Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

Le Merquier was no longer reading. After the reporter, the orator came upon the stage, the judge rather. His face was devoid of expression, his glance averted, and nothing lived, nothing stirred in his long body, but the right arm, that long, bony arm in its short sleeve, which moved mechanically up and down like a sword of justice, and punctuated the end of each sentence with the cruel and inexorable gesture of beheading. And it was in truth a veritable execution at which that audience was looking on. The orator would have been glad to omit from consideration the scandalous legends, the mystery that hovered over the amassing of that colossal fortune in distant lands, far from all supervision. But there were in the candidate's life certain points difficult to explain, certain details--He hesitated, seemed to be selecting his words with great care, then, as if recognizing the impossibility of formulating the direct charge, he continued: "Let us not degrade the discussion, Messieurs. You have understood me, you know to what infamous reports,--to what calumnies I would that I might say,--I allude; but truth compels me to declare that when Monsieur Jansoulet, being summoned before our third committee, was called upon to controvert the charges made against him, his explanations were so vague that, while we were persuaded of his innocence, our scrupulous regard for your honor led us to reject a candidate tainted with ordure of that sort. No, that man should not be allowed to sit among you. Indeed, what would he do here? Having resided so long in the Orient, he has forgotten the laws, the morals, the customs of his own country. He believes in the hasty administration of justice, bastinadoes in the public streets; he relies upon abuses of power, and, what is still worse, upon the venality, the cowering degradation of all mankind. He is the merchant who thinks that everything can be bought if he offers enough for it,--even the votes of electors, even the consciences of his colleagues."

You should have seen the artless admiration with which those estimable portly deputies, torpid with good living, listened to that ascetic, that man of another epoch, as if some Saint-Jerome had come forth from the depths of his thebaid to overwhelm with his burning eloquence, in the Senate of the Empire of the East, the unblushing profligacy of prevaricators and extortioners. How fully they understood the noble sobriquet of "My Conscience," which the Palais de Justice bestowed upon him, and which suited him so well with his great height and his wooden gestures! In the galleries the enthusiasm was even greater. Pretty faces leaned forward to see him, to drink in his words. Murmurs of approval ran along the benches, waving bouquets of all shades of color, like the wind blowing through a field of grain in flower. A woman's voice exclaimed in a slight foreign accent: "Bravo! bravo!"

And the mother?

Standing motionless, absorbed by her eager desire to understand something of that courtroom phraseology, of those mysterious allusions, she was like the deaf-mutes who detect what is said in their presence only by the movement of the lips, by the expression of the face. Now, one had only to look at her son and Le Merquier to understand what injury one was inflicting upon the other, what treacherous poisoned meaning fell from that long harangue upon the poor devil who might have been thought to be asleep, save for the quivering of his broad shoulders and the clenching of his hands in his hair, in which they rioted madly, while concealing his face. Oh! if she could have called to him from where she stood: "Don't be afraid, my son! If they all despise you, your mother loves you. Let us go away together. What do we care for them?" And for a moment she could almost believe that what she said to him thus in the depths of her heart reached him by virtue of some mysterious intuition. He had risen, shaken his curly head, with its flushed cheeks, and its thick lips quivering nervously with a childish longing to burst into tears. But, instead of leaving his bench, he clung to it, his great hands crushing the wooden rail. The other had finished; now it was his turn to reply.

"Messieurs--" he said.

He stopped instantly, dismayed by the hoarse, horribly dull and vulgar sound of his voice, which he heard for the first time in public. And in that pause, tormented by twitchings of the face, by fruitless efforts to find the intonation he sought, he must needs summon strength to make his defence. And if the poor man's agony was touching to behold, the old mother up yonder, leaning forward, breathing hard, moving her lips nervously as if to assist him to find his words, sent back to him a faithful imitation of his torture. Although he could not see her, having his face turned away from that gallery which he intentionally avoided, that maternal breath, the ardent magnetism of those black eyes gave him life at last, and the fetters suddenly dropped from his speech and his gestures.

"First of all, Messieurs, let me say that I do not come here to defend my election. If you believe that electoral morals have not always been the same in Corsica, that all the irregularities committed must be attributed to the corrupting influence of my money and not to the uncivilized and passionate nature of a people, reject me; it will be justice and I shall not murmur. But there is something else than my election involved in this matter; accusations have been made which attack my honor, which bring it directly in question, and to those alone I propose to reply." His voice gradually became stronger, still trembling and indistinct, but with now and then a thrilling note such as we sometimes hear in voices whose original harshness has undergone some changes. He sketched his life very rapidly, his early days, his departure for the Orient. You would have said that it was one of the eighteenth century tales of barbarian pirates scouring the Latin seas, of beys and fearless Provencaux, dark as crickets, who always end by marrying some sultana and "taking the turban," according to the old Marseillais expression. "For my part," said the Nabob, with his ingenuous smile, "I had no need to take the turban to enrich myself, I contented myself with importing into that land of indolence and utter heedlessness the activity, the pliability of a Frenchman from the South, and I succeeded in a few years in making one of the fortunes that are made nowhere else except in those infernally hot countries where everything is huge, hurried, out of proportion, where flowers grow in a night, where a single tree produces a whole forest. The excuse for such fortunes lies in the use that is made of them, and I undertake to say that no favorite of destiny ever tried harder than I did to earn forgiveness for his wealth. I did not succeed."--No, indeed, he had not succeeded. From all the gold he had sown with such insane lavishness he had reaped naught but hatred and contempt. Hatred! Who else could boast of having stirred up so much of that as he, as a vessel stirs up the mud when its keel touches bottom? He was too rich; that took the place in him of all sorts of vices, of all sorts of crimes, and singled him out for anonymous acts of vengeance, for cruel and persistent animosities.

