Chapter IX: Part 9

Perhaps the imprisoned mind heard him in the depths of its dark, degrading purgatory. But the lips moved and a long groan made answer; a far-off wail, a despairing appeal caused the glance Françoise and her son exchanged to overflow with impotent tears, and drew from them both a simultaneous cry in which their sorrows met: _Pécaïré!_ the local word expressive of all pity, all affection.

* * *

Early the next morning the uproar began with the arrival of the actors and actresses, an avalanche of caps, chignons, high boots, short petticoats, affected screams, veils floating over the fresh coats of rouge; the women were in a large majority, Cardailhac having reflected that, where a bey was concerned, the performance was of little consequence, that one need only emit false notes from pretty lips, show lovely arms and well-turned legs in the free-and-easy négligé of the operetta. All the plastic celebrities of his theatre were on hand, therefore, Amy Férat at their head, a hussy who had already tried her eye-teeth on the gold of several crowns; also two or three famous comic actors, whose pallid faces produced the same effect of chalky, spectral blotches amid the bright green of the hedgerows as was produced by the plaster statuettes. All that motley crew, enlivened by the journey, the unfamiliar fresh air, and the copious hospitality, as well as by the hope of hooking something in that procession of beys, nabobs, and other purse-bearers, asked nothing better than to caper and sing and make merry, with the vulgar enthusiasm of a crowd of Seine boatmen ashore on a lark. But Cardailhac did not propose to have it so. As soon as they had arrived, made their toilets and eaten their first breakfast, out came the books; we must rehearse!--There was no time to lose. The rehearsals took place in the small salon near the summer gallery, where they were already beginning to build the stage; and the noise of the hammers, the humming of the refrains, the thin voices supported by the squeaking of the orchestra leader's violin, mingled with the loud trumpet-calls of the peacocks on their perches, were blown to shreds in the mistral, which, failing to recognize the frantic chirping of its grasshoppers, contemptuously whisked it all away on the whirling tips of its wings.

Sitting in the centre of the porch, as if it were the proscenium of his theatre, Cardailhac, while superintending the rehearsals, issued his commands to a multitude of workmen and gardeners, ordered trees to be felled which obstructed the view, drew sketches of the triumphal arches, sent despatches and messengers to mayors, to sub-prefects, to Arles to procure a deputation of girls of the province in the national costume, to Barbantane, where the most skilful dancers of the _farandole_ are to be found, to Faraman renowned for its herds of wild bulls and Camarguese horses; and as Jansoulet's name blazed forth at the foot of all these despatches, as the name of the Bey of Tunis also figured in them, everybody acquiesced with the utmost eagerness, the telegraphic messages arrived in an endless stream, and that little Sardanapalus from Porte-Saint-Martin, who was called Cardailhac, was forever repeating: "There is something to work with;" delighted to throw gold about like handfuls of seed, to have a stage fifty leagues in circumference to arrange, all Provence, of which country that fanatical Parisian was a native, and thoroughly familiar with its resources in the direction of the picturesque.

Dispossessed of her functions, the old lady seldom appeared, gave her attention solely to the farm and her invalid, terrified by that crowd of visitors, those insolent servants whom one could not distinguish from their masters, those women with brazen, coquettish manners, those closely-shaven old villains who resembled wicked priests, all those mad creatures who chased one another through the halls at night with much throwing of pillows, wet sponges, and curtain tassels which they tore off to use as projectiles. She no longer had her son in the evening, for he was obliged to remain with his guests, whose number increased as the time for the fêtes drew near; nor had she even the resource of talking about her grandsons with "Monsieur Paul," whom Jansoulet, always the kindest of men, being a little awed by his friend's seriousness of manner, had sent away to pass a few days with his brothers. And the careful housekeeper, to whom some one came every moment and seized her keys to get spare linen or silverware, to open another room, thinking of the throwing open of her stores of treasures, of the plundering of her wardrobes and her sideboards, remembering the condition in which the visit of the former bey had left the château, devastated as by a cyclone, said in her patois, feverishly moistening the thread of her distaff:

"May God's fire devour all beys and all future beys!"

At last the day arrived, the famous day of which people still talk throughout the whole province. Oh! about three o'clock in the afternoon, after a sumptuous breakfast presided over by the old mother with a new Cambrai cap on her head,--a breakfast at which, side by side with Parisian celebrities, prefects were present and deputies, all in full dress, with swords at their sides, mayors in their scarfs of office, honest curés cleanly shaven,--when Jansoulet, in black coat and white cravat, surrounded by his guests, went out upon the stoop and saw, framed in that magnificent landscape, amid flags and arches and ensigns, that swarm of heads, that sea of brilliant costumes rising tier above tier on the slopes and thronging the paths; here, grouped in a nosegay on the lawn, the prettiest girls of Arles, whose little white faces peeped sweetly forth from lace neckerchiefs; below, the _farandole_ from Barbantane, its eight tambourines in a line, ready for the word, hand in hand, ribbons fluttering in the wind, hats over one ear, the red _taillote_ about the loins; still lower, in the succession of terraces, the choral societies drawn up in line, all black beneath their bright-hued caps, the banner-bearer in advance, serious and resolved, with clenched teeth, holding aloft his carved staff; lower still, on an immense _rond-point_, black bulls in shackles, and Camargue gauchos on their little horses with long white manes, their leggings above their knees, brandishing their spears; and after them more flags and helmets and bayonets, reaching to the triumphal arch at the entrance; then, as far as the eye could see on the other side of the Rhone,--over which two gangs of workmen had just thrown a bridge of boats, so that they could drive from the station to Saint-Romans in a straight line,--was an immense crowd, whole villages pouring down from all the hills, overflowing on the Giffas road in a wilderness of noise and dust, seated on the edge of the ditches, swarming among the elms, piled upon wagons, a formidable living lane for the procession to pass through; and over it all a huge white sun whose arrows a capricious breeze sent in every direction, from the copper of a tambourine to the point of a spear and the fringe of a banner, while the mighty Rhone, high-spirited and free, bore away to the ocean the shifting tableaux of that royal fête. In presence of those marvels, in which all the gold in his coffers shone resplendent, the Nabob felt a thrill of admiration and pride.

