together and to keep her salons full until the famous interview,
constantly moved about, carried on ten different conversations at once,
raising her soft, melodious voice to the purring pitch that
distinguishes Oriental women,--a wheedling, seductive voice, and a mind
as supple as her waist, opening all sorts of subjects, and, as
convention requires, mingling fashions and sermons on charity, theatres
and auction sales,--the scandalmonger and the confessor. She possessed a
great personal charm in addition to this acquired science of
entertaining, a science visible even in her very simple black dress,
which brought out in relief her cloistral pallor, her houri-like eyes,
her smooth, glossy hair, parted above a narrow, unwrinkled brow,--a brow
whose mystery was accentuated by the too thin lips, closing to the
curious the whole varied, adventurous past of that ex-odalisque, who was
of no age, had no knowledge of the date of her birth, did not remember
that she had ever been a child.
Clearly, if the absolute power of evil, very rarely found in women, whom
their impressionable physical nature subjects to so many varying
currents, could exist in a human soul, it would be found in the soul of
that slave trained to concessions and fawning, rebellious but patient,
and thoroughly self-controlled, like all those whom the habit of wearing
a veil lowered over their eyes has accustomed to lying without danger
and without scruple.
At that moment no one could have suspected the agony of suspense from
which she was suffering, to see her kneeling in front of the princess, a
good-humored old woman, of unceremonious manners, of whom La Fuernberg
constantly said: "Well, if she's a princess!"
"Oh! godmother, don't go yet, I beg you!"
She overwhelmed her with all sorts of fascinating little tricks of
action and expression, without acknowledging, of course, that she was
determined to detain her until Jansoulet's arrival, in order to make her
contribute to her triumph.
"You see," said the good woman, pointing to the Armenian, sitting,
majestic and solemn, his tasselled hat on his knees, "I have to take
poor monseigneur to the _Grand-Saint-Christophe_ to buy medals. He could
never do it without me."
"But I want you to stay. You must. Just a few minutes more."
And the baroness glanced furtively toward the gorgeous, old-fashioned
clock hanging in a corner of the salon.
Five o'clock already, and the stout Afchin did not come. The Levantines
began to laugh behind their fans. Luckily, tea had just been served, and
Spanish wines, and a quantity of delicious Turkish cakes, which were
found nowhere else, and the receipts for which, brought to Paris by the
ex-slave, are preserved in harems, as certain secrets connected with the
finest confectionery are preserved in our convents. That made a
diversion. Hemerlingue, who came from his office from time to time on
Saturdays to pay his respects to the ladies, was drinking a glass of
madeira at the small table on which the refreshments were served,
talking with Maurice Trott, formerly Said-Pacha's bath-master, when his
wife, always mild and tranquil externally, approached him. He knew what
fierce wrath must be hidden beneath that impenetrable calm, and he asked
her timidly, in an undertone:
"No one?"
"No one. You see to what an outrage you have exposed me!"
She smiled, her eyes half-closed, as she removed with the ends of her
fingers a crumb that had lodged in his long black whiskers; but her
transparent little nostrils quivered with awe-inspiring eloquence.
"Oh! she will come," said the banker, with his mouth full. "I am sure
she will come."
A rustling of silk, of a train being adjusted in the adjoining room,
caused the baroness to turn her head quickly. To the great delight of
the cluster of "bales" in one corner, who were watching everything, it
was not she who was expected.
She bore but little resemblance to Mademoiselle Afchin, the tall,
graceful blonde, with the tired features and irreproachable toilet,
worthy in every respect to bear a name as illustrious as that of Dr.
Jenkins. In the last two or three months the beautiful Madame Jenkins
had changed greatly, had grown much older. There comes a time in the
life of a woman who has long retained her youth, when the years which
have passed over her head without leaving a wrinkle write themselves
down pitilessly all at once in ineffaceable marks. We no longer say when
we see her: "How lovely she is!" but, "She must have been very lovely."
