“Don’t weep, my fairy, you rob me of all my courage. Come, you will be a
great deal happier when you no longer have your terrible demon. You will
go back to Fontainebleau and look after your chickens. The ten thousand
francs from Brahim will help to get you settled down. And then, don’t be
afraid, once you are over there I shall send you money. Since this Bey
wants to have sculpture done by me, he will have to pay for it, as you
may imagine. I shall return rich, rich. Who knows? Perhaps a sultana.”
“Yes, you will be a sultana, but I--I shall be dead and I shall never
see you again.” And the good Crenmitz in despair huddled herself into a
corner of the cab so that she would not be seen weeping.
Felicia was leaving Paris. She was trying to escape the horrible
sadness, the sinister disgust into which Mora’s death had thrown her.
What a terrible blow for the proud girl! _Ennui_, pique, had thrown her
into this man’s arms; she had given him pride--modesty--all; and now
he had carried all away with him, leaving her tarnished for life, a
tearless widow, without mourning and without dignity. Two or three
visits to Saint-James Villa, a few evenings in the back of some box
at some small theatre, behind the curtain that shelters forbidden and
shameful pleasure, these were the only memories left to her by this
liaison of a fortnight, this loveless intrigue wherein her pride had not
found even the satisfaction of the commotion caused by a big scandal.
The useless and indelible stain, the stupid fall of a woman who does not
know how to walk and who is embarrassed in her rising by the ironical
pity of the passers-by.
For a moment she thought of suicide, then the reflection that it would
be set down to a broken heart arrested her. She saw in a glance the
sentimental compassion of the drawing-rooms, the foolish figure that her
sham passion would cut among the innumberable love affairs of the duke,
and the Parma violets scattered by the pretty Moessards of journalism
on her grave, dug so near the other. Travelling remained to her--one of
those journeys so distant that they take even one’s thoughts into a new
world. Unfortunately the money was wanting. Then she remembered that on
the morrow of her great success at the Exhibition, old Brahim Bey had
called to see her, to make her, in behalf of his master, magnificent
proposals for certain great works to be executed in Tunis. She had
said No at the time, without allowing herself to be tempted by Oriental
remuneration, a splendid hospitality, the finest court in the Bardo for
a studio, with its surrounding facades of stone in lacework carving. But
now she was quite willing. She had to make but a sign, the agreement
was immediately concluded, and after an exchange of telegrams, a hasty
packing and shutting up of the house, she set out for the railway
station as if for a week’s absence, astonished herself by her prompt
decision, flattered on all the adventurous and artistic sides of her
nature by the hope of a new life in an unknown country.
The Bey’s pleasure yacht was to await her at Genoa; and in anticipation,
closing her eyes in the cab which was taking her to the station, she
could see the white stone buildings of an Italian port embracing an
iridescent sea where the sunshine was already Eastern, where everything
sang, to the very swelling of the sails on the blue water. Paris, as it
happened, was muddy that day, uniformly gray, flooded by one of those
continuous rains of which it seems to have the special property, rains
that seem to have risen in clouds from its river, from its smoke, from
its monster’s breath, and to fall in torrents from its roofs, from
its spouts, from the innumerable windows of its garrets. Felicia
was impatient to get away from this gloomy Paris, and her feverish
impatience found fault with the cabmen who made slow progress with the
horses, two sorry creatures of the veritable cab-horse type, with an
inexplicable block of carriages and omnibuses crowded together in the
vicinity of the Pont de la Concorde.
“But go on, driver, go on, then.”
“I cannot, madame. It is the funeral procession.”
She put her head out of the window and drew it back again immediately,
terrified. A line of soldiers marching with reversed arms, a confusion
of caps and hats raised from the forehead at the passage of an endless
cortege. It was Mora’s funeral procession defiling past.
“Don’t stop here. Go round,” she cried to the cabman.
The vehicle turned about with difficulty, dragging itself regretfully
from the superb spectacle which Paris had been awaiting for four days;
it remounted the avenues, took the Rue Montaigne, and, with its slow
and surly little trot, came out at the Madeleine by the Boulevard
Malesherbes. Here the crowd was greater, more compact.
