“M. BERNARD JANSOULET!”
The plebeian name, accentuated proudly by the liveried servants, and
announced in a resounding voice, sounded in Jenkins’s drawing-rooms like
the clash of a cymbal, one of those gongs which, in fairy pieces at
the theatre, are the prelude to fantastic apparitions. The light of the
chandeliers paled, every eye sparkled at the dazzling perspective of
the treasures of the Orient, of the showers of the sequins and of pearls
evoked by the magic syllables of that name, yesterday unknown.
He, it was he himself, the Nabob, the rich among the rich, the great
Parisian curiosity, spiced by that relish of adventure which is so
pleasing to the surfeited crowd. All heads turned, all conversations
were interrupted; near the door there was a pushing among the guests,
a crush as upon the quay of a seaport to witness the entry of a felucca
laden with gold.
Jenkins himself, so hospitable, so self-possessed, who was standing in
the first drawing-room receiving his guests, abruptly quitted the
group of men about him and hurried to place himself at the head of the
galleons bearing down upon the guest.
“You are a thousand times, a thousand times kind. Mme. Jenkins will be
so glad, so proud.--Come, let me conduct you!”
And in his haste, in his vainglorious delight, he bore Jansoulet off so
quickly that the latter had no time to present his companion, Paul de
Gery, to whom he was giving his first entry into society. The young man
welcomed this forgetfulness. He slipped away among the crowd of black
dress-coats constantly pressed back at each new arrival, buried himself
in it, seized by that wild terror which is experienced by every young
man from the country at his first introduction to a Paris drawing-room,
especially when he is intelligent and refined, and beneath his
breastplate of linen does not wear like a coat of mail the imperturbable
assurance of a boor.
All you, Parisians of Paris, who from the age of sixteen, in your first
dress-coat and with opera-hat against your thigh, have been wont to air
your adolescence at receptions of all kinds, you know nothing of that
anguish, compounded of vanity, of timidity, of recollections of romantic
readings, which keeps a young man from opening his mouth and so makes
him awkward and for a whole night pins him down to one spot in a
doorway, and converts him into a piece of furniture in a recess, a poor,
wandering and wretched being, incapable of manifesting his existence
save by an occasional change of place, dying of thirst rather than
approach the buffet, and going away without having uttered a word,
unless perhaps to stammer out one of those incoherent pieces of
foolishness which he remembers for months, and which make him, at night,
as he thinks of them, heave an “Ah!” of raging shame, with head buried
in the pillow.
Paul de Gery was that martyr. Away yonder in his country home he had
always lived a very retired existence with an old, pious, and gloomy
aunt, up to the time when the law-student, destined in the first
instance to the career in which his father had left an excellent
reputation, had found himself introduced to a few judges’ drawing-rooms,
ancient, melancholy dwellings with faded pier-glasses, where he used to
go to make a fourth at whist with venerable shadows. Jenkins’s evening
party was therefore a _debut_ for this provincial, of whom his very
ignorance and his southern adaptability made immediately an observer.
From the place where he stood, he watched the curious defile of
Jenkins’s guests which had not yet come to an end at midnight; all the
clients of the fashionable physician; the fine flower of society;
a strong political and financial element, bankers, deputies, a few
artists, all the jaded people of Parisian “high life,” wan-faced, with
glittering eyes, saturated with arsenic like greedy mice, but with
appetite insatiable for poison and for life. The drawing-room being
thrown open, the vast antechamber of which the doors had been removed to
be seen, laden with flowers at the sides, the principal staircase of the
mansion, over which swept, now shaken out to their full extent, the
long trains, whose silky weight seemed to give a backward pull to the
undraped busts of the women in the course of that pretty ascending
movement which brought them into view, little by little, till the
complete flower of their splendour was reached. The couples as they
gained the top seemed to be making an entry on the stage of a theatre;
and that was twice true, since each person left on the last step the
contracted eyebrows, the lines that marked preoccupation, the wearied
air, his vexations, his sorrows, to display instead a contented face, a
gay smile over the reposeful harmony of the features. The men exchanged
honest shakes of the hand, exhibitions of fraternal good-feeling;
the women, preoccupied with themselves, as they stood making little
caracoling movements, with trembling graces, play of eyes and shoulders,
murmured, without meaning anything, a few words of greeting:
“Thank you--oh, thank you! How kind you are!”
