too. Just think of the position those villains are putting me in. A week
ago my election should have been confirmed, and they have postponed the
meeting of the committee purposely, because they know the terrible
plight I am in, with all my fortune paralyzed, and the bey waiting for
the decision of the Chamber to know whether he can strip me clean or
not. I have eighty millions over there, Monsieur le Duc, and here I am
beginning to be in need of money. If this lasts a little longer--"
He wiped away the great drops of perspiration that were rolling down his
cheeks.
"Very well! I will make this matter of your confirmation my business,"
said the minister with much animation. "I will write to What's-his-name
to hurry up his report; and even if I have to be carried to the
Chamber--"
"Is your Excellency ill?" queried Jansoulet in a tone of deep interest,
in which there was no lack of sincerity, I promise you.
"No--a little weakness. We are a little short of blood; but Jenkins is
going to give us a new supply. Eh, Jenkins?"
The Irishman, who was not listening, made a vague gesture.
"Thunder! And to think that I have too much blood!" And the Nabob
loosened his cravat around his swollen neck, on the verge of apoplexy
with excitement and the heat of the room. "If I could only let you have
a little, Monsieur le Duc!"
"It would be fortunate for both of us," rejoined the minister with a
touch of irony. "For you especially; you are such a violent fellow and
at this moment need to be so calm. Look out for that, Jansoulet. Be on
your guard against the traps, the fits of passion they would like to
drive you into. Say to yourself now that you are a public man, standing
on an elevation, and that all your gestures can be seen from a distance.
The newspapers insult you; don't read them if you cannot conceal the
emotion they cause you. Don't do what I did with my blind man on Pont de
la Concorde, that horrible clarinet player, who has made my life a
burden for ten years, whistling at me every day: _De tes fils, Norma_. I
tried everything to make him go away, money, threats. Nothing would
induce him to go. The police? Oh! yes. With our modern ideas, to turn a
poor blind man off his bridge would become a momentous affair. The
opposition newspapers would speak of it, the Parisians would make a
fable of it. _The Cobbler and the Financier_; _The Duke and the
Clarinet._ I must resign myself to it. Indeed, it's my own fault. I
should not have shown the fellow that he annoyed me. I am confident that
my torture is half of his life now. Every morning he leaves his hovel
with his dog, his folding-stool and his horrible instrument, and says to
himself: 'Now I'll go and make life a burden to the Duc de Mora.' Not a
day does he miss, the villain. Look you! if I should open the window a
crack, you would hear that deluge of shrill little notes above the noise
of the water and the carriages. Very well! this _Messager_ man is your
clarinet; if you let him see that his music wearies you, he will never
stop. By the way, my dear deputy, let me remind you that you have a
committee meeting at three o'clock, and I shall see you very soon in the
Chamber."
Then, turning to Jenkins, he added: "You know what I asked you for,
Doctor,--pearls for day after to-morrow. And well loaded!"
Jenkins started and shook himself, as if suddenly aroused from a dream.
"I understand, my dear Duke; I'll supply you with breath--oh! breath
enough to win the Derby."
He bowed, and went away, laughing, a genuine wolf's laugh, showing his
white, parted teeth. The Nabob also took his leave, his heart
overflowing with gratitude, but not daring to allow that sceptic to see
anything of it, for any sort of demonstration aroused his distrust. And
the Minister of State, left alone, crouching in front of the crackling,
blazing fire, sheltered by the velvety warmth of his luxurious garments,
lined on that day by the feverish caress of a lovely May sun, began to
shiver anew, to shiver so violently that Felicia's letter, which he held
open in his blue fingers and read with amorous zest, trembled with a
rustling noise as of silk.
* * * * *
A very peculiar situation is that of a deputy in the period which
follows his election and precedes--as they say in Parliamentary
parlance--the verification of his credentials. It bears some resemblance
to the plight of a husband during the twenty-four hours between the
marriage at the mayor's office and its consecration by the Church.