In the misty rain, the illuminated stained-glass windows of the church,
the dull echo of the funeral chants beneath the lavishly distributed
black hangings under which the very outline of the Greek temple was
lost, filled the whole square with a sense of the office in course of
celebration, while the greater part of the immense procession was still
squeezed up in the Rue Royale, and as far even as the bridges a long
black line connecting the dead man with that gate of the Legislative
Assembly through which he had so often passed. Beyond the Madeleine
the highway of the boulevard stretched away empty, and looking bigger
between two lines of soldiers with arms reversed, confining the curious
to the pavements black with people, all the shops closed, and the
balconies, in spite of the rain, overflowing with human beings all
leaning forward in the direction of the church, as if to see a mid-Lent
festival or the home-coming of victorious troops. Paris, hungry for the
spectacular, constructs it indifferently out of anything, civil war as
readily as the burial of a statesman.
It was necessary for the cab to retrace its course again and to make a
new circuit; and it is easy to imagine the bad temper of the driver and
his beasts, all three of them Parisian in soul and passions, at having
to deprive themselves of so fine a show. Then, as all the life of Paris
had been drawn into the great artery of the boulevard, there began
through the deserted and silent streets--a capricious and irregular
drive--the snail-like progress of a cab taken by the hour. First
touching the extreme points of the Faubourg Saint-Martin and the
Faubourg Saint-Denis, returning again towards the centre, and at the
conclusion of circuits and dodges finding always the same obstacle in
ambush, the same crowd, some fragment of the black defile perceived for
a moment at the branching of a street, unfolding itself in the rain to
the sound of muffled drums--a dull and heavy sound, like that of earth
falling on a coffin-lid.
What torture for Felicia! It was her weakness and her remorse crossing
Paris in this solemn pomp, this funeral train, this public mourning
reflected by the very clouds; and the proud girl revolted against this
affront done her by fate, and tried to escape from it to the back of
the carriage, where she remained exhausted with eyes closed, while old
Crenmitz, believing her nervousness to be grief, did her best to comfort
her, herself wept over their separation, and hiding also, left the
entire window of the cab to the big Algerian hound with his finely
modelled head scenting the wind, and his two paws resting in the
sash with an heraldic stiffness of pose. Finally, after a thousand
interminable windings, the cab suddenly came to a halt, jolted on again
with difficulty amid cries and abuse, then, tossed about, the luggage on
top threatening its equilibrium, it ended by coming to a full stop, held
prisoner, as it were, at anchor.
“_Bon Dieu!_ what a mass of people!” murmured the Crenmitz, terrified.
Felicia came out of her stupor.
“Where are we?”
Under a colourless, smoky sky, blotted out by a fine network of rain and
stretched like gauze over everything, there lay an immense space filled
by an ocean of humanity surging from all the streets that led to it,
and motionless around a lofty column of bronze, which dominated this sea
like the gigantic mast of a sunken vessel. Cavalry in squadrons,
with swords drawn, guns in batteries stood at intervals along an open
passage, awaiting him who was to come by, perhaps in order to try to
retake him, to carry him off by force from the formidable enemy who was
bearing him away. Alas! all the cavalry charges, all the guns could be
of no avail here. The prisoner was departing, firmly guarded, defended
by a triple wall of hardwood, metal, and velvet, impervious to
grape-shot; and it was not from those soldiers that he could hope for
his deliverance.
“Get away from this. I will not stay here,” said Felicia, furious,
plucking at the wet box-coat of the driver, and seized by a wild dread
at the thought of the nightmare which was pursuing her, of _that_
which she could hear coming in a frightful rumbling, still distant,
but growing nearer from minute to minute. At the first movement of the
wheels, however, the cries and shouts broke out anew. Thinking that he
would be allowed to cross the square, the driver had penetrated with
great difficulty to the front ranks of the crowd; it now closed behind
him and refused to allow him to go forward. There they had to remain,
to endure those odours of common people and of alcohol, those curious
glances, already fired by the prospect of an exceptional spectacle. They
stared rudely at the beautiful traveller who was starting off with
so many trunks, and a dog of such size for her defender. Crenmitz was
horribly afraid; Felicia, for her part, could think of only one thing,
and that was that _he_ was about to pass before her eyes, that she would
be in the front rank to see him.
Suddenly a great shout “Here it comes!” Then silence fell on the whole
square at last at the end of three weary hours of waiting.
It came.