Then the couples would separate, for evening parties are no longer the
gatherings of charming wits, in which feminine delicacy was wont to
compel the character, the lofty knowledge, the genius, even, of men
to bow graciously before it; but these overcrowded routs, in which the
women, who alone are seated, chattering together like slaves in a harem,
have no longer aught save the pleasure of being beautiful or appearing
so. De Gery, after having wandered through the doctor’s library, the
conservatory, the billiard-room, where men were smoking, weary of
serious and dry conversation which seemed to him out of place amid
surroundings so decorated and in the brief hour of pleasure--some one
had asked him carelessly, without looking at him, what the Bourse
was doing that day--made his way again towards the door of the large
drawing-room, which was barricaded by a wedged crowd of dress-coats, a
sea of heads bent sideways and peering past each other, watching.
This salon was a spacious apartment richly furnished with the artistic
taste which distinguished the host and hostess. There were a few
old pictures on the light background of the hangings. A monumental
chimneypiece, adorned by a handsome group in marble--“The Seasons,” by
Sebastien Ruys--around which long green stems cut in lacework or of a
goffered bronze-like rigidity curved back towards the mirror as towards
the limpidity of a clear lake. On the low seats, women in close groups,
so close as almost to blend the delicate colours of their toilettes,
forming an immense basket of living flowers, above which there floated
the gleam of bare shoulders, of hair sown with diamonds that looked like
drops of water on the dark women, glittering reflections on the fair,
and the same heady perfume, the same confused and gentle hum, compact
of vibrant warmth and intangible wings, which, in summer, caresses a
garden-bed through all its flowering time. Now and then a little laugh,
rising into this luminous atmosphere, a quicker inspiration in the air,
which would cause aigrettes and curls to tremble, a handsome profile to
stand out suddenly. Such was the aspect of the drawing-room.
A few men were present, a very small number, however, and all of them
personages of note, laden with years and decorations. They were standing
about near couches, leaning over the backs of chairs, with that air of
condescension which men assume when speaking to children. But in the
peaceful buzz of these conversations, one voice rang out piercing and
brazen, that of the Nabob, who was tranquilly performing his evolutions
across this social hothouse with the assurance bestowed upon him by his
immense wealth, and a certain contempt for women which he had brought
back from the East.
At that moment, comfortably installed on a settee, his big hands in
yellow gloves crossed carelessly one over the other, he was talking with
a very handsome woman, whose original physiognomy--much vitality coupled
with severe features--stood out pale among the pretty faces about her,
just as her dress, all white, classic in its folds and following closely
the lines of her supple figure, contrasted with toilettes that were
richer, but among which none had that air of daring simplicity. From his
corner, de Gery admired the low and smooth forehead beneath its fringe
of downward combed hair, the well-opened eyes, deep blue in colour, an
abysmal blue, the mouth which ceased to smile only to relax its pure
curve into an expression that was weary and drooping. In sum, the rather
haughty mien of an exceptional being.
Somebody near him mentioned her name--Felicia Ruys. At once he
understood the rare attraction of this young girl, the continuer of
her father’s genius, whose budding celebrity had penetrated even to the
remote country district where he had lived, with the aureole of reputed
beauty. While he stood gazing at her, admiring her least gestures, a
little perplexed by the enigma of her handsome countenance, he heard
whispers behind him.
“But see how pleasant she is with the Nabob! If the duke were to come
in!”
“The Duc de Mora is coming?”
“Certainly. It is for him that the party is given; to bring about a
meeting between him and Jansoulet.”
“And you think that the duke and Mlle. Ruys----”
“Where have you come from? It is an intrigue known to all Paris. The
affair dates from the last exhibition, for which she did a bust of him.”
“And the duchess?”
“Bah! it is not her first experience of that sort. Ah! there is Mme.
Jenkins going to sing.”