"It is fine," he said, turning pale, and his mother, standing behind him, as pale as he, but from indescribable terror, murmured:

"It is too fine for any man. One would think that God was coming."

The feeling of the devout old peasant woman was much the same as that vaguely experienced by all those people who had assembled on the roads as if to watch the passage of a colossal procession on Corpus Christi, and who were reminded by that visit of an Oriental prince to a child of the province, of the legends of the Magian kings, the arrival of Gaspard the Moor bringing to the carpenter's son the myrrh and the crown.

Amid the heartfelt congratulations that were showered on Jansoulet, Cardailhac, who had not been seen since morning, suddenly appeared, triumphant and perspiring.

"Didn't I tell you that there was something to work with! Eh? Isn't this _chic_? There's a grouping for you! I fancy our Parisians would pay something handsome to attend a first performance like this."

He lowered his voice because the mother was close by:

"Have you seen our Arles girls? No, look at them more carefully--the first one, the one standing in front to offer the bouquet."

"Why, that's Amy Férat!"

"_Parbleu!_ you can see yourself, my dear fellow, that if the bey throws his handkerchief into that bevy of pretty girls, there must be at least one who knows enough to pick it up. Those innocent creatures wouldn't know what it meant! Oh! I have thought of everything, you'll see. It's all mounted and arranged as if it were on the stage. Farm side, garden side."

At that point, to give an idea of the perfectness of his organization, the manager raised his cane; his gesture was instantly repeated from end to end of the park, with the result that all the musical societies, all the trumpets, all the tambourines burst forth in unison in the majestic strains of the familiar song of the South: _Grand Soleil de la Provence_. The voices, the brazen notes ascended into the light, swelling the folds of the banners, giving the signal to the dancers of the _farandole_, who began to sway back and forth, to go through their first antics where they stood, while, on the other side of the river, a murmur ran through the crowd like a breeze, caused doubtless by the fear that the bey had arrived unexpectedly from another direction. A second gesture from the manager and the great orchestra subsided, more gradually, with _rallentando_ passages and meteoric showers of notes scattered among the foliage; but nothing better could be expected from a company of three thousand persons.

Just then the carriages appeared, the state carriages which had figured in the festivities in honor of the former bey, two great pink and gold chariots _à la mode de Tunis_, which Mother Jansoulet had taken care of as precious relics, and which came forth from the carriage-house with their varnished panels, their hangings and gold fringe as bright and fresh as when they were new. There again Cardailhac's ingenuity had exerted itself freely, and instead of horses, which were a little heavy for those fragile-looking, daintily decorated vehicles, the white reins guided eight mules with ribbons, plumes, and silver bells upon their heads, and caparisoned from head to foot with those marvellous _sparteries_, of which Provence seems to have borrowed the secret from the Moors and to have perfected the cunning art of manufacturing. If the bey were not satisfied with that!

The Nabob, Monpavon, the prefect and one of their generals entered the first carriage, the others took their places in the second and following ones. The curés and mayors, all excited by the wine they had drunk, ran to place themselves at the head of the singing societies of their respective parishes, which were to go to meet the procession; and the whole multitude set forth on the Giffas road.

It was a superbly clear day, but warm and oppressive, three months in advance of the season, as often happens in those impetuous regions where everything is in a hurry, where everything arrives before its time. Although there was not a cloud to be seen, the deathlike stillness of the atmosphere, the wind having fallen suddenly as one lowers a veil, the dazzling expanse, heated white-hot, a solemn silence hovering over the landscape, all indicated that a storm was brewing in some corner of the horizon. The extraordinary torpidity of the surrounding objects gradually affected the persons. Naught could be heard save the tinkling bells of the mules as they ambled slowly along, the measured, heavy tread, through the burning dust, of the bands of singers whom Cardailhac stationed at intervals in the procession, and from time to time, in the double, swarming line of human beings that bordered the road as far as the eye could see, a call, the voices of children, the cry of a peddler of fresh water, the inevitable accompaniment of all open-air fêtes in the South.

"For heaven's sake, open the window on your side, General, it's stifling," said Monpavon, with crimson face, fearing for his paint; and the lowered sashes afforded the worthy populace a view of those exalted functionaries mopping their august faces, which were terribly flushed and wore the same agonized expression of anticipation,--anticipation of the bey's arrival, of the storm, of something.

Another triumphal arch. Giffas and its long stony street strewn with green palm leaves, its old, dirty houses covered with flowers and decorations. Outside of the village the station, a square white structure, planted like a die at the side of the track, a genuine type of the little country station lost among vineyards, its only room always empty, except for an occasional old woman with a quantity of parcels, waiting in a corner, three hours too early for her train.

