his favorite word, and he says it in such an insinuating tone!--a
_combinazione_ in which the famous Nabob of whom all the papers are
talking is to have a part. Thus the _Caisse Territoriale_ would be able
to discharge its obligation to its loyal servants, to reward those who
had shown devotion to its service and lop off those who were useless.
This last for me, I imagine. And finally: "Make up your accounts. They
will all be settled to-morrow." Unfortunately he has so often soothed
our feelings with lying words that his discourse produced no effect.
Formerly those fine promises of his always succeeded. On the
announcement of a new _combinazione_, we used to caper about and weep
with joy in the offices, and embrace one another like shipwrecked
sailors at sight of a sail.
Everyone prepared his account for the next day, as he had told us. But
the next day, no Governor. The next day but one, still no Governor. He
had gone on a little journey.
At last, when we were all together, exasperated beyond measure, putting
out our tongues, crazy for the water that he had held to our mouths,
the Governor arrived, dropped into a chair, hid his face in his hands,
and, before we had time to speak to him, exclaimed: "Kill me, kill me!
I am a miserable impostor. The _combinazione_ has fallen through.
_Pechero!_ the _combinazione_ has fallen through!" And he cried and
sobbed, threw himself on his knees, tore out his hair by handfuls and
rolled on the carpet; he called us all by our nicknames, begged us to
take his life, spoke of his wife and children, whom he had utterly
ruined. And not one of us had the courage to complain in the face of
such despair. What do I say? We ended by sharing it. No, never since
theatres existed, has there been such an actor. But to-day, it is all
over, our confidence has departed. When he had gone everybody gave a
shrug. I must confess, however, that for a moment I was shaken. The
assurance with which he talked about discharging me, and the name of
the Nabob, who was so wealthy--
"Do you believe that?" said the cashier. "Why, you'll always be an
innocent, my poor Passajon. Never you fear! The Nabob's in it just
about as much as Moëssard's queen was."
And he went back to his shirt-fronts.
His last remark referred back to the time when Moëssard was paying
court to his queen and had promised the Governor that, in case he was
successful, he would induce Her Majesty to invest some funds in our
enterprise. All of us in the office were informed of that new prospect
and deeply interested, as you may imagine, in its speedy realization,
since our money depended on it. For two months that fable kept us in
breathless suspense. We were consumed with anxiety, we scrutinized
Moëssard's face; we thought that the effects of his association with
the lady were very visible there; and our old cashier, with his proud,
serious air, would reply gravely from behind his grating, when we
questioned him on the subject: "There's nothing new," or: "The affair's
in good shape." With that everybody was content and we said to each
other: "It's coming along, it's coming along," as if it were a matter
in the ordinary course of business. No, upon my word, Paris is the
only place in the world where such things can be seen. It positively
makes one's head spin sometimes. The upshot of it was that, one fine
morning, Moëssard stopped coming to the office. He had succeeded, it
seems; but the _Caisse Territoriale_ did not seem to him a sufficiently
advantageous investment for his dear friend's funds. That was
honorable, wasn't it?
However, the sentiment of honor is so easily lost that one can scarcely
believe it. When I think that I, Passajon, with my white hair, my
venerable appearance, my spotless past--thirty years of academic
service--have accustomed myself to living amid these infamies and base
intrigues like a fish in water! One may well ask what I am doing here,
why I remain here, how I happened to come here.
How did I happen to come here? Oh! bless your soul, in the simplest way
you can imagine. Nearly four years ago, my wife being dead and my
children married, I had just accepted my retiring pension as apparitor
to the Faculty, when an advertisement in the newspaper happened to
come to my notice. "WANTED, a clerk of mature age at the _Caisse
Territoriale_, 56 Boulevard Malesherbes. Good references." Let me make
a confession at once. The modern Babylon had always tempted me. And
then I felt that I was still vigorous, I could see ten active years
before me, during which I might earn a little money, much perhaps, by
investing my savings in the banking-house I was about to enter. So I
wrote, inclosing my photograph by Crespon, Place De Marché, in which I
am represented with a clean-shaven chin, a bright eye under my heavy
white eyebrows, wearing my steel chain around my neck, my insignia as
an academic official, "with the air of a conscript father on his curule
chair!" as our dean, M. Chalmette, used to say. (Indeed he declared
that I looked very much like the late Louis XVIII., only not so heavy.)
So I furnished the best of references, the most flattering
recommendations from the gentlemen of the Faculty. By return mail the
Governor answered my letter to the effect that my face pleased him--I
should think so, _parbleu!_ a reception room guarded by an imposing
countenance like mine is a tempting bait to the investor,--and that I
might come when I chose. I ought, you will tell me, to have made
inquiries on my own account. Oh! of course I ought. But I had so much
information to furnish about myself that it never occurred to me to ask
them for any about themselves. Moreover, how could one have a feeling
of distrust after seeing these superb quarters, these lofty ceilings,
these strong-boxes, as large as wardrobes, and these mirrors in which
you can see yourself from head to foot? And then the sonorous
prospectuses, the millions that I heard flying through the air, the
colossal enterprises with fabulous profits. I was dazzled, fascinated.
