The bright warmth of a clear May afternoon heated the lofty casement
windows of the Mora mansion to the temperature of a greenhouse. The
blue silk curtains were visible from outside through the branches of the
trees, and the wide terraces, where exotic flowers were planted out of
doors for the first time of the season, ran in borders along the whole
length of the quay. The raking of the garden paths traced the light
footprints of summer in the sand, while the soft fall of the water from
the hoses on the lawns was its refreshing song.
All the luxury of the princely residence lay sunning itself in the soft
warmth of the temperature, borrowing a beauty from the silence, the
repose of this noontide hour, the only hour when the roll of carriages
was not to be heard under the arches, nor the banging of the great doors
of the antechamber, and that perpetual vibration which the ringing of
bells upon arrivals or departures sent coursing through the very ivy on
the walls; the feverish pulse of the life of a fashionable house. It was
well known that up to three o’clock the duke held his reception at the
Ministry, and that the duchess, a Swede still benumbed by the snows
of Stockholm, had hardly issued from her drowsy curtains; consequently
nobody came to call, neither visitors or petitioners, and only the
footmen, perched like flamingoes on the deserted flight of steps in
front of the house, gave the place a touch of animation with the slim
shadows of their long legs and their yawning weariness of idlers.
As an exception, however, that day Jenkins’s brougham was standing
waiting in a corner of the court-yard. The duke, unwell since the
previous evening, had felt worse after leaving the breakfast-table, and
in all haste had sent for the man of the pearls in order to question him
on his singular condition. Pain nowhere, sleep and appetite as usual;
only an inconceivable lassitude, and a sense of terrible chill which
nothing could dissipate. Thus at that moment, notwithstanding the
brilliant spring sunshine which flooded his chamber and almost
extinguished the fire flaming in the grate, the duke was shivering
beneath his furs, surrounded by screens; and while signing papers for an
_attache_ of his cabinet on a low table of gold lacquer, placed so near
to the fire that it frizzled, he kept holding out his numb fingers
every moment toward the blaze, which might have burned the skin without
restoring circulation.
Was it anxiety caused by the indisposition of his illustrious client?
Jenkins appeared nervous, disquieted, walked backward and forward with
long strides over the carpet, hunting about right and left, seeking
in the air something which he believed to be present, a subtle and
intangible something like the trace of a perfume or the invisible track
left by a bird in its flight. You heard the crackling of the wood in
the fireplace, the rustle of papers hurriedly turned over, the indolent
voice of the duke indicating in a sentence, always precise and clear, a
reply to a letter of four pages, and the respectful monosyllables of
the _attache_--“Yes, M. le Ministre,” “No, M. le Ministre”; then the
scraping of a rebellious and heavy pen. Out of doors the swallows were
twittering merrily over the water, the sound of a clarinet was wafted
from somewhere near the bridges.
“It is impossible,” suddenly said the Minister of State, rising. “Take
that away, Lartigues; you must return to-morrow. I cannot write. I am
too cold. See, doctor; feel my hands--one would think that they had just
come out of a pail of iced water. For the last two days my whole body
has been the same. Isn’t it too absurd, in this weather!”
“I am not surprised,” muttered the Irishman, in a sullen, curt tone,
rarely heard from that honeyed personage.
The door had closed upon the young _attache_, bearing off his papers
with majestic dignity, but very happy, I imagine, to feel himself free
and to be able to stroll for an hour or two, before returning to the
Ministry, in the Tuileries gardens, full of spring frocks and pretty
girls sitting near the still empty chairs round the band, under the
chestnut-trees in flower, through which from root to summit there ran
the great thrill of the month when nests are built. The _attache_ was
certainly not frozen.
Jenkins, silently, examined his patient, sounded him, and tapped his
chest; then, in the same rough tone which might be explained by his
anxious devotion, the annoyance of the doctor who sees his orders
transgressed:
“Ah, now, my dear duke, what sort of life have you been living lately?”
He knew from the gossip of the antechamber--in the case of his regular
clients the doctor did not disdain this--he knew that the duke had a new
favourite, that this caprice of recent date possessed him, excited him
in an extraordinary measure, and the fact, taken together with
other observations made elsewhere, had implanted in Jenkins’s mind a
suspicion, a mad desire to know the name of this new mistress. It
was this that he was trying to read on the pale face of his patient,
attempting to fathom the depth of his thoughts rather than the origin
of his malady. But he had to deal with one of those faces which are
hermetically sealed, like those little coffers with a secret spring
which hold jewels and women’s letters, one of those discreet natures
closed by a cold, blue eye, a glance of steel by which the most astute
perspicacity may be baffled.