Felicia’s first impulse was to lower the blind on her side, on the side
past which the procession was about to pass. But at the rolling of the
drums close at hand, seized by the nervous wrath at her inability to
escape the obsession of the thing, perhaps also infected by the morbid
curiosity around her, she suddenly let the blind fly up, and her pale
and passionate little face showed itself at the window, supported by her
two clinched hands.
“There! since you will have it: I am watching you.”
As a funeral it was as fine a thing as can be seen, the supreme honours
rendered in all their vain splendour, as sonorous, as hollow as the
rhythmic accompaniment on the muffled drums. First the white surplices
of the clergy, amid the mourning drapery of the first five carriages;
next, drawn by six black horses, veritable horses of Erebus, there
advanced the funeral car, all beplumed, fringed and embroidered in
silver, with big tears, heraldic coronets surmounting gigantic M’s,
prophetic initials which seemed those of Death himself, _La Mort_ made
a duchess decorated with the eight waving plumes. So many canopies and
massive hangings hid the vulgar body of the hearse, as it trembled and
quivered at each step from top to bottom as though crushed beneath the
majesty of its dead burden. On the coffin, the sword, the coat, the
embroidered hat, parade undress--which had never been worn--shone with
gold and mother-of-pearl in the darkened little tent formed by the
hangings and among the bright tints of fresh flowers telling of spring
in spite of the sullenness of the sky. At a distance of ten paces came
the household servants of the duke; then, behind, in majestic isolation,
the cloaked officer bearing the emblems of honour--a veritable display
of all the orders of the whole world--crosses, multicoloured ribbons,
which covered to overflowing the cushion of black velvet with silver
fringe.
The master of ceremonies came next, in front of the representatives of
the Legislative Assembly--a dozen deputies chosen by lot, among them
the tall figure of the Nabob, wearing the official costume for the first
time, as if ironical Fortune had desired to give to the representative
on probation a foretaste of all parliamentary joys. The friends of the
dead man, who followed, formed a rather small group, singularly well
chosen to exhibit in its crudity the superficiality and the void of that
existence of a great personage reduced to the intimacy of a theatrical
manager thrice bankrupt, of a picture-dealer grown wealthy through
usuary, of a nobleman of tarnished reputation, and of a few men about
town without distinction. Up to this point everybody was walking on foot
and bareheaded; among the parliamentary representatives there were only
a few black skull-caps, which had been put on timidly as they approached
the populous districts. After them the carriages began.
At the death of a great warrior it is the custom for the funeral convoy
to be followed by the favourite horse of the hero, his battle charger,
regulating to the slow step of the procession that dancing step excited
by the smell of powder and the pageantry of standards. In this case,
Mora’s great brougham, that “C-spring” which used to bear him to
fashionable or political gatherings, took the place of that companion
in victory, its panels draped with black, its lamps veiled in long
streamers of light crape, floating to the ground with undulating
feminine grace. These veiled lamps constituted a new fashion for
funerals--the supreme “chic” of mourning; and it well became this dandy
to give a last lesson in elegance to the Parisians, who flocked to his
obsequies as to a “Longchamps” of death.
Three more masters of ceremony; then came the impassive official
procession, always the same for marriages, deaths, baptisms, openings
of Parliament, or receptions of sovereigns, the interminable cortege of
glittering carriages, with large windows and showy liveries bedizened
with gilt, which passed through the midst of the dazzled people, to
whom they recalled fairy-tales, Cinderella chariots, while evoking those
“Oh’s!” of admiration that mount and die away with the rockets on the
evenings of firework displays. And in the crowd there was always to be
found some good-natured policeman, some learned little grocer sauntering
round on the lookout for public ceremonies, ready to name in a loud
voice all the people in the carriages, as they defiled past, with their
regulation escorts of dragoons, cuirassiers, or Paris guards.
First the representatives of the Emperor, the Empress and all the
Imperial family; after these, in the hierarchic order, cunningly
elaborated, and the least infraction of which might have been the cause
of grave conflicts between the various departments of the State--the
members of the Privy Council, the Marshals, the Admirals, the High
Chancellor of the Legion of Honour; then the Senate, the Legislative
Assembly, the Council of State, the whole organization of the law and of
the university, the costumes, the ermine, the headgear of which took
you back to the days of old Paris--an air of something stately and
antiquated, out of date in our sceptical epoch of the workman’s blouse
and the dress-coat.
