same hour his friends and his enemies--for a man like the Nabob cannot
be indifferent to anybody--read it and discussed it, and adopted a line
of conduct toward him calculated not to compromise themselves. That
day's article must have been well loaded; for Jansoulet the coachman
told us that in the Bois his master did not exchange ten salutations in
ten circuits of the lake, whereas ordinarily his hat is not on his head
any more than a sovereign's when out for a drive. And when they returned
home it was much worse. The three boys had just reached the house, all
in tears and frightened to death, brought home from Bourdaloue College
by a good Father in their own interest, poor little fellows; they had
been given temporary leave of absence so that they might not hear any
unkind remarks, any cruel allusions in the parlor or the courtyard.
Thereupon the Nabob flew into a terrible rage, so that he demolished a
whole porcelain service, and it seems that, if it had not been for M. de
Gery, he would have gone off on the instant to break Moessard's head.
"And he would have done quite right," said M. Noel, entering the room at
that moment; and he, too, was greatly excited. "There's not a single
word of truth in that villain's article. My master never came to Paris
until last year. From Tunis to Marseille, and Marseille to Tunis, that's
all the travelling he did. But that scurvy journalist is taking his
revenge on us for refusing him twenty thousand francs."
"You made a very great mistake in doing that," said M. Francis,
Monpavon's Francis, valet to that old dandy, whose only tooth waggles in
the middle of his mouth whenever he says a word, but whom the young
ladies look favorably upon all the same because of his fine manners.
"Yes, you made a mistake. It is necessary to know how to handle people
carefully, as long as they are able to serve or injure us. Your Nabob
turned his back on his friends too suddenly after his success; and,
between you and me, my dear boy, he isn't strong enough to return such
blows as that."
I thought I might venture to say a word.
"It's quite true, Monsieur Noel, that your master isn't the same since
his election. He has adopted a very different tone and manners. Day
before yesterday at the _Territoriale_, he made such a hullabaloo as you
can't imagine. I heard him shout in the middle of the council meeting:
'You have lied to me, you have robbed me and made me as much of a thief
as yourselves. Show me your books, you pack of rascals!' If he treated
Moessard in that fashion, I don't wonder that he takes his revenge in
his newspaper."
"But what does the article say, anyway?" inquired M. Barreau; "who has
read it?"
No one answered. Several had tried to buy the paper; but in Paris
anything scandalous sells like hot cakes. At ten o'clock in the morning
there was not a copy of the _Messager_ to be had on the street.
Thereupon one of my nieces, a sly hussy if ever there was one, had the
happy thought of looking in the pocket of one of the numerous top-coats
hanging in long rows against the walls of the dressing-room.
"Here you are!" said the merry creature triumphantly, drawing from the
first pocket she searched a copy of the _Messager_, crumpled at the
folds as if it had been well read.
"And here's another!" cried Tom Bois-l'Hery, who was investigating on
his own account. A third top-coat, a third _Messager_. And so it was
with them all; buried in the depths of the pocket, or with its title
sticking out, the paper was everywhere, even as the article was certain
to be in every mind; and we imagined the Nabob upstairs, exchanging
amiable sentences with his guests, who could have recited to him word
for word the horrible things printed concerning him. We all laughed
heartily at the idea; but we were dying to know the contents of that
interesting page.
"Here, Pere Passajon, read it aloud to us."
That was the general desire, and I complied with it.
I do not know if you are like me, but when I read aloud I gargle with my
voice, so to speak, I introduce inflections and flourishes, so that I do
not understand a word of what I read, like those public singers to whom
the meaning of the words they sing is of little consequence provided
that the notes are all there. It was called "The Flower Boat." A
decidedly mixed-up story with Chinese names, relating to a very rich
mandarin, newly elevated to the first class, who had once kept a "flower
boat" moored on the outskirts of a town near a fortified gate frequented
by soldiers. At the last word of the article we knew no more than at the
beginning. To be sure, we tried to wink and to look very knowing; but,
frankly, there was no ground for it. A genuine rebus without a key; and
we should still be staring at it, had not old Francis, who is the very
devil for his knowledge of all sorts of things, explained to us that the
fortified gate with soldiers must mean the Ecole Militaire, and that the
"flower boat" had not so pretty a name as that in good French. And he
said the name aloud, despite the ladies. Such an explosion of
exclamations, of "Ahs!" and "Ohs!" some saying: "I expected as much,"
others: "It isn't possible."