“You are mistaken, doctor,” replied his excellency tranquilly. “I have
made no changes in my habits.”
“Very well, M. le Duc, you have done wrong,” remarked the Irishman
abruptly, furious at having made no discovery.
And then, feeling that he was going too far, he gave vent to his bad
temper and to the severity of his diagnosis in words which were a tissue
of banalities and axioms. One ought to take care. Medicine was not
magic. The power of the Jenkins pearls was limited by human strength,
by the necessities of age, by the resources of nature, which,
unfortunately, are not inexhaustible. The duke interrupted him in an
irritable tone:
“Come, Jenkins, you know very well that I don’t like phrases. I am not
all right, then? What is the matter with me? What is the reason of this
chilliness?”
“It is anaemia, exhaustion--a sinking of the oil in the lamp.”
“What must I do?”
“Nothing. An absolute rest. Eat, sleep, nothing besides. If you could go
and spend a few weeks at Grandbois.”
Mora shrugged his shoulders:
“And the Chamber--and the Council--and--? Nonsense! how is it possible?”
“In any case, M. le Duc, you must put the brake on; as somebody said,
renounce absolutely--”
Jenkins was interrupted by the entry of the servant on duty, who,
discreetly, on tiptoe, like a dancing-master, came in to deliver a
letter and a card to the Minister of State, who was still shivering
before the fire. At the sight of that satin-gray envelope of a peculiar
shape the Irishman started involuntarily, while the duke, having opened
and glanced over his letter, rose with new vigor, his cheeks wearing
that light flush of artificial health which all the heat of the stove
had not been able to bring there.
“My dear doctor, I must at any price--”
The servant still stood waiting.
“What is it? Ah, yes; this card. Take the visitor to the gallery. I
shall be there directly.”
The gallery of the Duke de Mora, open to visitors twice a week, was for
himself, as it were, a neutral ground, a public place where he could see
any one without binding or compromising himself in any way. Then, the
servant having withdrawn:
“Jenkins, _mon bon_, you have already worked miracles for me. I ask you
for one more. Double the dose of my pearls; find something, whatever
you will. But I must be feeling young by Sunday. You understand me,
altogether young.”
And on the little letter in his hand, his fingers, warm once more and
feverish, clinched themselves with a thrill of eager desire.
“Take care, M. le Duc,” said Jenkins, very pale and with compressed
lips. “I have no wish to alarm you unnecessarily with regard to the
feeble state of your health, but it becomes my duty--”
Mora gave a smile of pretty arrogance:
“Your duty and my pleasure are two separate things, my worthy friend.
Let me burn the candle at both ends, if it amuses me. I have never had
so fine an opportunity as this time.”
He started:
“The duchess!”
A door concealed behind a curtain had just opened to give passage to a
merry little head with fair curls in disorder, quite fairy-like amid the
laces and frills of a dressing-jacket worthy of a princess:
“What do I hear? You have not gone out? But do scold him, doctor. He is
wrong, isn’t he, to have so many fancies about himself? Look at him--a
picture of health!”
“There--you see,” said the duke, laughing, to the Irishman. “You will
not come in, duchess?”
“No, I am going to carry you off, on the contrary. My uncle d’Estaing
has sent me a cage full of tropical birds. I want to show them to you.
Wonderful creatures, of all colours, with little eyes like black pearls.
And so sensitive to cold--nearly as much so as you are.”
“Let us go and have a look at them,” said the minister. “Wait for me,
Jenkins. I shall be back in a moment.”
Then, noticing that he still had his letter in his hand, he threw it
carelessly into the drawer of the little table at which he had been
signing papers, and left the room behind the duchess, with the fine
coolness of a husband accustomed to these changes of situation.
What prodigious mechanic, what incomparable manufacturer of toys,
must it have been who succeeded in endowing the human mask with its
suppleness, its marvellous elasticity! How interesting to observe
the face of this great seigneur surprised in the very planning of his
adultery, with cheeks flushed in the anticipation of promised delights,
calming down at a moment’s notice into the serenity of conjugal
tenderness; how fine the devout obsequiousness, the paternal smile,
after the Franklin method, of Jenkins, in the presence of the duchess,
giving place suddenly, when he found himself alone, to a savage
expression of anger and hatred, the pallor of a criminal, the pallor of
a Castaing or of a Lapommerais hatching his sinister treasons.