"Ah! Messieurs," cried the poor Nabob, raising his clenched fists, "I have known poverty, I have struggled with it hand to hand, and it is a terrible struggle, I give you my word. But to struggle against wealth, to defend one's happiness, one's honor, one's peace of mind, feebly protected by piles of gold pieces which topple over and crush one, is a far more ghastly, more heart-sickening task. Never, in the gloomiest of my days of destitution, did I suffer the torture, the agony, the sleeplessness with which fortune has overwhelmed me, this horrible fortune which I abhor and which suffocates me! I am known as the Nabob in Paris. Nabob is not the proper name for me, but Pariah, a social pariah stretching out his arms, wide open, to a society that will have none of him."

Printed upon paper these words may seem cold; but there, before the whole Chamber, that man's defence seemed to be instinct with an eloquent and imposing serenity, which aroused astonishment at first, coming from that clown, that upstart, unread, uneducated, with his Rhone boatman's voice and his street porter's bearing, and afterward moved his auditors strangely by its unrefined, uncivilized character, utterly at variance with all parliamentary traditions. Already tokens of approval had manifested themselves among the benches, accustomed to submit to the colorless, monotonous downpour of administrative language. But at that cry of frenzy and despair hurled at wealth by the unfortunate man whom it held in its toils, whom it drenched and drowned in its floods of gold, and who struggled against it, calling for help from the depths of his Pactolus, the whole Chamber rose with fervent applause, with hands outstretched as if to give the unhappy Nabob those tokens of esteem which he seemed to covet so earnestly, and at the same time to save him from shipwreck. Jansoulet was conscious of it, and, warmed by that manifestation of sympathy, he continued, with head erect and assured glance:

"You have just been told, Messieurs, that I am not worthy to sit among you. And the man who told you that was the very last man from whom I should have expected it, for he alone knows the painful secret of my life; he alone was able to speak for me, to justify me and convince you. He did not choose to do it. Very good! I will make the attempt, whatever it may cost me. Outrageously calumniated as I have been before the whole country, I owe to myself, I owe to my children this public justification, and I have decided to make it."

With that he turned abruptly toward the gallery where he knew that the enemy was watching him, and stopped suddenly, horror-stricken. Directly in front of him, behind the baroness's pale, malicious little face, his mother, his mother whom he believed to be two hundred leagues away from the terrible storm, stood leaning against the wall, gazing at him, holding toward him her divine face streaming with tears, but proud and radiant none the less in her Bernard's great success. For it was a genuine success of sincere, eminently human emotion, which a few words more would change into a triumph.--"Go on! Go on!" men shouted from all sides of the Chamber, to reassure him, to encourage him. But Jansoulet did not speak. And yet he had very little to say to justify himself: "Calumny wilfully confused two names. My name is Bernard Jansoulet. The other's name was Jansoulet Louis." Not another word.

But that was too much in his mother's presence, as she was still ignorant of her oldest son's dishonor. It was too much for the family respect and unity.

He fancied he could hear his old father's voice: "I am dying of shame, my son."--Would not she die of shame too, if he were to speak? He met his mother's smile with a sublime glance of renunciation; then he continued in a dull voice and with a gesture of discouragement:

"Excuse me, Messieurs, this explanation is decidedly beyond my strength. Order an investigation into my life, open to all and in the broad light of day, for any one can understand my every act. I swear to you that you will find nothing therein which should debar me from sitting among the representatives of my country."

The amazement, the disappointment at that surrender, which seemed to all the sudden downfall of great effrontery when brought to bay, were beyond all bounds. There was a moment of excitement on the benches, the confusion of a standing vote, which the Nabob watched listlessly in the uncertain light from the stained glass windows, as the condemned man watches the surging crowd from the platform of the scaffold; then, after the suspense of a century which precedes a supreme moment, the president announced amid profound silence, in the simplest manner imaginable:

"Monsieur Bernard Jansoulet's election is declared void."

Never was a man's life cut short with less solemnity or pother.

Mere Jansoulet, up yonder in her gallery, understood nothing except that she could see gaps on the benches all around,--that people were getting up and going away. Soon no one remained with her save the fat man and the lady in the white hat, who were leaning over the rail and gazing curiously at Bernard, who seemed to be preparing to go, for he was very calmly packing thick bundles of papers into a great portfolio. His papers arranged, he rose and left his seat.--Ah! the lives of those who sit in high places sometimes have very cruel moments. Gravely, heavily, under the eyes of the whole Chamber, he must redescend the steps he had climbed at the price of so much toil and money, only to be hurled back to their foot by an inexorable fatality.