In the bey's honor the little building was decked with flags and banners, furnished with rugs and divans and a splendid buffet, on which was a light lunch and water ices all ready for his Highness. When he had arrived and alighted from his carriage, the Nabob shook off the species of haunting disquiet which had oppressed him for a moment past, without his knowing why. Prefects, generals, deputies, black coats and embroidered military coats stood on the broad inner platform, in impressive, solemn groups, with the pursed lips, the shifting from one foot to the other, the self-conscious starts of a public functionary who feels that he is being stared at. And you can imagine whether noses were flattened against window-panes in order to obtain a glimpse of those hierarchic embroideries, of Monpavon's breastplate, which expanded and rose like an omelette soufflée, of Cardailhac gasping for breath as he issued his final orders, and of the beaming face of Jansoulet, their Jansoulet, whose eyes, sparkling between the bloated, sunburned cheeks, resembled two great gilt nails in a piece of Cordova leather. Suddenly the electric bells began to ring. The station-agent rushed frantically out to the track: "The train is signalled, messieurs. It will be here in eight minutes." Everybody started. Then a general instinctive impulse caused every watch to be drawn from its fob. Only six minutes more. Thereupon, in the profound silence, some one exclaimed: "Look there!" On the right, in the direction from which the train was to come, two high vine-covered hills formed a tunnel into which the track plunged and disappeared, as if swallowed up. At that moment the whole sky in that direction was as black as ink, obscured by an enormous cloud, a threatening wall cutting the blue as with a knife, rearing palisades, lofty cliffs of basalt on which the light broke like white foam with the pallid gleam of moonlight. In the solemn silence of the deserted track, along that line of rails where one felt that everything, so far as the eye could see, stood aside for the passage of his Highness, that aërial cliff was a terrifying spectacle as it advanced, casting its shadow before it with that illusion of perspective which gave to the cloud a slow, majestic movement and to its shadow the rapid pace of a galloping horse. "What a storm we are going to have directly!" That was the thought that came to them all; but they had not time to express it, for an ear-piercing whistle was heard and the train appeared in the depths of the dark tunnel. A typical royal train, short and travelling fast, decorated with French and Tunisian flags, its groaning, puffing locomotive, with an enormous bouquet of roses on its breast, representing the maid of honor at a wedding of Leviathans.

It came rushing on at full speed, but slackened its pace as it drew near. The functionaries formed a group, drawing themselves up, arranging their swords, adjusting their false collars, while Jansoulet walked along the track toward the train, the obsequious smile on his lips and his back already bent for the "Salem alek!" The train continued to move, very slowly. Jansoulet thought that it had stopped, and placed his hand on the door of the royal carriage glittering with gold under the black sky; but the headway was too great, doubtless, for the train still went forward, the Nabob walking beside it, trying to open that infernal door which resisted all his efforts, and with the other hand making a sign of command to the machine. But the machine did not obey. "Stop, I tell you!" It did not stop. Impatient at the delay, he sprang upon the velvet-covered step, and with the somewhat presumptuous impetuosity, which used to please the former bey so much, he cried out, thrusting his great curly head in at the window:

"Station for Saint-Romans, your Highness!"

You know that sort of vague light peculiar to dreams, that colorless, empty atmosphere, in which everything assumes a ghostly aspect? well, Jansoulet was suddenly enveloped, made prisoner, paralyzed by it. He tried to speak, but the words would not come; his nerveless fingers clung so feebly to their support that he nearly fell backward. In heaven's name, what had he seen? Half reclining on a divan which extended across one end of the car, his fine head with its dead-white complexion and its long, silky black beard resting on his hand, the bey, buttoned to the chin in his Oriental frock-coat, without other ornament than the broad ribbon of the Legion of Honor across his breast and the diamond clasp in his cap, was fanning himself impassively with a little fan of _spartum_, embroidered with gold. Two aides-de-camp were standing near him and an engineer of the French company. Opposite him, upon another divan, in a respectful attitude, but one indicating high favor, as they alone remained seated in presence of the bey, both as yellow as saffron, their long whiskers falling over their white cravats, sat two owls, one fat, the other thin. They were the Hemerlingues, father and son, who had reconquered his Highness and were carrying him in triumph to Paris. A ghastly dream! All those people, although they knew Jansoulet well, stared coolly at him as if his face conveyed no idea to them. Pitiably pale, with the perspiration standing on his brow, he stammered: "But, your Highness, do you not mean to leave--" A livid flash, like that of a sabre stroke, followed by a frightful peal of thunder, cut him short. But the flash that shot from the monarch's eyes seemed far more terrible to him. Rising to his feet and stretching out his arm, the bey crushed him with these words, prepared in advance and uttered slowly in a rather guttural voice accustomed to the harsh Arabic syllables, but in very pure French:

"You may return home, Mercanti. The foot goes where the heart leads it, mine shall never enter the door of the man who has robbed my country."

Jansoulet tried to say a word. The bey waved his hand: "Begone!" And the engineer having pressed the button of an electric bell, to which a whistle replied, the train, which had not come to a full stop, stretched and strained its iron muscles and started ahead under full steam, waving its flags in the wind of the storm amid whirling clouds of dense smoke and sinister flashes.

He stood by the track, dazed, staggering, crushed, watching his fortune recede and disappear, heedless of the great drops of rain that began to fall upon his bare head. Then, when the others rushed toward him, surrounded him and overwhelmed him with questions: "Isn't the Bey going to stop?" he stammered a few incoherent words: "Court intrigues--infamous machinations." And suddenly, shaking his fist at the train which had already disappeared, with bloodshot eyes and the foam of fierce wrath on his lips, he cried with the roar of a wild beast:

"Vile curs!"