Felicia, to avoid her thoughts, voluntarily fixed her eyes upon this
monotonous defile, exasperating in its length; and little by little a
torpor stole over her, as if on a rainy day she had been turning over
the leaves of an album of engravings, a history of official costumes
from the most remote times down to our own day. All these people, seen
in profile, still and upright, behind the large glass panes of the
carriage windows, had indeed the appearance of personages in coloured
plates, sitting well forward on the edge of the seats in order that
the spectators should miss nothing of their golden embroideries, their
palm-leaves, their galloons, their braids--puppets given over to the
curiosity of the crowd--and exposing themselves to it with an air of
indifference and detachment.
Indifference! That was the most special characteristic of this funeral.
It was to be felt everywhere, on people’s faces and in their hearts, as
well among these functionaries of whom the greater part had only known
the duke by sight, as in the ranks on foot between his hearse and his
brougham, his closest friends, or those who had been in daily attendance
upon him. The fat minister, Vice-President of the Council, seemed
indifferent, and even glad, as he held in his powerful fist the strings
of the pall and seemed to draw it forward, in more haste than the horses
and the hearse to conduct to his six feet of earth the enemy of twenty
years’ standing, the eternal rival, the obstacle to all his ambitions.
The other three dignitaries did not advance with the same vigour, and
the long cords floated loosely in their weary or careless hands with
significant slackness. The priests were indifferent by profession.
Indifferent were the servants of his household, whom he never called
anything but “_chose_,” and whom he treated really like “things.”
Indifferent was M. Louis, for whom it was the last day of servitude, a
slave become emancipated, rich enough to enjoy his ransom. Even among
the intimate friends of the dead man this glacial cold had penetrated.
Yet some of them had been deeply attached to him. But Cardailhac was too
busy superintending the order and the progress of the procession to give
way to the least emotion, which would, besides, have been foreign to his
nature. Old Monpavon, stricken to the heart, would have considered the
least bending of his linen cuirass and of his tall figure a piece of
deplorably bad taste, totally unworthy of his illustrious friend. His
eyes remained as dry and glittering as ever, since the undertakers
provide the tears for great mournings, embroidered in silver on black
cloth. Some one was weeping, however, away yonder among the members of
the committee; but he was expending his compassion very naively upon
himself. Poor Nabob! softened by that music and splendour, it seemed to
him that he was burying all his ambitions of glory and dignity. And his
was but one more variety of indifference.
Among the public, the enjoyment of a fine spectacle, the pleasure of
turning a week-day into a Sunday, dominated every other sentiment.
Along the line of the boulevards, the spectators on the balconies almost
seemed disposed to applaud; here, in the populous districts, irreverence
was still more frankly manifest. Jests, blackguardly wit at the expense
of the dead man and his doings, known to all Paris, laughter raised by
the tall hats of the rabbis, the pass-word of the council experts, all
were heard in the air between two rolls of the drum. Poverty, forced
labour, with its feet in the wet, wearing its blouse, its apron, its
cap raised from habit, with sneering chuckle watched this inhabitant of
another sphere pass by, this brilliant duke, severed now from all his
honours, who perhaps while living had never paid a visit to that end of
the town. But there it is. To arrive up yonder, where everybody has to
go, the common route must be taken, the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, the Rue
de la Roquette as far as that great gate where the _octroi_ is collected
and the infinite begins. And well! it does one good to see that lordly
persons like Mora, dukes, ministers, follow the same road towards
the same destination. This equality in death consoles for many of the
injustices of life. To-morrow bread will seem less dear, wine better,
the workman’s tool less heavy, when he will be able to say to himself
as he rises in the morning, “That old Mora, he has come to it like the
rest!”
The procession still went on, more fatiguing even than lugubrious. Now
it consisted of choral societies, deputations from the army and the
navy, officers of all descriptions, pressing on in a troop in advance
of a long file of empty vehicles--mourning-coaches, private
carriages--present for reasons of etiquette. Then the troops followed
in their turn, and into the sordid suburb, that long Rue de la Roquette,
already swarming with people as far as eye could reach, there plunged
a whole army, foot-soldiers, dragoons, lancers, carabineers, heavy guns
with their great mouths in the air, ready to bark, making pavement
and windows tremble, but not able to drown the rolling of the drums--a
sinister and savage rolling which suggested to Felicia’s imagination
some funeral of an African chief, at which thousands of sacrificed
victims accompany the soul of a prince so that it shall not pass alone
into the kingdom of spirits, and made her fancy that perhaps this
pompous and interminable retinue was about to descend and disappear in
the superhuman grave large enough to receive the whole of it.
“_Now and in the hour of our death. Amen_,” Crenmitz murmured, while the
cab swayed from side to side in the lighted square, and high in space
the golden statue of Liberty seemed to be taking a magic flight; and the
old dancer’s prayer was perhaps the one note of sincere feeling called
forth on the immense line of the funeral procession.
All the speeches are over; three long speeches as icy as the vault
into which the dead man has just descended, three official declamations
which, above all, have provided the orators with an opportunity of
giving loud voice to their own devotion to the interests of the dynasty.
Fifteen times the guns have roused the many echoes of the cemetery,
shaken the wreaths of jet and everlasting flowers--the light _ex-voto_
offerings suspended at the corners of the monuments--and while a reddish
mist floats and rolls with a smell of gunpowder across the city of the
dead, ascends and mingles slowly with the smoke of factories in the
plebeian district, the innumerable assembly disperses also, scattered
through the steep streets, down the lofty steps all white among the
foliage, with a confused murmur, a rippling as of waves over rocks.
Purple robes, black robes, blue and green coats, shoulder-knots of gold,
slender swords, of whose safety the wearers assure themselves with
their hands as they walk, all hasten to regain their carriages. People
exchange low bows, discreet smiles, while the mourning-coaches tear down
the carriage-ways at a gallop, revealing long lines of black coachmen,
with backs bent, hats tilted forward, the box-coats flying in the wind
made by their rapid motion.
The general impression is one of thankfulness to have reached the end
of a long and fatiguing performance, a legitimate eagerness to quit the
administrative harness and ceremonial costumes, to unbuckle sashes, to
loosen stand-up collars and neckbands, to slacken the tension of facial
muscles, which had been subject to long restraint.
Heavy and short, dragging along his swollen legs with difficulty,
Hemerlingue was hastening towards the exit, declining the offers which
were made to him of a seat in this or that carriage, since he knew well
that his own alone was of size adequate to cope with his proportions.
“Baron, Baron, this way. There is room for you.”
“No, thank you. I want to walk to straighten my legs.”
And to avoid these invitations, which were beginning to embarrass him,
he took an almost deserted pathway, one that proved too deserted indeed,
for hardly had he taken a step along it before he regretted it. Ever
since entering the cemetery he had had but one preoccupation--the fear
of finding himself face to face with Jansoulet, whose violence of temper
he knew, and who might well forget the sacredness of the place, and even
in Pere Lachaise renew the scandal of the Rue Royale. Two or three times
during the ceremony he had seen the great head of his old chum emerge
from among the crowd of insignificant types which largely composed the
company and move in his direction, as though seeking him and desiring
a meeting. Down there, in the main road, there would, at any rate,
have been people about in case of trouble, while here--Brr--It was this
anxiety that made him quicken his short step, his panting breaths, but
in vain. As he looked round, in his fear of being followed, the strong,
erect shoulders of the Nabob appeared at the entrance to the path.
Impossible for the big man to slip away through one of the narrow
passages left between the tombs, which are placed so close together that
there is not even space to kneel. The damp, rich soil slipped and gave
way beneath his feet. He decided to walk on with an air of indifference,
hoping that perhaps the other might not recognise him. But a hoarse and
powerful voice cried behind him:
“Lazarus!”
His name--the name of this rich man--was Lazarus. He made no reply, but
tried to catch up a group of officers who were moving on, very far in
front of him.
“Lazarus! Oh, Lazarus!”
Just as in old times on the quay of Marseilles. Under the influence of
old habit he was tempted to stop; then the remembrance of his infamies,
of all the ill he had done the Nabob, that he was still occupied in
doing him, came back to him suddenly with a horrible fear so strong
that it amounted to a paroxysm, when an iron hand laid hold of him
unceremoniously. A sweat of terror broke out over all his flabby limbs,
his face became still more yellow, his eyes blinked in anticipation of
the formidable blow which he expected to come, while his fat arms were
instinctively raised to ward it off.
“Oh, don’t be afraid. I wish you no harm,” said Jansoulet sadly. “Only I
have come to beg you to do no more to me.”
He stooped to breathe. The banker, bewildered and frightened, opened
wide his round owl’s eyes in presence of this suffocating emotion.
“Listen, Lazarus; it is you who are the stronger in this war we
have been waging on each other for so long. I am down; yes, down. My
shoulders have touched the ground. Now, be generous; spare your old
chum. Give me quarter; come, give me quarter.”
This southerner was trembling, defeated and softened by the emotional
display of the funeral ceremony. Hemerlingue, as he stood facing him,
was hardly more courageous. The gloomy music, the open grave, the
speeches, the cannonade of that lofty philosophy of inevitable death,
all these things had worked on the feelings of this fat baron. The voice
of his old comrade completed the awakening of whatever there remained of
human in that packet of gelatine.
His old chum! It was the first time for ten years--since their
quarrel--that he had seen him so near. How many things were recalled to
him by those sun-tanned features, those broad shoulders, so ill adapted
for the wearing of embroidered coats! The thin woollen rug full of
holes, in which they used to wrap themselves both to sleep on the bridge
of the _Sinai_, the food shared in brotherly fashion, the wanderings
through the burned-up country round Marseilles, where they used to steal
big onions and eat them raw by the side of some ditch, the dreams, the
schemings, the pence put into a common fund, and, when fortune had begun
to smile on them, the fun they had had together, those excellent quiet
little suppers over which they would tell each other everything, with
their elbows on the table.
How can one ever reach the point of seriously quarrelling when one knows
the other so well, when they have lived together like two twins at the
breast of the lean and strong nurse, Poverty, sharing her sour milk and
her rough caresses! These thoughts passed through Hemerlingue’s mind
like a flash of lightning. Almost instinctively he let his heavy hand
fall into the one which the Nabob was holding out to him. Something of
the primitive animal was roused in them, something stronger than their
enmity, and these two men, each of whom for ten years had been trying
to bring the other to ruin and disgrace, fell to talking without any
reserve.
Generally, between friends newly met, after the first effusions are
over, a silence comes as if they had no more to tell each other, while
it is in reality the abundance of things, their precipitate rush, that
prevents them from finding utterance. The two chums had touched that
condition; but Jansoulet kept a tight grasp on the banker’s arm, fearing
to see him escape and resist the kindly impulse he had just roused.
“You are not in a hurry, are you? We can take a little walk, if you
like. It has stopped raining, the air is pleasant; one feels twenty
years younger.”
“Yes, it is pleasant,” said Hemerlingue; “only I cannot walk for long;
my legs are heavy.”
“True, your poor legs. See, there is a bench over there. Let us go and
sit down. Lean on me, old friend.”
And the Nabob, with brotherly aid, led him to one of those benches
dotted here and there among the tombs, on which those inconsolable
mourners rest who make the cemetery their usual walk and abode. He
settled him in his seat, gazed upon him tenderly, pitied him for his
infirmity, and, following what was quite a natural channel in such a
spot, they came to talking of their health, of the old age that was
approaching. This one was dropsical, the other subject to apoplectic
fits. Both were in the habit of dosing themselves with the Jenkins
pearls, a dangerous remedy--witness Mora, so quickly carried off.
“My poor duke!” said Jansoulet.
“A great loss to the country,” remarked the banker with an air of
conviction.
And the Nabob added naively:
“For me above all, for me; for, if he had lived--Ah! what luck you have,
what luck you have!”
Fearing to have wounded him, he went on quickly:
“And then, too, you are clever, so very clever.”
The baron looked at him with a wink so droll, that his little black
eyelashes disappeared amid his yellow fat.
“No,” said he, “it is not I who am clever. It is Marie.”
“Marie?”
“Yes, the baroness. Since her baptism she has given up her name of
Yamina for that of Marie. She is a real sort of woman. She knows more
than I do myself about banking and Paris and business. It is she who
manages everything at home.”
“You are very fortunate,” sighed Jansoulet. His air of gloom told a long
story of qualities missing in Mlle. Afchin. Then, after a silence, the
baron resumed:
“She has a great grudge against you, Marie, you know. She will not be
pleased when she hears that we have been talking together.”
A frown passed over his heavy brow, as though he were regretting their
reconciliation, at the thought of the scene which he would have with his
wife. Jansoulet stammered:
“I have done her no harm, however.”
“Come, come, neither of you has been very nice to her. Think of the
affront put upon her when we called after our marriage. Your wife
sending word to us that she was not in the habit of receiving quondam
slaves. As though our friendship ought not to have been stronger than a
prejudice. Women don’t forget things of that kind.”
“But no responsibility lay with me for that, old friend. You know how
proud those Afchins are.”
He was not proud himself, poor man. His mien was so woebegone, so
supplicating under his friend’s frown, that he moved him to pity.
Decidedly, the cemetery had softened the baron.
“Listen, Bernard; there is only one thing that counts. If you want us to
be friends, as formerly, and this reconciliation not to be wasted, you
will have to get my wife to consent. Without her nothing can be done.
When Mlle. Afchin shut her door in our faces you let her have her way,
did you not? In the same way, on my side, if Marie said to me when I go
home, ‘I will not let you be friends,’ all my protestations now would
not prevent me from throwing you overboard. For there is no such thing
as friendship in face of such difficulties. Peace at one’s fireside is
better than everything else.”
“But in that case, what is to be done?” asked the Nabob, frightened.
“I am going to tell you. The baroness is at home every Saturday. Come
with your wife and pay her a visit the day after to-morrow. You will
find the best society in Paris at the house. The past shall not be
mentioned. The ladies will gossip together of chiffons and frocks, talk
of the things women do talk about. And then the whole matter will be
settled. We shall become friends as we used to be; and since you are in
difficulties, well, we will find some way of getting you out of them.”
“Do you think so? The fact is I am in terrible straits,” said the other,
shaking his head.
Hemerlingue’s cunning eyes disappeared again beneath the folds of his
cheeks like two flies in butter.
“Well, yes; I have played a strong game. But you don’t lack shrewdness,
all the same. The loan of the fifteen millions to the Bey--it was a good
stroke, that. Ah! you are bold enough; only you hold your cards badly.
One can see your game.”
Till now they had been talking in low tones, impressed by the silence
of the great necropolis; but little by little human interests asserted
themselves in a louder key even there where their nothingness lay
exposed on all those flat stones covered with dates and figures, as if
death was only an affair of time and calculation--the desired solution
of a problem.
Hemerlingue enjoyed the sight of his friend reduced to such humility,
and gave him advice on his affairs, with which he seemed to be fully
acquainted. According to him the Nabob could still get out of his
difficulties very well. Everything depended on the validation, on the
turning up of a card. The question was to make sure that it should be a
good one. But Jansoulet had no more confidence. In losing Mora, he had
lost everything.
“You lose Mora, but you regain me; so things are equalized,” said the
banker tranquilly.
“No, do you see it is impossible. It is too late. Le Merquier has
completed the report. It is a dreadful one, I believe.”
“Well, if he has completed his report, he will have to prepare another.”
“How is that to be done?”
The baron looked at him with surprise.
“Ah, you are losing your senses. Why, by paying him a hundred, two
hundred, three hundred thousand francs, if necessary.
“How can you think of such a thing? Le Merquier, that man of integrity!
‘My conscience,’ as they call him.”
This time Hemerlingue’s laugh burst forth with an extraordinary
heartiness, and must have reached the inmost recesses of the
neighbouring mausoleums, little accustomed to such disrespect.
“‘My conscience’ a man of integrity! Ah! you amuse me. You don’t know,
then, that he is in my pay, conscience and all, and that--” He paused,
and looked behind him, somewhat startled by a sound which he had heard.
“Listen.”
It was the echo of his laughter sent back to them from the depths of a
vault, as if the idea of Le Merquier having a conscience moved even the
dead to mirth.
“Suppose we walk a little,” said he, “it begins to be chilly on this
bench.”
Then, as they walked among the tombs, he went on to explain to him with
a certain pedantic fatuity, that in France bribes played as important a
part as in the East. Only one had to be a little more delicate about
it here. You veiled your bribes. “Thus, take this Le Merquier, for
instance. Instead of offering him your money openly, in a big purse, as
you would to a local pasha, you go about it indirectly. The man is
fond of pictures. He is constantly having dealings with Schwalbach, who
employs him as a decoy for his Catholic clients. Well, you offer him
some picture--a souvenir to hang on a panel in his study. The whole
point is to make the price quite clear. But you will see. I will take
you round to call on him myself. I will show you how the thing is
worked.”