One rapid glance towards each of the two doors, and he stood before the
drawer full of precious papers, the little gold key still remaining in
the lock with an arrogant carelessness, which seemed to say, “No one
will dare.”
Jenkins dared.
The letter lay there, the first on a pile of others. The grain of
the paper, an address of three words dashed off in a simple, bold
handwriting, and then the perfume, that intoxicating, suggestive
perfume, the very breath of her divine lips--It was true, then, his
jealous love had not deceived him, nor the embarrassment she had shown
in his presence for some time past, nor the secretive and rejuvenated
airs of Constance, nor those bouquets magnificently blooming in the
studio as in the shadow of an intrigue. That indomitable pride had
surrendered, then, at last? But in that case, why not to him, Jenkins?
To him who had loved her for so long--always; who was ten years
younger than the other man, and who certainly was troubled with no cold
shiverings! All these thoughts passed through his head like arrows shot
from a tireless bow. And, stabbed through and through, torn to pieces,
his eyes blinded, he stood there looking at the little satiny and cold
envelope which he did not dare open for fear of dismissing a final
doubt, when the rustling of a curtain warned him that some one had just
come in. He threw the letter back quickly, and closed the wonderfully
adjusted drawer of the lacquered table.
“Ah! it is you, Jansoulet. How is it you are here?”
“His excellency told me to come and wait for him in his room,” replied
the Nabob, very proud of being thus introduced into the privacy of the
apartments, at an hour, especially, when visitors were not generally
received. As a fact, the duke was beginning to show a real liking for
this savage, for several reasons: to begin with, he liked audacious
people, adventurers who followed their lucky star. Was he not one of
them himself? Then, the Nabob amused him; his accent, his frank manners,
his rather coarse and impudent flattery, were a change for him from
the eternal conventionality of his surroundings, from that scourge
of administrative and court life which he held in horror--the set
speech--in such great horror that he never finished a sentence which he
had begun. The Nabob had an unforeseen way of finishing his which was
sometimes full of surprises. A fine gambler as well, losing games of
_ecarte_ at five thousand francs the fish without flinching. And so
convenient when one wanted to get rid of a picture, always ready to
buy, no matter at what price. To these motives of condescending kindness
there had come to be joined of late a sentiment of pity and indignation
in the face of the tenacity with which the unfortunate man was being
persecuted, the cowardly and merciless war so ably managed, that public
opinion, always credulous and with neck outstretched to see which way
the wind is blowing, was beginning to be seriously influenced. One
must do to Mora the justice of admitting that he was no follower of the
crowd. When he had seen in a corner of the gallery the simple but rather
piteous and discomfited face of the Nabob, he had thought it cowardly to
receive him there, and had sent him up to his private room.
Jenkins and Jansoulet, sufficiently embarrassed by each other’s
presence, exchanged a few commonplace words. Their great friendship
had recently cooled, Jansoulet having refused point-blank all further
subsidies to the Bethlehem Society, leaving the business on the
Irishman’s hands, who was furious at this defection, and much more
furious still at this moment because he had not been able to open
Felicia’s letter before the arrival of the intruder. The Nabob, on his
side, was asking himself whether the doctor was going to be present at
the conversation which he wished to have with the duke on the subject of
the infamous insinuations with which the _Messenger_ was pursuing him;
anxious also to know whether these calumnies might not have produced a
coolness in that sovereign good-will which was so necessary to him at
the moment of the verification of his election. The greeting which he
had received in the gallery had half reassured him on this point; he
was entirely satisfied when the duke entered and came towards him with
outstretched hand:
“Well, my poor Jansoulet, I hope Paris is making you pay dearly enough
for your welcome. What brawling and hate and spite one finds!”
“Ah, M. le Duc, if you knew--”
“I know. I have read it,” said the minister, moving closer to the fire.
“I sincerely hope that your excellency does not believe these infamies.
Besides, I have here--I bring the proof.”
With his strong hairy hands, trembling with emotion, he hunted among the
papers in an enormous shagreen portfolio which he had under his arm.
“Never mind that--never mind. I am acquainted with the whole affair. I
know that, wilfully or not, they have mixed you up with another person,
whom family considerations--”
The duke could not restrain a smile at the bewilderment of the Nabob,
stupefied to find him so well informed.
“A Minister of State has to know everything. But don’t worry. Your
election will be declared valid all the same. And once declared valid--”
Jansoulet heaved a sigh of relief.