"Courage, Jansoulet, courage."

You can guess who said that, and who, passing his arm through the Nabob's, tried to straighten him up, to make him throw out his breast as he did, led him to the carriages amid the stupefied silence of the braided coats, and helped him to enter, crushed and bewildered, as a relative of the deceased is hoisted into a mourning carriage at the close of the lugubrious ceremony. The rain was beginning to fall, the peals of thunder followed one another rapidly. They crowded into the carriages, which started hurriedly homeward. Thereupon a heart-rending, yet comical thing took place, one of those cruel tricks which cowardly destiny plays upon its victims when they are down. In the fading light, the increasing obscurity caused by the squall, the crowd that filled all the approaches to the station believed that it could distinguish a Royal Highness amid such a profusion of gold lace, and as soon as the wheels began to revolve, a tremendous uproar, an appalling outcry which had been brewing in all those throats for an hour past, arose and filled the air, rebounded from hill to hill and echoed through the valley: "Vive le Bey!" Warned by that signal, the first flourishes rang out, the singing societies struck up in their turn, and as the noise increased from point to point, the road from Giffas to Saint-Romans was naught but one long, unbroken wave of sound. In vain did Cardailhac, all the gentlemen, Jansoulet himself, lean out of the windows and make desperate signs: "Enough! enough!" Their gestures were lost in the confusion, in the darkness; what was seen of them seemed an encouragement to shout louder. And I give you my word that it was in no wise needed. All those Southerners, whose enthusiasm had been kept at fever heat since morning, excited still more by the tedium of the long wait and by the storm, gave all that they had of voice, of breath, of noisy energy, blending with the national hymn of Provence that oft-repeated cry, which broke in upon it like a refrain: "Vive le Bey!" The majority had no sort of idea what a bey might be, did not even picture him to themselves, and gave a most extraordinary pronunciation to the unfamiliar title, as if it had three _b's_ and ten _y's_. But no matter, they worked themselves into a frenzy over it, threw up their hands, waved their hats, and waxed excited over their own antics. Women, deeply affected, wiped their eyes; and suddenly the piercing cry of a child came from the topmost branches of an elm: "Mamma, mamma, I see him!" He saw him! They all saw him for that matter; to this day they would all take their oath that they saw him.

Confronted with such delirious excitement, finding it impossible to impose silence and tranquillity upon that mob, there was but one course for the people in the carriages to pursue: to let them alone, raise the windows and drive at full speed in order to abridge that unpleasant martyrdom as much as possible. Then it was terrible. Seeing the cortège quicken its pace, the whole road began to run with it. The _farandoleurs_ of Barbantane, hand-in-hand, bounded from side to side, to the muffled wheezing of their tambourines, forming a human garland around the carriage doors. The singing societies, unable to sing at that breathless pace, but howling none the less, dragged their banner-bearers along, the banners thrown over their shoulders; and the stout, red-faced curés, panting, pushing their huge overburdened paunches before them, still found strength to shout in the mules' ears, in sympathetic, effusive tones: "Vive notre bon Bey!" And with it all, the rain, the rain falling in bucketfuls, in sheets, soiling the pink carriages, increasing the confusion, giving to that triumphal return the aspect of a rout, but a laughable rout, compounded of songs, laughter, blasphemy, frantic embraces and infernal oaths, something like the return from a Corpus Christi procession in the storm, with cassocks tucked up, surplices thrown over the head, and the good Lord hastily housed under a porch.

A dull rumbling announced to the poor Nabob, sitting silent and motionless in a corner of his carriage, that they were crossing the bridge of boats. They had arrived.

"At last!" he said, looking out through the dripping windows at the foam-tipped waves of the Rhone, where the storm seemed to him like repose after that through which he had passed. But, when the first carriage reached the triumphal arch at the end of the bridge, bombs were exploded, the drums beat, saluting the monarch's arrival upon his faithful subject's domain, and the climax of irony was reached when, in the half light, a blaze of gas suddenly illuminated the roof of the château with letters of fire, over which the rain and wind caused great shadows to run to and fro, but which still displayed very legibly the legend: "Viv' L' B'Y M'H'MED."

"That's the bouquet," said the unhappy Nabob, unable to restrain a smile, a very pitiful, very bitter smile. But no, he was mistaken. The bouquet awaited him at the door of the chateâu; and it was Amy Férat who came forward to present it to him, stepping out of the group of maidens from Arles, who were sheltering their watered silk skirts and figured velvet caps under the marquée, awaiting the first carriage. Her bunch of flowers in her hand, modestly, with downcast eyes and roguish ankle, the pretty actress darted to the door and stood almost kneeling in an attitude of salutation, which she had been rehearsing for a week. Instead of the bey, Jansoulet stepped out, excited, stiffly erect, and passed her by without even looking at her. And as she stood there, her nosegay in her hand, with the stupid expression of a balked fairy, Cardailhac said to her with the _blague_ of a Parisian who speedily makes the best of things:

"Take away your flowers, my dear, your affair has fallen through. The Bey isn't coming--he forgot his handkerchief, and as that's what he uses to talk to ladies, why, you understand--"