There was a movement in the drawing-room, a more violent swaying of the
crowd near the door, and conversation ceased for a moment. Paul de
Gery breathed. What he had just heard had oppressed his heart. He felt
himself reached, soiled, by this mud flung in handfuls over the ideal
which in his own mind he had formed of that splendid adolescence,
matured by the sun of Art to so penetrating a charm. He moved away
a little, changed his place. He feared to hear again some whispered
infamy. Mme. Jenkins’s voice did him good, a voice that was famous in
the drawing-rooms of Paris and that in spite of all its magnificence had
nothing theatrical about it, but seemed an emotional utterance vibrating
over unstudied sonorities. The singer, a woman of forty or forty-five,
had splendid ash-blond hair, delicate, rather nerveless features, a
striking expression of kindness. Still good-looking, she was dressed
in the costly taste of a woman who has not given up the thought of
pleasing. Indeed, she was far from having given it up. Married a dozen
years ago, for a second time, to the doctor, they seemed still to be
at the first months of their dual happiness. While she sang a popular
Russian melody, savage and sweet like the smile of a Slav, Jenkins was
ingenuously proud, without seeking to dissimulate the fact, his broad
face all beaming; and she, each time that she bent her head as she
regained her breath, glanced in his direction a timid, affectionate
smile that flew to seek him over the unfolded music. And then, when she
had finished amid an admiring and delighted murmur, it was touching to
notice how discreetly she gave her husband’s hand a secret squeeze, as
though to secure to themselves a corner of private bliss in the midst of
her great triumph. Young de Gery was feeling cheered by the spectacle of
this happy couple, when quite close to him a voice murmured--it was not,
however, the same voice that he had heard just before:
“You know what they say--that the Jenkinses are not married.”
“How absurd!”
“I assure you. It would seem that there is a veritable Mme. Jenkins
somewhere, but not the lady we know. Besides, have you noticed----”
The dialogue continued in an undertone. Mme. Jenkins advanced, bowing,
smiling, while the doctor, stopping a tray that was being borne
round, brought her a glass of claret with the alacrity of a mother, an
impresario, a lover. Calumny, calumny, ineffaceable defilement! To the
provincial young man, Jenkins’s attentions now seemed exaggerated.
He fancied that there was something affected about them, something
deliberate, and, too, in the words of thanks which she addressed in
a low voice to her husband he thought he could detect a timidity, a
submissiveness, not consonant with the dignity of the legitimate spouse,
glad and proud in an assured happiness. “But Society is a hideous
affair!” said de Gery to himself, dismayed and with cold hands. The
smiles around him had upon him the effect of hypocritical grimaces.
He felt shame and disgust. Then suddenly revolting: “Come, it is not
possible.” And, as though in reply to this exclamation, behind him
the scandalous tongue resumed in an easy tone: “After all, you know, I
cannot vouch for its truth. I am only repeating what I have heard. But
look! Baroness Hemerlingue. He gets all Paris, this Jenkins.”
The baroness moved forward on the arm of the doctor, who had rushed to
meet her, and appeared, despite all his control of his facial muscles, a
little ill at ease and discomfited. He had thought, the good Jenkins, to
profit by the opportunity afforded by this evening party to bring
about a reconciliation between his friend Hemerlingue and his friend
Jansoulet, who were his two most wealthy clients and embarrassed him
greatly with their intestine feud. The Nabob was perfectly willing.
He bore his old chum no grudge. Their quarrel had arisen out of
Hemerlingue’s marriage with one of the favourites of the last Bey. “A
story with a woman at the bottom of it, in short,” said Jansoulet, and
a story which he would have been glad to see come to an end, since his
exuberant nature found every antipathy oppressive. But it seemed that
the baron was not anxious for any settlement of their differences; for,
notwithstanding his word passed to Jenkins, his wife arrived alone, to
the Irishman’s great chagrin.
She was a tall, slender, frail person, with eyebrows that suggested a
bird’s plumes, and a youthful intimidated manner. She was aged about
thirty but looked twenty, and wore a head-dress of grasses and ears of
corn drooping over very black hair peppered with diamonds. With her long
lashes against cheeks white with that transparency of complexion which
characterizes women who have long led a cloistered existence, and a
little ill at ease in her Parisian clothes, she resembled less one who
had formerly been a woman of the harem than a nun who, having renounced
her vows, was returning into the world.