Rights one cannot use, a semi-happiness, semi-privileges, the annoyance
of having to hold oneself in check in one direction or another, the lack
of a definite standing. You are married without being married, a deputy
without being sure of it; but, in the case of the deputy, that
uncertainty is prolonged for days and weeks, and the longer it lasts the
more problematical the result becomes; and it is downright torture for
the unfortunate representative on trial to be obliged to go to the
Chamber, to occupy a seat which he may not keep, to listen to debates
whose conclusion he is likely not to hear, to implant in his eyes and
ears the delightful memory of parliamentary sessions, with their ocean
of bald or apoplectic heads, the endless noise of crumpled paper, the
shouts of the pages, the drumming of paper knives on the tables, and the
hum of private conversations, above which the orator's voice soars in a
timid or vociferous solo with a continuous accompaniment.
That situation, disheartening enough at best, was made worse for the
Nabob by the calumnious stones, whispered at first, now printed and put
in circulation by thousands of copies, which resulted in his being
tacitly quarantined by his colleagues. At first he went about in the
corridors, to the library, to the restaurant, to the Salle des
Conferences, like the others, overjoyed to leave his footprints in every
corner of that majestic labyrinth; but, being a stranger to the
majority, cut by some members of the club on Rue Royale, who avoided
him, detested by the whole clerical coterie, of which Le Merquier was
the leader, and by the financial clique, naturally hostile to that
billionaire, with his power to cause a rise or fall in stocks, like the
vessels of large tonnage which divert the channel in a harbor, his
isolation was simply emphasized by change of locality, and the same
hostility accompanied him everywhere.
His movements, his bearing were marked by a sort of constraint, of
hesitating distrust. He felt that he was watched. If he entered the
restaurant for a moment, that great light room looking on the gardens
of the presidency, which he liked because there, at the broad white
marble counter laden with food and drink, the deputies laid aside their
imposing, high and mighty airs, the legislative haughtiness became more
affable, recalled to naturalness by nature, he knew that a sneering,
insulting item would appear in the _Messager_ the next morning, holding
him up to his constituents as "a wine-bibber _emeritus_."
They were another source of vexation to him,--those terrible
constituents.
They came in flocks, invaded the Salle des Pas-Perdus, galloped about in
all directions like excited little black kids, calling from one end to
the other of the echoing hall: "O Pe! O Tche!" inhaling with delight the
odor of government, of administration that filled the air, making eyes
at the ministers who passed, sniffing at their heels, as if some prebend
were about to fall from their venerable pockets, from their swollen
portfolios; but crowding around "Moussiou" Jansoulet especially, with so
many urgent petitions, demands, demonstrations, that, in order to rid
himself of that gesticulating mob at which everybody turned to look, and
which made him seem like the delegate of a tribe of Touaregs in the
midst of a civilized people, he was obliged to glance imploringly at
some usher who was skilled in the art of rescue under such circumstances
and would come to him in a great hurry and say, "that he was wanted
immediately in the eighth committee." So that the poor Nabob,
persecuted everywhere, driven from the corridors, the Pas-Perdus, the
restaurant, had adopted the course of never leaving his bench, where he
sat motionless and mute throughout the sitting.
He had, however, one friend in the Chamber,--a deputy newly elected for
Deux-Sevres, named M. Sarigue, a poor fellow not unlike the inoffensive,
ignoble animal whose name he bore,[2] with his sparse, red hair, his
frightened eyes, his hopping gait in his white gaiters. He was so shy
that he could not say two words without stammering, almost tongue-tied,
incessantly rolling balls of chewing-gum around in his mouth, which put
the finishing touch to the viscosity of his speech; and every one
wondered why such an impotent creature had cared to become a member of
the Assembly, what delirious female ambition had spurred on to public
office a man so unfitted for the least important private function.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] A _sarigue_ is an opossum.
By an amusing manifestation of the irony of fate, Jansoulet, who was
intensely agitated by the uncertainty concerning his own confirmation,
was chosen by the eighth committee to make the report on the Deux-Sevres
election, and M. Sarigue, realizing his incapacity, full of a ghastly
dread of being sent back in disgrace to his own fireside, prowled humbly
and beseechingly around that tall, curly-haired worthy, whose broad
shoulder-blades moved back and forth like the bellows of a forge under
his fine tightly fitting frock-coat, little suspecting that a poor,
worried creature like himself was hidden beneath that solid envelope.