* * *

Now, it is night. Everybody is asleep at Saint-Romans after the tremendous hurly-burly of the day. The rain is still falling in torrents, the banners feebly wave their drenched carcasses, one can hear the water rushing down the stone steps, transformed into cascades. Everything is streaming and dripping. A sound of water, a deafening sound of water. Alone in his magnificently furnished chamber with its seignorial bed and its curtains of Chinese silk with purple stripes, the Nabob is still stirring, striding back and forth, revolving bitter thoughts. His mind is no longer intent upon the affront to himself, the public affront in the presence of thirty thousand persons, nor upon the murderous insult that the Bey addressed to him in presence of his mortal enemies. No, that Southerner with his wholly physical sensations, swift as the action of new weapons, has already cast away all the venom of his spleen. Moreover court favorites are always prepared, by many celebrated precedents, for such overwhelming falls from grace. What terrifies him is what he can see behind that insult. He reflects that all his property is over yonder, houses, counting-rooms, vessels, at the mercy of the bey, in that lawless Orient, the land of arbitrary power. And, pressing his burning brow against the streaming glass, with the perspiration standing on his back, and hands cold as ice, he stares vacantly out into the night, no darker, no more impenetrable than his own destiny.

Suddenly he hears footsteps, hurried footsteps, at his door.

"Who's there?"

"Monsieur," says Noël, entering the room half-dressed, "a very urgent despatch sent from the telegraph office by special messenger."

"A despatch!--What is the next thing?"

He takes the blue paper and opens it with trembling hand. The god, having already been wounded twice, is beginning to feel that he is vulnerable, to lose his assurance; he experiences the apprehensions, the nervous tremors of other men. The signature first. _Mora!_ Is it possible? The duke, the duke telegraph to him! Yes, there is no doubt about it. _M-o-r-a._

And above:

_Popolasca is dead. Election in Corsica soon. You are official
candidate._

A deputy! That means salvation. With that he has nothing to fear. A representative of the great French nation is not to be treated like a simple _mercanti_. Down with the Hemerlingues!

"O my duke, my noble duke!"

He was so excited that he could not sign the receipt.

"Where's the man who brought this despatch?" he asked abruptly.

"Here, Monsieur Jansoulet," replied a hearty voice from the hall, in the familiar Southern dialect.

He was a lucky dog, that messenger.

"Come in," said the Nabob.

And, after handing him his receipt, he plunged his hands into his pockets, which were always full, grasped as many gold pieces as he could hold and threw them into the poor devil's cap as he stood there stammering, bewildered, dazzled by the fortune that had befallen him in the darkness of that enchanted palace.

XII.

A CORSICAN ELECTION.

"POZZONEGRO, near Sartène.

"I am able at last to write you of my movements, my dear Monsieur
Joyeuse. In the five days that we have been in Corsica we have
travelled about so much, talked so much, changed carriages and
steeds so often, riding sometimes on mules, sometimes on asses, and
sometimes even on men's backs to cross streams, have written so
many letters, made notes on so many petitions, given away so many
chasubles and altar-cloths, propped up so many tottering church
steeples, founded so many asylums, proposed and drunk so many
toasts, absorbed so much talk and Talano wine and white cheese,
that I have found no time to send an affectionate word to the
little family circle around the big table, from which I have been
missing for two weeks. Luckily my absence will not last much
longer, for we expect to leave day after to-morrow and travel
straight through to Paris. So far as the election is concerned, I
fancy that our trip has been successful. Corsica is a wonderful
country, indolent and poor, a mixture of poverty and of pride which
makes both the noble and bourgeois families keep up a certain
appearance of opulence even at the price of the most painful
privations. They talk here in all seriousness of the great wealth
of Popolasca, the indigent deputy whom death robbed of the hundred
thousand francs his resignation in the Nabob's favor would have
brought him. All these people have, moreover, a frenzied longing
for offices, an administrative mania, a craving to wear a uniform
of some sort and a flat cap on which they can write: "Government
clerk." If you should give a Corsican peasant his choice between
the richest farm in Beauce and the baldric of the humblest
forest-warden, he would not hesitate a moment, he would choose the
baldric. Under such circumstances you can judge whether a candidate
with a large fortune and governmental favors at his disposal has a
good chance of being elected. Elected M. Jansoulet will be,
therefore, especially if he succeeds in the move which he is making
at this moment and which has brought us to the only inn of a small
village called Pozzonegro (Black Well), a genuine well, all black
with verdure, fifty cottages built of red stone clustered around a
church of the Italian type, in the bottom of a ravine surrounded by
steep hills, by cliffs of bright-colored sandstone, scaled by vast
forests of larches and junipers. Through my open window, at which I
am writing, I can see a bit of blue sky overhead, the orifice of
the black well; below, on the little square, shaded by an enormous
walnut tree, as if the shadows were not dense enough already, two
shepherds dressed in skins are playing cards on the stone curb of a
fountain. Gambling is the disease of this country of sloth, where
the crops are harvested by men from Lucca. The two poor devils
before me could not find a sou in their pockets; one stakes his
knife, the other a cheese wrapped in vine leaves, the two stakes
being placed beside them on the stone. A little curé is watching
them, smoking his cigar, and apparently taking the liveliest
interest in their game.

"And that is all--not a sound anywhere except the regular dropping
of the water on the stone, the exclamations of one of the gamblers,
who swears by the _sango del seminario_; and in the common-room of
the inn, under my chamber, our friend's earnest voice, mingled with
the buzzing of the illustrious Paganetti, who acts as interpreter
in his conversation with the no less illustrious Piedigriggio.