An air of piety, of extreme devoutness, in her bearing, a certain
ecclesiastical trick of walking with downcast eyes, elbows close to
the body, hands crossed, mannerisms which she had acquired in the very
religious atmosphere in which she had lived since her conversion and
her recent baptism, completed this resemblance. And you can imagine
with what ardent curiosity that worldly assembly regarded this quondam
odalisk turned fervent Catholic, as she advanced escorted by a man with
a livid countenance like that of some spectacled sacristan, Maitre
le Merquier, deputy of Lyons, Hemerlingue’s man of business, who
accompanied the baroness whenever the baron “was somewhat indisposed,”
as on this evening.
At their entry into the second drawing-room, the Nabob came straight up
to her, expecting to see appear in her wake the puffy face of his old
comrade to whom it was agreed that he should go and offer his hand. The
baroness perceived him and became still whiter. A flash as of steel shot
from beneath her long lashes. Her nostrils dilated, quivered, and, as
Jansoulet bowed, she quickened her step, carrying her head high and
erect, and letting fall from her thin lips an Arab word which no one
else could understand but of which the Nabob himself well appreciated
the insult; for, as he raised his head again, his tanned face was of the
colour of baked earthenware as it leaves the furnace. He stood for an
instant without moving, his huge fists clinched, his mouth swollen with
anger. Jenkins came up and rejoined him, and de Gery, who had followed
the whole scene from a distance, saw them talking together with
preoccupied air.
The thing was a failure. The reconciliation, so cunningly planned, would
not take place. Hemerlingue did not desire it. If only the duke, now,
did not fail to keep his engagement with them. This reflection was
prompted by the lateness of the hour. The Wauters who was to sing the
music of the Night from the _Enchanted Flute_, on her way home from her
theatre, had just entered, completely muffled in her hoods of lace.
And there was still no sign of the Minister.
It was, however, a clearly understood, definitely promised arrangement.
Monpavon was to call for him at the club. From time to time the good
Jenkins glanced at his watch, while applauding absently the bouquet of
brilliant notes which the Wauters was pouring forth from her fairy
lips, a bouquet costing three thousand francs, useless, like the other
expenses of the evening, if the duke did not come.
Suddenly the double doors were flung wide open:
“His excellency M. le Duc de Mora!”
A long quiver of excitement welcomed him, a respectful curiosity that
ranged itself in two rows instead of the mobbing crowd that flocked on
the heels of the Nabob.
None better than he knew how to bear himself in society, to walk across
a drawing-room with gravity, to endow futile things with an air of
seriousness, and to treat serious things lightly; that was the epitome
of his attitude in life, a paradoxical distinction. Still handsome,
despite his fifty-six years, with a comeliness compounded of elegance
and proportion, wherein the grace of the dandy was fortified by
something military about the figure and the haughtiness of the face; he
wore with striking effect his black dress-coat, on which, to do honour
to Jenkins, he had pinned a few of his decorations, which he was in the
habit of never wearing except upon official occasions. The reflection
from the linen, from the white cravat, the dull silver of the
decorations, the smoothness of the thin hair now turning gray, enhanced
the pallor of the features, more bloodless than all the bloodless faces
that were to be seen that evening in the Irishman’s house.
He had led such a terrible life! Politics, play under all its forms,
from the Stock Exchange to the baccarat-table, and that reputation of a
man successful with women which had to be maintained at all costs. Oh,
this man was a true client of Jenkins; and this princely visit, he owed
it in good sooth to the inventor of those mysterious pills which gave
that fire to his glance, to his whole being that energy so vibrating and
extraordinary.
“My dear duke, permit me to----”
Monpavon, with solemn air and a great sense of his own importance,
endeavoured to effect the presentation so long looked forward to; but
his excellency, preoccupied, seemed not to hear, continued his progress
towards the large drawing-room, borne along by one of those electric
currents that break the social monotony. On his passage, and while he
greeted the handsome Mme. Jenkins, the ladies bent forward a little with
seductive airs, a soft laugh, concerned to please. But he noticed only
one among them, Felicia, on her feet in the centre of a group of men,
discussing some question as though she were in her studio, and watching
the duke come towards her, while tranquilly taking her sherbet. She
greeted him with perfect naturalness. Those near had discreetly retired
to a little distance. There seemed to exist between them, however,
notwithstanding what de Gery had overheard with regard to their presumed
relations, nothing more than a quite intellectual intimacy, a playful
familiarity.
