Chapter III: Part 3

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

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

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

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

"Did he tell you so?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well, Jansoulet, did you read it?"

"Read what, pray?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moëssard interposed:

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

And with the free and easy manner of the tap-room habitué, of the reporter who scrawls his notes as he sits in front of his mug of beer, the journalist produced a pocketbook stuffed with memoranda, stamped papers, newspaper clippings, notes on glossy paper with crests--which he scattered over the table, pushing his plate away, to look for the proof of his article.

"Here it is." He passed it to Jansoulet; but Jenkins cried out:

"No, no, read it aloud."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The whole table rose, electrified.

"Bravo! Ah! bravo!"

"Superb."

"Very _chic_--very _chic_."

"Well said."

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

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

Jansoulet, radiant with pleasure, had also risen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well, what is it that you need?"

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

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

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

"I vill do mein best, Monsieur Jansoulet."

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

"Another!"

Thereupon the poor man instinctively repeated his eloquent horse-dealer's gesture. At that the visitor, also instinctively, recoiled so quickly and with such an insulted air that the Nabob realized that he was in error and took the trouble to observe the young man who stood before him, simply but correctly dressed, with a sallow complexion, absolutely no beard, regular features, perhaps a little too serious and determined for his years, which fact, with his extremely light hair, curling tightly all over his head like a powdered wig, gave him the aspect of a young deputy of the Tiers État under Louis XVI., the face of a Barnave at twenty. That face, although the Nabob then saw it for the first time, was not altogether unfamiliar to him.

"What do you wish, monsieur?"

Taking the letter the young man handed him, he walked to a window to read it.

"Ah!--it's from mamma."

He said it with such a joyous inflection, the word "mamma" lighted his whole face with such a youthful, attractive smile, that the visitor, repelled at first by the parvenu's vulgar appearance, felt in full sympathy with him.

The Nabob read in an undertone these few lines written in a coarse, incorrect, trembling hand, in striking contrast to the fine laid paper with the words "Château de Saint-Romans" at the top.

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

The Nabob interrupted himself to say:

"I ought to have known you, Monsieur de Géry. You look like your father. Take a seat, I beg you."

Then he finished running through the letter. His mother made no precise request, but, in the name of the services the de Géry family had formerly rendered them, she commended Monsieur Paul to him. An orphan, with his two young brothers to support, he had been admitted to practice as an advocate in the South and was starting for Paris to seek his fortune. She implored Jansoulet to assist him, "for he sorely needed it, poor fellow." And she signed: "Your mother, who is dying for a sight of you, FRANÇOISE."

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

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

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

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

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

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

III.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he went back to his shirt-fronts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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