As he worked at the report of the election at Deux-Sevres, going over
the numerous protests, the charges of electoral trickery, banquets
given, money squandered, casks of wine broached in front of the mayor's
office, the usual manoeuvres of an election in those days, Jansoulet
shuddered on his own account. "Why, I did all that!" he said to himself
in dismay. Ah! M. Sarigue need have no fear, he could never have put his
hand upon a more kindly-disposed judge or a more indulgent one, for the
Nabob, moved to pity for his patient, knowing by experience how painful
the agony of suspense is, did his work with all possible haste, and the
huge portfolio that he had under his arm when he left the hotel de Mora,
contained his report, all ready to be read to the Committee.
Whether it was the thought of that first essay as a public officer, or
the duke's kind words, or the magnificent weather, which was keenly
enjoyed by that Southerner whose impressions were wholly physical, and
who was accustomed to transact business in the warm sunlight and beneath
the blue sky,--certain it is that the ushers of the Corps Legislatif
beheld that day a superb and haughty Jansoulet whom they had not known
before. Old Hemerlingue's carriage, recognizable by the unusual width of
its doors, of which he caught a glimpse through the iron railing, was
all that was needed to put him in full possession of his natural
assurance and audacity.
"The enemy is at hand. Attention!" As he walked through the Salle des
Pas-Perdus, he saw the financier talking in a corner with Le Merquier,
the judge of his election, passed close by them and stared at them with
a triumphant air which made them wonder: "What in God's name has
happened to him?"
Then, enchanted by his own _sang-froid_, he walked toward the
committee-rooms, vast, high apartments, opening from both sides of a
long corridor, furnished with huge tables covered with green cloths and
heavy chairs of uniform pattern which bore the stamp of wearisome
solemnity. He reached his destination. Men were standing about in
groups, discussing, gesticulating, exchanging salutations and grasps of
the hand, throwing back their heads, like Chinese shadows, against the
bright background of the windows. There were some who walked alone, with
backs bent, as if crushed by the weight of thoughts that furrowed their
brows. Others whispered in one another's ears, imparting excessively
mysterious information of the utmost importance, putting a finger to
their lips, screwing up their eyes to enjoin secrecy. A provincial
flavor distinguished them all, with differences of inflection, Southern
excitability, the drawling accent of the Centre, Breton sing-song, all
blended in the same idiotic, strutting self-sufficiency; frock-coats
after the style of Landerneau, mountain shoes, and home-spun linen; the
monumental assurance of village clubs, local expressions, provincialisms
abruptly imported into political and administrative language, the limp,
colorless phraseology which invented "the burning questions returning to
the surface," and "individualities without a commission."
To see those worthies, excited or pensive as the case might be, you
would have said that they were the greatest breeders of ideas on earth;
unluckily, on the days when the Chamber was in session they were
transformed, they clung coyly to their benches, as frightened as
school-boys under the master's ferule, laughing obsequiously at the
jests of the man of wit who presided over them, or taking the floor to
put forward the most amazing propositions, or for interruptions of the
sort that make one think that it was not a type simply, but a whole race
that Henri Monnier stigmatized in his immortal sketch. Two or three
orators in the whole Chamber, the rest well skilled in the art of
planting themselves before the fire in a provincial salon, after an
excellent repast at the prefect's table, and saying in a nasal tone:
"The administration, Messieurs," or "The Emperor's government,"--but
incapable of going farther.
On ordinary occasions the good-natured Nabob allowed himself to be
dazzled by those attitudes, that clattering noise as of an empty
spinning-wheel; but to-day he found himself on a level with the others.
As he sat at the centre of the green table, his portfolio before him,
his two elbows firmly planted upon it, reading the report drawn by de
Gery, the members of the committee stared at him in mute amazement.
It was a clear, concise, rapid summary of their labors of the past
fortnight, in which they found their ideas so well expressed that they
had great difficulty in recognizing them. Then, when two or three among
them suggested that the report was too favorable, that he glided too
lightly over certain protests that had reached the committee, the maker
of the report spoke with surprising assurance, with the prolixity and
exuberance of men of his province, proved that a deputy should not be
held responsible beyond a certain point for the imprudence of his
electoral agents, that otherwise no election would stand against an
investigation that was at all minute; and as, in reality, he was
pleading his own cause, he displayed an irresistible warmth and
conviction, taking care to let fly from time to time one of the long
meaningless substantives with a thousand claws, of the sort that the
committee liked.