It was that for which the Hemerlingues were waiting, following with their eyes to its last stage that heart-rending, humiliating exit which piles upon the back of the rejected one something of the shame and horror of an expulsion; then, as soon as the Nabob had disappeared, they looked at each other with a silent laugh and left the gallery, the old woman not daring to ask them to enlighten her, being warned by her instinct of the bitter hostility of those two. Left alone, she gave all her attention to something else that was being read, convinced that her son's interests were still under discussion. There was talk of elections, of counting ballots, and the poor mother, leaning forward over the rail in her shabby cap, knitting her thick eyebrows, would have listened religiously to the report on the Sarigue election to the very end, had not the usher who had admitted her come to tell her that it was all over and that she had better go.

"Really? It's all over?" she said, rising as if with regret.

And she added, timidly, in a low tone:

"Did he--did he win?"

It was so ingenuous, so touching, that the usher had not the slightest inclination to laugh.

"Unfortunately no, Madame. Monsieur Jansoulet did not win. But why did he stop after he made such a good start? If it's true that he was never in Paris before and that another Jansoulet did all they accuse him of, why didn't he say so?"

The old mother turned very pale and clung to the stair-rail.

She had understood.

Bernard's sudden pause when he caught sight of her, the sacrifice he had offered her so simply with the eloquent glance of a murdered beast came to her mind; by the same blow the shame of the Elder, of the favorite child, was confounded with the other's downfall, a two-edged maternal sorrow, which tore her heart whichever way she turned. Yes, yes, it was for her sake that he had forborne to speak. But she would not accept such a sacrifice. He must return at once and explain himself to the deputies.

"My son? where is my son?"

"Below, Madame, in his carriage. It was he who sent me to look for you."

She darted in front of the usher, walking rapidly, talking aloud, jostling against little black-faced, bearded men who were gesticulating in the corridors. After the Salle des Pas-Perdus, she passed through a great ante-chamber, circular in shape, where servants, drawn up respectfully in line, formed a living, bedizened dado on the high bare wall. From there she could see, through the glass doors, the iron gateway outside, the crowd, and among other waiting carriages the Nabob's. The peasant woman as she passed recognized her enormous neighbor of the gallery talking with the sallow man in spectacles who had declaimed against her son and was receiving all sorts of congratulations and warm grasps of the hand for his speech. Hearing the name of Jansoulet pronounced with an accompaniment of mocking, well-satisfied laughter, she slackened her long stride.

"At all events," said a young dandy with the face of a dissolute woman, "he didn't prove wherein our charges are false."

At that the old woman made a jagged hole through the group and exclaimed, taking her stand in front of Moessard:

"What he didn't tell you I will tell you. I am his mother, and it's my duty to speak."

She interrupted herself to seize Le Merquier's sleeve as he was slinking away.

"You, above all, you bad man, you are going to listen to me. What have you against my child? Don't you know who he is? Wait a moment and let me tell you."

She turned to the journalist:

"I had two sons, Monsieur--"

Moessard was no longer there. She returned to Le Merquier:

"Two sons, Monsieur--"

Le Merquier had disappeared.

"Oh! listen to me, some one, I entreat you," said the poor mother, throwing her hands and her words about, to recall, to detain her auditors; but they all fled, melted away, disappeared, deputies, reporters, strange and mocking faces to whom she insisted upon telling her story by main force, heedless of the indifference which greeted her sorrows and her joys, her maternal pride and affection expressed in a jargon of her own. And while she rushed about and labored thus, intensely excited, her cap awry, at once grotesque and sublime like all children of nature in the drama of civilization, calling to witness to her son's uprightness and the injustice of men even the footmen whose contemptuous impassiveness was more cruel than all the rest, Jansoulet, who had come to look for her, being anxious at her non-appearance, suddenly stood beside her.

"Take my arm, mother. You must not stay here."

He spoke very loud, with a manner so composed and calm that all laughter ceased, and the old woman, suddenly quieted, supported by the firm pressure of that arm, clinging to which the last trembling of her indignation vanished, left the palace between two respectful lines of people. A sublime though rustic couple, the son's millions illumining the mother's peasantry like the relics of a saint enclosed in a golden shrine, they disappeared in the bright sunlight, in the splendor of the gorgeous carriage, brutal irony in presence of that sore distress, a striking example of the ghastly poverty of wealth.

They sat side by side on the back seat, for they dreaded to be seen, and at first they did not speak. But as soon as the carriage had started, as soon as they had left behind the sorrowful Calvary where his honor remained on the gibbet, Jansoulet, at the end of his strength, laid his head against his mother's shoulder, hid his face in a fold of the old green shawl, and there, shedding hot tears, his whole body shaken by sobs, the cry of his infancy came once more to his lips, his _patois_ wail when he was a little child: "Mamma! mamma!"

XXII.

PARISIAN DRAMAS.

"Que l'heure est donc breve Qu'on passe en aimant! C'est moins qu'un moment, Un peu plus qu'un reve."[7]

In the half-light of the great salon clad in its summer garb, filled with flowers, the plush furniture swathed in white covers, the chandeliers draped in gauze, the shades lowered and the windows open, Madame Jenkins sits at the piano, picking out the last production of the fashionable musician of the day; a few sonorous chords accompany the exquisite lines, a melancholy _Lied_ in unequal measures, which seems to have been written for the serious sweetness of her voice and the anxious state of her mind.

