Chapter III: Part 3

Furious, with noses in their cups, the others watch this little scene from a distance. Then, as Jenkins takes his departure, bright, smiling, with a nod to the various groups, Monpavon seizes the governor: “Now is our chance.” And both, springing on the Nabob, drag him off towards a couch, oblige him almost forcibly to sit down, press upon each side of him with a ferocious little laugh that seems to signify, “What shall we do with him now?” Get the money out of him, the largest amount possible. It is needed, to set afloat once more the Territorial Bank, for years lain aground on a sand-bank, buried to the very top of its masts. A superb operation, this re-flotation, if these two gentlemen are to be believed, for the submerged bank is full of ingots, of precious things, of the thousand various forms of wealth of a new country discussed by everybody and known by none.

In founding this unique establishment, Paganetti of Porto-Vecchio had as his aim to monopolize the commercial development of the whole of Corsica: iron mines, sulphur mines, copper mines, marble quarries, coral fisheries, oyster beds, water ferruginous and sulphurous, immense forests of thuya, of cork-oak, and to establish for the facilitation of this development a network of railways over the island, with a service of packet-boats in addition. Such is the gigantic undertaking to which he has devoted himself. He has sunk considerable capital in it, and it is the new-comer, the workman of the last hour, who will gain the whole profit.

While with his Italian accent and violent gestures the Corsican enumerates the “splendours” of the affair, Monpavon, haughty, and with an air calculated to command confidence, nods his head approvingly with conviction, and from time to time, when he judges the moment propitious, throws into the conversation the name of the Duc de Mora, which never fails in its effect on the Nabob.

“Well, in short, how much would be required?”

“Millions,” says Monpavon boldly, in the tone of a man who would have no difficulty in addressing himself elsewhere. “Yes, millions; but the enterprise is magnificent. And, as his excellency was saying, it would provide even a political position. Just think! In that district without a metallic currency, you might become counsellor-general, deputy.” The Nabob gives a start. And the little Paganetti, who feels the bait quiver on his hook: “Yes, deputy. You will be that whenever I choose. At a sign from me all Corsica is at your disposal.” Then he launches out into an astonishing improvisation, counting the votes which he controls, the cantons which will obey his call. “You bring me your capital. I--I give you an entire people.” The cause is gained.

“Bompain, Bompain!” calls the Nabob, roused to enthusiasm. He has now but one fear, that is lest the thing escape him; and in order to bind Paganetti, who has not concealed his need of money, he hastens to effect the payment of a first instalment to the Territorial bank. New appearance of the man in red breeches with the check-book which he carries clasped gravely to his chest, like a choir-boy moving the Gospel from one side to the other. New inscription of Jansoulet’s signature upon a slip, which the governor pockets with a negligent air and which operates on his person a sudden transformation. The Paganetti who was so humble and spiritless just now, goes away with the assurance of a man worth four hundred thousand francs, while Monpavon, carrying it even higher than usual, follows after him in his steps, and watches over him with a more than paternal solicitude.

“That’s a good piece of business done,” says the Nabob to himself. “I can drink my coffee now.”

But the borrowers are waiting for him to pass. The most prompt, the most adroit, is Cardailhac, the manager, who lays hold of him and bears him off into a side-room.

“Let us have a little talk, old friend. I must explain to you the situation of affairs in connection with our theatre.” Very complicated, doubtless, the situation; for here is M. Bompain who advances once more, and there are the slips of blue paper flying away from the check-book. Whose turn now? There is the journalist Moessard coming to draw his pay for the article in the _Messenger_; the Nabob will find out what it costs to have one’s self called “benefactor of childhood” in the morning papers. There is the parish priest from the country who demands funds for the restoration of his church, and takes checks by assault with the brutality of a Peter the Hermit. There is old Schwalbach coming up with nose in his beard and winking mysteriously.

“Sh! He had found a pearl for monsieur’s gallery, an Hobbema from the collection of the Duc de Mora. But several people are after it. It will be difficult--”

“I must have it at any price,” says the Nabob, hooked by the name of Mora. “You understand, Schwalbach. I must have this Hobbema. Twenty thousand francs for you if you secure it.”

“I shall do my utmost, M. Jansoulet.”

And the old rascal calculates, as he goes away, that the twenty thousand of the Nabob added to the ten thousand promised him by the duke if he gets rid of his picture for him, will make a nice little profit for himself.

While these fortunate ones follow each other, others look on around, wild with impatience, biting their nails to the quick, for all are come on the same errand. From the good Jenkins, who opened the advance, to the masseur Cabassu, who closes it, all draw the Nabob away to some room apart. But, however far they lead him down this gallery of reception-rooms, there is always some indiscreet mirror to reflect the profile of the host and the gestures of his broad back. That back has eloquence. Now and then it straightens itself up in indignation. “Oh, no; that is too much.” Or again it sinks forward with a comical resignation. “Well, since it must be so.” And always Bompain’s fez in some corner of the view.

When those are finished, others arrive. They are the small fry who follow in the wake of the big eaters in the ferocious hunts of the rivers. There is a continual coming and going through these handsome white-and-gold drawing rooms, a noise of doors, an established current of bare-faced and vulgar exploitation attracted from the four corners of Paris and the suburbs by this gigantic fortune and incredible facility.