"I beg your pardon," added Francis, who was formerly a trumpeter in the
9th Lancers, Mora's and Monpavon's regiment, "I beg your pardon. Twenty
years ago or more I was in barracks at the Ecole Militaire, and I
remember very well that there was near the barrier a dirty little
dance-house called the Bal Jansoulet, with furnished rooms upstairs at
five sous the hour, to which we used to adjourn between dances."
"You're an infernal liar!" cried M. Noel, fairly beside himself; "a
sharper and liar like your master. Jansoulet never came to Paris until
this time."
Francis was sitting a little outside of the circle we made around the
"marquise," sipping something sweet, because champagne is bad for his
nerves, and besides, it is not a _chic_ enough drink for him. He rose
solemnly, without putting down his glass, and, walking up to M. Noel,
said to him, quietly:
"You lack good form, my dear fellow. The other evening, at your own
house, I considered your manners very vulgar and unbecoming. It serves
no purpose to insult people, especially as I'm a fencing-master, and, if
we should carry the thing any farther, I could put two inches of cold
steel into your body at whatever point I chose; but I am a good sort of
fellow, and instead of a sword-thrust I prefer to give you some advice
which your master will do well to profit by. This is what I would do if
I were in your place; I would hunt up Moessard and buy him without
haggling over the price. Hemerlingue has given him twenty thousand
francs to speak, I would offer him thirty thousand to hold his tongue."
"Never, never!" roared M. Noel. "Instead of that I will go and wring the
miserable bandit's neck."
"You will wring nothing at all. Whether the story is true or false, you
have seen the effect of it to-night. That's a specimen of the pleasures
in store for you. What do you expect, my dear fellow? You have thrown
away your crutches and tried to walk alone too soon. That's all right if
you're sure of yourself and firm on your legs; but when your footing is
not very good anyway, and in addition you are unlucky enough to have
Hemerlingue at your heels, it's a bad business. And with it all your
master's beginning to be short of money; he has given notes to old
Schwalbach, and don't talk to me of a Nabob who gives notes. I am well
aware that you have heaps of millions over yonder in Tunis; but you will
have to have your election confirmed in order to get possession of them,
and after a few more articles like the one to-day, I'll answer for it
that you won't succeed. You undertake to struggle with Paris, my boy,
but you're not big enough, you know nothing about it. This isn't the
Orient, and, although we don't wring the necks of people who offend us,
or throw them into the water in leather bags, we have other ways of
putting them out of sight. Let your master beware, Noel. One of these
days Paris will swallow him as I swallow this plum, without spitting out
the stone or the skin!"
Really the old man was most imposing, and, notwithstanding the paint on
his face, I began to feel some respect for him. While he was speaking we
heard the music overhead, the singing provided for the entertainment of
the guests, and out on the square the horses of the municipal guards
shaking their curb-chains. Our party must have been a very brilliant
affair from outside, with the myriads of candles and the illuminated
doorway. And when one thinks of the ruin that perhaps was beneath it
all! We stood there in the vestibule like rats taking council together
in the hold, when the vessel is beginning to take in water without the
crew suspecting it, and I saw plainly enough that everybody, footmen and
lady's maids, would soon scamper away at the first alarm. Can it be that
such a catastrophe is possible? But in that case, what would become of
me and the _Territoriale_, and my advances and my back pay?
That Francis left me with cold shivers running down my back.
XVI.
A PUBLIC MAN.
The luminous warmth of a bright May afternoon made the lofty windows of
the hotel de Mora as hot as the glass roof of a greenhouse; its
transparent hangings of blue silk could be seen from without between the
branches, and its broad terraces, where the exotic flowers, brought into
the air for the first time, ran like a border all the length of the
quay. The great rakes scraping among the shrubs in the garden left on
the gravelled paths the light footprints of summer, while the soft
pattering of the water from the sprinklers on the green lawn seemed like
its revivifying song.
All the magnificence of the princely abode shone resplendent in the
pleasant mildness of the temperature, borrowing a grandiose beauty from
the silence, the repose of that noonday hour, the only hour in the day
when one did not hear carriages rumbling under the arches, the great
doors of the reception-room opening and closing, and the constant
vibration in the ivy on the walls caused by the pulling of bells to
announce somebody's coming in or going out, like the feverish throbbing
of life in the house of a leader of society. It was well known that
until three o'clock the duke received at the department; that the
duchess, a Swede still benumbed by the snow of Stockholm, had hardly
emerged from behind her somnolent bed-curtains; so that no one came,
neither callers nor petitioners, and the footmen, perched like
flamingoes on the steps of the deserted stoop, alone enlivened the scene
with the slim shadows of their long legs and the yawning ennui of their
idleness.