"Le temps nous enleve, Notre enchantement,"[8]

sighs the poor woman, moved by the sound of her own lament; and while the notes fly away through the courtyard of the mansion, tranquil as usual, where the fountain is playing in the midst of a clump of rhododendrons, the singer interrupts herself, her hands prolonging the chord, her eyes fixed on the music, but her glance far, far away. The doctor is absent. The interests of his business and his health have banished him from Paris for a few days, and, as frequently happens in solitude, the fair Madame Jenkins' thoughts have assumed that serious cast, that analytical tendency which sometimes makes a brief separation fatal to the most united households. United they had not been for a long time. They met only at table, before the servants, hardly spoke to each other, unless he, the man of oleaginous manners, chose to indulge in some brutal, uncivil remark concerning her son, her years which were beginning to tell upon her at last, or a dress which was not becoming to her. Always gentle and serene, she forced back her tears, submitted to everything, pretended not to understand; not that she loved him still, after so much cruel and contemptuous treatment, but it was the old story, as Joe the coachman said, of "an old incubus who wants to be married." Heretofore a terrible obstacle, the life of the legitimate spouse, had prolonged a shameful situation. Now that the obstacle no longer existed, she wanted to put an end to the comedy, because of Andre, who might any day be forced to despise his mother, because of the world which they had been deceiving for ten years, so that she never went into society without a sinking at the heart, dreading the welcome that would be accorded her on the morrow of a disclosure. To her hints, her entreaties, Jenkins had replied at first with vague phrases, with grandiloquent gestures: "Do you doubt me? Isn't our engagement sacred?"

FOOTNOTES:

[7] "How swift flies the hour
We pass in love's pleasures!
'Tis less than a moment,
Scarce more than a dream."

[8] "Time tears from our grasp
Our blissful enchantment."

He also dwelt upon the difficulty of keeping secret a ceremony of such importance. Then he had taken refuge in malevolent silence, big with chilling anger and violent resolutions. The duke's death, the check thereby administered to his insane vanity, had dealt the last blow; for disaster, which often brings together hearts that are ripe for a mutual understanding, consummates and completes disunion. And that was a genuine disaster. The popularity of the Jenkins Pearls suddenly arrested, the very thorough exposure of the position of the foreign physician, the charlatan, by old Bouchereau in the journal of the Academy, caused the leaders of society to gaze at one another in alarm, even paler from terror than from the absorption of arsenic into their systems, and the Irishman had already felt the effect of those bewilderingly sudden changes of the wind which make Parisian infatuations so dangerous.

It was for that reason, doubtless, that Jenkins had deemed it advisable to disappear for some time, leaving Madame to continue to frequent the salons that were still open, in order to feel the pulse of public opinion and hold it in awe. It was a cruel task for the poor woman, who found everywhere something of the same cold, distant reception she had met with at Hemerlingue's. But she did not complain, hoping in this way to earn her marriage, to knit between him and herself, as a last resort, the painful bond of pity, of trials undergone in common. And as she knew that she was always in demand in society because of her talent, because of the artistic entertainment she furnished at select parties, being always ready to lay her long gloves and her fan on the piano, as a prelude to some portion of her rich repertory, she labored constantly, passed her afternoons turning over new music, selecting by preference melancholy and complicated pieces, the modern music which is no longer content to be an art but is becoming a science, and is much better adapted to the demands of our nervous fancies, our anxieties, than to the demands of sentiment.

"C'est moins qu'un moment,
Un pen plus qu'un reve.
Le temps nous enleve
Notre enchantement."

A flood of bright light suddenly burst into the salon with the maid, who brought her mistress a card: "Heurteux, _homme d'affaires_."

The gentleman was waiting. He insisted on seeing Madame.

"Did you tell him that the doctor was away from home?"

She had told him; but it was Madame with whom he wished to speak.

"With me?"

With a feeling of uneasiness she scrutinized that coarse, rough card, that unfamiliar, harsh name: "Heurteux." Who could he be?

"Very well; show him in."

Heurteux, _homme d'affaires_, coming from the bright sunlight into the semi-darkness of the salon, blinked uncertainly, tried to distinguish his surroundings. She, on the contrary, distinguished very clearly a stiff, wooden figure, grizzly whiskers, a protruding under-jaw, one of those brigands of the Law whom we meet in the outskirts of the Palais de Justice, and who seem to have been born fifty years old, with a bitter expression about the mouth, an envious manner, and morocco satchels under their arms. He sat down on the edge of the chair to which she waved him, turned his head to make sure that the servant had left the room, then opened his satchel with great deliberation, as if to look for a paper. Finding that he did not speak, she began in an impatient tone:

"I must inform you, Monsieur, that my husband is away and that I am not familiar with any of his business matters."

Unmoved, with his hand still fumbling among his documents, the man replied:

"I am quite well aware that Monsieur Jenkins is away, Madame--" he laid particular stress on the words "Monsieur Jenkins,"--"especially as I come from him."

She stared at him in terror.

"From him?"