“I called at your house, mademoiselle, on my way to the Bois.”
“I was informed of it. You even went into the studio.”
“And I saw the famous group--my group.”
“Well?”
“It is very fine. The hound runs as though he were mad. The fox scampers
away admirably. Only I did not quite understand. You had told me that it
was our own story, yours and mine.”
“Ah, there! Try. It is an apologue that I read in--You do not read
Rabelais, M. le Duc?”
“My faith, no. He is too coarse.”
“Ah, well, his works were the text-book of my first reading lessons.
Very badly brought up, you know. Oh, exceedingly badly. My apologue,
then, is taken from Rabelais. Here it is: Bacchus created a wonderful
fox, impossible to capture. Vulcan, on the other hand, gave a dog of
his own creation the power to catch every animal that he should pursue.
‘Now,’ as my author has it, ‘it happened that the two met.’ You see
what a wild and interminable chase. It seems to me, my dear duke,
that destiny has in the same way brought us together, endowed with
conflicting attributes; you who have received from the gods the gift of
reaching all hearts, I whose heart will never be made prisoner.”
She spoke these words, looking him full in the face, almost laughing,
but sheathed and erect in the white tunic which seemed to defend her
person against the liberties of his thought. He, the conqueror, the
irresistible, had never before met one of this audacious and headstrong
breed. He brought to bear upon her, therefore, all the magnetic currents
of his seductiveness, while around them the rising murmur of the _fete_,
the soft laughter, the rustle of satins and the rattling of pearls
formed the accompaniment to this duet of mundane passion and juvenile
irony. He resumed after a minute’s pause:
“But how did the gods escape from that awkward situation?”
“By turning the two runners into stone.”
“Upon my word,” said he, “that is a solution which I do not at all
accept. I defy the gods ever to petrify my heart.”
A fiery gleam shot for a moment from his eyes, extinguished immediately
by the thought that people were observing them.
In effect, people were observing them intently, but no one with so
much curiosity as Jenkins, who wandered round them a little way off,
impatient and fidgety, as though he were annoyed with Felicia for taking
private possession of the important personage of the assembly. The young
girl laughingly called the duke’s attention to it.
“People will say that I am monopolizing you.”
She pointed out to him Monpavon waiting, standing near the Nabob who,
from afar, was gazing at his excellency with the beseeching, submissive
eyes of a big, good-tempered mastiff. The Minister of State then
remembered the object which had brought him. He bowed to the young girl
and returned to Monpavon, who was able at last to present to him “his
honourable friend, M. Bernard Jansoulet.” His excellency bowed slightly,
the _parvenu_ humbled himself lower than the earth, then they chatted
for a moment.
A group curious to observe. Jansoulet, tall, strong, with an air of the
people about him, a sunburned skin, his broad back arched as though made
round for ever by the low bowings of Oriental courtiery, his big, short
hands splitting his light gloves, his excessive gestures, his southern
exuberance chopping up his words like a puncher. The other, a high-bred
gentleman, a man of the world, elegance itself, easy in his least
gestures, though these, however, were extremely rare, carelessly letting
fall unfinished sentences, relieving by a half smile the gravity of his
face, concealing beneath an imperturbable politeness the deep contempt
which he had for man and woman; and it was in that contempt that his
strength lay. In an American drawing-room the antithesis would have been
less violent. The Nabob’s millions would have re-established the balance
and even made the scale lean to his side. But Paris does not yet place
money above every other force, and to realize this, it was sufficient
to observe the great contractor wriggling amiably before the great
gentleman and casting under his feet, like the courtier’s cloak of
ermine, the dense vanity of a newly rich man.
From the corner in which he had ensconced himself, de Gery was watching
the scene with interest, knowing what importance his friend attached to
this introduction, when the same chance which all through the evening
had so cruelly been giving the lie to the native simplicity of his
inexperience, caused him to distinguish a short dialogue near him, amid
that buzz of many conversations through which each hears just the word
that interests him.
