Great festivities last Saturday in the Place Vendome. In honour of
his election, M. Bernard Jansoulet, the new deputy for Corsica, gave
a magnificent evening party, with municipal guards at the door,
illumination of the entire mansion, and two thousand invitations sent
out to fashionable Paris.
I owed to the distinction of my manners, to the sonority of my vocal
organ, which the chairman of the board had had occasion to notice at the
meetings at the Territorial Bank, the opportunity of taking part in
this sumptuous entertainment, at which, for three hours, standing in the
vestibule, amid the flowers and hangings, clad in scarlet and gold, with
that majesty peculiar to persons who are rather generously built, and
with my calves exposed for the first time in my life, I launched, like
a cannon-ball, through the five communicating drawing-rooms, the name
of each guest, which a glittering beadle saluted every time with the
“_bing_” of his halberd on the floor.
How many the curious observations which that evening again I was able
to make; how many the pleasant sallies, the high-toned jests exchanged
among the servants upon all that world as it passed by! Not with
the vine-dressers of Montbars in any case should I have heard such
drolleries. I should remark that the worthy M. Barreau, to begin with,
had caused to be served to us all in his pantry, filled to the ceiling
with iced drinks and provisions, a solid lunch well washed down, which
put each of us in a good humour that was maintained during the evening
by the glasses of punch and champagne pilfered from the trays when
dessert was served.
The masters, indeed, seemed in less joyous mood than we. So early as
nine o’clock, when I arrived at my post, I was struck by the uneasy
nervousness apparent on the face of the Nabob, whom I saw walking with
M. de Gery through the lighted and empty drawing-rooms, talking quickly
and making large gestures.
“I will kill him!” he said; “I will kill him!”
The other endeavoured to soothe him; then madame came in, and the
subject of their conversation was changed.
A mighty fine woman, this Levantine, twice as stout as I am, dazzling to
look at with her tiara of diamonds, the jewels with which her huge
white shoulders were laden, her back as round as her bosom, her waist
compressed within a cuirass of green gold, which was continued in long
braids down the whole length of her stiff skirt. I have never seen
anything so imposing, so rich. She suggested one of those beautiful
white elephants that carry towers on their backs, of which we read in
books of travel. When she walked, supporting herself with difficulty
by means of clinging to the furniture, her whole body quivered, her
ornaments clattered like a lot of old iron. Added to this, a small,
very piercing voice, and a fine red face which a little negro boy
kept cooling for her all the time with a white feather fan as big as a
peacock’s tail.
It was the first time that this indolent and retiring person had showed
herself to Parisian society, and M. Jansoulet seemed very happy and
proud that she had been willing to preside over his party; which
undertaking, for that matter, did not cost the lady much trouble, for,
leaving her husband to receive the guests in the first drawing-room,
she went and lay down on the divan of the small Japanese room, wedged
between two piles of cushions, motionless, so that you could see her
from a distance right in the background, looking like an idol, beneath
the great fan which her negro waved regularly like a piece of clockwork.
These foreign women possess an assurance!
All the same, the Nabob’s irritation had struck me, and seeing the
_valet de chambre_ go by, descending the staircase four steps at a time,
I caught him on the wing and whispered in his ear:
“What’s the matter, then, with your governor, M. Noel?”
“It is the article in the _Messenger_,” was his reply, and I had to
give up the idea of learning anything further for the moment, the
loud ringing of a bell announcing that the first carriage had arrived,
followed soon by a crowd of others.
Wholly absorbed in my occupation, careful to utter clearly the names
which were given to me, and to make them echo from salon to salon, I
had no longer a thought for anything besides. It is no easy business to
announce in a proper manner persons who are always under the impression
that their name must be known, whisper it under their breath as they
pass, and then are surprised to hear you murder it with the finest
accent, and are almost angry with you on account of those entrances
which, missing fire and greeted with little smiles, follow upon an
ill-made announcement. At M. Jansoulet’s, what made the work still
more difficult for me was the number of foreigners--Turks, Egyptians,
Persians, Tunisians. I say nothing of the Corsicans, who were very
numerous that day, because during my four years at the Territorial I
have become accustomed to the pronunciation of those high-sounding,
interminable names, always followed by that of the locality: “Paganetti
de Porto Vecchio, Bastelica di Bonifacio, Paianatchi de Barbicaglia.”