"Alas! yes, Madame. The doctor--as you are doubtless aware--is in a very embarrassed position for the moment. Unfortunate operations on the Bourse, the downfall of a great financial institution in which he had funds invested, the heavy burden of the Work of Bethlehem now resting on him alone, all these disasters combined have compelled him to form an heroic resolution. He is selling his house, his horses, everything that he owns, and has given me a power of attorney to that end."

He had found at last what he was looking for, one of those stamped papers, riddled with memoranda and words erased and interlined, into which the unfeeling law sometimes crowds so much cowardice and falsehood. Madame Jenkins was on the point of saying: "But I was here. I would have done whatever he wished, carried out all his orders," when she suddenly realized, from the visitor's lack of constraint, his self-assured, almost insolent manner, that she too was involved in that general overturn, in that throwing overboard of the expensive house and useless chattels, and that her departure would be the signal for the sale.

She rose abruptly. The man, still seated, continued:

"What I still have to say, Madame,"--Oh! she knew, she could have dictated what he still had to say--"is so painful, so delicate--Monsieur Jenkins is leaving Paris for a long time, and, fearing to expose you to the perils and hazards of the new life upon which he is entering, to take you away from a son of whom you are very fond, and in whose interest it will be better perhaps--"

She no longer heard or saw him, but, given over to despair, to madness perhaps, while he lost himself in involved sentences, she listened to a voice within persistently singing the air which haunted her in that terrible crash, as the drowning man's eyes retain the image of the last object upon which they rested.

"Le temps nous enleve
Notre enchantement."

Suddenly her pride returned to her.

"Let us put an end to this, Monsieur. All your circumlocution and your fine words are simply an additional insult. The truth is that I am to be driven out, turned into the street like a servant."

"O Madame! Madame! The situation is painful enough, let us not embitter it by words. In working out his _modus vivendi_, Monsieur Jenkins parts from you, but he does it with death in his heart, and the propositions I am instructed to make to you are a sufficient proof of his feeling for you. In the first place, as to furniture and clothes, I am authorized to allow you to take--"

"Enough," said she.

She rushed to the bell:

"I am going out. My hat, my cloak at once,--something, no matter what. I am in a hurry."

And while her servant went to bring what she required, she added:

"Everything here belongs to Monsieur Jenkins. Let him dispose of it as he will. I will take nothing from him--do not insist--it is useless."

The man did not insist. His errand being performed, the rest was of little consequence to him.

Coolly, without excitement, she carefully adjusted her hat in front of the mirror, the servant attaching the veil and arranging the folds of the cape over her shoulders; then she looked around for a moment to see if she had forgotten anything that was of value to her. No, nothing; her son's letters were in her pocket; she never parted from them.

"Does Madame wish the carriage?"

"No."

And she left the house.

It was about five o'clock. At that moment Bernard Jansoulet was passing through the iron gateway of the Corps Legislatif, his mother on his arm; but, painful as was the drama that was being enacted there, this one far surpassed it in that respect, being more sudden, more unforeseen, devoid of the slightest solemnity, one of the private domestic dramas which Paris improvises every hour in the day; and it may be that that gives to the air we breathe in Paris that vibrating, quivering quality which excites the nerves. The weather was superb. The streets in those wealthy quarters, as broad and straight as avenues, shone resplendent in the light, which was already beginning to fade, enlivened by open windows, by flower-laden balconies, by glimpses of verdure toward the boulevards, light and tremulous between the harsh, rigid lines of stone. Madame Jenkins' hurried steps were bent in that direction, as she hastened along at random in a pitiable state of bewilderment. What a horrible downfall! Five minutes ago, rich, encompassed by all the respect and comforts of a luxurious existence. Now, nothing! Not even a roof to shelter her, not even a name! The street.

Where was she to go? What would become of her?

At first she had thought of her son. But to confess her sin, to blush before the child who respected her, to weep before him while depriving herself of the right to be consoled, was beyond her strength. No, there was nothing left for her but death. To die as soon as possible, to avoid shame by disappearing utterly, the inevitable end of situations from which there is no escape. But where to die? And how? There were so many ways of turning one's back on life! And as she walked along she reviewed them all in her mind. All around her was overflowing life, the charm that Paris lacks in winter, the open-air display of its splendor, its refined elegance, visible at that hour of the day and that season of the year around the Madeleine and its flower-market, in a space marked off by the fragrance of the roses and carnations. On the broad sidewalk, where gorgeous toilets were displayed, blending their rustling with the cool quivering of the leaves, there was something of the pleasure of a meeting in a salon, an air of acquaintance among the promenaders, smiles and quiet greetings as they passed. And suddenly Madame Jenkins, anxious concerning the distress depicted on her features, and concerning what people might think to see her hurrying along with that heedless, preoccupied manner, slackened her pace to the saunter of a simple promenader, and stopped to look at the shop windows. The bright-colored, gauzy window displays all spoke of travelling, of the country: light trains for the fine gravel of the park, hats wrapped about with gauze as a protection against the sun at the seashore, fans, umbrellas, purses. Her eyes gazed at all those gewgaws without seeing them; but an indistinct, pale reflection in the clear glass showed her her own body lying motionless on a bed in a furnished lodging, the leaden sleep of a narcotic in her head, or outside the walls yonder, displacing the mud beneath some boat. Which was the better?