And delighted at the amazement of the Nabob, who, to flatter him,
exaggerated his surprise still further, and opened his eyes wide with an
air of admiration, the banker enlarged the scope of his lesson--made of
it a veritable course of Parisian and worldly philosophy.
“See, old comrade, what one has to look after in Paris, above everything
else, is the keeping up of appearances. They are the only things that
count--appearances! Now you have not sufficient care for them. You go
about town, your waistcoat unbuttoned, a good-humoured fellow, talking
of your affairs, just what you are by nature. You stroll around just
as you would in the bazaars of Tunis. That is how you have come to get
bowled over, my good Bernard.”
He paused to take breath, feeling quite exhausted. In an hour he had
walked farther and spoken more than he was accustomed to do in the
course of a whole year. They noticed, as they stopped, that their walk
and conversation had led them back in the direction of Mora’s grave,
which was situated just above a little exposed plateau, whence looking
over a thousand closely packed roofs, they could see Montmartre, the
Buttes Chaumont, their rounded outline in the distance looking like high
waves. In the hollows lights were already beginning to twinkle, like
ships’ lanterns, through the violet mists that were rising; chimneys
seemed to leap upward like masts, or steamer funnels discharging their
smoke. Those three undulations, with the tide of Pere Lachaise, were
clearly suggestive of waves of the sea, following each other at equal
intervals. The sky was bright, as often happens in the evening of a
rainy day, an immense sky, shaded with tints of dawn, against which
the family tomb of Mora exhibited in relief four allegorical figures,
imploring, meditative, thoughtful, whose attitudes were made more
imposing by the dying light. Of the speeches, of the official
condolences, nothing remained. The soil trodden down all around, masons
at work washing the dirt from the plaster threshold, were all that was
left to recall the recent burial.
Suddenly the door of the ducal tomb shut with a clash of all its
metallic weight. Thenceforth the late Minister of State was to remain
alone, utterly alone, in the shadow of its night, deeper than that which
then was creeping up from the bottom of the garden, invading the winding
paths, the stone stairways, the bases of the columns, pyramids and tombs
of every kind, whose summits were reached more slowly by the shroud.
Navvies, all white with that chalky whiteness of dried bones, were
passing by, carrying their tools and wallets. Furtive mourners, dragging
themselves away regretfully from tears and prayer, glided along the
margins of the clumps of trees, seeming to skirt them as with the silent
flight of night-birds, while from the extremities of Pere Lachaise
voices rose--melancholy calls announcing the closing time. The day of
the cemetery was at its end. The city of the dead, handed over once
more to Nature, was becoming an immense wood with open spaces marked by
crosses. Down in a valley, the window-panes of a custodian’s house were
lighted up. A shudder seemed to run through the air, losing itself in
murmurings along the dim paths.
“Let us go,” the two old comrades said to each other, gradually coming
to feel the impression of that twilight, which seemed colder than
elsewhere; but before moving off, Hemerlingue, pursuing his train of
thought, pointed to the monument winged at the four corners by the
draperies and the outstretched hands of its sculptured figures.
“Look here,” said he. “That was the man who understood the art of
keeping up appearances.”
Jansoulet took his arm to aid him in the descent.
“Ah, yes, he was clever. But you are the most clever of all,” he
answered with his terrible Gascon intonation.
Hemerlingue made no protest.
“It is to my wife that I owe it. So I strongly recommend you to make
your peace with her, because unless you do----”
“Oh, don’t be afraid. We shall come on Saturday. But you will take me to
see Le Merquier.”
And while the two silhouettes, the one tall and square, the other
massive and short, were passing out of sight among the twinings of the
great labyrinth, while the voice of Jansoulet guiding his friend, “This
way, old fellow--lean hard on my arm,” died away by insensible degrees,
a stray beam of the setting sun fell upon and illuminated behind them
in the little plateau, an expressive and colossal bust, with great brow
beneath long swept-back hair, and powerful and ironic lip--the bust of
Balzac watching them.