It happened however, on that day, that Jenkins' maroon-lined _coupe_ was
waiting in a corner of the courtyard. The duke, who had been feeling
badly the day before, felt still worse when he left the breakfast table,
and lost no time in sending for the man of the pearls in order to
question him concerning his singular condition. He had no pain anywhere,
slept well and had his usual appetite; but there was a most
extraordinary sensation of weariness and of terrible cold, which nothing
could overcome. So it was that, at that moment, notwithstanding the
lovely spring sunshine which flooded his room and put to shame the flame
blazing on his hearth as in the depth of winter, the duke was shivering
in his blue firs, between his little screens, and as he wrote his name
on divers documents for a clerk from his office, on a low lacquered
table that stood so near the fire that the lacquer came off in scales,
he kept holding his benumbed fingers to the blaze, which might have
scorched them on the surface without restoring circulation and life to
their bloodless rigidity.
Was it anxiety caused by the indisposition of his illustrious patient?
At all events Jenkins seemed nervous, excited, strode up and down the
room, prying and sniffing to right and left, trying to find in the air
something that he believed to be there, something subtle and intangible,
like the faint trace of a perfume or the invisible mark left by a
passing bird. He could hear the wood snapping on the hearth, the sound
of papers hastily turned, the duke's indolent voice, indicating in a
word or two, always concise and clear, the answer to a letter of four
pages, and the clerk's respectful monosyllables: "Yes, Monsieur le
Ministre." "No, Monsieur le Ministre." Outside, the swallows whistled
merrily over the water, and some one was playing a clarinet in the
direction of the bridges.
"It is impossible," said the minister abruptly, rising from his chair.
"Take them away, Lartigues. You can come again, to-morrow. I can't
write, I am too cold. Just feel my hands, doctor, and tell me if you
would not say they were just out of a pail of iced water. My whole body
has been like that for two days. It's absurd enough in such weather!"
"It doesn't surprise me," growled the Irishman in a surly, short tone,
very unusual in that mellifluous voice.
The door had closed behind the young clerk, who carried away his
documents with a majestic stiffness of bearing, but was very happy, I
fancy, to feel that he was at liberty, and to have the opportunity,
before returning to the department, to saunter for an hour or two in
the Tuileries, overflowing at that hour with spring dresses and pretty
girls seated around the still unoccupied chairs of the musicians under
the flowering chestnut trees, which quivered from top to bottom with the
glad thrill of the month of nests. He was not frozen, not he.
Jenkins examined his patient without speaking, ausculted him, percussed
him, then, in the same rough tone, which might possibly be ascribed to
anxious affection, to the irritation of the physician who finds that his
instructions have been disregarded, he said:
"In God's name, my dear Duke, what sort of a life have you been leading
lately?"
He knew from ante-room gossips--the doctor did not despise them in the
households of those of his patients with whom he was on intimate
terms--he knew that the duke had a _new one_, that this caprice of
recent date had taken possession of him, excited him to an unusual
degree, and that information, added to other observations made in other
directions, had sown in Jenkins' mind a suspicion, a mad desire to know
the name of this _new one_. That is what he was trying to read on his
patient's pale brow, seeking the subject of his thoughts rather than the
cause of his illness. But he had to do with one of those faces peculiar
to men who are successful with women, faces as hermetically sealed as
the caskets with secret compartments which contain women's jewels and
letters,--one of those reticent natures locked with a cold, limpid
glance, a glance of steel against which the most perspicacious cunning
is powerless.
"You are mistaken, Doctor," replied His Excellency calmly, "I have not
changed my habits in any respect."
"Very good! you have done wrong, Monsieur le Duc," said the Irishman
bluntly, furious at his inability to discover anything.
But the next moment, realizing that he had gone too far, he tempered his
ill-humor and the brutality of his diagnosis with a bolus of trite,
axiomatic observations.--He must be careful. Medicine was not magic. The
power of the Jenkins Pearls was limited by human strength, the
necessities of advancing age, the resources of nature, which, unhappily,
are not inexhaustible. The duke interrupted him nervously:
"Come, come, Jenkins, you know that I don't like fine phrases. They
don't go with me. What is the matter with me? What is the cause of this
coldness?"