I must say, also, that at that time the establishment had a very
different look from that it has to-day. Certainly affairs were going
badly--they have always gone badly, have our affairs--and the journal
appeared only at irregular intervals. But one of the Governor's little
_combinazioni_ enabled him to save appearances.
He had conceived the idea, if you please, of opening a patriotic
subscription to erect a statue to General Paolo Paoli, a great man of
his country. The Corsicans are not rich, but they are as vain as
turkeys. So money poured into the _Territoriale_. But unfortunately it
did not last. In two months the statue was devoured, before it was
erected, and the succession of protests and summonses began again.
To-day I am used to it. But when I first came from my province, the
notices posted by order of the court, the bailiffs at the door, made a
painful impression upon me. Inside, no attention was paid to them. They
knew that at the last moment a Monpavon or a Bois-l'Héry was certain to
turn up to appease the bailiffs; for all those gentlemen, being deeply
involved in the affair, are interested to avoid a failure. That is just
what saves our evil-minded little Governor. The others run after their
money--everyone knows what that means in gambling--and they would not
be pleased to know that all the shares they have in their hands are
worth nothing more than their weight as old paper.
From the smallest to the greatest, all of us in the house are in that
plight. From the landlord, to whom we owe two years' rent and who keeps
us on for nothing for fear of losing it all, down to us poor clerks, to
myself, who am in for seven thousand francs of savings and my four
years' back pay, we are all running after our money. That is why I
persist in remaining here.
Doubtless, notwithstanding my advanced age, I might have succeeded, by
favor of my education, my general appearance and the care I have always
taken of my clothes, in getting a place in some other office. There is
a very honorable person of my acquaintance, M. Joyeuse, bookkeeper for
Hemerlingue and Son, the great bankers on Rue Saint-Honoré, who never
fails to say to me whenever he meets me:
"Passajon, my boy, don't stay in that den of thieves. You make a
mistake in staying on there; you'll never get a sou out of it. Come to
Hemerlingue's. I'll undertake to find some little corner for you. You
will earn less, but you'll receive very much more."
I feel that he is right, the honest fellow. But it's stronger than I
am, I cannot make up my mind to go. And yet this is not a cheerful life
that I lead here in these great cold rooms where no one ever comes,
where every one slinks into a corner without speaking. What would you
have? We know one another too well, that's the whole of it. Up to last
year we had meetings of the council of supervision, meetings of
stockholders, stormy, uproarious meetings, genuine battles of savages,
whose yells could be heard at the Madeleine. And subscribers used to
come too, several times a week, indignant because they had never heard
anything from their money. Those were the times when our Governor came
out strong. I have seen people go into his office, monsieur, as fierce
as wolves thirsty for blood, and come out, after a quarter of an hour,
milder than sheep, satisfied, reassured, and their pockets comforted
with a few bank-notes. For there was the cunning of the thing: to ruin
with money the poor wretches who came to demand it. To-day the
shareholders of the _Caisse Territoriale_ never stir. I think that they
are all dead or resigned to their fate. The council never meets. We
have sessions only on paper; it is my duty to make up a so-called
balance-sheet--always the same--of which I make a fresh copy every
three months. We never see a living soul, except that at rare intervals
some subscriber to the Paoli statue drops down on us from the wilds of
Corsica, anxious to know if the monument is progressing; or perhaps
some devout reader of the _Vérité Financière_, which disappeared more
than two years ago, comes with an air of timidity to renew his
subscription, and requests that it be forwarded a little more
regularly, if possible. There is a confidence which nothing weakens.
When one of those innocent creatures falls in the midst of our
half-starved band, it is something terrible. We surround him, we
embrace him, we try to get his name on one of our lists, and, in case
he resists, if he will subscribe neither to the Paoli monument nor to
the Corsican railways, then those gentry perform what they call--my pen
blushes to write it--what they call "the drayman trick."
This is how it is done: we always have in the office a package prepared
beforehand, a box tied with stout string which arrives, presumably from
some railway station, while the visitor is there. "Twenty francs cartage,"
says the one of us who brings in the package. (Twenty francs, or some
times thirty, according to the victim's appearance.) Every one at once
begins to fumble in his pocket. "Twenty francs cartage! I haven't
it."--"Nor I--What luck!" Some one runs to the counting-room.--Closed!
They look for the cashier. Gone out. And the hoarse voice of the
drayman waxing impatient in the ante-room: "Come, come, make haste." (I
am generally selected for the drayman's part, because of my voice.)