For these small sums, these regular distributions, recourse was not had to the check-book. For such purposes the Nabob kept in one of his rooms a mahogany chest of drawers, a horrible little piece of furniture representing the savings of a house porter, the first that Jansoulet had bought when he had been able to give up living in furnished apartments; which he had preserved since, like a gambler’s fetish; and the three drawers of which contained always two hundred thousand francs in cash. It was to this constant supply that he had recourse on the days of his large receptions, displaying a certain ostentation in the way in which he would handle the gold and silver, by great handfuls, thrusting it to the bottom of his pockets to draw it out thence with the gesture of a cattle dealer; a certain vulgar way of raising the skirts of his frock-coat and of sending his hand “to the bottom and into the pile.” To-day there must be a terrible void in the drawers of the little chest.

After so many mysterious whispered confabulations, demands more or less clearly formulated, chance entries and triumphant departures, the last client having been dismissed, the chest of drawers closed and locked, the flat in the Place Vendome began to empty in the uncertain light of the afternoon towards four o’clock, that close of the November days so exceedingly prolonged afterward by artificial light. The servants were clearing away the coffee and the raki, and bearing off the open and half-emptied cigar-boxes. The Nabob, thinking himself alone, gave a sigh of relief. “Ouf! that’s over.” But no. Opposite him, some one comes out from a corner that is already dark, and approaches with a letter in his hand.

Another!

And at once, mechanically, the poor man made that eloquent, horse-dealer’s gesture of his. Instinctively, also, the visitor showed a movement of recoil so prompt, so hurt, that the Nabob understood that he was making a mistake, and took the trouble to examine the young man who stood before him, simply but correctly dressed, of a dull complexion, without the least sign of a beard, with regular features, perhaps a little too serious and fixed for his age, which, aided by his hair of pale blond colour, curled in little ringlets like a powdered wig, gave him the appearance of a young deputy of the Commons under Louis XVI, the head of a Barnave at twenty! This face, although the Nabob beheld it for the first time, was not absolutely unknown to him.

“What do you desire, monsieur?”

Taking the letter which the young man held out to him, he went to a window in order to see to read it.

“Te! It is from mamma.”

He said it with so happy an air; that word “mamma” lit up all his face with so young, so kind a smile, that the visitor, who had been at first repulsed by the vulgar aspect of this _parvenu_, felt himself filled with sympathy for him.

In an undertone the Nabob read these few lines written in an awkward hand, incorrect and shaky, which contrasted with the large glazed note-paper, with its heading “Chateau de Saint-Romans.”

“My dear son, this letter will be delivered to you by the eldest son of M. de Gery, the former justice of the peace for Bourg-Saint-Andeol, who has shown us so much kindness.”

The Nabob broke off his reading.

“I ought to have recognised you, M. de Gery. You resemble your father. Sit down, I beg of you.”

Then he finished running through the letter. His mother asked him nothing precise, but, in the name of the services which the de Gery family had rendered them in former years, she recommended M. Paul to him. An orphan, burdened with the care of his two young brothers, he had been called to the bar in the south, and was now coming to Paris to seek his fortune. She implored Jansoulet to aid him, “for he needed it badly, poor fellow,” and she signed herself, “Thy mother who pines for thee, Francoise.”

This letter from his mother, whom he had not seen for six years, those expressions of the south country of which he could hear the intonations that he knew so well, that coarse handwriting which sketched for him an adored face, all wrinkled, scored, and cracked, but smiling beneath its peasant’s head-dress, had affected the Nabob. During the six weeks that he had been in France, lost in the whirl of Paris, the business of getting settled in his new habitation, he had not yet given a thought to his dear old lady at home; and now he saw all of her again in these lines. He remained a moment looking at the letter, which trembled in his heavy fingers.

Then, this emotion having passed:

“M. de Gery,” said he, “I am glad of the opportunity which is about to permit me to repay to you a little of the kindness which your family has shown to mine. From to-day, if you consent, I take you into my house. You are educated, you seem intelligent, you can be of great service to me. I have a thousand plans, a thousand affairs in hand. I am being drawn into a crowd of large industrial enterprises. I want some one who will aid me; represent me at need. I have indeed a secretary, a steward, that excellent Bompain, but the unfortunate fellow knows nothing of Paris; he has been, as it were, bewildered ever since his arrival. You will tell me that you also come straight from the country, but that does not matter. Well brought up as you are, a southerner, alert and adaptable, you will quickly pick up the routine of the Boulevard. For the rest, I myself undertake your education from that point of view. In a few weeks you will find yourself, I answer for it, as much at home in Paris as I am.”

Poor man! It was touching to hear him speak of his Parisian habits, and of his experience; he whose destiny it was to be always a beginner.

“Now, that is understood, is it not? I engage you as secretary. You will have a fixed salary which we will settle directly, and I shall provide you with the opportunity to make your fortune rapidly.”

And while de Gery, raised suddenly above all the anxieties of a newcomer, of one who solicits a favour, of a neophyte, did not move for fear of awaking from a dream:

“Now,” said the Nabob to him in a gentle voice, “sit down there, next me, and let us talk a little about mamma.”