"M. Piedigriggio (Grayfoot) is a local celebrity. He is a tall old
man of seventy-five, still very erect in his short cloak over which
his long white beard falls, his brown woollen Catalan cap on his
hair, which is also white, a pair of scissors in his belt, which he
uses to cut the great leaves of green tobacco in the hollow of his
hand; a venerable old fellow in fact, and when he crossed the
square and shook hands with the curé, with a patronizing smile at
the two gamblers, I never would have believed that I had before me
the famous brigand Piedigriggio, who, from 1840 to 1860, _held the
thickets_ in Monte-Rotondo, tired out gendarmes and troops of the
line, and who to-day, his seven or eight murders with the rifle or
the knife being outlawed by lapse of time, goes his way in peace
throughout the region that saw his crimes, and is a man of
considerable importance. This is the explanation: Piedigriggio has
two sons, who, following nobly in his footsteps, have toyed with
the rifle and now hold the thickets in their turn. Impossible to
lay hands upon or to find, as their father was for twenty years,
informed by the shepherds of the movements of the gendarmerie, as
soon as the gendarmes leave a village, the brigands appear there.
The older of the two, Scipion, came last Sunday to Pozzonegro to
hear mass. To say that people are fond of them, and that the grasp
of the bloodstained hand of these villains is agreeable to all
those who receive it, would be to calumniate the pacific
inhabitants of this commune; but they fear them, and their will is
law.

"Now it appears that the Piedigriggios have taken it into their
heads to espouse the cause of our rival in the election, a
formidable alliance, which may cause two whole cantons to vote
against us, for the knaves have legs as long, in proportion, as the
range of their guns. Naturally we have the gendarmes with us, but
the brigands are much more powerful. As our host said to us this
morning: 'The gendarmes, they go, but the banditti, they stay.' In
the face of that very logical reasoning, we realized that there was
but one thing to do, to treat with the Piedigriggios, and make a
bargain with them. The mayor said a word to the old man, who
consulted his sons, and they are discussing the terms of the treaty
downstairs. I can hear the Governor's voice from here: 'Nonsense,
my dear fellow, I'm an old Corsican myself, you know.' And then the
other's tranquil reply, cut simultaneously with his tobacco by the
grating noise of the great scissors. The 'dear fellow' does not
seem to have faith; and I am inclined to think that matters will
not progress until the gold pieces ring on the table.

"The trouble is that Paganetti is well known in his native country.
The value of his word is written on the public square at Corte
which still awaits the monument to Paoli, in the vast crop of
humbuggery that he has succeeded in planting in this sterile
Ithacan island, and in the flabby, empty pocket-books of all the
wretched village curés, petty bourgeois, petty noblemen, whose
slender savings he has filched by dangling chimerical _combinazioni_
before their eyes. Upon my word, he needed all his phenomenal
assurance, together with the financial resources he now has at his
command to satisfy all demands, to venture to show his face here
again.

"After all, how much truth is there in these fabulous works
undertaken by the _Caisse Territoriale_?

"None at all.

"Mines which do not yield, which will never yield, as they exist
only on paper; quarries which as yet know not pickaxe or powder;
untilled, sandy moors, which they survey with a gesture, saying,
'We begin here, and we go way over yonder, to the devil.' It's the
same with the forests,--one whole densely wooded slope of
Monte-Rotondo, which belongs to us, it seems, but which it is not
practicable to cut unless aeronauts should do duty as woodcutters.
So as to the mineral baths, of which this wretched hamlet of
Pozzonegro is one of the most important, with its fountain, whose
amazing ferruginous properties Paganetti is constantly vaunting. Of
packet-boats, not a trace. Yes, there is an old, half-ruined
Genoese tower, on the shore of the Bay of Ajaccio, with this
inscription on a tarnished panel over its hermetically closed door:
'Paganetti Agency, Maritime Company, Bureau of Information.' The
bureau is kept by fat gray lizards in company with a screech-owl.
As for the railroads, I noticed that all the excellent Corsicans to
whom I mentioned them, replied with cunning smiles, disconnected
phrases, full of mystery; and not until this morning did I obtain
the exceedingly farcical explanation of all this reticence.

"I had read among the documents which the Governor waves before our
eyes from time to time, like a fan to inflate his _blague_, a deed
of a marble quarry at a place called Taverna, two hours from
Pozzonegro. Availing myself of our visit to this place, I jumped on
a mule this morning, without a word to any one, and, guided by a
tall rascal, with the legs of a deer,--a perfect specimen of the
Corsican poacher or smuggler, with his great red pipe between his
teeth,--I betook myself to Taverna. After a horrible journey among
cliffs intersected by crevasses, bogs, and abysses of immeasurable
depth, where my mule maliciously amused himself by walking close to
the edge, as if he were measuring it with his shoes, we descended
an almost perpendicular surface to our destination,--a vast desert
of rocks, absolutely bare, all white with the droppings of gulls
and mews; for the sea is just below, very near, and the silence of
the place was broken only by the beating of the waves and the
shrill cries of flocks of birds flying in circles. My guide, who
has a holy horror of customs officers and gendarmes, remained at
the top of the cliff, because of a small custom-house station on
the shore, while I bent my steps toward a tall red building which
reared its three stories aloft in that blazing solitude, the
windows broken, the roof-tiles in confusion, and over the rotting
door an immense sign: '_Caisse Territoriale. Carr--bre--54._' The
wind and sun and rain have destroyed the rest.