What is to be done? Send back the package? the Governor won't like
that. "Messieurs, I beg you to allow me," the innocent victim ventures
to observe, opening his purse.--"Ah! monsieur, if you would."--He pays
his twenty francs, we escort him to the door, and as soon as his back
is turned we divide the fruit of the crime, laughing like brigands.
Fie! Monsieur Passajon. Such performances at your time of life! Oh!
_Mon Dieu_! I know all about it. I know that I should honor myself
much more if I left this vile place. But, what then? why, I must
abandon all that I have at stake here. No, it is not possible. It is
urgently necessary that I remain, that I keep a close watch, that I am
always on hand to have the advantage of a windfall, if one should come.
Oh! I swear by my ribbon, by my thirty years of academic service, if
ever an affair like this of the Nabob makes it possible for me to
recoup my losses, I will not wait a moment, I will take myself off in
hot haste to look after my little vineyard near Monbars, cured forever
of my speculative ideas. But alas! that is a very chimerical
hope,--played out, discredited, well known as we are on 'Change, with
our shares no longer quoted at the Bourse, our obligations fast
becoming waste paper, such a wilderness of falsehood and debts, and the
hole that is being dug deeper and deeper. (We owe at this moment three
million five hundred thousand francs. And yet that three millions is
not what embarrasses us. On the other hand it is what keeps us up; but
we owe the concierge a little bill of a hundred and twenty five francs
for postage stamps, gas and the like. That's the dangerous thing.) And
they would have us believe that a man, a great financier like this
Nabob, even though he was just from the Congo or had come from the moon
this very day, is fool enough to put his money in such a trap.
Nonsense! Is it possible? Tell that story elsewhere, my dear Governor.
IV.
A DÉBUT IN SOCIETY.
"Monsieur Bernard Jansoulet!"
That plebeian name, proudly announced by the liveried footman in a
resounding voice, rang through Jenkins's salons like the clash of
cymbals, like one of the gongs that announce fantastic apparitions in a
fairy play. The candles paled, flames flashed from every eye, at the
dazzling prospect of Oriental treasures, of showers of pearls and
sequins let fall by the magic syllables of that name, but yesterday
unknown.
Yes, it was he, the Nabob, the richest of the rich, the great Parisian
curiosity, flavored with that spice of adventure that is so alluring to
surfeited multitudes. All heads were turned, all conversation was
interrupted; there was a grand rush for the door, a pushing and
jostling like that of the crowds on the quay at a seaport, to watch the
arrival of a felucca with a cargo of gold.
Even the hospitable Jenkins, who was standing in the first salon to
receive his guests, despite his usual self-possession abruptly left the
group of men with whom he was talking and bore away to meet the
galleons.
"A thousand times, a thousand times too kind. Madame Jenkins will be
very happy, very proud. Come and let me take you to her."
And in his haste, in his vainglorious delight, he dragged Jansoulet
away so quickly that the latter had no time to present his companion,
Paul de Géry, whom he was introducing into society. The young man was
well pleased to be overlooked. He glided into the mass of black coats
which was forced farther and farther back by every new arrival, and was
swallowed up in it, a prey to the foolish terror that every young
provincial feels on his first appearance in a Parisian salon,
especially when he is shrewd and intelligent and does not wear the
imperturbable self-assurance of the bumpkin like a coat of mail beneath
his linen buckler.
You, Parisians of Paris, who, ever since you were sixteen have
exhibited your youth at the receptions of all classes of society, in
your first black coat with your crush-hat on your hip,--you, I say,
have no conception of that anguish, compounded of vanity, timidity and
recollections of romantic books, which screws our teeth together,
embarrasses our movements, makes us for a whole evening a statue
between two doors, a fixture in a window-recess, a poor, pitiful,
wandering creature, incapable of making his existence manifest
otherwise than by changing his position from time to time, preferring
to die of thirst rather than go near the sideboard, and going away
without having said a word, unless we may have stammered one of those
incoherent absurdities which we remember for months, and which makes
us, when we think of it at night, utter an _ah!_ of frantic shame and
bury our face in the pillow.
Paul de Géry was a martyr of that type. In his province he had always
lived a very retired life, with a pious, melancholy old aunt, until the
time when, as a student of law, originally destined for a profession in
which his father had left an excellent reputation, he had been induced
to frequent the salons of some of the counsellors of the court,
old-fashioned, gloomy dwellings, with dingy hangings, where he made a
fourth hand at whist with venerable ghosts. Jenkins' evening party was
therefore a début in society for that provincial, whose very ignorance
and Southern adaptability made him first of all a keen observer.