"It's anaemia, exhaustion--a lowering of the oil in the lamp."
"What must I do?"
"Nothing. Absolute rest. Eat and sleep, nothing more. If you could go
and pass a few weeks at Grandbois--"
Mora shrugged his shoulders.
"What about the Chamber, and the Council, and--Nonsense! as if it were
possible!"
"At all events, Monsieur le Duc, you must put on the drag, as someone
said, you must absolutely give up--"
Jenkins was interrupted by the entrance of the usher, who glided softly
into the room on tiptoe, like a dancing-master, and handed a letter and
a card to the minister who was still shivering in front of the fire.
When he saw that envelope, of a satiny shade of gray, and of peculiar
shape, the Irishman involuntarily started, while the duke, having opened
his letter and glanced over it, rose to his feet full of animation, on
his cheeks the faint flush of factitious health which all the heat from
the fire had failed to bring to them.
"My dear Doctor, you must at any cost--"
The usher was standing near, waiting.
"What is it?--Oh! yes, this card. Show him into the gallery, I will be
there in a moment."
The Duc de Mora's gallery, which was open to visitors twice a week, was
to him a sort of neutral territory, a public place where he could see
anybody on earth without binding himself to anything or compromising
himself. Then, when the usher had left the room:
"Jenkins, my good friend, you have already performed miracles for me. I
ask you to perform another. Double my dose of the pearls, think up
something, whatever you choose. But I must be in condition Sunday. You
understand, in perfect condition."
And his hot, feverish fingers closed upon the little note he held with a
shudder of longing.
"Beware, Monsieur le Duc," said Jenkins, very pale, his lips pressed
tightly together, "I have no desire to alarm you beyond measure
concerning your weak state, but it is my duty--"
Mora smiled, a charming, mischievous smile.
"Your duty and my pleasure are two, my good fellow. Let me burn my life
at both ends if it amuses me. I have never had such a fine opportunity
as I have now."
He started.
"The duchess!"
A door under the hangings had opened, giving passage to a dishevelled
little head of fair hair, like a mass of vapor amid the laces and
furbelows of a royal _deshabille_.
"What is this I hear? You haven't gone out? Pray scold him, Doctor.
Isn't he foolish to listen to his own fears so much? Just look at him.
He looks in superb health."
"There! You see," said the duke, with a laugh, to the Irishman. "Aren't
you coming in, Duchess?"
"No, I am going to take you away, on the contrary. My uncle d'Estaing
has sent me a cage filled with birds from the Indies. I want to show
them to you. Marvels of all colors, with little eyes like black pearls.
And so cold, so cold, almost as sensitive to cold as you are."
"Let us go and see them," said the minister. "Wait for me, Jenkins; I
will come back."
Then, realizing that he still had his letter in his hand, he tossed it
carelessly into the drawer of the little table on which he had been
signing documents, and went out behind the duchess, with the perfect
_sang-froid_ of a husband accustomed to such manoeuvres. What
marvellously skilful workman, what incomparable maker of toys was able
to endow the human countenance with its flexibility, its wonderful
elasticity? Nothing could be prettier than that great nobleman's face,
surprised with his adultery on his lips, the cheeks inflamed by the
vision of promised delights, and suddenly assuming a serene expression
of conjugal affection; nothing could be finer than the hypocritical
humility of Jenkins, his paternal smile in the duchess's presence,
giving place instantly when he was left alone, to a savage expression of
wrath and hatred, a criminal pallor, the pallor of a Castaing or a
Lapommerais devising his sinister schemes.
A swift glance at each of the doors, and in a twinkling he stood before
the drawer filled with valuable papers, in which the little gold key was
allowed to remain with an insolent negligence that seemed to say:
"No one will dare."
But Jenkins dared.