"Certainly there has been at some time an attempt made to work the
mine, for there is a large, square, yawning hole, with cleanly-cut
edges and patches of red streaked with brown, like leprous spots,
along its sterile walls; and among the nettles at the bottom
enormous blocks of marble of the variety known in commerce as
_griotte_, condemned blocks of which no use can be made for lack of
a proper road leading to the quarry, or a harbor which would enable
boats to approach the hill; and, more than all else, for lack of
sufficient funds to supply either of those needs. So the quarry,
although within a few cable-lengths of the shore, is abandoned,
useless, and a nuisance, like Robinson Crusoe's boat, with the same
drawbacks as to availability. These details of the distressing
history of our only territorial possession were furnished me by an
unhappy survivor, shivering with fever, whom I found in the
basement of the yellow house trying to cook a piece of kid over the
acrid smoke of a fire of mastic branches.

"That man, who comprises the whole staff of the _Caisse
Territoriale_ in Corsica, is Paganetti's foster-father, an
ex-lighthouse-keeper who does not mind loneliness. The Governor
leaves him there partly from charity, and also because an
occasional letter from the Taverna quarry produces a good effect at
meetings of shareholders. I had great difficulty in extorting any
information from that three-fourths wild man, who gazed at me
suspiciously, in ambush behind his goat-skin _pelone_; he did
tell me, however, unintentionally, what the Corsicans understand by
the term railroad, and why they assume this mysterious manner when
they mention it. While I was trying to find out whether he knew
anything of the scheme for an iron road in the island, the old
fellow did not put on the cunning smile I had observed in his
compatriots, but said to me quite naturally, in very good French,
but in a voice as rusty and stiff as an old lock that is seldom
used:

"'Oh! moussiou, no need of railroads here--'

"'But they are very valuable, very useful to make communication
easier.'

"'I don't say that ain't true; but with the gendarmes we don't need
anything more.'

"'The gendarmes?'

"'To be sure.'

"The misunderstanding lasted fully five minutes, before I finally
comprehended that the secret police are known here as the
'railroads.' As there are many Corsican police officials on the
Continent, they make use of an honest euphemism to describe their
degrading occupation in their family circle. You ask the kinsmen of
one of them, 'Where's your brother Ambrosini?' 'What is your Uncle
Barbicaglia doing?' They will answer, with a little wink: 'He has a
place on the railroad;' and everybody knows what that means. Among
the lower classes, the peasants, who have never seen a railroad and
have no idea what it is, there is a perfectly serious belief that
the great department of the secret imperial police has no other
name than that. Our principal agent in the island shares that
touching innocence; this will give you an idea of the condition of
the _Line from Ajaccio to Bastia via Bonifacio, Porto Vecchio,
etc._, which figures on the great books with green backs in the
Paganetti establishment. In a word, all the assets of the
territorial bank are comprised in a few desks and two old
hovels--the whole hardly worthy of a place in the rubbish-yard on
Rue Saint-Ferdinand, where I hear the weathercocks creaking and the
old doors slamming every night as I fall asleep.

"But in that case what has been done, what is being done with the
enormous sums that M. Jansoulet has poured into the treasury in the
last five months, to say nothing of what has come from other
sources attracted by that magic name? I fully agreed with you that
all these soundings and borings and purchases of land, which appear
on the books in a fine round hand, were immeasurably exaggerated.
But how could any one suspect such infernal impudence? That is why
M. le Gouverneur was so disgusted at the idea of taking me on this
electoral trip. I have not thought it best to have an explanation
on the spot. My poor Nabob has enough on his mind with his
election. But, as soon as we have returned, I shall place all the
details of my long investigation before his eyes; and I will
extricate him from this den of thieves by persuasion or by force.
They have finished their negotiations downstairs. Old Piedigriggio
is crossing the square, playing with his long peasant's purse,
which looks to me to be well-filled. The bargain is concluded, I
suppose. A hasty adieu, my dear Monsieur Joyeuse; remember me to
the young ladies, and bid them keep a tiny place for me at the
work-table.

"PAUL DE GÉRY."

The electoral cyclone in which they had been enveloped in Corsica crossed the sea in their wake like the blast of a sirocco, followed them to Paris and blew madly through the apartments on Place Vendôme, which were thronged from morning till night by the usual crowd, increased by the constant arrival of little men as dark as carob-beans, with regular, bearded faces, some noisy, buzzing and chattering, others silent, self-contained and dogmatic, the two types of the race in which the same climate produces different results. All those famished islanders made appointments, in the wilds of their uncivilized fatherland, to meet one another at the Nabob's table, and his house had become a tavern, a restaurant, a market-place. In the dining-room, where the table was always set, there was always some Corsican, newly arrived, in the act of taking a bite, with the bewildered and greedy expression of a relation from the country.

The noisy, blatant breed of election agents is the same everywhere; but these men were distinguished by something more of ardor, a more impassioned zeal, a turkey-cock vanity heated white-hot. The most insignificant clerk, inspector, mayor's secretary, or village schoolmaster talked as if he had a whole canton behind him and the pockets of his threadbare coat stuffed full of ballots. And it is a fact, which Jansoulet had had abundant opportunity to verify, that in the Corsican villages the families are so ancient, of such humble origin, with so many ramifications, that a poor devil who breaks stones on the high road finds some way to work out his relationship to the greatest personages on the island, and in that way wields a serious influence. As the national temperament, proud, cunning, intriguing, revengeful, intensifies these complications, the result is that great care must be taken as to where one puts his foot among the snares that are spread from one end of the island to the other.