It was always a pleasure to me to modulate these Italian syllables, to
give them all their sonority, and I saw clearly, from the bewildered
airs of these worthy islanders, how charmed and surprised they were to
be introduced in such a manner into the high society of the Continent.
But with the Turks, these pashas, beys, and effendis, I had much
more trouble, and I must have happened often to fall on a wrong
pronunciation; for M. Jansoulet, on two separate occasions, sent word
to me to pay more attention to the names that were given to me, and
especially to announce in a more natural manner. This remark, uttered
aloud before the whole vestibule with a certain roughness, annoyed me
greatly, and prevented me--shall I confess it?--from pitying this rich
_parvenu_ when I learned, in the course of the evening, what cruel
thorns lay concealed in his bed of roses.
From half past ten until midnight the bell was constantly ringing,
carriages rolling up under the portico, guests succeeding one another,
deputies, senators, councillors of state, municipal councillors,
who looked much rather as though they were attending a meeting of
shareholders than an evening-party of society people. What could account
for this? I had not succeeded in finding an explanation, but a remark of
the beadle Nicklauss opened my eyes.
“Do you notice, M. Passajon,” said that worthy henchman, as he stood
opposite me, halberd in hand, “do you notice how few ladies we have?”
That was it, egad! Nor were we the only two to observe the fact. As each
new arrival made his entry I could hear the Nabob, who was standing near
the door, exclaim, with consternation in his thick voice like that of a
Marseillais with a cold in his head:
“What! all alone?”
The guest would murmur his excuses. “Mn-mn-mn--his wife a trifle
indisposed. Certainly very sorry.” Then another would arrive, and the
same question call forth the same reply.
By its constant repetition this phrase “All alone?” had eventually
become a jest in the vestibule; lackeys and footmen threw it at each
other whenever there entered a new guest “all alone!” And we laughed
and were put in good-humour by it. But M. Nicklauss, with his great
experience of the world, deemed this almost general abstention of the
fair sex unnatural.
“It must be the article in the _Messenger_,” said he.
Everybody was talking about it, this rascally article, and before the
mirror garlanded with flowers, at which each guest gave a finishing
touch to his attire before entering, I surprised fragments of whispered
conversation such as this:
“You have read it?”
“It is horrible!”
“Do you think the thing possible?”
“I have no idea. In any case, I preferred not to bring my wife.”
“I have done the same. A man can go everywhere without compromising
himself.”
“Certainly. While a woman----”
Then they would go in, opera hat under arm, with that conquering air of
married men when they are unaccompanied by their wives.
What, then, could there be in this newspaper, this terrible article, to
menace to this degree the influence of so wealthy a man? Unfortunately,
my duties took up the whole of my time. I could go down neither to the
pantry nor to the cloak-room to obtain information, to chat with the
coachmen and valets and lackeys whom I could see standing at the foot
of the staircase, amusing themselves by jests upon the people who were
going up. What will you? Masters give themselves great airs also. How
not laugh to see go by with an insolent manner and an empty stomach the
Marquis and the Marquise de Bois l’Hery, after all that we have been
told about the traffickings of Monsieur and the toilettes of Madame? And
the Jenkins couple, so tender, so united, the doctor carefully putting
a lace shawl over his lady’s shoulders for fear she should take cold
on the staircase; she herself smiling and in full dress, all in velvet,
with a great long train, leaning on her husband’s arm with an air that
seems to say, “How happy I am!” when I happened to know that, in fact,
since the death of the Irishwoman, his real, legitimate wife, the doctor
is thinking of getting rid of the old woman who clings to him, in order
to be able to marry a chit of a girl, and that the old woman passes her
nights in lamentation, and in spoiling with tears whatever beauty she
has left.
The humorous thing is that not one of these people had the least
suspicion of the rich jests and jeers that were spat over their backs
as they passed, not a notion of the filth which those long trains drew
after them as they crossed the carpet of the antechamber, and they all
would look at you so disdainfully that it was enough to make you die of
laughing.
The two ladies whom I have just named, the wife of the governor, a
little Corsican, to whom her bushy eyebrows, her white teeth, and her
shining cheeks, dark beneath the skin, give the appearance of a woman of
Auvergne with a washed face, a good sort, for the rest, and laughing all
the time except when her husband is looking at other women; in addition,
a few Levantines with tiaras of gold or pearls, less perfect specimens
of the type than our own, but still in a similar style, wives of
upholsterers, jewellers, regular tradesmen of the establishment, with
shoulders as large as shop-fronts, and expensive toilettes; finally,
sundry ladies, wives of officials of the Territorial, in sorry, badly
creased dresses; these constituted the sole representation of the fair
sex in the assembly, some thirty ladies lost among a thousand black
coats--that is to say, practically none at all. From time to time
Cassagne, Laporte, Grandvarlet, who were serving the refreshments in
trays, stopped to inform us of what was passing in the drawing-rooms.
“Ah, my boys, if you could see it! it has a gloom, a melancholy. The men
don’t stir from the buffets. The ladies are all at the back, seated in a
circle, fanning themselves and saying nothing. The fat old lady does
not speak to a soul. I fancy she is sulking. You should see the look on
Monsieur! Come, _pere_ Passajon, a glass of Chateau-Larose; it will pick
you up a bit.”
They were charmingly kind to me, all these young people, and took a
mischievous pleasure in doing me the honours of the cellar so often and
so copiously, that my tongue commenced to become heavy, uncertain, and
as the young folk said to me, in their somewhat free language. “Uncle,
you are babbling.” Happily the last of the effendis had just arrived,
and there was nobody else to announce; for it was in vain that I sought
to shake off the impression, every time I advanced between the curtains
to send a name hurtling through the air at random, I saw the chandeliers
of the drawing-rooms revolving with hundreds of dazzling lights, and the
floors slipping away with sharp and perpendicular slopes like Russian
mountains. I was bound to get my speech mixed, it is certain.
The cool night-air, sundry ablutions at the pump in the court-yard,
quickly got the better of this small discomfort, and when I entered the
cloak-room nothing of it was any longer apparent. I found a numerous and
gay company collected round a _marquise au champagne_, of which all
my nieces, wearing their best dresses, with their hair puffed out
and cravats of pink ribbon, took their full share notwithstanding
exclamations and bewitching little grimaces that deceived nobody.
Naturally, the conversation turned on the famous article, an article by
Moessard, it appears, full of frightful occupations which the Nabob was
alleged to have followed fifteen or twenty years ago, at the time of his
first sojourn in Paris.
It was the third attack of the kind which the _Messenger_ had published
in the course of the last week, and that rogue of a Moessard had the
spite to send the number each time done up in a packet to the Place
Vendome.
M. Jansoulet received it in the morning with his chocolate; and at the
same hour his friends and his enemies--for a man like the Nabob could
be regarded with indifference by none--would be reading, commenting,
tracing for themselves the relation to him a line of conduct designed to
save them from becoming compromised. Today’s article must be supposed to
have struck hard all the same; for Jansoulet, the coachman, recounted
to us a few hours ago, in the Bois, his master had not exchanged ten
greetings in the course of ten drives round the lake, while ordinarily
his hat is as rarely on his head as a sovereign’s when he takes the air.
Then, when they got back, there was another trouble. The three boys had
just arrived at the house, all in tears and dismay, brought home from
the College Bourdaloue by a worthy father in the interest of the poor
little fellows themselves, who had received a temporary leave of absence
in order to spare them from hearing in the parlour or the playground
any unkind story or painful allusion. Thereupon the Nabob flew into a
terrible passion, which caused him to destroy a service of porcelain,
and it appears that, had it not been for M. de Gery, he would have
rushed off at once to punch Moessard’s head.
“And he would have done very well,” remarked M. Noel, entering at these
last words, very much excited. “There is not a line of truth in that
rascal’s article. My master had never been in Paris before last year.
From Tunis to Marseilles, from Marseilles to Tunis, those were his only
journeys. But this knave of a journalist is taking his revenge because
we refused him twenty thousand francs.”
“There you acted very unwisely,” observed M. Francis upon
this--Monpavon’s Francis, Monpavon the old beau whose solitary tooth
shakes about in the centre of his mouth at every word he says, but whom
the young ladies regard with a favourable eye all the same on account of
his fine manners. “Yes, you were unwise. One must know how to conciliate
people, so long as they are in a position to be useful to us or to
injure us. Your Nabob has turned his back too quickly upon his friends
after his success; and between you and me, _mon cher_, he is not
sufficiently firmly established to be able to disregard attacks of this
kind.”