“It is indeed the least that Monpavon can do, to enable him to make a
few good acquaintances. He has introduced him to so many bad ones. You
know that he has just put Paganetti and all his gang on his shoulders.”
“Poor fellow! But they will devour him.”
“Bah! It is only fair that he should be made to disgorge a little. He
has been such a thief himself away yonder among the Turks.”
“Really, do you believe that is so?”
“Do I believe it? I am in possession of very precise details on the
point which I have from Baron Hemerlingue, the banker, who effected the
last Tunisian loan. He knows some stories about the Nabob, he does. Just
imagine.”
And the infamous gossip commenced. For fifteen years Jansoulet had
exploited the former Bey in a scandalous fashion. Names of purveyors
were cited and tricks wonderful in their assurance, their effrontery;
for instance, the story of a musical frigate, yes, a veritable musical
box, like a dining-room picture, which he had bought for two hundred
thousand francs and sold again for ten millions; the cost price of a
throne sold at three millions for which the account could be seen in the
books of an upholsterer of the Faubourg Saint-Honore did not exceed a
hundred thousand francs; and the funniest part of it was that, the Bey
having changed his mind, the royal seat, fallen into disgrace before it
had even been unpacked, remained still nailed in its packing-case at the
custom-house in Tripoli.
Next, beyond these wildly extravagant commissions on the provision of
the least toy, they laid stress upon accusations more grave but no less
certain, since they also sprang from the same source. It seemed there
was, adjoining the seraglio, a harem of European women admirably
equipped for his Highness by the Nabob, who must have been a good
judge in such matters, having practised formerly, in Paris--before
his departure for the East--the most singular trades: vendor of
theatre-tickets, manager of a low dancing-hall, and of an establishment
more ill-famed still. And the whispering ended in a smothered laugh, the
coarse laugh of men chatting among themselves.
The first impulse of the young man from the country, as he heard these
infamous calumnies, was to turn round and exclaim:
“You lie!”
A few hours earlier he would have done it without hesitating; but, since
he had been there, he had learned distrust, scepticism. He contained
himself, therefore, and listened to the end, motionless in the same
place, having deep down within himself an unavowed desire to become
further acquainted with the man whose service he had entered. As for
the Nabob, the completely unconscious subject of this hideous recital,
tranquilly installed in a small room to which its blue hangings and two
shaded lamps gave a reposeful air, he was playing his game of _ecarte_
with the Duc de Mora.
O magic of Fortune’s argosy! The son of the dealer in old iron seated
alone at a card-table opposite the first personage of the Empire!
Jansoulet could scarcely believe the Venetian mirror in which were
reflected his own bright countenance and the august head with its
parting down the middle. Accordingly, in order to show his appreciation
of this great honour, he sought to lose decently as many thousand-franc
notes as possible, feeling himself even so the winner of the game, and
quite proud to see his money pass into those aristocratic hands, whose
least gesture he studied as they dealt, cut, or held the cards.
A circle had formed around them, always keeping a distance, however,
the ten paces exacted for the salutation of a prince; it was the public
there to witness this triumph in which the Nabob was bearing his part
as in a dream, intoxicated by those fairy harmonies rather faint in the
distance, whose songs that reached him in snatches as over the resonant
obstacle of a pool, the perfume of flowers that seem to become full
blown in so singular fashion towards the end of Parisian balls, when
the late hour that confuses all notions of time and the weariness of
the sleepless nights communicate to brains soothed in a more nervous
atmosphere, as it were, a dizzy sense of enjoyment. The robust nature of
Jansoulet, civilized savage that he was, was more sensitive than another
to these unknown subtleties, and he had need of all his strength to
refrain from manifesting by some glad hurrah, by some untimely effusion
of gestures and speech, the impulse of physical gaiety which pervaded
his whole being, as happens to those great mountain dogs that are
thrown into epileptic fits of madness by the inhaling of a drop of some
essence.
“The sky is clear, the pavement dry. If you like, my dear boy, we
will send the carriage away and return on foot,” said Jansoulet to his
companion as they left Jenkins’s house.