The most dangerous part of it was that all those people were jealous of one another, detested one another, quarrelled openly at the table on the subject of the election, exchanging black glances, grasping the hilts of their knives at the slightest dispute, talking very loud and all together, some in the harsh, resonant Genoese patois, others in the most comical French, choking with restrained insults, throwing at one another's heads the names of unknown villages, dates of local history which suddenly placed two centuries of family feuds upon the table between two covers. The Nabob was afraid that his breakfasts would end tragically, and tried to calm all those violent natures with his kindly, conciliatory smile. But Paganetti reassured him. According to him, the vendetta, although still kept alive in Corsica, very rarely employs the stiletto and the firearm in these days. The anonymous letter has taken their place. Indeed, unsigned letters were received every day at Place Vendôme, after the style of this one:--

"You are so generous, Monsieur Jansoulet, that I can do no less
than point out to you Sieur Bornalinco (Ange-Marie) as a traitor
who has gone over to your enemies; I have a very different story to
tell of his cousin Bornalinco (Louis-Thomas), who is devoted to the
good cause," etc.

Or else:

"Monsieur Jansoulet, I fear that your election will be badly
managed and will come to nothing if you continue to employ Castirla
(Josué) of the canton of Odessa, while his kinsman, Luciani, is the
very man you need."

Although he finally gave up reading such missives, the poor candidate was shaken by all those doubts, by all those passions, being caught in a network of petty intrigues, his mind full of terror and distrust, anxious, excited, nervous, feeling keenly the truth of the Corsican proverb:

"If you are very ill-disposed to your enemy, pray that he may have an election in his family."

We can imagine that the check-book and the three great drawers in the mahogany commode were not spared by that cloud of devouring locusts that swooped down upon "Moussiou Jansoulet's" salons. Nothing could be more comical than the overbearing way in which those worthy islanders negotiated their loans, abruptly and with an air of defiance. And yet they were not the most terrible, except in the matter of boxes of cigars, which vanished in their pockets so rapidly as to make one think they proposed to open a _Civette_ on their return to the island. But just as wounds grow red and inflamed on very hot days, so the election had caused an amazing recrudescence in the systematic pillage that reigned in the house. The expenses of advertising were considerable: Moëssard's articles, sent to Corsica in packages of twenty thousand, thirty thousand copies, with portraits, biographies, pamphlets, all the printed clamor that it is possible to raise around a name. And then there was no diminution in the ordinary consumption of the panting pumps established around the reservoir of millions. On one side the Work of Bethlehem, a powerful machine, pumping at regular intervals, with tremendous energy; the _Caisse Territoriale_, with marvellous power of suction, indefatigable in its operation, with triple and quadruple action, of several thousand horse-power; and the Schwalbach pump, and the Bois-l'Héry pump, and how many more; some of enormous size, making a great noise, with audacious pistons, others more quiet and reserved, with tiny valves, bearings skilfully oiled--toy-pumps as delicately constructed as the probosces of insects whose thirst causes stings, and which deposit poison on the spot from which they suck their life; but all working with the same unanimity, and fatally certain to cause, if not an absolute drought, at all events a serious lowering of the level.

Already unfavorable reports, vague as yet, were in circulation on the Bourse. Was it a manoeuvre of the enemy, of that Hemerlingue against whom Jansoulet was waging ruthless financial war, trying to defeat all his operations, and losing very considerable sums at the game, because he had against him his own excitable nature, his adversary's cool-headedness and the bungling of Paganetti, whom he used as a man of straw? In any event, the star of gold had turned pale. Paul de Géry learned as much from Père Joyeuse, who had entered the employ of a broker as book-keeper, and was thoroughly posted on matters connected with the Bourse; but what alarmed him more than all else was the Nabob's strange agitation, the craving for excitement which had succeeded the admirable calmness of conscious strength, of serenity, the disappearance of his Southern sobriety, the way in which he stimulated himself before eating by great draughts of _raki_, talking loud and laughing uproariously like a common sailor during his watch on deck. One felt that the man was tiring himself out to escape some absorbing thought, which was visible nevertheless in the sudden contraction of all the muscles of his face when it passed through his mind, or when he was feverishly turning over the pages of his tarnished little memorandum-book. The serious interview, the decisive explanation that Paul was so desirous to have with him, Jansoulet would not have at any price. He passed his evenings at the club, his mornings in bed, and as soon as he was awake had his bedroom full of people, who talked to him while he was dressing, and to whom he replied with his face in his wash-bowl. If, by any miracle, de Géry caught him for a second, he would run away or cut him short with a: "Not now, I beg you." At last the young man resorted to heroic measures.

One morning about five o'clock, Jansoulet, on returning from his club, found on the table beside his bed a little note which he took at first for one of the anonymous denunciations which he received every day. It was a denunciation, in very truth, but signed, written with the utmost frankness, breathing the loyalty and youthful seriousness of the man who wrote it. De Géry set before him very clearly all the infamous schemes, all the speculations by which he was surrounded. He called the rascals by their names, without circumlocution. There was not one among the ordinary habitués of the house who was not a suspicious character, not one who came there for any other purpose than to steal or lie. From attic to cellar, pillage and waste. Bois-l'Héry's horses were unsound, the Schwalbach gallery a fraud, Moëssard's articles notorious blackmail. De Géry had drawn up a long detailed list of those impudent frauds, with proofs in support of his allegations; but he commended especially to Jansoulet's attention the matter of the _Caisse Territoriale_, as the really dangerous element in his situation. In the other matters money alone was at risk; in this, honor was involved. Attracted by the Nabob's name, by his title of president of the council, hundreds of stockholders had walked into that infamous trap, seeking gold in the footsteps of that lucky miner. That fact imposed a terrible responsibility upon him which he would understand by reading the memorandum relating to the concern, which was falsehood and fraud, pure and simple, from beginning to end.