From the place where he stood he watched the interesting procession,
still in progress at midnight, of Jenkins' guests, the whole body of
the fashionable physician's patients; the very flower of society, a
large sprinkling of politics and finance, bankers, deputies, a few
artists, all the jaded ones of Parisian high life, pale and wan, with
gleaming eyes, saturated with arsenic like gluttonous mice, but
insatiably greedy of poison and of life. Through the open salon and the
great reception-room, the doors of which had been removed, he could see
the stairway and landing, profusely decorated with flowers along the
sides, where the long trains were duly spread, their silky weight
seeming to force back the décolleté busts of their wearers in that
graceful ascending motion which caused them to appear, little by
little, until they burst upon one in the full bloom of their splendor.
As the couples reached the top of the stairs they seemed to make their
entrance on the stage; and that was doubly true, for every one left on
the last step the frowns, the wrinkles of deep thought the air of
weariness and all traces of anger or depression, to display a tranquil
countenance, a smile playing over the placid features. The men
exchanged hearty grasps of the hand, warm fraternal greetings; the
women, thinking only of themselves, with little affected shrugs, with a
charming simper and abundant play of the eyes and shoulders, murmured a
few meaningless words of greeting:
"Thanks! Oh! thanks--how kind you are."
Then the couples separated, for an evening party is no longer, as it
used to be, an assemblage of congenial persons, in which the wit of the
women compelled the force of character, the superior knowledge, the
very genius of the men to bow gracefully before it, but a too numerous
mob in which the women, who alone are seated, whisper together like
captives in the harem, and have no other enjoyment than that of being
beautiful or of seeming to be. De Géry, after wandering through the
doctor's library, the conservatory and the billiard room, where there
was smoking, tired of dull, serious conversation, which seemed to him
to be out of keeping in such a festal scene and in the brief hour of
pleasure--some one had asked him carelessly and without looking at him,
what was doing at the Bourse that day--approached the door of the main
salon, which was blockaded by a dense mass of black coats, a surging
sea of heads packed closely together and gazing.
An enormous room, handsomely furnished, with the artistic taste
characteristic of the master and mistress of the house. A few old
pictures against the light background of the draperies. A monumental
chimney-piece, decorated with a fine marble group, "The Seasons" by
Sébastien Ruys, about which long green stalks, with lacelike edges, or
of the stiffness of carved bronze, bent toward the mirror as toward a
stream of limpid water. On the low chairs groups of women crowded
together, blending the vaporous hues of their dresses, forming an
immense nosegay of living flowers, above which gleamed bare white
shoulders, hair studded with diamonds, drops of water on the brunettes,
glistening reflections on the blondes, and the same intoxicating
perfume, the same confused, pleasant buzzing, made by waves of heat and
intangible wings, that caresses all the flowers in the garden in
summer. At times a little laugh, ascending in that luminous atmosphere,
a quicker breath, made plumes and curls tremble, and attracted
attention to a lovely profile. Such was the aspect of the salon.
A few men were there, very few, all persons of distinction, laden with
years and decorations, talking on the arm of a divan or leaning over
the back of a chair with the condescending air we assume in conversing
with children. But amid the placid murmur of the private conversations,
one voice rang out, loud and discordant, the voice of the Nabob, who
was threading his way through that social conservatory with the
self-assurance due to his immense fortune and a certain contempt for
woman which he had brought with him from the Orient.
At that moment, sprawling upon a chair, with his great yellow-gloved
hands awkwardly clasped, he was talking with a very beautiful woman,
whose unusual face--much animation upon features of a severe cast--was
noticeable by reason of its pallor among the surrounding pretty faces,
just as her dress, all white, classic in its draping and moulded to her
graceful, willowy figure, contrasted with much richer costumes, not one
of which had its character of bold simplicity. De Géry, from his
corner, gazed at that smooth, narrow forehead beneath the fringe of
hair brushed low, those long, wide-open eyes of a deep blue, an abysmal
blue, that mouth which ceased to smile only to relax its classic
outline in a weary, spiritless expression. All in all, the somewhat
haughty aspect of an exceptional being.
Some one near him mentioned her name--Felicia Ruys. Thereupon he
understood the rare attraction of that girl, inheritress of her
father's genius, whose new-born celebrity had reached as far as his
province, with the halo of a reputation for great beauty. While he was
gazing at her, admiring her slightest movement, a little puzzled by the
enigma presented by that beautiful face, he heard a whispered
conversation behind him.
"Just see how affable she is with the Nabob! Suppose the duke should
come!"
"Is the Duc de Mora expected?"
"To be sure. The party is given for him; to have him meet Jansoulet."
"And you think that the duke and Mademoiselle Ruys--"
"Where have you come from? It's a liaison known to all Paris. It dates
from the last Salon, for which she did his bust."
"And what about the duchess?"
"Pshaw! she has seen many others. Ah! Madame Jenkins is going to sing."