De Gery accepted with eagerness. He felt that he required to walk, to
shake off in the open air the infamies and the lies of that comedy
of society which had left his heart cold and oppressed, with all his
life-blood driven to his temples where he could hear the swollen veins
beating. He staggered as he walked, like those unfortunate persons who,
having been operated upon for cataract, in the terror of sight regained,
do not dare put one foot before the other. But with what a brutal hand
the operation had been performed! So that great artist with the glorious
name, that pure and untamed beauty the sight alone of whom had troubled
him like an apparition, was only a courtesan. Mme. Jenkins, that stately
woman, of bearing at once so proud and so gentle, had no real title to
the name. That illustrious man of science with the open countenance, and
a manner so pleasant in his welcome, had the impudence thus to parade
a disgraceful concubinage. And Paris suspected it, but that did not
prevent it from running to their parties. And, finally, Jansoulet, so
kind, so generous, for whom he felt in his heart so much gratitude, he
knew him to be fallen into the hands of a gang of brigands, a brigand
himself and well worthy of the conspiracy organized to cause him to
disgorge his millions.
Was it possible, and how much of it was he to be obliged to believe?
A glance which he threw sideways at the Nabob, whose immense person
almost blocked the pavement, revealed to him suddenly in that walk
oppressed by the weight of his wealth, a something low and vulgar which
he had not previously remarked. Yes, he was indeed the adventurer
from the south, moulded of the slimy clay that covers the quays of
Marseilles, trodden down by all the nomads and wanderers of a seaport.
Kind, generous, forsooth! as harlots are, or thieves. And the gold,
flowing in torrents through that tainted and luxurious world, splashing
the very walls, seemed to him now to be loaded with all the dross, all
the filth of its impure and muddy source. There remained, then, for
him, de Gery, but one thing to do, to go away, to quit with all possible
speed this situation in which he risked the compromising of his good
name, the one heritage from his father. Doubtless. But the two little
brothers down yonder in the country. Who would pay for their board and
lodging? Who would keep up the modest home miraculously brought into
being once more by the handsome salary of the eldest son, the head of
the family? Those words, “head of the family,” plunged him immediately
into one of those internal combats in which interest and conscience
struggled for the mastery--the one brutal, substantial, attacking
vigorously with straight thrusts, the other elusive, breaking away by
subtle disengagements--while the worthy Jansoulet, unconscious cause
of the conflict, walked with long strides close by his young friend,
inhaling the fresh air with delight at the end of his lighted cigar.
Never had he felt it such a happiness to be alive; and this evening
party at Jenkins’s, which had been his own first real entry into society
as well as de Gery’s, had left with him an impression of porticoes
erected as for a triumph, of an eagerly assembled crowd, of flowers
thrown on his path. So true is it that things only exist through the
eyes that observe them. What a success! the duke, as he took leave of
him inviting him to come to see his picture gallery, which meant the
doors of Mora House opened to him within a week. Felicia Ruys
consenting to do his bust, so that at the next exhibition the son of the
nail-dealer would have his portrait in marble by the same great
artist who had signed that of the Minister of State. Was it not the
satisfaction of all his childish vanities?
And each pondering his own thoughts, sombre or glad, they continued to
walk shoulder to shoulder, absorbed and so absent in mind that the Place
Vendome, silent and bathed in a blue and chilly light, rang under their
steps before a word had been uttered between them.
“Already?” said the Nabob. “I should not at all have minded walking a
little longer. What do you say?” And while they strolled two or three
times around the square, he gave vent in spasmodic bursts to the immense
joy which filled him.
“How pleasant the air is! How one can breathe! Thunder of God! I would
not have missed this evening’s party for a hundred thousand francs.
What a worthy soul that Jenkins is! Do you like Felicia Ruys’s style of
beauty? For my part, I dote on it. And the duke, what a great gentleman!
so simple, so kind. A fine place, Paris, is it not, my son?”
“It is too complicated for me. It frightens me,” answered Paul de Gery
in a hollow voice.
“Yes, yes, I understand,” replied the other with an adorable fatuity.
“You are not yet accustomed to it; but, never mind, one quickly becomes
so. See how after a single month I find myself at my ease.”
“That is because it is not your first visit to Paris. You have lived
here.”
“I? Never in my life. Who told you that?”
“Indeed! I thought--” answered the young man; and immediately, a host of
reflections crowding into his mind:
“What, then, have you done to this Baron Hemerlingue? It is a hatred to
the death between you.”