MEMOIRS OF AN OFFICE PORTER A MERE GLANCE AT THE TERRITORIAL BANK

I had just finished my frugal morning repast and, as my habit was, placed the remains of my modest provisions in the board-room safe with a secret lock, which has served me as a store-cupboard during four years, almost, that I have been at the Territorial. Suddenly the governor walks into the offices, with his face all red and eyes inflamed, as though after a night’s feasting, draws in his breath noisily, and in rude terms says to me, with his Italian accent:

“But this place stinks, _Moussiou_ Passajon.”

The place did not stink, if you like the word. Only--shall I say it?--I had ordered a few onions to garnish a knuckle of veal which Mme. Seraphine had sent down to me, she being the cook on the second floor, whose accounts I write out for her every evening. I tried to explain the matter to the governor, but he had flown into a temper, saying that to his mind there was no sense in poisoning the atmosphere of an office in that way, and that it was not worth while to maintain premises at a rent of twelve thousand francs, with eight windows fronting full on the Boulevard Malesherbes, in order to roast onions in them. I don’t know what he did not say to me in his passion. For my own part, naturally I got angry at hearing myself addressed in that insolent manner. It is surely the least a man can do to be polite with people in his service whom he does not pay. What the deuce! So I answered him that it was annoying, in truth, but that if the Territorial Bank paid me what it owed me, namely, four years’ arrears of salary, _plus_ seven thousand francs personal advances made by me to the governor for expenses of cabs, newspapers, cigars, and American grogs on board days, I would go and eat decently at the nearest cookshop, and should not be reduced to cooking, in the room where our board was accustomed to sit, a wretched stew, for which I had to thank the public compassion of female cooks. Take that!

In speaking thus I had yielded to an impulse of indignation very excusable in the eyes of any person whatever acquainted with my position here. Even so, I had said nothing improper and had confined myself within the limits of language conformable to my age and education. (I must have mentioned somewhere in the course of these memoirs that of the sixty-five years I have lived I passed more than thirty as beadle to the Faculty of Letters in Dijon. Hence my taste for reports and memoirs, and those ideas of academical style of which traces will be found in many passages of this lucubration.) I had, then, expressed myself in the governor’s presence with the most complete reserve, without employing any one of those terms of abuse to which he is treated by everybody here, from our two censors--M. de Monpavon, who, every time he comes, calls him laughingly “Fleur-de-Mazas,” and M. de Bois l’Hery, of the Trumpet Club, coarse as a groom, who, for adieu, always greets him with, “To your bedstead, bug!”--to our cashier, whom I have heard repeat a hundred times, tapping on his big book, “That he has in there enough to send him to the galleys when he pleases.” Ah, well! All the same, my simple observation produced an extraordinary effect upon him. The circles round his eyes became quite yellow, and, trembling with rage, one of those evil rages of his country, he uttered these words: “Passajon, you are a blackguard. One word more, and I discharge you!” Stupor nailed me to the floor when I heard them. Discharge me--_me!_ and my four years’ arrears, and my seven thousand francs of money lent!

As though he could read my thought before it was put into words, the governor replied that all accounts were going to be settled, mine included. “And as to that,” he added, “summon these gentlemen to my private room. I have important news to announce to them.”

Upon that, he went into his office, banging the doors.

That devil of a man! In vain you may know him to the core--know him a liar, a comedian--he manages always to get the better of you with his stories. My account, mine!--mine! I was so affected by the thought that my legs seemed to give way beneath me as I went to inform the staff.

According to the regulations, there are twelve of us employed at the Territorial Bank, including the governor and the handsome Moessard, manager of _Financial Truth_; but more than half of that number were wanting. To begin with, since _Truth_ ceased to be issued--it is two years since its last appearance--M. Moessard has not once set foot in the place. It seems he moves amid honours and riches, has a queen for his mistress--a real queen--who gives him all the money he desires. Oh, what a Babylon, this Paris! The others come from time to time to learn whether by chance anything new has happened at the bank; and, as nothing ever has, we remain weeks without seeing them. Four or five faithful ones, all poor old men like myself, persist in putting in an appearance regularly every morning at the same hour, from habit, from want of occupation, not knowing what else to do. Every one, however, busies himself about things quite foreign to the work of the office. A man must live, you know. And then, too, one cannot pass the day dragging one’s self from easy chair to easy chair, from window to window, to look out of doors (eight windows fronting on the Boulevard). So one tries to do some work as best one can. I myself, as I have said, keep the accounts of Mme. Seraphine, and of another cook in the building. Also, I write my memoirs, which, again, takes a good deal of my time. Our receipt clerk--one who has not very hard work with us--makes line for a firm that deals in fishing requisites. Of our two copying-clerks, one, who writes a good hand, copies plays for a dramatic agency; the other invents little halfpenny toys which the hawkers sell at street corners about the time of the New Year, and manages by this means to keep himself from dying of hunger during all the rest of the year. Our cashier is the only one who does no outside work. He would believe his honour lost if he did. He is a very proud man, who never utters a complaint, and whose one dread is to have the appearance of being in want of linen. Locked in his office, he is occupied from morning till evening in the manufacture of shirt-fronts, collars, and cuffs of paper. In this, he has attained very great skill, and his ever-dazzling linen would deceive, if it were not that at the least movement, when he walks, when he sits down, the stuff crackles upon him as though he had a cardboard box under his waistcoat. Unfortunately all this paper does not feed him; and he is so thin, has such a mien, that you ask yourself on what he lives. Between ourselves, I suspect him of paying a visit sometimes to my store-cupboard. He can do so with ease; for, as cashier, he has the “word” which opens the safe with the secret lock, and I fancy that when my back is turned he forages a little among my provisions.