She hesitated, comparing the two; then, having formed her decision, walked rapidly away with the resolute stride of the woman who tears herself regretfully from the artful temptations of the shop-window. As she hurried along, the Marquis de Monpavon, vivacious and superb, with a flower in his buttonhole, saluted her at a distance with the grand flourish of the hat so dear to the vanity of woman, the acme of elegance in the way of street salutations, the hat raised high in air above a rigid head. She answered with the polite greeting of the true Parisian, hardly expressed by an imperceptible movement of the figure and a smile in the eyes; and, seeing that exchange of worldly courtesies amid the springtime merrymaking, no one would have suspected that the same sinister thought guided the footsteps of those two, who met by chance on the road they were both following, in opposite directions, but aiming for the same goal.

The prediction of Mora's valet with regard to the marquis was fulfilled: "We may die or lose our power, then you will be called to account and it will be a terrible time." It was a terrible time. With the utmost difficulty the ex-receiver-general had obtained an extension of a fortnight in which to reimburse the Treasury, clinging to one last chance, that Jansoulet's election would be confirmed, and that, having recovered his millions, he would come once more to his assistance. The decision of the Chamber had deprived him of that supreme hope. As soon as he heard of it, he returned very calmly to the club and went up to his room where Francis was impatiently waiting to hand him an important paper that had arrived during the day. It was a notice to Sieur Louis-Marie-Agenor de Monpavon to appear the next day at the office of the examining magistrate. Was that addressed to the director of the _Caisse Territoriale_ or to the defaulting ex-receiver-general? In any event, the employment at the outset of the brutal method of formal summons, instead of a quiet notification, was sufficiently indicative of the seriousness of the affair and the firm determination of the authorities.

In the face of such an extremity, which he had long foreseen and expected, the old beau's course was determined in advance. A Monpavon in the police-court, a Monpavon librarian at Mazas! Never! He put all his affairs in order, destroyed papers, carefully emptied his pockets, in which he placed only a few ingredients taken from his toilet-table, and all in such a perfectly calm and natural way that when he said to Francis as he left the room: "Going to take a bath. Beastly Chamber. Poisonous dirt," the servant believed what he said. Indeed, the marquis did not lie. After standing through that long and exciting sitting of the Chamber in the dust of the gallery, his legs ached as if he had spent two nights in a railway carriage; and as his resolve to die blended with his longing for a good bath, it occurred to the old sybarite to go to sleep in a bath-tub like What's-his-name--Thingamy--ps--ps--ps--and other famous characters of antiquity. It is doing him no more than justice to say that not one of those Stoics went forth to meet death more tranquilly than he.

Adorned with a white camellia with which, as he passed, the pretty flower-girl at the club decorated the buttonhole above his rosette as an officer of the Legion of Honor, he was walking lightly up Boulevard des Capucines, when the sight of Madame Jenkins disturbed his serenity for a moment. He noticed a youthful air about her, a flame in her eyes, a something so alluring that he stopped to look at her. Tall and lovely, her long black gauze dress trailing behind, her shoulders covered by a lace mantle over which a garland of autumn leaves fell from her hat, she passed on, disappeared amid the throng of other women no less stylish than she, in a perfumed atmosphere; and the thought that his eyes were about to close forever on that attractive spectacle, which he enjoyed as a connoisseur, saddened the old beau a little and diminished the elasticity of his walk. But a few steps farther on a meeting of another sort restored all his courage.

A shabby, shamefaced man, dazzled by the bright light, was crossing the boulevard; it was old Marestang, ex-senator, ex-minister, who was so deeply compromised in the affair of the _Tourteaux de Malte_, that, notwithstanding his age, his services, and the great scandal of such a prosecution, he had been sentenced to two years' imprisonment and stricken from the rolls of the Legion of Honor, where he was numbered among the great dignitaries. The affair was already ancient history, and the poor devil, a portion of his sentence having been remitted, had just come from prison, dejected, ruined, lacking even the wherewithal to gild his mental distress, for he had been compelled to disgorge. Standing on the edge of the sidewalk, he waited, hanging his head, until there should be an opportunity to cross the crowded street, sorely embarrassed by that enforced halt on the most frequented corner of the boulevards, caught between the foot-passengers and the stream of open carriages filled with familiar faces. Monpavon, passing near him, surprised his restless, timid glance, imploring recognition and at the same time seeking to avoid it. The idea that he might some day be reduced to that degree of humiliation caused him to shudder with disgust. "Nonsense! As if it were possible!" And, drawing himself up, inflating his breastplate, he walked on, with a firmer and more determined stride than before.