And that cruel fashion of speaking of the past, of referring to a
distant period what was a visible fact but yesterday, constitutes a
beginning of old age and of retirement,--a substitution of reminiscences
for all past triumphs. Was it the disappointment of seeing the doctor's
wife instead of Madame Jansoulet, or was the discredit which the Duc de
Mora's death had brought upon the fashionable doctor destined to
overflow upon her who bore his name? There was something of both those
causes, and perhaps of another as well, in the cold welcome which the
baroness accorded Madame Jenkins. A murmured greeting, a few hurried
words, and she returned to the battalion of noble dames who were
nibbling away with great zest. The salon became animated under the
influence of the Spanish wines. People no longer whispered; they
talked. Lamps were brought in and imparted additional brilliancy to the
occasion, but announced that it was very near its end, as several
persons who had no interest in the great event were already moving
toward the door. And the Jansoulets did not come.
Suddenly there was a heavy, hurried step. The Nabob appeared, alone,
buttoned into his black frock-coat, correctly gloved and cravatted, but
with distorted features and haggard eye, still trembling from the
terrible scene in which he had just taken part.
She had refused to come.
In the morning he had told Madame's women to have her dressed at three
o'clock, as he was accustomed to do whenever he took the Levantine
abroad with him, for he found it necessary to impart motion to that
indolent creature, who, being incapable of assuming any responsibility
whatsoever, allowed others to think, to decide and to act for her,
although she was quite willing to go wherever he chose, when she was
once started. And he relied upon that willingness to enable him to take
her to Hemerlingue's house. But when, after breakfast, Jansoulet, fully
dressed, magnificent, perspiring in his struggles to put on his gloves,
sent to ask if Madame would soon be ready, he was told that Madame was
not going out. It was a serious crisis, so serious that, discarding the
mediation of valets and maids, through whom their conjugal interviews
were usually conducted, he ran upstairs four stairs at a time, and
entered the Levantine's luxurious apartments like a gust of the mistral.
She was still in bed, clad in the ample open-work tunic in silk of two
colors, which the Moors call a _djebba_, and in one of their
gold-embroidered caps from which her beautiful heavy black mane escaped
in tangled masses around her moon-like face, flushed by the hearty meal
she had just finished. The sleeves of the _djebba_ were turned back,
disclosing two enormous, shapeless arms, laden with bracelets, with long
slender chains wandering amid a wilderness of little mirrors, red
chaplets, boxes of perfume, microscopic pipes, cigarette cases, the
trivial toy-shop display of a Moorish beauty at her hour for rising.
The bedroom, heavy with the opium-laden, suffocating odor of Turkish
tobacco, presented the same disorderly aspect. Negresses went in and
out, slowly removing their mistress's coffee service, her favorite
gazelle was lapping a cup which he had overturned on the carpet with his
slender nose, while the dark-browed Cabassu, seated at the foot of the
bed with touching familiarity, was reading aloud to Madame a drama in
verse soon to be produced at Cardaillac's theatre. The Levantine was
amazed, absolutely stupefied by the work.
"My dear," she said to Jansoulet, in her thick Flemish accent, "I don't
know what our manager is thinking about. I am just reading that play,
_Revolte_, that he is so crazy over. Why, it's a frightful thing! It's
never been on the stage."
"What do I care for your stage?" cried Jansoulet fiercely, despite all
his respect for the daughter of the Afchins. "What! you're not dressed,
yet? Weren't you told that we were going out?"
She had been told, but she had begun to read this idiotic play.
"We will go out to-morrow," she said in her sleepy tone.
"To-morrow! Impossible! We are expected to-day without fail. A very
important visit."
"Where are we to go, pray?"
He hesitated a second, then answered:
"To Hemerlingue's."
She looked up at him with her great eyes, convinced that he was laughing
at her. Thereupon he told her of his meeting with the baron at Mora's
funeral and the agreement they had made.
"Go there if you choose," she said coldly; "but you know me very little
if you think that I, an Afchin, will ever set foot inside that slave's
door."
Cabassu, seeing the turn that the discussion was taking, had prudently
disappeared in an adjoining room, the five books of _Revolte_ in a pile
under his arm.
"Stay," said the Nabob to his wife, "it is clear that you don't
understand the terrible plight I am in. Listen."
Heedless of the maids and negresses, with the Oriental's sovereign
indifference for the servant class, he began to draw the picture of his
great embarrassment, his property in Tunis seized, his credit in Paris
lost, his whole life hanging in suspense on the decision of the Chamber,
Hemerlingue's influence with the man who was to make the report, and the
absolute necessity of sacrificing all self-love to such momentous
interests. He talked with great warmth, eager to persuade her, to take
her with him. But she replied, simply: "I will not go," as if it were a
matter of an expedition of no possible consequence, so long that it was
likely to tire her.
"Come, come, it isn't possible that you would say such a thing," he
continued, quivering with excitement. "Remember that my fortune is at
stake, the future of your children, the very name you bear. Everything
is staked on this one concession, which you cannot refuse to make."
He might have talked thus for hours, he would still have been met by the
same determined, invincible obstinacy. A Mademoiselle Afchin could not
call upon a slave.
"I tell you, madame," he exclaimed, savagely, "that slave is worth more
than you. By her shrewdness she has doubled her husband's wealth, while
you on the contrary--"
For the first time in the twelve years of their married life Jansoulet
dared to oppose his wife's will. Was he ashamed of that crime of
_lese-majeste_ or did he realize that such a declaration might dig an
impassable abyss between them? At all events he changed his tone at once
and knelt beside the low bed, with the affectionate, smiling tone one
employs to make children listen to reason.
"My dear little Marthe, I implore you--get up and dress yourself. It's
for your own interest that I ask you to do it, for your luxury, for your
comfort. What will become of you if, by a mere whim, by naughty
wilfulness, we are to be reduced to poverty?"
The word "poverty" conveyed absolutely no meaning to the Levantine. You
could speak of it before her as you speak of death before small
children. It failed to move her, as she had no idea what it was. At all
events she was obstinately determined to remain in bed in her _djebba_,
for, to emphasize her decision, she lighted a fresh cigarette from the
one she had just finished, and while the Nabob enveloped his "darling
little wife" in apologies and prayers and supplications, promising her a
diadem of pearls a hundred times more beautiful than hers if she would
come, she watched the heady smoke float up to the painted ceiling and
wrapped herself in it as in imperturbable tranquillity. Finally, in face
of that persistent refusal, that silence, that forehead upon which he
detected the barrier of unconquerable obstinacy, Jansoulet gave rein to
his wrath and drew himself up to his full height.
"Very good," said he, "I say you shall."
He turned to the negresses:
"Dress your mistress, at once."
And the boor that he really was, the son of the Southern junk-dealer
coming to the surface in that crisis, which moved him to the depths of
his being, he threw back the bedclothes with a brutal, contemptuous
gesture, tossing the innumerable gewgaws they held to the floor, and
forcing the half-naked Levantine to jump to her feet with a promptitude
most remarkable in that bulky personage. She roared under the outrage,
gathered the folds of her tunic about her misshapen bust, fixed her
little cap crosswise over her falling hair, and began to blackguard her
husband.
"Never, you hear me, never--you shall never drag me to that--"
Filth poured from her heavy lips as from the mouth of a drain. Jansoulet
might well have believed that he was in one of the frightful dens along
the water front in Marseille, listening to a quarrel between a
prostitute and a _nervi_, or looking on at some open-air fracas between
Genoese, Maltese and Provencal women gleaning on the quay around bags of
grain in process of unloading, and reviling each other at full speed in
eddies of golden dust. She was the typical seaport Levantine, the
spoiled, neglected child, who from her terrace, or from her gondola, in
the evening, has heard sailors cursing one another in all the languages
of the Latin seas, and has remembered everything. The wretched man
stared at her, horrified and dismayed at what she compelled him to hear,
at her grotesque figure, foaming at the mouth and sputtering:
"No, I won't go--no, I won't go!"
And she was the mother of his children, an Afchin!
Suddenly, at the thought that his fate was in that woman's hands, that
she had only to put on a dress to save him, and that time was flying,
that it would soon be too late, a gust of crime rushed to his brain,
distorted all his features. He rushed at her, opening and closing his
hands with such a terrible expression that the daughter of the Afchins,
in deadly terror, darted toward the door through which the _masseur_ had
just left the room, calling:
"Aristide!"
That cry, that voice, his wife's evident intimacy with his
lieutenant--Jansoulet stopped, his frantic anger passed away, and he
rushed from the room, throwing the doors open, more eager to escape the
disaster and the horror whose presence he felt in his own house, than to
go elsewhere to seek the help that had been promised him.
A quarter of an hour later he made his appearance at Hemerlingue's,
making a despairing gesture in the banker's direction as he entered, and
approached the baroness, stammering the ready-made phrase that he had
heard repeated so often on the evening of his own ball: "His wife was
very ill--in despair that she could not--" She did not give him time to
finish, but rose slowly, like a long, slender snake in the crosswise
folds of her clinging skirt, and said, in her schoolgirl accent, without
looking at him: "Oh! _I_ knew--_I_ knew;" then moved away and paid no
further heed to him. He tried to accost Hemerlingue, but that gentleman
seemed deeply absorbed in his conversation with Maurice Trott. Thereupon
he went and sat down beside Madame Jenkins, whose isolation was no less
marked than his. But, while he talked with the poor woman, who was as
languid as he himself was preoccupied, he watched the baroness do the
honors of that salon, so much more comfortable than his own great gilded
halls.
The guests were taking their leave. Madame Hemerlingue escorted some of
the ladies to the door, bent her head beneath the benediction of the
Armenian bishop, bowed smilingly to the young dandies with canes,
bestowed upon every one the proper variety of salutation, with perfect
self-possession; and the poor devil could not avoid a mental comparison
between that Oriental slave become such a thorough Parisian, of such
marked distinction in the most refined society on earth, and that other
woman, the European enervated by the Orient, brutalized by Turkish
tobacco and bloated by a life of sloth. His ambition, his pride as a
husband were disappointed, humiliated in that union of which he now saw
the peril and the emptiness, the last cruel blow of destiny which
deprived him even of the refuge of domestic happiness against all his
public misfortunes.
Gradually the salons became empty. The Levantines disappeared one after
another, each leaving an immense void in her place. Madame Jenkins had
gone, and only two or three women, strangers to Jansoulet, remained,
among whom the mistress of the house seemed to be seeking refuge from
him. But Hemerlingue was at liberty, and the Nabob joined him just as he
was sidling furtively away in the direction of his offices, which were
on the same floor opposite the state apartments. Jansoulet went out with
him, forgetting in his confusion to salute the baroness; and when they
were safely out on the landing, arranged as a reception-room, the
corpulent Hemerlingue, who had been very cold and reserved so long as he
felt his wife's eye upon him, assumed a somewhat more open expression.
"It's a great pity," he said in a low tone, as if he were afraid of
being overheard, "that Madame Jansoulet would not come."
Jansoulet replied with a gesture of despair and savage helplessness.
"Too bad--too bad!" said the other, blowing his nose and feeling in his
pocket for his key.
"Look here, old fellow," said the Nabob, taking his arm, "because our
wives don't hit it off together, is no reason--That doesn't prevent our
remaining friends. What a nice little chat we had the other day, eh?"
"To be sure," said the baron, withdrawing his hand to unlock the door,
which opened noiselessly, disclosing the lofty private office with its
one lamp burning in front of the capacious, empty armchair.
"Ya didon, Mouci,"[5] said the poor Nabob, trying to jest, and resorting
to the _sabir_ patois to remind his old chum of all the pleasant
reminiscences they had overhauled the day before. "Our visit to Le
Merquier still holds. The picture we were going to offer him, you know.
What day shall we go?"
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Ah! I say, Monsieur.
"Ah! yes, Le Merquier. To be sure. Well, very soon. I will write you."
"Sure? You know it's very urgent."
"Yes, yes, I'll write you. Adieu."
And the fat man closed his door hastily as if he feared that his wife
might appear.
Two days later the Nabob received a note from Hemerlingue, almost
undecipherable with its little fly-tracks, complicated by abbreviations
more or less commercial, behind which the ex-sutler concealed his
absolute lack of orthography:
"MON CH/ANC/CAM/--Je ne puis decid/t'accom/ chez Le Merq/. Trop d'aff/en
ce mom/. D'aill/v/ ser/mieux seuls pour caus/. Vas-y carrem/. On t'att/.
R/Cassette, tous les mat/de 8 a 10.
"A toi cor/
"HEM/."[6]
FOOTNOTES:
[6] "MY DEAR OLD COMRADE,--I cannot see my way to accompanying you to
see Le Merquier. Too busy just now. Indeed, you will do better to talk
with him alone. Go there openly. You are expected. Rue Cassette, every
morning, 8 to 10.
"Yours cordially,
"HEMERLINGUE."
Below, by way of postscript, in a hand equally fine, but much clearer,
was written very legibly:
"A religious picture, if possible."
What was he to think of that letter? Was it dictated by real
friendliness or polite dissimulation? At all events, further hesitation
was out of the question. The time was very short. So Jansoulet made a
brave effort, for Le Merquier frightened him sadly, and went to his
office one morning.
This strange Paris of ours, in its population and its varied aspects,
seems like a map of the whole world. We find in the Marais narrow
streets with old, carved, vermiculated doors, with overhanging gables,
with balconies _en moucharabies_, which make one think of old
Heidelberg. Faubourg Saint-Honore where it is broadest, near the Russian
church with its white minarets and golden balls, recalls a bit of
Moscow. On Montmartre there is a picturesque, crowded spot that is pure
Algiers. Low, clean little houses, with their copper-plates on the
doors, and their private gardens, stand in line along typical English
streets between Neuilly and the Champs-Elysees; while the whole circuit
of the apse of Saint-Sulpice, Rue Ferou, Rue Cassette, lying placidly in
the shadow of the great towers, roughly paved, with knockers on the
front doors, seems to have been transplanted from some pious provincial
city,--Tours or Orleans for instance, in the neighborhood of the
cathedral and the bishop's palace, where tall trees tower above the
walls and sway to the music of the bells and the responses.
There, in the vicinity of the Catholic club, of which he had been chosen
honorary president, lived Maitre Le Merquier, advocate, Deputy for Lyon,
man of business of all the great religious communities of France, and
the man whom Hemerlingue, in pursuance of an idea of great profundity
for that bulky individual, had intrusted with the legal affairs of his
firm.
Arriving about nine o'clock at an ancient mansion, whose ground-floor
was occupied by a religious publishing house sleeping peacefully in its
odor of the sacristy and of coarse paper for printing miracles, and
ascending the broad staircase, the walls of which were whitewashed like
those of a convent, Jansoulet felt permeated with that provincial and
Catholic atmosphere wherein the memories of his Southern past revived,
childish impressions still fresh and intact, thanks to his long exile,
impressions which the son of Francoise had had neither time nor occasion
to disown since his arrival in Paris. Worldly hypocrisy had assumed all
its different shapes before him, tried all its masks, except that of
religious integrity. So that he refused in his own mind to believe in
the venality of a man who lived in such surroundings. Ushered into the
advocate's waiting-room, a large parlor with curtains of starched muslin
as fine as that of which surplices are made, its only ornament a large
and beautiful copy of Tintoret's _Dead Christ_ over the door, his
uncertainty and anxiety changed to indignant conviction. It was not
possible. He had been misled touching Le Merquier. Surely it was an
impudent slander, such as Paris is so ready to spread; or perhaps they
were laying another one of those wicked traps for him, against which he
had done nothing but stumble for six months past. No, that timid
conscience renowned at the Palais de Justice and the Chamber, that
cold, austere man could not be dealt with like those coarse, pot-bellied
pashas, with their loose belts and floating sleeves so convenient as
receptacles for purses of sequins. He would expose himself to a shameful
refusal, to the natural revolt of outraged honor, if he should attempt
such methods of bribery.
The Nabob said this to himself as he sat on the oak bench that ran
around the room, polished by serge gowns and the rough broadcloth of
cassocks. Notwithstanding the early hour, several persons beside himself
were waiting. A Dominican striding back and forth, ascetic and serene of
face, two nuns buried in their hoods, telling their beads on long
rosaries which measured their time of waiting, priests from the diocese
of Lyon, recognizable from the shape of their hats, and other persons of
stern and meditative mien seated by the great table of black wood which
stood in the centre of the room, and turning the leaves of some of those
edifying periodicals which are printed on the hill of Fourvieres, the
_Echoes from Purgatory_, or _Marie's Rose-bush_, and which give as
premiums to yearly subscribers papal indulgences, absolution for future
sins. A few words in a low voice, a stifled cough, the faint murmuring
of the two sisters' prayer reminded Jansoulet of the confused, faraway
sensation of hours of waiting around the confessional, in a corner of
his village church, when the great religious festivals were drawing
near.