“Ah, M. le Duc, how it cheers me to hear you speak thus! I was beginning
to lose all confidence. My enemies are so powerful. And a piece of bad
luck into the bargain. Do you know that it is Le Merquier himself who is
charged with the report on my election?”
“Le Merquier? The devil!”
“Yes, Le Merquier, Hemerlingue’s agent, the dirty hypocrite who
converted the baroness, no doubt because his religion forbade him to
have a Mohammedan for a mistress.”
“Come, come, Jansoulet.”
“Well, M. le Duc? One can’t help being angry. Think of the situation
in which these wretches are placing me. Here I ought to have had my
election made valid a week ago, and they arrange the postponement of the
sitting expressly because they know the terrible position in which I am
placed--my whole fortune paralyzed, the Bey waiting for the decision of
the Chamber to decide whether or not he can plunder me. I have eighty
millions over there, M. le Duc, and here I begin to be short of money.
If the thing goes on only a little longer--”
He wiped away the big drops of sweat that trickled down his cheeks.
“Ah, well, I will look after this validation myself,” said the minister
sharply. “I will write to what’s-his-name to hurry up with his report;
and even if I have to be carried to the Chamber--”
“Your excellency is unwell?” asked Jansoulet, in a tone of interest
which, I swear to you, had no affectation about it.
“No--a little weakness. I am rather anaemic--wanting blood; but Jenkins
is going to put me right. Aren’t you, Jenkins?”
The Irishman, who had not been listening, made a vague gesture.
“_Tonnerre!_ And here am I with only too much of it.”
And the Nabob loosened his cravat about his neck, swollen like an
apoplexy by his emotion and the heat of the room. “If I could only
transfer a little to you, M. le Duc!”
“It would be an excellent thing for both,” said the Minister of State
with pale irony. “For you, especially, who are a violent fellow, and
who at this moment need so much self-control. Take care on that point,
Jansoulet. Beware of the hot retorts, the steps taken in a fit of temper
to which they would like to drive you. Repeat to yourself now that you
are a public man, on a platform, all of whose actions are observed from
far. The newspapers are abusing you; don’t read them, if you cannot
conceal the emotion which they cause you. Don’t do what I did, with my
blind man of the Pont de la Concorde, that frightful clarinet-player,
who for the last ten years has been blighting my life by playing all
day ‘De tes fils, Norma.’ I have tried everything to get him away from
there--money, threats. Nothing has succeeded in inducing him to go. The
police? Ah, yes, indeed. With modern ideas, it becomes quite a business
to clear off a blind man from a bridge. The Opposition newspapers would
talk of it, the Parisians would make a story out of it--‘_The Cobbler
and the Financier_.’ ‘The Duke and the Clarinet.’ No, I must resign
myself. It is, besides, my own fault. I never ought to have let this
man see that he annoyed me. I am sure that my torture makes half the
pleasure of his life now. Every morning he comes forth from his wretched
lodging with his dog, his folding-stool, his frightful music, and says
to himself, ‘Come, let us go and worry the Duc de Mora.’ Not a day
does he miss, the wretch! Why, see, if I were but to open the window a
trifle, you would hear his deluge of little sharp notes above the noise
of the water and the traffic. Well, this journalist of the _Messenger_,
he is your clarinet; if you allow him to see that his music wearies you,
he will never finish. And with this, my dear deputy, I will remind you
that you have a meeting at three o’clock at the office, and I must send
you back to the Chamber.”
Then turning to Jenkins:
“You know what I asked of you, doctor--pearls for the day after
to-morrow; and let them be extra strong!”
Jenkins started, shook himself as at the sudden awakening from a dream:
“Certainly, my dear duke. You shall be given some stamina--oh, yes;
stamina, breath enough to win the great Derby stakes.”
He bowed, and left the room laughing, the veritable laugh of a wolf
showing its gleaming white teeth. The Nabob took leave in his turn, his
heart filled with gratitude, but not daring to let anything of it appear
in the presence of this sceptic in whom all demonstrativeness aroused
distrust. And the Minister of State, left alone, rolled up in his wraps
before the crackling and blazing fire, sheltered in the padded warmth of
his luxury, doubled that day by the feverish caress of the May sunshine,
began to shiver with cold again, to shiver so violently that Felicia’s
letter which he had reopened and was reading rapturously shook in his
hands.