Monsieur de Monpavon is walking to his death. He goes thither by the long line of the boulevards, all aflame in the direction of the Madeleine, treading once more the springy asphalt like any loiterer, his nose in the air, his hands behind his back. He has plenty of time, there is nothing to hurry him,--the hour for the rendezvous is within his control. At every step he smiles, wafts a patronizing little greeting with the ends of his fingers, or performs the great flourish of the hat of a moment ago. Everything charms him, fascinates him, from the rumbling of the watering-carts to the rattle of the blinds at the doors of cafes which overflow to the middle of the sidewalk. The approach of death gives him the acute faculties of a convalescent, sensitive to all the beauties, all the hidden poesy of a lovely hour in summer in the heart of Parisian life,--of a lovely hour which will be his last, and which he would like to prolong until night. That is the reason, doubtless, why he passes the sumptuous establishment where he usually takes his bath; nor does he pause at the Chinese Baths. He is too well known hereabout. All Paris would know what had happened the same evening. There would be a lot of ill-bred gossip in clubs and salons, much spiteful comment on his death; and the old fop, the man of breeding, wishes to spare himself that shame, to plunge and be swallowed up in the uncertainty and anonymity of suicide, like the soldiers who, on the day after a great battle, are reported neither as living, wounded or dead, but simply as missing. That is why he had been careful to keep nothing upon him that might lead to his identification or furnish any precise information for the police reports, and why he seeks the distant, out-of-the-way quarters of the vast city, where the ghastly but comforting confusion of the common grave will protect him. Already the aspect of the boulevards has changed greatly. The crowd has become compact, more active and engrossed, the houses smaller and covered with business signs. When he has passed Portes Saint-Martin and Saint-Denis, through which the swarming overflow of the faubourgs streams at all hours of the day, the provincial character of the city becomes accentuated. The old beau no longer sees any one whom he knows and can boast of being a stranger to all.

The shopkeepers, who stare curiously at him, with his display of linen, his fine frock-coat, his erect figure, take him for some famous actor out for a little healthful exercise before the play, on the old boulevard, the scene of his earliest triumphs. The wind is cooler, the twilight darkens distant objects, and while the long street is still flooded with light in those portions through which he has passed, the light fades at every step. So it is with the past when its rays fall upon him who looks back and regrets. It seems to Monpavon that he is entering the darkness. He shivers a little, but does not lose courage, and walks on with head erect and unfaltering gait.

Monsieur de Monpavon is walking to his death. Now he enters the complicated labyrinth of noisy streets where the rumble of the omnibuses blends with the thousand and one industries of the working quarters, where the hot smoke from the factories is mingled with the fever of a whole population struggling against hunger. The air quivers, the gutters smoke, the buildings tremble as the heavy drays pass and collide at the corners of the narrow streets. Suddenly the marquis stops; he has found what he wanted. Between a charcoal dealer's dark shop and an undertaker's establishment, where the spruce boards leaning against the wall cause him to shudder, is a porte-cochere surmounted by a sign, the word "BATHS" on a dull lantern. He enters and crosses a damp little garden where a fountain weeps in a basin of artificial rockwork. That is just the dismal retreat he has been seeking. Who will ever dream of thinking that the Marquis de Monpavon came to that place to cut his throat? The house is at the end of the garden, a low house with green shutters, a glass door, and the false villa-like air that they all have. He orders a bath, plenty of towels, walks along the narrow corridor, and while the bath is being prepared, listening to the running water behind him, he smokes his cigar at the window, gazes at the flower-garden with its spindling lilacs, and the high wall that incloses it.

Adjoining it is a great yard, the yard of a fire-engine house with a gymnasium, whose poles and swings and horizontal bars, seen indistinctly over the wall, have the look of gibbets. A bugle rings out in the yard, and that blast carries the marquis back thirty years, reminds him of his campaigns in Algeria, the lofty ramparts of Constantine, Mora's arrival in the regiment, and duels, and select card-parties. Ah! how well life began! What a pity that those infernal cards--Ps--ps--ps--However, it's worth something to have saved one's breeding.

"Monsieur," said the attendant, "your bath is ready."

* * * * *

At that moment Madame Jenkins, pale and gasping for breath, entered Andre's studio, drawn thither by an instinct stronger than her will, by the feeling that she must embrace her child before she died. And yet, when she opened the door--he had given her a duplicate key--it was a relief to her to see that he had not returned, that her excitement, increased by a long walk, an unusual experience in her luxurious life as a woman of wealth, would have time to subside. No one in the room. But on the table the little note that he always left when he went out, so that his mother, whose visits, because of Jenkins' tyranny, had become more and more infrequent and brief, might know where he was, and either wait for him or join him. Those two had not ceased to love each other dearly, profoundly, despite the cruel circumstances which compelled them to introduce into their relations as mother and son the precautions, the clandestine mystery of a different kind of love.

"I am at my rehearsal," said the little note to-day, "I shall return about seven."

That attention from her son, whom she had not been to see for three weeks, and who persisted in expecting her none the less, brought to the mother's eyes a flood of tears which blinded her. One would have said that she had entered a new world. It was so light, so peaceful, so high, that little room which caught the last gleam of daylight on its windows, which was all aflame with the last rays of the sun already sinking below the horizon, and which seemed, like all attic rooms, carved out of a piece of sky, with its bare walls, decorated only by a large portrait, her own; nothing but her own portrait smiling in the place of honor and another in a gilt frame on the table. Yes, in very truth, the humble little lodging, which was still so light when all Paris was becoming dark, produced a supernatural impression upon her, despite the poverty of its scanty furniture, scattered through two rooms, its common chintz coverings, and its mantel adorned with two great bunches of hyacinths, the flowers that are drawn through the streets by cartloads in the morning. What a lovely, brave, dignified life she might have led there with her Andre! And in a moment, with the rapidity of a dream, she placed her bed in one corner, her piano in another, saw herself giving lessons, taking charge of the house, to which she brought her share of enthusiasm and courageous cheerfulness. How could she have failed to understand that that should be the duty, the pride of her widowhood? What blindness, what shameful weakness!