For a moment the Nabob was taken aback. That name of Hemerlingue, thrown
suddenly into his glee, recalled to him the one annoying episode of the
evening.
“To him as to the others,” said he in a saddened voice, “I have never
done anything save good. We began together in poverty. We made progress
and prospered side by side. Whenever he wished to try a flight on his
own wings, I always aided and supported him to the best of my ability.
It was I who during ten consecutive years secured for him the contracts
for the fleet and the army; almost his whole fortune came from that
source. Then one fine morning this slow-blooded imbecile of a Bernese
goes crazy over an odalisk whom the mother of the Bey had caused to be
expelled from the harem. The hussy was beautiful and ambitious, she made
him marry her, and naturally, after this brilliant match, Hemerlingue
was obliged to leave Tunis. Somebody had persuaded him to believe that I
was urging the Bey to close the principality to him. It was not true. On
the contrary, I obtained from his Highness permission for Hemerlingue’s
son--a child by his first wife--to remain in Tunis in order to look
after their suspended interests, while the father came to Paris to found
his banking-house. Moreover, I have been well rewarded for my kindness.
When, at the death of my poor Ahmed, the Mouchir, his brother, ascended
the throne, the Hemerlingues, restored to favour, never ceased to work
for my undoing with the new master. The Bey still keeps on good terms
with me; but my credit is shaken. Well, in spite of that, in spite of
all the shabby tricks that Hemerlingue has played me, that he plays me
still, I was ready this evening to hold out my hand to him. Not only
does the blackguard refuse it, but he causes me to be insulted by his
wife, a savage and evil-disposed creature, who does not pardon me for
always having declined to receive her in Tunis. Do you know what she
called me just now as she passed me? ‘Thief and son of a dog.’ As free
in her language as that, the odalisk--That is to say, that if I did not
know my Hemerlingue to be as cowardly as he is fat--After all, bah! let
them say what they like. I snap my fingers at them. What can they do
against me? Ruin me with the Bey? That is a matter of indifference
to me. There is nothing any longer for me to do in Tunis, and I shall
withdraw myself from the place altogether as soon as possible. There
is only one town, one country in the world, and that is Paris--Paris
welcoming, hospitable, not prudish, where every intelligent man may find
space to do great things. And I, now, do you see, de Gery, I want to do
great things. I have had enough of mercantile life. For twenty years I
have worked for money; to-day I am greedy of glory, of consideration, of
fame. I want to be somebody in the history of my country, and that will
be easy for me. With my immense fortune, my knowledge of men and of
affairs, the things I know I have here in my head, nothing is beyond my
reach and I aspire to everything. Believe me, therefore, my dear boy,
never leave me”--one would have said that he was replying to the secret
thought of his young companion--“remain faithfully on board my ship. The
masts are firm; I have my bunkers full of coal. I swear to you that we
shall go far, and quickly, _nom d’un sort_!”
The ingenuous southerner thus poured out his projects into the night
with many expressive gestures, and from time to time, as they walked
rapidly to and fro in the vast and deserted square, majestically
surrounded by its silent and closed palaces, he raised his head towards
the man of bronze on the column, as though taking to witness that great
upstart whose presence in the midst of Paris authorizes all ambitions,
endows every chimera with probability.
There is in young people a warmth of heart, a need of enthusiasm which
is awakened by the least touch. As the Nabob talked, de Gery felt his
suspicion take wing and all his sympathy return, together with a shade
of pity. No, very certainly this man was not a rascal, but a poor,
illuded being whose fortune had gone to his head like a wine too heavy
for a stomach long accustomed to water. Alone in the midst of Paris,
surrounded by enemies and people ready to take advantage of him,
Jansoulet made upon him the impression of a man on foot laden with gold
passing through some evil-haunted wood, in the dark and unarmed. And
he reflected that it would be well for the _protege_ to watch,
without seeming to do so, over the protector, to become the discerning
Telemachus of the blind Mentor, to point out to him the quagmires, to
defend him against the highwaymen, to aid him, in a word, in his combats
amid all that swarm of nocturnal ambuscades which he felt were prowling
ferociously around the Nabob and his millions.