A deputy is in a very singular situation during the period which follows
his election and precedes--as they say in parliamentary jargon--the
verification of its validity. It is a little like the position of the
newly married man during the twenty-four hours separating the civil
marriage from its consecration by the Church. Rights of which he cannot
avail himself, a half-happiness, a semi-authority, the embarrassment
of keeping the balance a little on this side or on that, the lack of a
defined footing. One is married and yet not married, a deputy and yet
not perfectly sure of being it; only, for the deputy, this uncertainty
is prolonged over days and weeks, and since the longer it lasts the more
problematical does the validation become, it is like torture for the
unfortunate representative on probation to be obliged to attend the
Chamber, to occupy a place which he will perhaps not keep, to listen to
discussions of which it is possible that he will never hear the end, to
fix in his eyes and ears the delicious memory of parliamentary sittings
with their sea of bald or apoplectic foreheads, their confused noise of
rustling papers, the cries of attendants, wooden knives beating a tattoo
on the tables, private conversations from amid which the voice of
the orator issues, a thundering or timid solo with a continuous
accompaniment.
This situation, at best so trying to the nerves, was complicated in
the Nabob’s case by these calumnies, at first whispered, now printed,
circulated in thousands of copies by the newspapers, with the
consequence that he found himself tacitly put in quarantine by his
colleagues.
The first days he went and came in the corridors, the library, the
dining-room, the lecture-hall, like the rest, delighted to roam through
all the corners of that majestic labyrinth; but he was unknown to most
of his associates, unacknowledged by a few members of the Rue Royale
Club, who avoided him, detested by all the clerical party of which
Le Merquier was the head. The financial set was hostile to this
multi-millionaire, powerful in both “bull” and “bear” market, like those
vessels of heavy tonnage which displace the water of a harbour, and
thus his isolation only became the more marked by the change in his
circumstances and the same enmity followed him everywhere.
His gestures, his manner, showed trace of it in a certain constraint,
a sort of hesitating distrust. He felt he was watched. If he went for a
minute into the _buffet_, that large bright room opening on the gardens
of the president’s house, which he liked because there, at the broad
counter of white marble laden with bottles and provisions, the deputies
lost their big, imposing airs, the legislative haughtiness allowed
itself to become more familiar, even there he knew that the next day
there would appear in the _Messenger_ a mocking, offensive paragraph
exhibiting him to his electors as a wine-bibber of the most notorious
order.
Those terrible electors added to his embarrassments.
They arrived in crowds, invaded the Salle des Pas-Perdus, galloped all
over the place like little fiery black kids, shouting to each other from
one end to the other of the echoing room, “O Pe! O Tche!” inhaling with
delight the odour of government, of administration, pervading the air,
watching admiringly the ministers as they passed, following in their
trail with keen nose, as though from their respected pockets, from their
swollen portfolios, there might fall some appointment; but especially
surrounding “Moussiou” Jansoulet with so many exacting petitions,
reclamations, demonstrations, that, in order to free himself from the
gesticulating uproar which made everybody turn round, and turned him
as it were into the delegate of a tribe of Tuaregs in the midst of
civilized folk, he was obliged to implore with a look the help of some
attendant on duty familiar with such acts of rescue, who would come to
him with an air of urgency to say “that he was wanted immediately in
Bureau No. 8.” So at last, embarrassed everywhere, driven from the
corridors, from the Pas-Perdus, from the refreshment-room, the poor
Nabob had adopted the course of never leaving his seat, where he
remained motionless and without speaking during the whole time of the
sitting.
He had, however, one friend in the Chamber, a deputy newly elected for
the Deux-Sevres, called M. Sarigue, a poor man sufficiently resembling
the inoffensive and ill-favoured animal whose name he bore, with his red
and scanty hair, his timorous eyes, his hopping walk, his white gaiters;
he was so timid that he could not utter two words without stuttering,
almost voiceless, continually sucking jujubes, which completed the
confusion of his speech. One asked what such a weakling as he had come
to do in the Assembly, what feminine ambition run mad had urged into
public life this being useless for no matter what private activity.
By an amusing irony of fate, Jansoulet, himself agitated by all the
anxieties of his own validation, was chosen in Bureau no. 8 to draw up
the report on the election in the Deux-Sevres; and M. Sarigue, humble
and supplicating, conscious of his incapacity and filled by a horrible
dread of being sent back to his home in disgrace, used to follow about
this great jovial fellow with the curly hair and big shoulder blades
that moved like the bellows of a forge beneath a light and tightly
fitting frock-coat, without any suspicion that a poor anxious being like
himself lay concealed within that solid envelope.
As he worked at the report on the Deux-Sevres election, as he examined
the numerous protests, the accusations of electioneering trickery, meals
given, money spent, casks of wine broached at the doors of the mayors’
houses, the usual accompaniments of an election in those days, Jansoulet
used to shudder on his own account. “Why, I did all that myself,” he
would say to himself, terrified. Ah! M. Sarigue need not be afraid;
never could he have put his hand on an examiner with kinder intentions
or more indulgent, for the Nabob, taking pity on the sufferer, knowing
by experience how painful is the anguish of waiting, had made haste
through his labour; and the enormous portfolio which he carried under
his arm, as he left the Mora mansion, contained his report ready to be
sent in to the bureau.
Whether it were this first essay in a public function, the kind words
of the duke, or the magnificent weather out of doors, keenly enjoyed by
this southerner, with his susceptibility to wholly physical impressions
and accustomed to life under a blue sky and the warmth of the
sunshine--however that may have been, certain it is that the attendants
of the legislative body beheld that day a proud and haughty Jansoulet
whom they had not previously known. The fat Hemerlingue’s carriage,
caught sight of at the gate, recognisable by the unusual width of its
doors, completed his reinstatement in the possession of his true nature
of assurance and bold audacity. “The enemy is there. Attention!” As
he crossed the Salle des Pas-Perdus, he caught sight of the financier
chatting in a corner with Le Merquier, the examiner; he passed quite
near them, and looked at them with a triumphant air which made people
wonder:
“What is the meaning of this?”
Then, highly pleased at his own coolness, he passed on towards the
committee-rooms, big and lofty apartments opening right and left on a
long corridor, and having large tables covered with green baize, and
heavy chairs all of a similar pattern and bearing the impress of a dull
solemnity. People were beginning to come in. Groups were taking up their
positions, discussing matters, gesticulating, with bows, shakings
of hands, inclinations of the head, like Chinese shadows against the
luminous background of the windows.
Men were there who walked about with bent back, solitary, as it were
crushed down beneath the weight of the thoughts which knitted their
brow. Others whispering in their neighbour’s ears, confiding to each
other exceedingly mysterious and terribly important pieces of news,
finger on lip, eyes opened wide in silent recommendation to discretion.
A provincial flavour characterized it all, varieties of intonation, the
violence of southern speech, drawling accents of the central districts,
the sing-song of Brittany, fused into one and the same imbecile
self-conceit, frock-coats as they cut them at Landerneau, mountain
shoes, home-spun linen, and a self-assurance begotten in a village or in
the club of some insignificant town, local expressions, provincialisms
abruptly introduced into the speech of the political and administrative
world, that flabby and colourless phraseology which has invented such
expressions as “burning questions that come again to the surface” and
“individualities without mandate.”
To see these excited or thoughtful people, you might have supposed them
the greatest apostles of ideas in the world; unfortunately, on the days
of the sittings they underwent a transformation, sat in hushed silence
in their places, laughing in servile fashion at the jests of the
clever man who presided over them, or only rising to make ridiculous
propositions, the kind of interruption which would tempt one to believe
that it is not a type only, but a whole race, that Henri Monnier has
satirized in his immortal sketch. Two or three orators in all the
Chamber, the rest well qualified to plant themselves before the
fireplace of a provincial drawing-room, after an excellent meal at the
Prefect’s, and to say in nasal voice, “The administration, gentlemen,”
or “The Government of the Emperor,” but incapable of anything further.
Ordinarily the good Nabob had been dazzled by these poses, that buzzing
as of an empty spinning-wheel which is made by would-be important
people; but to-day he found his own place, and fell in with the general
note. Seated at the centre of the green table, his portfolio open before
him, his elbows planted well forward upon it, he read the report
drawn up by de Gery, and the members of the committee looked at him in
amazement.
It was a concise, clear, and rapid summary of their fortnight’s
proceedings, in which they found their ideas so well expressed that they
had great difficulty in recognising them. Then, as two or three among
them considered the report too favourable, that it passed too lightly
over certain protests that had reached the committee, the examiner
addressed the meeting with an astonishing assurance, with the prolixity,
the verbosity of his own people, demonstrated that a deputy ought not
to be held responsible beyond a certain point for the imprudence of
his election agents, that no election, otherwise, would bear a minute
examination, and since in reality it was his own cause that he
was pleading, he brought to the task a conviction, an irresistible
enthusiasm, taking care to let out now and then one of those long, dull
substantives with a thousand feet, such as the committee loved.
The others listened to him thoughtfully, communicating their sentiments
to each other by nods of the head, making flourishes, in order the
better to concentrate their attention, and drawing heads on their
blotting-pads--a proceeding which harmonized well with the schoolboyish
noises in the corridors, a murmur of lessons in course of repetition,
and those droves of sparrows which you could hear chirping under the
casements in a flagged court-yard, just like the court-yard of a school.
The report having been adopted, M. Sarigue was summoned in order that
he might offer some supplementary explanations. He arrived, pale,
emaciated, stuttering like a criminal before conviction, and you
would have laughed to see with what an air of authority and protection
Jansoulet encouraged and reassured him. “Calm yourself, my dear
colleague.” But the members of Committee No. 8 did not laugh. They were
all, or nearly all, Sarigues in their way, two or three of them
being absolutely broken down, stricken by partial paralysis. So much
assurance, such great eloquence, had moved them to enthusiasm.
When Jansoulet issued from the legislative assembly, reconducted to
his carriage by his grateful colleague, it was about six o’clock.
The splendid weather--a beautiful sunset over the Seine, which lay
stretching away like molten gold on the Trocadero side--was a temptation
to a walk for this robust plebeian, on whom it was imposed by the
conventions that he should ride in a carriage and wear gloves, but who
escaped such encumbrances as often as he possibly could. He dismissed
his servants, and, with his portfolio under his arm, set forth across
the Pont de la Concorde.
Since the first of May he had not experienced such a sense of
well-being. With rolling gait, hat a little to the back of his head,
in the position in which he had seen it worn by overworked politicians
harassed by pressure of business, allowing all the laborious fever
of their brain to evaporate in the coolness of the air, as a factory
discharges its steam into the gutter at the end of a day’s work, he
moved forward among other figures like his own, evidently coming
too from that colonnaded temple which faces the Madeleine above the
fountains of the _Place_. As they passed, people turned to look after
them, saying, “Those are deputies.” And Jansoulet felt the delight of a
child, a plebeian joy, compounded of ignorance and naive vanity.
“Ask for the _Messenger_, evening edition.”
The words came from a newspaper kiosk at the corner of the bridge, full
at that hour of fresh printed sheets in heaps, which two women were
quickly folding, and which smelt of the damp press--late news, the
success of the day or its scandal.
Nearly all the deputies bought a copy as they passed, and glanced over
it quickly in the hope of finding their name. Jansoulet, for his part,
feared to see his in it and did not stop. Then suddenly he reflected:
“Must not a public man be above these weaknesses? I am strong enough now
to read everything.” He retraced his steps and took a newspaper like
his colleagues. He opened it, very calmly, right at the place usually
occupied by Moessard’s articles. As it happened, there was one. Still
the same title: “_Chinoiseries_,” and an _M._ for signature.
“Ah! ah!” said the public man, firm and cold as marble, with a fine
smile of disdain. Mora’s lesson still rung in his ears, and, had he
forgotten it, the air from _Norma_ which was being slowly played in
little ironical notes not far off would have sufficed to recall it
to him. Only, after all calculations have been made amid the fleeting
happenings of our existence, there is always the unforeseen to be
reckoned with; and that is how it came that the poor Nabob suddenly felt
a wave of blood blind him, a cry of rage strangle itself in the sudden
contraction of his throat. This time his mother, his old Frances, had
been dragged into the infamous joke of the “Bateau de fleurs.” How well
he aimed his blows, this Moessard, how well he knew the really sensitive
spots in that heart, so frankly exposed!
“Be quiet, Jansoulet; be quiet.”
It was in vain that he repeated the words to himself again and again:
anger, a wild anger, that intoxication of the blood that demands blood,
took possession of him. His first impulse was to hail a cab, that
he might escape from the irritating street, free his body from the
preoccupation of walking and maintaining a physical composure--to hail a
cab as for a wounded man. But the carriages which thronged the square
at that hour of general home-going were victorias, landaus, private
broughams, hundreds of them, passing down from the lurid splendour
of the Arc de Triomphe towards the violet shadows of the Tuileries,
rushing, it seemed, one over another, in the sloping perspective of
the avenue, down to the great square where the motionless statues, with
their circular crowns on their brows, watched them as they separated
towards the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the Rue Royale and the Rue de
Rivoli.