The others listened, deep in thought, exchanging their impressions by
nods of the head, drawing flourishes and faces on their blotting-pads
the better to fix their attention; a detail that harmonized with the
schoolboy-like noise in the corridors, a muttering as of lessons being
recited, and the flocks of sparrows chirping under the windows in a
flagged courtyard surrounded by arches, a veritable school-yard. The
report adopted, they sent for M. Sarigue to make some supplementary
explanations. He appeared, pale-faced, abashed, stammering like a
criminal before conviction, and you would have laughed to see the
patronizing, authoritative air with which Jansoulet encouraged and
reassured him: "Be calm, my dear colleague." But the members of the
eighth committee did not laugh. They were all, or almost all, of the
Sarigue species, two or three being absolutely nerveless, afflicted with
partial loss of the power of speech. Such self-assurance, such eloquence
had aroused their enthusiasm.
When Jansoulet left the Corps Legislatif, escorted to his carriage by
his grateful colleague, it was about six o'clock. The superb weather, a
gorgeous sunset over by the Trocadero, across the Seine, which shone
like burnished gold, tempted that robust plebeian, whom the conventional
proprieties of his position compelled to ride in a carriage and to wear
gloves, but who dispensed with them as often as possible, to return on
foot. He sent away his servants, and started across Pont de la Concorde,
his leather satchel under his arm. He had known no such feeling of
contentment since the first of May. Throwing back his shoulders, with
his hat tipped slightly back in the attitude he had noticed in men who
were worried, overdone with business, allowing all the toil-born fever
of their brain to evaporate in the fresh air, as a factory discharges
its vapor into the gutter at the close of a day of labor, he walked on
among other figures like his own, evidently just from the pillared
temple that faces the Madeleine beyond the monumental fountains of the
square. As they passed, people turned and said: "They are deputies." And
Jansoulet felt a childlike joy, a vulgar joy compounded of ignorance
and ingenuous vanity.
"Buy the _Messager_ evening edition."
The words came from the newspaper booth at the end of the bridge, filled
at that hour with piles of freshly printed sheets which two women were
hastily folding and which smelt of the damp press, of the latest news,
the triumph of the day or its scandal. Almost all the deputies purchased
a copy as they passed, and ran through it rapidly, hoping to find their
names. Jansoulet, for his part, dreaded to see his and did not stop. But
suddenly he thought: "Ought not a public man to be above such weaknesses
as this? I am strong enough to read anything now." He retraced his steps
and took a paper like his colleagues. He opened it very calmly at the
place usually occupied by Moessard's articles. There was one there.
Still the same title: _Chinoiseries_, and an M. for signature.
"Aha!" said the public man, as unmoved and cold as marble, with a fine,
scornful smile. Mora's lesson was still ringing in his ears, and even if
he had forgotten it, the air from _Norma_ in jerky, ironical little
notes not far away would have sufficed to remind him of it. But, however
carefully we may make our calculations in the rush of events in our
lives, we must still reckon with the unforeseen; and that is why the
Nabob suddenly found himself blinded by a rush of blood to his eyes,
while a cry of rage was stifled by the sudden contraction of his throat.
His mother, his old Francoise, was dragged into the infamous jest of
the "flower boat" at last. How well that Moessard aimed, how well he
knew the really sensitive spots in that heart, so innocently laid bare!
"Be calm, Jansoulet, be calm."
In vain did he repeat the injunction in every tone,--anger, furious
anger, the drunkenness of blood demanding blood enveloped him. His first
impulse was to stop a cab and hurl himself into it, in order to escape
the irritating street, to rid his body of the necessity of walking and
choosing a path--to stop a cab as for a wounded man. But at that hour of
general home-coming the square was crowded with hundreds of victorias,
caleches, coupes, descending from the resplendent glory of the
Arc-de-Triomphe toward the purple freshness of the Tuileries, crowding
closely upon one another down the inclined surface of the avenue to the
great cross-roads where the motionless statues, standing firmly on their
pedestals with their wreath-encircled brows, watched them diverge toward
Faubourg Saint-Germain, Rue Royale and Rue de Rivoli.