These are certainly very extraordinary, very incredible internal arrangements for a banking house. It is, however, the mere truth that I am telling, and Paris is full of financial institutions after the pattern of ours. Oh, if ever I publish my memoirs! But to take up the interrupted thread of my story.

When he saw us all collected in his private room, the manager said to us with solemnity:

“Gentlemen and dear comrades, the time of trials is ended. The Territorial Bank inaugurates a new phase.”

Upon this he commenced to speak to us of a superb _combinazione_--it is his favourite word and he pronounces it in such an insinuating manner--a _combinazione_ into which there was entering this famous Nabob, of whom all the newspapers are talking. The Territorial Bank was therefore about to find itself in a position which would enable it to acquit itself of its obligations to its faithful servants, recognise acts of devotion, rid itself of useless parasites. This for me, I imagine. And in conclusion: “Prepare your statements. All accounts will be settled not later than to-morrow.” Unhappily he has so often soothed us with lying words, that the effect of his speech was lost. Formerly these fine promises were always swallowed. At the announcement of a new _combinazione_, there used to be dancing, weeping for joy in the offices, and men would embrace each other like shipwrecked sailors discovering a sail.

Each one would prepare his account for the morrow, as he had said. But on the morrow, no manager. The day following, still nobody. He had left town on a little journey.

At length, one day when all would be there, exasperated, putting out our tongues, maddened by the water which he had brought to our mouths, the governor would arrive, let himself drop into an easy chair, his head in his hands, and before one could speak to him: “Kill me,” he would say, “kill me. I am a wretched impostor. The _combinazione_ has failed. It has failed, _Pechero!_ the _combinazione_.” And he would cry, sob, throw himself on his knees, pluck out his hair by handfuls, roll on the carpet. He would call us by our Christian names, implore us to put an end to his existence, speak of his wife and children whose ruin he had consummated. And none of us would have the courage to protest in face of a despair so formidable. What do I say? One always ended by sympathizing with him. No, since theatres have existed, never has there been a comedian of his ability. But to-day, that is all over, confidence is gone. When he had left, every one shrugged his shoulders. I must admit, however, that for a moment I had been shaken. That assurance about the settling of my account, and then the name of the Nabob, that man so rich----

“You actually believe it, you?” the cashier said to me. “You will be always innocent, then, my poor Passajon. Don’t disturb yourself. It will be the same with the Nabob as it was with Moessard’s Queen.” And he returned to the manufacture of his shirt-fronts.

What he had just said referred to the time when Moessard was making love to his Queen, and had promised the governor that in case of success he would induce her Majesty to put capital into our undertaking. At the office, we were all aware of this new adventure, and very anxious, as you may imagine, that it should succeed quickly, since our money depended upon it. For two months this story held all of us breathless. We felt some disquiet, we kept a watch on Moessard’s face, considered that the lady was inclined to insist upon a great deal of ceremony; and our old cashier, with his dignified and serious air, when he was questioned on the matter, would answer gravely, behind his wire screen: “Nothing fresh,” or “The thing is in a good way.” Whereupon everybody was contented. One would say to another, “It is making progress,” as though merely an ordinary enterprise was in question. No, in good truth, there is only one Paris, where one can see such things. Positively it makes your head turn sometimes. In a word, Moessard, one fine morning, ceased coming to the office. He had succeeded, it appears, but the Territorial Bank had not seemed to him a sufficiently advantageous investment for the money of his mistress. Now, I ask you, was that honest?

For that matter, the notion of honesty is lost so easily as hardly to be believed. When I reflect that I, Passajon, with my white hair, my venerable appearance, my so blameless past--thirty years of academical services--am grown accustomed to living like a fish in the water, in the midst of these infamies, this swindling! One might well ask what I am doing here, why I remain, how I am come to this.

How I am come to it? Oh, _mon Dieu!_ very simply. Four years ago, my wife being dead, my children married, I had just retired from my post as hall-porter at the college, when an advertisement in the newspaper chanced to meet my eye: “Wanted, an office-porter, middle-aged, at the Territorial Bank, 56, Boulevard Malesherbes. Good references.” Let me confess it at the outset. The modern Babylon had always attracted me. Then, too, I felt myself still a young man. I saw before me ten good years during which I might earn a little money, a great deal, perhaps, by means of investing my savings in the banking-house which I should enter. So I wrote, inclosing my photograph, the one taken at Crespon’s, in the Market Place, which represents me with chin closely shaven, a keen eye beneath my thick white eyebrows, my steel chain about my neck, my ribbon as an academy official, “the air of a conscript father upon his curule-chair,” as M. Chalmette, our dean used to say. (He insisted also that I much resembled the late King Louis XVIII; less strongly, however.) I supplied, further, the best of references; the most flattering recommendations from the gentlemen of the college. By return of post, the governor replied that my appearance pleased him--I believe it, _parbleu!_ an antechamber in the charge of a person with a striking face like mine is a bait for the shareholder--and that I might come when I liked. I ought, you may say to me, myself also to have made my inquiries. Eh! no doubt. But I had to give so much information about myself that it never occurred to me to ask for any about them. Besides, how could a man be suspicious, seeing this admirable installation, these lofty ceilings, these great safes, as big as cupboards, and these mirrors, in which you can see yourself from head to knee? And then those sonorous prospectuses, those millions that I seemed to hear flying through the air, those colossal enterprises with their fabulous profits. I was dazzled, fascinated. It must be mentioned, too, that at the time the house did not bear quite the aspect which it has to-day. Certainly, business was already going badly--our business always has gone badly--the paper appeared only at irregular intervals. But a little _combinazione_ of the governor’s enabled him to save appearances.

He had conceived the idea, just imagine, of opening a patriotic subscription for the purpose of erecting a statue to General Paolo Paoli, or some such name; in any case, to a great countryman of his own. Money flowed accordingly into the Territorial. Unfortunately, that state of things did not last. By the end of a couple of months the statue was eaten up before it had been made, and the series of protests and writs recommenced. Nowadays I am accustomed to them. But in the days when I had just come from the country, the Auvergnats at the door, caused me a painful impression. In the house, nobody paid attention to such things any longer. It was known that at the last moment there would always arrive a Monpavon, a Bois l’Hery, to pacify the bailiffs; for all those gentlemen, being deeply implicated in the concern, have an interest in avoiding a bankruptcy. That is the very circumstance which saves him, our wily governor. The others run after their money--we know the meaning which that expression has in gaming--and they would not like all the stock on their hands to become worthless save to sell for waste paper.

Small and great, that is the case of all of us who are connected with the firm. From the landlord, to whom two years’ rent is owing and who, for fear of losing it all, allows us to stay for nothing, to us poor employees, even to me, who am involved to the extent of my seven thousand francs of savings and my four years of arrears, we are running after our money. That is the reason why I remain obstinately here.

Doubtless, in spite of my advanced age, thanks to my good appearance, to my education, to the care which I have always taken of my clothes, I might have obtained some post under other management. There is one person of excellent repute known to me, M. Joyeuse, a bookkeeper in the firm of Hemerlingue & Son, the great bankers of the Rue Saint-Honore, who, every time he meets me, never fails to remark:

“Passajon, my friend, don’t stop in that den of brigands. You are wrong to persist in remaining. You will never get a halfpenny out of them. So come to Hemerlingue’s. I undertake to find some little corner for you there. You will earn less, but you will be paid much more.”

I feel that he is quite right, that worthy fellow. But the thing is stronger than I. I cannot make up my mind to leave. And yet it is by no means gay, the life I lead here in these great, cold rooms, where no one ever comes, where each man stows himself away in a corner without speaking. What will you have? Each knows the other too well. Everything has been said already.

Again, until last year, we used to have sittings of the board of inspection, meetings of shareholders, stormy and noisy assemblies, veritable battles of savages, from which the cries could be heard to the Madeleine. Several times a week also there would call subscribers indignant at no longer ever receiving any news of their money. It was on such occasions that our governor shone. I have seen these people, monsieur, go into his office furious as wolves thirsting for blood, and, after a quarter of an hour, come out milder than sheep, satisfied, reassured, and their pockets relieved of a few bank-notes. For, there lay the acme of his cleverness; in the extraction of money from the unlucky people who came to demand it. Nowadays the shareholders of the Territorial Bank no longer give any sign of existence. I think they are all dead or else resigned to the situation. The board never meets. The sittings only take place on paper; it is I who am charged with the preparation of a so-called report--always the same--which I copy out afresh each quarter. We should never see a living soul, if, at long intervals, there did not rise from the depths of Corsica some subscribers to the statue of Paoli, curious to know how the monument is progressing; or, it may be, some worthy reader of _Financial Truth_, which died over two years ago, who calls to renew his subscription with a timid air, and begs a little more regularity, if possible, in the forwarding of the paper. There is a faith that nothing shakes. So, when one of these innocents falls among our hungry band, it is something terrible. He is surrounded, hemmed in, an attempt is made to secure his name for one of our lists, and, in case of resistance, if he wishes to subscribe neither to the Paoli monument nor to Corsican railways, these gentlemen deal him what they call--my pen blushes to write it--what they call, I say, “the drayman thrust.”

Here is what it is: We always keep at the office a parcel prepared in advance, a well-corded case which arrives nominally from the railway station while the visitor is present. “There are twenty francs carriage to pay,” says the one among us who brings the thing in. (Twenty francs, sometimes thirty, according to the appearance of the patient.) Every one then begins to ransack his pockets: “Twenty francs carriage! but I haven’t got it.” “Nor I either. What a nuisance!” Some one runs to the cash-till. Closed. The cashier is summoned. He is out. And the gruff voice of the drayman, growing impatient in the antechamber: “Come, come, make haste.” (It is generally I who play the drayman, because of the strength of my vocal organs.) What is to be done now? Return the parcel? That will vex the governor. “Gentlemen, I beg, will you permit me,” ventures the innocent victim, opening his purse. “Ah, monsieur, indeed--” He hands over his twenty francs, he is ushered to the door, and, as soon as his heel is turned, we all divide the fruit of the crime, laughing like highway robbers.

Fie! M. Passajon. At your age, such a trade! Eh! _mon Dieu!_ I well know it. I know that I should do myself more honour in quitting this evil place. But what! You would have me then renounce the hope of getting back anything of all I have put in here. No, it is not possible. There is urgent need on the contrary that I should remain, that I should be on the watch, always at hand, ready to profit by any windfall, if one should come. Oh, for example, I swear it upon my ribbon, upon my thirty years of academical service, if ever an affair like this of the Nabob allow me to recover my disbursements, I shall not wait another single minute. I shall quickly be off to look after my pretty vineyard down yonder, near Monbars, cured forever of my thoughts of speculation. But, alas! that is a very chimerical hope. Exhausted, used up, known as we are upon the Paris market, with our stocks which are no longer quoted on the Bourse, our bonds which are near being waste paper, so many lies, so many debts, and the hole that grows ever deeper and deeper. (We owe at this moment three million five hundred thousand francs. It is not, however, those three millions that worry us. On the contrary, it is they that keep us going; but we have with the _concierge_ a little bill of a hundred and twenty-five francs for postage-stamps, a month’s gas bill, and other little things. That is the really terrible part of it.) and we are expected to believe that a man, a great financier like this Nabob, even though he were just arrived from the Congo, or dropped from the moon the same day, would be fool enough to put his money into a concern like this. Come! Is the thing possible? You may tell that story to the marines, my dear governor.

A DEBUT IN SOCIETY

“M. BERNARD JANSOULET!”

The plebeian name, accentuated proudly by the liveried servants, and announced in a resounding voice, sounded in Jenkins’s drawing-rooms like the clash of a cymbal, one of those gongs which, in fairy pieces at the theatre, are the prelude to fantastic apparitions. The light of the chandeliers paled, every eye sparkled at the dazzling perspective of the treasures of the Orient, of the showers of the sequins and of pearls evoked by the magic syllables of that name, yesterday unknown.

He, it was he himself, the Nabob, the rich among the rich, the great Parisian curiosity, spiced by that relish of adventure which is so pleasing to the surfeited crowd. All heads turned, all conversations were interrupted; near the door there was a pushing among the guests, a crush as upon the quay of a seaport to witness the entry of a felucca laden with gold.

Jenkins himself, so hospitable, so self-possessed, who was standing in the first drawing-room receiving his guests, abruptly quitted the group of men about him and hurried to place himself at the head of the galleons bearing down upon the guest.

“You are a thousand times, a thousand times kind. Mme. Jenkins will be so glad, so proud.--Come, let me conduct you!”

And in his haste, in his vainglorious delight, he bore Jansoulet off so quickly that the latter had no time to present his companion, Paul de Gery, to whom he was giving his first entry into society. The young man welcomed this forgetfulness. He slipped away among the crowd of black dress-coats constantly pressed back at each new arrival, buried himself in it, seized by that wild terror which is experienced by every young man from the country at his first introduction to a Paris drawing-room, especially when he is intelligent and refined, and beneath his breastplate of linen does not wear like a coat of mail the imperturbable assurance of a boor.

All you, Parisians of Paris, who from the age of sixteen, in your first dress-coat and with opera-hat against your thigh, have been wont to air your adolescence at receptions of all kinds, you know nothing of that anguish, compounded of vanity, of timidity, of recollections of romantic readings, which keeps a young man from opening his mouth and so makes him awkward and for a whole night pins him down to one spot in a doorway, and converts him into a piece of furniture in a recess, a poor, wandering and wretched being, incapable of manifesting his existence save by an occasional change of place, dying of thirst rather than approach the buffet, and going away without having uttered a word, unless perhaps to stammer out one of those incoherent pieces of foolishness which he remembers for months, and which make him, at night, as he thinks of them, heave an “Ah!” of raging shame, with head buried in the pillow.

Paul de Gery was that martyr. Away yonder in his country home he had always lived a very retired existence with an old, pious, and gloomy aunt, up to the time when the law-student, destined in the first instance to the career in which his father had left an excellent reputation, had found himself introduced to a few judges’ drawing-rooms, ancient, melancholy dwellings with faded pier-glasses, where he used to go to make a fourth at whist with venerable shadows. Jenkins’s evening party was therefore a _debut_ for this provincial, of whom his very ignorance and his southern adaptability made immediately an observer.

From the place where he stood, he watched the curious defile of Jenkins’s guests which had not yet come to an end at midnight; all the clients of the fashionable physician; the fine flower of society; a strong political and financial element, bankers, deputies, a few artists, all the jaded people of Parisian “high life,” wan-faced, with glittering eyes, saturated with arsenic like greedy mice, but with appetite insatiable for poison and for life. The drawing-room being thrown open, the vast antechamber of which the doors had been removed to be seen, laden with flowers at the sides, the principal staircase of the mansion, over which swept, now shaken out to their full extent, the long trains, whose silky weight seemed to give a backward pull to the undraped busts of the women in the course of that pretty ascending movement which brought them into view, little by little, till the complete flower of their splendour was reached. The couples as they gained the top seemed to be making an entry on the stage of a theatre; and that was twice true, since each person left on the last step the contracted eyebrows, the lines that marked preoccupation, the wearied air, his vexations, his sorrows, to display instead a contented face, a gay smile over the reposeful harmony of the features. The men exchanged honest shakes of the hand, exhibitions of fraternal good-feeling; the women, preoccupied with themselves, as they stood making little caracoling movements, with trembling graces, play of eyes and shoulders, murmured, without meaning anything, a few words of greeting:

“Thank you--oh, thank you! How kind you are!”

Then the couples would separate, for evening parties are no longer the gatherings of charming wits, in which feminine delicacy was wont to compel the character, the lofty knowledge, the genius, even, of men to bow graciously before it; but these overcrowded routs, in which the women, who alone are seated, chattering together like slaves in a harem, have no longer aught save the pleasure of being beautiful or appearing so. De Gery, after having wandered through the doctor’s library, the conservatory, the billiard-room, where men were smoking, weary of serious and dry conversation which seemed to him out of place amid surroundings so decorated and in the brief hour of pleasure--some one had asked him carelessly, without looking at him, what the Bourse was doing that day--made his way again towards the door of the large drawing-room, which was barricaded by a wedged crowd of dress-coats, a sea of heads bent sideways and peering past each other, watching.

This salon was a spacious apartment richly furnished with the artistic taste which distinguished the host and hostess. There were a few old pictures on the light background of the hangings. A monumental chimneypiece, adorned by a handsome group in marble--“The Seasons,” by Sebastien Ruys--around which long green stems cut in lacework or of a goffered bronze-like rigidity curved back towards the mirror as towards the limpidity of a clear lake. On the low seats, women in close groups, so close as almost to blend the delicate colours of their toilettes, forming an immense basket of living flowers, above which there floated the gleam of bare shoulders, of hair sown with diamonds that looked like drops of water on the dark women, glittering reflections on the fair, and the same heady perfume, the same confused and gentle hum, compact of vibrant warmth and intangible wings, which, in summer, caresses a garden-bed through all its flowering time. Now and then a little laugh, rising into this luminous atmosphere, a quicker inspiration in the air, which would cause aigrettes and curls to tremble, a handsome profile to stand out suddenly. Such was the aspect of the drawing-room.

A few men were present, a very small number, however, and all of them personages of note, laden with years and decorations. They were standing about near couches, leaning over the backs of chairs, with that air of condescension which men assume when speaking to children. But in the peaceful buzz of these conversations, one voice rang out piercing and brazen, that of the Nabob, who was tranquilly performing his evolutions across this social hothouse with the assurance bestowed upon him by his immense wealth, and a certain contempt for women which he had brought back from the East.

At that moment, comfortably installed on a settee, his big hands in yellow gloves crossed carelessly one over the other, he was talking with a very handsome woman, whose original physiognomy--much vitality coupled with severe features--stood out pale among the pretty faces about her, just as her dress, all white, classic in its folds and following closely the lines of her supple figure, contrasted with toilettes that were richer, but among which none had that air of daring simplicity. From his corner, de Gery admired the low and smooth forehead beneath its fringe of downward combed hair, the well-opened eyes, deep blue in colour, an abysmal blue, the mouth which ceased to smile only to relax its pure curve into an expression that was weary and drooping. In sum, the rather haughty mien of an exceptional being.

Somebody near him mentioned her name--Felicia Ruys. At once he understood the rare attraction of this young girl, the continuer of her father’s genius, whose budding celebrity had penetrated even to the remote country district where he had lived, with the aureole of reputed beauty. While he stood gazing at her, admiring her least gestures, a little perplexed by the enigma of her handsome countenance, he heard whispers behind him.

“But see how pleasant she is with the Nabob! If the duke were to come in!”

“The Duc de Mora is coming?”

“Certainly. It is for him that the party is given; to bring about a meeting between him and Jansoulet.”

“And you think that the duke and Mlle. Ruys----”

“Where have you come from? It is an intrigue known to all Paris. The affair dates from the last exhibition, for which she did a bust of him.”

“And the duchess?”

“Bah! it is not her first experience of that sort. Ah! there is Mme. Jenkins going to sing.”

There was a movement in the drawing-room, a more violent swaying of the crowd near the door, and conversation ceased for a moment. Paul de Gery breathed. What he had just heard had oppressed his heart. He felt himself reached, soiled, by this mud flung in handfuls over the ideal which in his own mind he had formed of that splendid adolescence, matured by the sun of Art to so penetrating a charm. He moved away a little, changed his place. He feared to hear again some whispered infamy. Mme. Jenkins’s voice did him good, a voice that was famous in the drawing-rooms of Paris and that in spite of all its magnificence had nothing theatrical about it, but seemed an emotional utterance vibrating over unstudied sonorities. The singer, a woman of forty or forty-five, had splendid ash-blond hair, delicate, rather nerveless features, a striking expression of kindness. Still good-looking, she was dressed in the costly taste of a woman who has not given up the thought of pleasing. Indeed, she was far from having given it up. Married a dozen years ago, for a second time, to the doctor, they seemed still to be at the first months of their dual happiness. While she sang a popular Russian melody, savage and sweet like the smile of a Slav, Jenkins was ingenuously proud, without seeking to dissimulate the fact, his broad face all beaming; and she, each time that she bent her head as she regained her breath, glanced in his direction a timid, affectionate smile that flew to seek him over the unfolded music. And then, when she had finished amid an admiring and delighted murmur, it was touching to notice how discreetly she gave her husband’s hand a secret squeeze, as though to secure to themselves a corner of private bliss in the midst of her great triumph. Young de Gery was feeling cheered by the spectacle of this happy couple, when quite close to him a voice murmured--it was not, however, the same voice that he had heard just before:

“You know what they say--that the Jenkinses are not married.”

“How absurd!”

“I assure you. It would seem that there is a veritable Mme. Jenkins somewhere, but not the lady we know. Besides, have you noticed----”

The dialogue continued in an undertone. Mme. Jenkins advanced, bowing, smiling, while the doctor, stopping a tray that was being borne round, brought her a glass of claret with the alacrity of a mother, an impresario, a lover. Calumny, calumny, ineffaceable defilement! To the provincial young man, Jenkins’s attentions now seemed exaggerated. He fancied that there was something affected about them, something deliberate, and, too, in the words of thanks which she addressed in a low voice to her husband he thought he could detect a timidity, a submissiveness, not consonant with the dignity of the legitimate spouse, glad and proud in an assured happiness. “But Society is a hideous affair!” said de Gery to himself, dismayed and with cold hands. The smiles around him had upon him the effect of hypocritical grimaces. He felt shame and disgust. Then suddenly revolting: “Come, it is not possible.” And, as though in reply to this exclamation, behind him the scandalous tongue resumed in an easy tone: “After all, you know, I cannot vouch for its truth. I am only repeating what I have heard. But look! Baroness Hemerlingue. He gets all Paris, this Jenkins.”

The baroness moved forward on the arm of the doctor, who had rushed to meet her, and appeared, despite all his control of his facial muscles, a little ill at ease and discomfited. He had thought, the good Jenkins, to profit by the opportunity afforded by this evening party to bring about a reconciliation between his friend Hemerlingue and his friend Jansoulet, who were his two most wealthy clients and embarrassed him greatly with their intestine feud. The Nabob was perfectly willing. He bore his old chum no grudge. Their quarrel had arisen out of Hemerlingue’s marriage with one of the favourites of the last Bey. “A story with a woman at the bottom of it, in short,” said Jansoulet, and a story which he would have been glad to see come to an end, since his exuberant nature found every antipathy oppressive. But it seemed that the baron was not anxious for any settlement of their differences; for, notwithstanding his word passed to Jenkins, his wife arrived alone, to the Irishman’s great chagrin.

She was a tall, slender, frail person, with eyebrows that suggested a bird’s plumes, and a youthful intimidated manner. She was aged about thirty but looked twenty, and wore a head-dress of grasses and ears of corn drooping over very black hair peppered with diamonds. With her long lashes against cheeks white with that transparency of complexion which characterizes women who have long led a cloistered existence, and a little ill at ease in her Parisian clothes, she resembled less one who had formerly been a woman of the harem than a nun who, having renounced her vows, was returning into the world.

An air of piety, of extreme devoutness, in her bearing, a certain ecclesiastical trick of walking with downcast eyes, elbows close to the body, hands crossed, mannerisms which she had acquired in the very religious atmosphere in which she had lived since her conversion and her recent baptism, completed this resemblance. And you can imagine with what ardent curiosity that worldly assembly regarded this quondam odalisk turned fervent Catholic, as she advanced escorted by a man with a livid countenance like that of some spectacled sacristan, Maitre le Merquier, deputy of Lyons, Hemerlingue’s man of business, who accompanied the baroness whenever the baron “was somewhat indisposed,” as on this evening.

At their entry into the second drawing-room, the Nabob came straight up to her, expecting to see appear in her wake the puffy face of his old comrade to whom it was agreed that he should go and offer his hand. The baroness perceived him and became still whiter. A flash as of steel shot from beneath her long lashes. Her nostrils dilated, quivered, and, as Jansoulet bowed, she quickened her step, carrying her head high and erect, and letting fall from her thin lips an Arab word which no one else could understand but of which the Nabob himself well appreciated the insult; for, as he raised his head again, his tanned face was of the colour of baked earthenware as it leaves the furnace. He stood for an instant without moving, his huge fists clinched, his mouth swollen with anger. Jenkins came up and rejoined him, and de Gery, who had followed the whole scene from a distance, saw them talking together with preoccupied air.

The thing was a failure. The reconciliation, so cunningly planned, would not take place. Hemerlingue did not desire it. If only the duke, now, did not fail to keep his engagement with them. This reflection was prompted by the lateness of the hour. The Wauters who was to sing the music of the Night from the _Enchanted Flute_, on her way home from her theatre, had just entered, completely muffled in her hoods of lace.

And there was still no sign of the Minister.

It was, however, a clearly understood, definitely promised arrangement. Monpavon was to call for him at the club. From time to time the good Jenkins glanced at his watch, while applauding absently the bouquet of brilliant notes which the Wauters was pouring forth from her fairy lips, a bouquet costing three thousand francs, useless, like the other expenses of the evening, if the duke did not come.

Suddenly the double doors were flung wide open:

“His excellency M. le Duc de Mora!”

A long quiver of excitement welcomed him, a respectful curiosity that ranged itself in two rows instead of the mobbing crowd that flocked on the heels of the Nabob.