The letter was there, on top of a pile of others. The texture of the
paper, the three words of the address dashed off in a plain, bold hand,
and the perfume, that intoxicating, conjuring perfume, the very breath
from her divine mouth. So it was true, his jealous love had not led him
astray, nor her evident embarrassment in his presence for some time
past, nor Constance's mysterious, youthful airs, nor the superb bouquets
strewn about the studio, as in the mysterious shadow of a sin. So that
indomitable pride had surrendered at last! But in that case why not to
him, Jenkins? He who had loved her so long, always in fact, who was ten
years younger than the other, and who certainly was no shiverer? All
those thoughts rushed through his brain like arrows shot from a tireless
bow. And he stood there, riddled with wounds, torn with emotion, his
eyes blinded with blood, staring at the little cold, soft envelope which
he dared not open for fear of removing one last doubt, when a rustling
of the hangings, which made him hastily toss the letter back and close
the smoothly-running drawer of the lacquer table, warned him that
somebody had entered the room.
"Hallo! is it you, Jansoulet? How came you here?"
"His Excellency told me to come and wait for him in his bedroom,"
replied the Nabob, very proud to be thus admitted to the sanctuary of
the private apartments, especially at an hour when the minister did not
receive. The fact was that the duke was beginning to show a genuine,
sympathetic feeling for that savage. For several reasons: in the first
place he liked audacious, pushing fellows, lucky adventurers. Was he not
one himself? And then the Nabob amused him; his accent, his unvarnished
manners, his flattery, a trifle unblushing and impudent, gave him a
respite from the everlasting conventionality of his surroundings, from
that scourge of administrative and court ceremonial which he held in
horror,--the conventional phrase,--in so great horror that he never
finished the period he had begun. The Nabob, for his part, finished his
in unforeseen ways that were sometimes full of surprises; he was a
first-rate gambler too, losing games of ecarte at five thousand francs
the turn, at the club on Rue Royale, without winking. And then he was so
convenient when one wanted to get rid of a picture, always ready to buy,
no matter at what price. These motives of condescending amiability had
been reinforced latterly by a feeling of pity and indignation because of
the persistent ferocity with which the poor fellow was being persecuted,
because of the cowardly, merciless war upon him, which was carried on so
skilfully that public opinion, always credulous, always putting out its
neck to see how the wind is blowing, was beginning to be seriously
influenced. We must do Mora the justice to say that he was no follower
of the crowd. When he saw the Nabob's face, always good-humored, but
wearing a piteous, discomfited look, in a corner of the gallery, it had
occurred to him that it was cowardly to receive him there, and he had
told him to go up to his room.
Jenkins and Jansoulet, being decidedly embarrassed in each other's
presence, exchanged a few commonplace words. Their warm friendship had
grown sensibly cooler of late, Jansoulet having flatly refused any
further subsidy to the Work of Bethlehem, thereby leaving the enterprise
on the Irishman's hands; he was furious at that defection, much more
furious just then because he had been unable to open Felicia's letter
before the intruder's arrival. The Nabob, for his part, was wondering
whether the doctor was to be present at the conversation he wished to
have with the duke on the subject of the infamous allusions with which
the _Messager_ was hounding him; he was anxious also to know whether
those calumnies had cooled the all-powerful goodwill, which would be so
necessary to him in the confirmation of his election. The welcome he had
received in the gallery had partly quieted his fears; they vanished
altogether when the duke returned and came toward him with outstretched
hand.
"Well, well! my poor Jansoulet, I should say that Paris is making you
pay dear for her welcome. What a tempest of scolding and hatred and bad
temper!"
"Ah! Monsieur le Duc, if you knew--"
"I do know--I have read it all," said the minister, drawing near the
fire.
"I trust that your Excellency doesn't believe those infamous stories. At
all events I have here--I have brought proofs."
With his strong hairy hands trembling with emotion, he fumbled among the
papers in an enormous portfolio that he had under his arm.
"Never mind--never mind. I know all about it. I know that, purposely or
not, they have confused you with another person whom family reasons--"
The duke could not restrain a smile in face of the utter bewilderment of
the Nabob, who was astounded to find him so well informed.
"A minister of State should know everything. But never fear. Your
election shall be confirmed, all the same. And when it is once
confirmed--"
Jansoulet drew a long breath of relief.
"Ah! Monsieur le Duc, how much good you do me by talking to me thus. I
was beginning to lose all my confidence. My enemies are so powerful! And
on top of all the rest there's another piece of ill-luck. Le Merquier,
of all people, is assigned to make the report concerning my election."
"Le Merquier?--the devil!"
"Yes, Le Merquier, Hemerlingue's confidential man, the vile hypocrite
who converted the baroness, doubtless because his religion forbids him
to have a Mohammedan for his mistress."
"Fie, fie, Jansoulet!"