A sad mistake, doubtless, but one for which much extenuation might have been found in her easily influenced, affectionate nature, in the adroitness and knavery of her accomplice, who talked constantly of marriage, concealing from her the fact that he was not free himself, and when at last he was obliged to confess, drawing such a picture of the unrelieved gloom of his life, of his despair, of his love, that the poor creature, already so seriously involved in the eyes of the world, incapable of one of those heroic efforts which place one above false situations, had yielded at last, had accepted that twofold existence, at once so brilliant and so wretched, resting everything upon a lie that had lasted ten years. Ten years of intoxicating triumphs and indescribable anxiety, ten years during which she had never sung without the fear of being betrayed between two measures, during which the slightest remark concerning irregular establishments wounded her like an allusion to her own case, during which the expression of her face had gradually assumed that air of gentle humility, of a culprit demanding pardon. Then the certainty of being abandoned at some time had ruined even those borrowed joys, had caused her luxurious surroundings to wither and fade; and what agony, what suffering she had silently undergone, what never-ending humiliations, down to the last and most horrible of all!

While she reviews her life thus sorrowfully in the cool evening air and the peaceful calm of the deserted house, ringing laughter, an outburst of joyous youthful spirits ascends from the floor below; and remembering Andre's confidences, his last letter, in which he told her the great news, she tries to distinguish among those unfamiliar, youthful voices that of her daughter Elise, her son's fiancee, whom she does not know, whom she will never know. That thought, which completes the voluntary disherison of the mother, adds to the misery of her last moments and fills them with such a flood of remorse and regret that, notwithstanding her determination to be brave, she weeps and weeps.

The night falls gradually. Great streaks of shadow strike the sloping windows, while the sky, immeasurable in its depth, becomes colorless, seems to recede into the darkness. The roofs mass for the night as soldiers do for an attack. The clocks gravely tell each other the hour, while the swallows circle about in the neighborhood of a hidden nest and the wind makes its usual incursion among the ruins in the old lumber-yard. Tonight it blows with a wailing noise like the sea, with a shudder of fog; it blows from the river as if to remind the wretched woman that that is where she must go. Oh! how she shivers in her lace mantle at the thought! Why did she come here to revive her taste for life, which would be impossible after the confession she would be forced to make? Swift footsteps shake the staircase, the door is thrown open; it is Andre. He is singing, he is happy, and in a great hurry, for he is expected to dine with the Joyeuses. A glimmer of light, quick, so that the lover may beautify himself. But, as he scratches the match, he divines the presence of some one in the studio, a shadow moving among the motionless shadows.

"Who's there?"

Something answers, something like a stifled laugh or a sob. He thinks it is his young neighbors, a scheme of the "children" to amuse themselves. He draws near. Two hands, two arms seize him, are wound about him.

"It is I."

And in a feverish voice, which talks hurriedly in self-defence, she tells him that she is about to start on a long journey, and that before starting--

"A journey. Where are you going, pray?"

"Oh! I don't know. We are going ever so far away,--to his own country on some business of his."

"What! you won't be here for my play? It's to be given in three days. And then, right after it, my wedding. Nonsense! he can't prevent your being present at my wedding."

She excuses herself, invents reasons, but her burning hands, which her son holds in his, her unnatural voice, convince Andre that she is not telling the truth. He attempts to light the candles, but she prevents him.

"No, no, we don't need a light. It is better this way. Besides, I have so many preparations still to make; I must go."

They are both standing, ready for the parting; but Andre will not let her go until he has made her confess what the matter is, what tragic anxiety causes the wrinkles on that lovely face, in which the eyes--is it an effect of the twilight?--gleam with fierce brilliancy.

"Nothing--no, nothing, I promise you. Only the thought that I cannot share in your joys, your triumphs. But you know that I love you, you do not doubt your mother, do you? I have never passed a day without thinking of you. Do you do as much; keep a place in your heart for me. And now kiss me, and let me go at once. I have delayed too long."

A moment more and she will not have strength to do what she still has to do. She rushes toward the door.

"I say no, you shall not go. I have a feeling that some extraordinary thing is taking place in your life that you don't wish to tell me. You are in great sorrow, I am sure of it. That man has done some shameful thing to you."

"No, no; let me go, let me go."

But on the contrary, he holds her, holds her fast.

"Come, what is the matter? Tell me, tell me--"

Then, under his breath, in a low, loving voice, like a kiss:

"He has left you, has he not?"

The unhappy creature shudders, struggles.

"Don't ask me any questions. I will not tell you anything. Adieu!"

And he rejoins, straining her to his heart:

"What can you tell me that I do not know already, my poor mother? Didn't you understand why I left his house six months ago?"

"You know?"

"Everything. And this that has happened to you to-day I have long foreseen and hoped for."

"Oh! wretched, wretched woman that I am, why did I come?"

"Because this is your proper place, because you owe me ten years of my mother. You see that I must keep you."