little ones in their best clothes in thy honour, for the dignity thou dost preserve in the homes of the poorest, the glorious raiment set aside for thee at the bottom of the old shaky chest of drawers; I bless thee especially by reason of all the happiness thou hast brought that morning to the great new house in the old faubourg.

Toilettes having been completed, the _dejeuner_ finished, taken on the thumb, as they say--and you can imagine what quantity these young ladies’ thumbs would carry--they came to put on their hats before the mirror in the drawing-room. Bonne Maman threw around her supervising glance, inserted a pin here, retied a ribbon there, straightened her father’s cravat; but while all this little world was stamping with impatience, beckoned out of doors by the beauty of the day, there came a ring at the bell, echoing through the apartment and disturbing their gay proceedings.

“Suppose we don’t open the door?” propose the children.

And what a relief, with a cry of delight, they see their friend Paul come in!

“Quick! quick! Come and let us tell you the good news.”

He knew well, before any of them, that the play had been accepted. He had had a good deal of trouble to get it read by Cardailhac, who, the moment he saw its “short lines,” as he called verse, wished to send the manuscript to the Levantine and her _masseur_, as he was wont to do in the case of all beginners in the writing of drama. But Paul was careful not to refer to his own intervention. As for the other event, the one of which nothing was said, on account of the children, he guessed it easily by the trembling greeting of Maranne, whose fair mane was standing straight up over his forehead by reason of the poet’s two hands having been pushed through it so many times, a thing he always did in his moments of joy, by the slightly embarrassed demeanour of Elise, by the triumphant airs of M. Joyeuse, who was standing very erect in his new summer clothes, with all the happiness of his children written on his face.

Bonne Maman alone preserved her usual peaceful air; but one noticed, in the eager alacrity with which she forestalled her sister’s wants, a certain attention still more tender than before, an anxiety to make her look pretty. And it was delicious to watch the girl of twenty as she busied herself about the adornment of others, without envy, without regret, with something of the gentle renunciation of a mother welcoming the young love of her daughter in memory of a happiness gone by. Paul saw this; he was the only one who did see it; but while admiring Aline, he asked himself sadly if in that maternal heart there would ever be place for other affections, for preoccupations outside the tranquil and bright circle wherein Bonne Maman presided so prettily over the evening work.

Love is, as one knows, a poor blind creature, deprived of hearing and speech, and only led by presentiments, divinations, the nervous faculties of a sick man. It is pitiable indeed to see him wandering, feeling his way, constantly making false steps, passing his hands over the supports by which he guides himself with the distrustful awkwardness of the infirm. At the very moment when Paul was doubting Aline’s sensibility, in announcing to his friends that he was about to start on a journey which would occupy several days, perhaps several weeks, did not remark the girl’s sudden paleness, did not hear the distressed cry that escaped her lips:

“You are going away?”

He was going away, going to Tunis, very much troubled at leaving his poor Nabob in the midst of the pack of furious wolves that surrounded him. Mora’s protection, however, gave him some reassurance; and then, the journey in question was absolutely necessary.

“And the Territorial?” asked the old accountant, ever returning to the subject in his mind. “How are things standing there? I see Jansoulet’s name still at the head of the board. You cannot get him out, then, from that Ali-Baba’s cave? Take care--take care!”

“Ah, I know all about that, M. Joyeuse. But, to leave it with honour, money is needed, much money, a fresh sacrifice of two or three millions, and we have not got them. That is exactly the reason why I am going to Tunis to try to wrest from the rapacity of the Bey a slice of that great fortune which he is retaining in his possession so unjustly. At present I have still some chance of succeeding, while later on, perhaps--”

“Go, then, and make haste, my dear lad, and if you return, as I wish you may, with a heavy bag, see that you deal first of all with the Paganetti gang. Remember that one shareholder less patient than the rest has the power to smash the whole thing up, to demand an inquiry; and you know what the inquiry would reveal. Now I come to think of it,” added M. Joyeuse, whose brow had contracted a frown, “I am even surprised that Hemerlingue, in his hatred for you, has not secretly brought up a few shares.”

He was interrupted by the chorus of imprecations which the name of Hemerlingue raised from all the young people, who detested the fat banker for the injury he had done their father, and for the ill-will he bore that good Nabob, who was adored in the house through Paul de Gery.

“Hemerlingue, the heartless monster! Wretch! That wicked man!”

But amid all these exclamations, the Visionary was following up his idea of the fat baron becoming a shareholder in the Territorial for the purpose of dragging his enemy into the courts. And you may imagine the stupefaction of Andre Maranne, a complete stranger to the whole affair, when he saw M. Joyeuse turn to him, and, with face purple and swollen with rage, point his finger at him, with these terrible words:

“The greatest rascal, after all, in this affair, is you, sir!”

“Oh, papa, papa! what are you saying?”

“Eh, what? Ah, forgive me, my dear Andre. I was fancying myself in the examining magistrate’s private room, face to face with that rogue. It is my confounded brain that is always running away with me.”

All broke into uproarious laughter, which escaped into the outer air through the open windows, and went to mingle with the thousand noises of moving vehicles and people in their Sunday clothes going up the Avenue des Ternes. The author of _Revolt_ took advantage of the diversion to ask whether they were not soon going to start. It was late--the good places would be taken in the Bois.

“To the Bois de Boulogne, on Sunday!” exclaimed Paul de Gery.

“Oh, our Bois is not yours,” replied Aline with a smile. “Come with us, and you will see.”

Did it ever happen to you, in the course of a solitary and contemplative walk, to lie down on your face in the undergrowth of a forest, amid that vegetation which springs up, various and manifold, through the fallen autumn leaves, and allow your eyes to wander along the level of the ground before you? Little by little the sense of height is lost, the interwoven branches of the oaks above your head form an inaccessible sky, and you behold a new forest extending beneath the other, opening its deep avenues filled by a green and mysterious light, and formed of tiny shrubs or root fibres taking the appearance of the stems of sugar-canes, of severely graceful palm-trees, of delicate cups containing a drop of water, of many-branched candlesticks bearing little yellow lights which the wind blows on as it passes. And the miraculous thing is, that beneath these light shadows live minute plants and thousand of insects whose existence, observed from so near at hand, is a revelation to you of all the mysteries. An ant, bending like a wood-cutter under his burden, drags after it a splinter of bark bigger than itself; a beetle makes its way along a blade of grass thrown like a bridge from one stem to another; while beneath a lofty bracken standing isolated in the middle of a patch of velvety moss, a little blue or red insect waits, with antennae at attention, for another little insect on its way through some desert path over there to arrive at the trysting-place beneath the giant tree. It is a small forest beneath a great one, too near the soil to be noticed by its big neighbours, too humble, too hidden to be reached by its great orchestra of song and storm.

A similar revelation awaits in the Bois de Boulogne. Behind those sanded drives, watered and clean, whereon files of carriage-wheels moving slowly round the lake trace all day long a worn and mechanical furrow, behind that admirably set scene of trimmed green hedges, of captive water, of flowery rocks, the true Bois, a wild wood with perennial undergrowth, grows and flourishes, forming impenetrable recesses traversed by narrow paths and bubbling springs.

This is the Bois of the children, the Bois of the humble, the little forest beneath the great one. And Paul, who knew only the long avenues of the aristocratic Parisian promenades, the sparkling lake perceived from the depths of a carriage or from the top of a coach in a drive back from Longchamps, was astonished to see the deliciously sheltered nook to which his friends had led him. It was on the banks of a pond lying like a mirror under willow-trees, covered with water-lilies, with here and there large white shimmering spaces where sunbeams fell and lay on the bright surface.

On the sloping bank, sheltered by the boughs of trees where the leaves were already thick, they sat down to listen to the reading of the play, and the pretty, attentive faces, the skirts lying puffed out over the grass, made one think of some Decameron, more innocent and chaste, in a peaceful atmosphere. To complete this pleasant country scene, two windmill-sails seen through an opening in the branches were revolving over in the direction of Suresnes, while of the dazzling and luxurious vision to be met at every cross-roads in the Bois there reached them only a confused and perpetual murmur, which one ended by ceasing to notice. The poet’s voice alone rose in the silence, the verses fell on the air tremblingly, repeated below the breath by other moved lips, and stifled sounds of approbation greeted them, with shudders at the tragic passages. Bonne Maman was even seen to wipe away a big tear. That comes, you see, from having no embroidery in one’s hand!

His first work! That was what the _Revolt_ was for Andre, that first work always too exuberant and ornate, into which the author throws, to begin with, whole arrears of ideas and opinions, pent up like the waters of a river-lock; that first work which is often the richest if not the best of its writer’s productions. As for the fate that awaited it, no one could predict it; and the uncertainty that hovered over the reading of the drama added to its own emotion that of each auditor, the hopes, all arrayed in white, of Mlle. Elise, the fantastic hallucinations of M. Joyeuse, and the more positive desires of Aline as she installed in advance the modest fortune of her sister in the nest of an artist’s household, beaten by the winds but envied by the crowd.

Ah, if one of those idle people, taking a turn for the hundredth time round the lake, overwhelmed by the monotony of his habitual promenade, had come and parted the branches, how surprised he would have been at this picture! But would he ever have suspected how much passion, how many dreams, what poetry and hope there could be contained in that little green corner, hardly larger than the shadow a fern throws on the moss?

“You were right; I did not know the Bois,” said Paul in a low voice to Aline, who was leaning on his arm.

They were following a narrow path overarched by the boughs of trees, and as they talked were moving forward at a quick pace, well in advance of the others. It was not, however, _pere_ Kontzen’s terrace nor his appetizing fried dishes that drew them on. No; the beautiful lines which they had just heard had carried them away, lifting them to great heights, and they had not yet come down to earth again. They walked straight on towards the ever-retreating end of the road, which opened out at its extremity into a luminous glory, a mass of sunbeams, as if all the sunshine of that beautiful day lay waiting for them where it had fallen on the outskirts of the wood. Never had Paul felt so happy. That light arm that lay on his arm, that child’s step by which his own was guided, these alone would have made life sweet and pleasant to him, no less than this walk over the mossy turf of a green path. He would have told the girl so, simply, as he felt it, had he not feared to alarm that confidence which Aline placed in him, no doubt because of the sentiments which she knew he possessed for another woman, and which seemed to hold at a distance from them every thought of love.

Suddenly, right before them, against the bright background, a group of persons riding on horseback came in sight, at first vague and indistinct, then appearing as a man and a woman, handsomely mounted, and entered the mysterious path among the bars of gold, the leafy shadows, the thousand dots of light with which the ground was strewn, and which, displaced by their progress as they cantered along, rose and covered them with flowery patterns from the chests of the horses to the blue veil of the lady rider. They came along slowly, capriciously, and the two young people, who had drawn back into the copse, could see pass close by them, with a clinking of bits proudly shaken and white with foam as though after a furious gallop, two splendid animals carrying a pair of human beings brought very near together by the narrowing of the path; he, supporting with one arm the supple figure moulded in a dark cloth habit; she, with a hand resting on the shoulder of her cavalier and her small head seen in retreating profile beneath the half-dropped tulle of her veil, resting on it tenderly. This embrace, half disturbed by the impatience of the horses, that kiss on which their reins became confused, that passion which stalked in broad day through the Bois with so great a contempt for public opinion, would have been enough to betray the duke and Felicia, if the haughty and charming mein of the lady and the aristocratic ease of her companion, his pallor slightly tinged with colour as the result of his ride and of Jenkins’s miraculous pearls, had not already betrayed them.

It is not an extraordinary thing to meet Mora in the Bois on a Sunday. Like his master, he loved to show himself to the Parisians, to advertise his popularity with all sections of the public; and then the duchess never accompanied him on that day, and he could make a halt quite at his ease in that little villa of Saint-James, known to all Paris, whose red towers, outlined among the trees schoolboys used to point out to each other in whispers. But only a mad woman, a daring affronter of society like this Felicia, could have dreamt of advertising herself like this, with the loss of her reputation forever. A sound of hoofs dying away in the distance, of shrubs brushed in passing; a few plants that had been pressed down and were straightening themselves again; branches pushed out of the way resuming their places--that was all that remained of the apparition.

“You saw?” said Paul; speaking first.

She had seen, and she had understood, notwithstanding the candour of her innocence, for a blush spread over her features, one of those feelings of shame experienced for the faults of those we love.

“Poor Felicia!” she said in a low voice, pitying not only the unhappy woman who had just passed them, but also him whom this defection must have smitten to the very heart. The truth is that Paul de Gery had felt no surprise at this meeting, which justified previous suspicions and the instinctive aversion which he had felt for Felicia at their dinner some days before. But he found it pleasant to be pitied by Aline, to feel the compassion in that voice becoming more tender, in that arm leaning upon his. Like children who pretend to be ill for the sake of the pleasure of being fondled by their mother, he allowed his consoler to strive to appease his grief, speaking to him of his brothers, of the Nabob, and of his forthcoming trip to Tunis--a fine country, they said. “You must write to us often, and long letters about the interesting things on the journey, the place you stay in. For one can see those who are far away better when one imagines the kind of place they are inhabiting.”

So talking, they reached the end of the bowered path terminating in an immense open glade through which there moved the tumult of the Bois, carriages and riders on horseback alternating with each other, and the crowd at that distance seeming to be tramping through a flaky dust which blended it into a single confused herd. Paul slackened his pace, emboldened by this last minute of solitude.

“Do you know what I am thinking of?” he said, taking Aline’s hand. “I am thinking that it would be a pleasure to be unhappy so as to be comforted by you. But however precious your pity may be to me, I cannot allow you to waste your compassion on an imaginary pain. No, my heart is not broken, but more alive, on the contrary, and stronger. And if I were to tell you what miracle it is that has preserved it, what talisman--”

He held out before her eyes a little oval frame in which was set a simple profile, a pencil outline wherein she recognised herself, surprised to see herself so pretty, reflected, as it were, in the magic mirror of Love. Tears came into her eyes without her knowing the reason, an open spring whose stream beat within her chaste breast. He continued:

“This portrait belongs to me. It was drawn for me. And yet, at the moment of starting on this journey I have a scruple. I do not wish to have it except from yourself. Take it, then, and if you find a worthier friend, some one who loves you with a love deeper and more loyal than mine, I am willing that you should give it to him.”

She had regained her composure, and looking de Gery full in the face with a serious tenderness, she said:

“If I listened only to my heart, I should feel no hesitation about my reply: for, if you love me as you say, I am sure that I love you too. But I am not free; I am not alone in the world. Look yonder.”

She pointed to her father and her sisters, who were beckoning to them in the distance and hastening to come up with them.

“Well, and I myself?” answered Paul quickly. “Have I not similar duties, similar responsibilities? We are like two widowed heads of families. Will you not love mine as much as I love yours?”

“True? is it true? You will let me stay with them? I shall be Aline for you, and Bonne Maman for all our children? Oh! then,” exclaimed the dear creature, beaming with joy, “there is my portrait--I give it to you! And all my soul with it, too, and forever.”

THE JENKINS PEARLS

About a week after his adventure with Moessard, that new complication in the terrible muddle of his affairs, Jansoulet, on leaving the Chamber, one Thursday, ordered his coachman to drive him to Mora’s house. He had not paid a visit there since the scuffle in the Rue Royale, and the idea of finding himself in the duke’s presence gave him, through his thick skin, something of the panic that agitates a boy on his way upstairs to see the head-master after a fight in the schoolroom. However, the embarrassment of this first interview had to be gone through. They said in the committee-rooms that Le Merquier had completed his report, a masterpiece of logic and ferocity, that it meant an invalidation, and that he was bound to carry it with a high hand unless Mora, so powerful in the Assembly, should himself intervene and give him his word of command. A serious matter, and one that made the Nabob’s cheeks flush, while in the curved mirrors of his brougham he studied his appearance, his courtier’s smiles, trying to think out a way of effecting a brilliant entry, one of those strokes of good-natured effrontery which had brought him fortune with Ahmed, and which served him likewise in his relations with the French ambassador. All this accompanied by beatings of the heart and by those shudders between the shoulder-blades which precede decisive actions, even when these are settled within a gilded chariot.

When he arrived at the mansion by the river, he was much surprised to notice that the porter on the quay, as on the days of great receptions, was sending carriages up the Rue de Lille, in order to keep a door free for those leaving. Rather anxious, he wondered, “What is there going on?” Perhaps a concert given by the duchess, a charity bazaar, some festivity from which Mora might have excluded him on account of the scandal of his last adventure. And this anxiety was augmented still further when Jansoulet, after having passed across the principal court-yard amid a din of slamming doors and a dull and continuous rumble of wheels over the sand, found himself--after ascending the steps--in the immense entrance-hall filled by a crowd which did not extend beyond any of the doors leading to the rooms; centring its anxious going and coming around the porter’s table, where all the famous names of fashionable Paris were being inscribed. It seemed as though a disastrous gust of wind had gone through the house, carrying off a little of its calm, and allowing disquiet and danger to filter into its comfort.

“What a misfortune!”

“Ah! it is terrible.”

“And so suddenly!”

Such were the remarks that people were exchanging as they met.

An idea flashed into Jansoulet’s mind:

“Is the duke ill?” he inquired of a servant.

“Ah, monsieur, he is dying! He will not live through the night!”

If the roof of the palace had fallen in upon his head he would not have been more utterly stunned. Red lights flashed before his eyes, he tottered, and let himself drop into a seat on a velvet-covered bench beside the great cage of monkeys. The animals, over-excited by all this bustle, suspended by their tails, by their little long-thumbed hands, were hanging to the bars in groups, and came, inquisitive and frightened, to make the most ludicrous grimaces at this big, stupefied man as he sat staring at the marble floor, repeating aloud to himself, “I am ruined! I am ruined!”

The duke was dying. He had been seized suddenly with illness on the Sunday after his return from the Bois. He had felt intolerable burnings in his bowels, which passed through his whole body, searing as with a red-hot iron, and alternating with a cold lethargy and long periods of coma. Jenkins, summoned at once, did not say much, but ordered certain sedatives. The next day the pains came on again with greater intensity and followed by the same icy torpor, also more accentuated, as if life, torn up by the roots, were departing in violent spasms. Among those around him, none was greatly concerned. “The day after a visit to Saint-James Villa,” was muttered in the antechamber, and Jenkins’s handsome face preserved its serenity. He had spoken to two or three people, in the course of his morning rounds, of the duke’s indisposition, and that so lightly that nobody had paid much attention to the matter.

Mora himself, notwithstanding his extreme weakness, although he felt his head absolutely blank, and, as he said, “not an idea anywhere,” was far from suspecting the gravity of his condition. It was only on the third day, on waking in the morning, that the sight of a tiny stream of blood, which had trickled from his mouth over his beard and the stained pillow, had frightened this fastidious man, who had a horror of all human ills, especially sickness, and now saw it arrive stealthily with its pollutions, its weaknesses, and the loss of physical self-control, the first concession made to death. Monpavon, entering the room behind Jenkins, surprised the anxious expression of the great seigneur faced by the terrible truth, and at the same time was horrified by the ravages made in a few hours upon Mora’s emaciated face, in which all the wrinkles of age, suddenly evident, were mingled with lines of suffering, and those muscular depressions which tell of serious internal lesions. He took Jenkins aside, while the duke’s toilet necessaries were carried to him--a whole apparatus of crystal and silver contrasting with the yellow pallor of the invalid.

“Look here, Jenkins, the duke is very ill.”

“I am afraid so,” said the Irishman, in a low voice.

“But what is the matter with him?”

“What he wanted, _parbleu_!” answered the other in a fury. “One cannot be young at his age with impunity. This intrigue will cost him dear.”

Some evil passion was getting the better of him but he subdued it immediately, and, puffing out his cheeks as though his head were full of water, he sighed deeply as he pressed the old nobleman’s hands.

“Poor duke! poor duke! Ah, my friend, I am most unhappy!”

“Take care, Jenkins,” said Monpavon coldly, disengaging his hands, “you are assuming a terrible responsibility. What! is the duke as bad as that?--ps--ps--ps--Will you see nobody? You have arranged no consultation?”

The Irishman raised his hands as if to say, “What good can it do?”

The other insisted. It was absolutely necessary that Brisset, Jousseline, Bouchereau, all the great physicians should be called in.

“But you will frighten him.”

De Monpavon expanded his chest, the one pride of the old broken-down charger.

“_Mon Cher_, if you had seen Mora and me in the trenches of Constantine--ps--ps. Never looked away. We don’t know fear. Give notice to your colleagues. I undertake to inform him.”

The consultation took place in the evening with great privacy, the duke having insisted on this from a singular sense of shame produced by his illness, by that suffering which discrowned him, making him the equal of other men. Like those African kings who hide themselves in the recesses of their palaces to die, he would have wished that men should believe him carried off, transfigured, become a god. Then, too, he dreaded above all things the expressions of pity, the condolences, the compassion with which he knew that his sick-bed would be surrounded; the tears because he suspected them to be hypocritical, and because, if sincere, they displeased him still more by their grimacing ugliness.

He had always detested scenes, exaggerated sentiments, everything that could move him to emotion or disturb the harmonious equilibrium of his life. Every one knew this, and the order was to keep away from him the distress, the misery, which from one end of France to the other flowed towards Mora as to one of those forest refuges lighted during the night at which all wanderers may knock. Not that he was hard to the unfortunate; perhaps he may have been too easily moved to the pity which he regarded as an inferior sentiment, a weakness unworthy of the strong, and, refusing it to others, he dreaded it for himself, for the integrity of his courage. Nobody in the palace, then, except Monpavon and Louis the _valet de chambre_, knew of the visit of those three personages introduced mysteriously into the Minister of State’s apartments. The duchess herself was ignorant of it. Separated from her husband by the barriers frequently placed by the political and fashionable life of the great world between married people, she believed him slightly indisposed, nervous more than anything else; and had so little suspicion of a catastrophe that at the very hour when the doctors were mounting the great, dimly lit staircase at the other end of the palace, her private apartments were being lit up for a girls’ dance, one of those _bals blancs_ which the ingenuity of the idle world had begun to make fashionable in Paris.

This consultation was like all others: solemn and sinister. Doctors no longer wear their great periwigs of the time of Moliere, but they still assume the same gravity of the priests of Isis, of astrologers bristling with cabalistic formulae pronounced with sage noddings of the head, to which, for comical effect, there is only wanting the high pointed cap of former days. In this case the scene borrowed an imposing aspect from its setting. In the vast bed-chamber, transformed, heightened, as it were, in dignity by the immobility of the owner, these grave figures came forward round the bed on which the light was concentrated, illuminating amid the whiteness of the linen and the purple of the hangings a face worn into hollows, pale from lips to eyes, but wrapped in serenity as in a veil, as in a shroud. The consultants spoke in low tones, cast furtive glances as each other, or exchanged some barbarous word, remaining impassive, without even a frown. But this mute and reticent expression of the doctor and magistrate, this solemnity with which science and justice hedge themselves about to hide their frailty or ignorance, had no power to move the duke.