Jansoulet, newspaper in hand, made his way through the uproar, without
thinking of it, bending his steps instinctively toward the club, where
he went every day to play cards from six to seven. He was a public man
still; but intensely excited, talking aloud, stammering oaths and
threats in a voice that suddenly became soft once more as he thought of
the dear old woman.--To think of rolling her in the mire too! Oh! if she
should read it, if she could understand! What punishment could he
invent for such an infamous outrage? He reached Rue Royale, where
equipages of all sorts returning from the Bois bowled swiftly homeward,
with whirling axles, visions of veiled women and children's curly heads,
bringing a little vegetable mould to the pavements of Paris and whiffs
of spring mingled with the perfume of rice-powder. In front of the
Ministry of Marine, a phaeton perched very high upon slender wheels,
bearing a strong resemblance to a huge field-spider, the little groom
clinging behind and the two persons on the box-seat forming its body,
came very near colliding with the sidewalk as it turned.
The Nabob raised his head, and restrained an exclamation.
Beside a painted hussy with red hair, wearing a tiny little hat with
broad ribbons, who, from her perch on her leather cushion, was driving
the horse with her hands, her eyes, her whole made-up person, stiffly
erect, yet leaning forward, sat Moessard, Moessard the dandy,
pink-cheeked and painted like his companion, raised on the same
dung-heap, fattened on the same vices. The strumpet and the journalist,
and she was not the one of the two who sold herself most shamelessly!
Towering above the women lolling in their caleches, the men who sat
opposite them buried under flounces, all the attitudes of fatigue and
ennui which they whose appetites are sated display in public as if in
scorn of pleasure and wealth, they insolently exhibited themselves, she
very proud to drive the queen's lover, and he without the slightest
shame beside that creature who flicked her whip at men in passage-ways,
safe on her lofty perch from the salutary drag-nets of the police.
Perhaps he found it necessary to quicken his royal mistress's pulses by
thus parading under her windows with Suzanne Bloch, _alias_ Suze la
Rousse.
"Hi! hi there!"
The horse, a tall trotter with slender legs, a genuine cocotte's horse,
was returning from his digression, toward the middle of the street, with
dancing steps, prancing gracefully up and down without going forward.
Jansoulet dropped his satchel, and as if he had cast aside at the same
time all his gravity, his prestige as a public man, he gave a mighty
leap and grasped the animal's bit, holding him fast with his strong
hairy hands.
An arrest on Rue Royale and in broad daylight; no one but that Tartar
would have dared do such a thing!
"Get down," he said to Moessard, whose face turned green and yellow in
spots when he recognized him. "Get down at once."
"Will you let go my horse, you fat beast!--Lash him, Suzanne, it's the
Nabob."
She tried to gather up the reins, but the animal, held in a powerful
grasp, reared so suddenly that in another second the fragile vehicle
would have shot out all that it contained, like a sling. Thereupon,
carried away by one of the furious fits of rage peculiar to the
faubourg, which in such girls as she scale off the varnish of their
luxury and their false skin, she struck the Nabob two blows with her
whip, which glided off the hard, tanned face, but gave it a ferocious
expression, accentuated by the short nose, slit at the end like a
hunting terrier's, which had turned white.
"Get down, or, by God, I will overturn the whole thing!"
In a confused mass of carriages, standing still because movement was
impossible or slowly skirting the obstacle, with thousands of curious
eyes, amid the shouts of drivers and clashing of bits, two iron wrists
shook the whole phaeton.
"Jump down--jump, I say--don't you see he's going to tip us over? What a
grip!"
And the girl gazed at the Hercules with interest.
Moessard had hardly put his foot to the ground, when, before he could
take refuge on the sidewalk, where black _kepis_ were hastening to the
scene, Jansoulet threw himself upon him, lifted him by the nape of the
neck like a rabbit, and exclaimed, heedless of his protestations, his
terrified, stammering entreaties: