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.