Jansoulet, his newspaper in his hand, traversed this tumult without
giving it a thought, carried by force of habit towards the club where he
went every day for his game of cards from six to seven. A public man, he
was that still; but excited, speaking aloud, muttering oaths and threats
in a voice that had suddenly grown tender again at the memory of the
dear old woman. To have dragged her into that--her also! Oh, if she
should read it, if she should understand! What punishment could he
invent for such an infamy? He had reached the Rue Royale, up which were
disappearing with the speed of horses that knew they were going home
and with glancings of shining axles, visions of veiled women, heads of
fair-haired children, equipages of all kinds returning from the Bois,
depositing a little genuine earth upon the Paris pavement, and bringing
odours of spring mingled with the scent of _poudre de riz_.
Opposite the Ministry of Marine, a very high phaeton on light wheels,
rather like a great spider, its body represented by the little groom
hanging on to the box and the two persons occupying the front seat, just
missed a collision with the curb as it turned the corner.
The Nabob raised his head and stifled a cry.
Beside a painted woman, with red hair and wearing a tiny hat with wide
strings, who, perched on her leathern cushion, sat leaning stiffly
forward, hands, eyes, her whole factitious person intent on driving the
horse, there sat, pink and made-up also, grown fat with the same vices,
Moessard, the handsome Moessard--the harlot and the journalist; and of
the two, it was not the woman who had sold herself the most. High above
those women reclining in their open carriages, those men opposite them
half buried beneath the flounces of their gowns, all those poses of
fatigue and weariness which the overfed exhibit in public as in contempt
of pleasure and riches, they lorded it insolently, she very proud to be
seen driving with the lover of the Queen, and he without the least shame
in sitting beside a creature who hooked men in the drives of the Bois
with the lash of her whip, removed on her high-perched seat from all
fear of the salutary raids of the police. Perhaps, in order to whet the
appetite of his royal mistress, he chose to parade beneath her windows
in company of Suzanne Bloch, known as Suze the Red.
“Hep! hep, then!”
The horse, a high trotter with slim legs, just such a horse as a
_cocotte_ would care to own, recovered from its swerve and resumed its
proper place with dancing steps, graceful pawings executed on the same
spot without advancing. Jansoulet let fall his portfolio, and as though
he had dropped with it all his gravity, his prestige as a public man,
he made a terrible spring, and dashed to the bit of the animal, which he
held firm with his strong, hairy hands.
A carriage forcibly stopped in the Rue Royale, and in broad
daylight--only this Tartar would have dared such a stroke as that!
“Get down!” said he to Moessard, whose face had turned green and yellow
when he saw him. “Get down immediately!”
“Will you let go my horse, you bloated idiot! Whip up Suzanne; it is the
Nabob.”
She tried to gather up the reins, but the animal, held firmly, reared
so sharply that a little more and like a sling the fragile vehicle would
have sent everybody in it flying far away. At this, furious with one of
those plebeian rages which in women of her kind shatter all the veneer
of their luxury, she dealt the Nabob two stinging lashes with her whip,
which left little trace on his tanned and hardened face, but which
brought there a ferocious expression, accentuated by the short nose
which had turned white and was slit at the end like that of a sporting
terrier.
“Come down, or, by God, I will upset the whole thing!”
Amid an eddy of carriages arrested by the block in the traffic, or that
passed slowly round the obstacle, with thousands of curious eyes, amid
cries of coachmen and clinking of bits, two wrists of iron shook the
entire vehicle.
“Jump--but jump, I tell you! Don’t you see he will have us over? What a
grip!”
And the woman looked at the Hercules with interest.
Hardly had Moessard set foot to the ground, and before he could take
refuge on the pavement, whither the black military caps of policemen
could be seen hastening, Jansoulet threw himself upon him, lifted him by
the back of the neck like a rabbit, and, careless of his protestations
and his terrified stammerings:
“Yes, yes, I will give you satisfaction, you blackguard! But, first, I
intend to do to you what is done to dirty beasts to prevent them from
repeating the same offence.”
And roughly he set to work rubbing his nose and face all over with his
newspaper, which he had rolled into a ball, stifling him, blinding him
with it, and making scratches from which the blood trickled over his
skin. The man was dragged from his hands, crimson, suffocated. A little
more and he would have killed him.
The struggle over, pulling down his sleeves, adjusting his crumpled
linen, picking up his portfolio out of which the papers of the Sarigue
election were flying scattered even to the gutter, the Nabob answered
the policemen who were asking him for his name in order to draw up a
summons:
“Bernard Jansoulet, Deputy for Corsica.”
A public man!
Only then did he remember that he was one. Who would have suspected
it, seeing him breathless and bare-headed, like a porter after a street
fight, under the eager, coldly mocking glances of the crowd?