Thorstein Veblen - "An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation"

James Anthony Froude - "Short Studies on Great Subjects"

Henry Beam Piper - "Oomphel in the Sky"

Mark Lemon - "The Jest Book"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2)

A >> Alphonse Daudet >> The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2)




Oh! how he reviles himself now for his delay in confessing everything,
for the fallacious security which he has encouraged in his home and
which he will have to destroy at one blow. Why need he have criticised
that Tunisian loan? He even blames himself now for having declined a
position at the _Caisse Territoriale_. Had he the right to decline it?
Ah! what a pitiful head of a family, who lacked strength to maintain
or to defend the welfare of his dear ones. And, in presence of the
charming group sitting within the rays of the lamp, whose tranquil
aspect is in such glaring contrast to his inward agitation, he is
seized with remorse, which assails his feeble mind so fiercely that
his secret comes to his lips, is on the point of escaping him in
an outburst of sobs, when a ring at the bell--not an imaginary
ring--startles them all and checks him as he is about to speak.

Who could have come at that hour? They had lived in seclusion since the
mother's death, receiving almost no visitors. Andre Maranne, when he
came down to pass a few moments with them, knocked familiarly after the
manner of those to whom a door is always open. Profound silence in the
salon, a long colloquy on the landing. At last the old servant--she had
been in the family as long as the lamp--introduced a young man, a
perfect stranger, who stopped suddenly, spellbound, at sight of the
charming picture presented by the four darlings grouped about the
table. He entered with an abashed, somewhat awkward air. However, he
set forth very clearly the purpose of his call. He was recommended to
apply to M. Joyeuse by a worthy man of his acquaintance, old Passajon,
to give him lessons in book-keeping. A friend of his was involved in
some large financial enterprises, a stock company of some size. He was
anxious to be of service to him by keeping an eye upon the employment
of his funds and the rectitude of his associates' operations; but he
was a lawyer, with a very imperfect knowledge of financial matters and
the vernacular of the banking business. Could not M. Joyeuse, in a few
months, with three or four lessons a week--"

"Why, yes indeed, monsieur, yes indeed," stammered the father, dazed by
this unhoped-for chance; "I will willingly undertake to fit you in a
month or two for this work of examining accounts. Where shall we have
the lessons?"

"Here, if you please," said the young man, "for I am anxious that
nobody should know that I am working at it. But I shall be very sorry
if I am to put everybody to flight every time I appear, as I seem to
have done this evening."

It was a fact that, as soon as the visitor opened his mouth, the four
curly heads had disappeared, with much whispering and rustling of
skirts, and the salon appeared very bare now that the great circle of
white light was empty.

Always quick to take alarm where his daughters were concerned, M.
Joyeuse replied that "the young ladies always retired early," in a
short, sharp tone which said as plainly as could be: "Let us confine
our conversation to our lessons, young man, I beg."

Thereupon they agreed upon the days and the hours in the evening.

As for the terms, that would be for monsieur to determine.

Monsieur named a figure.

The clerk turned scarlet; it was what he earned at Hemerlingue's.

"Oh! no, that is too much."

But the other would not listen; he hemmed and hawed and rolled his
tongue around as if he were trying to say something that it was very
difficult to say; then with sudden resolution:

"Here is your first month's pay."

"But, monsieur--"

The young man insisted. He was a stranger. It was fair that he should
pay in advance. Evidently Passajon had told him. M. Joyeuse understood
and said, beneath his breath: "Thanks, oh! thanks!" so deeply moved
that words failed him. Life, it meant life for a few months, time to
turn around, to find a situation. His darlings would be deprived of
nothing. They would have their New Year's gifts. O Providence!

"Until Wednesday, then, Monsieur Joyeuse."

"Until Wednesday, Monsieur--?"

"De Gery--Paul de Gery."

They parted, equally dazzled, enchanted, one by the appearance of that
unexpected saviour, the other by the lovely tableau of which he had
caught a glimpse, all those maidens grouped around the table covered
with books and papers and skeins, with an air of purity, of
hard-working probity. That sight opened up to de Gery a whole new
Paris, brave, domestic, very different from that with which he was
already familiar, a Paris of which the writers of feuilletons and the
reporters never speak, and which reminded him of his province, with an
additional element, namely, the charm which the surrounding hurly-burly
and turmoil impart to the peaceful shelter that they do not reach.




VI.

FELICIA RUYS.


"By the way, what have you done with your son, Jenkins? Why do we never
see him at your house now? He was an attractive boy."

As she said this in the tone of disdainful acerbity in which she always
addressed the Irishman, Felicia was at work on the bust of the Nabob
which she had just begun, adjusting her model, taking up and putting
down the modelling tool, wiping her hands with a quick movement on the
little sponge, while the light and peace of a lovely Sunday afternoon
flooded the circular glass-walled studio. Felicia "received" every
Sunday, if receiving consisted in leaving her door open and allowing
people to come and go and sit down a moment, without stirring from her
work for them, or even breaking off a discussion she might have begun,
to welcome new arrivals. There were artists with shapely heads and
bright red beards, and here and there the white poll of an old man,
sentimental friends of the elder Ruys; then there were connoisseurs,
men of the world, bankers, brokers, and some young swells who came
rather to see the fair sculptress than her sculpture, so that they
would have the right to say that evening at the club: "I was at
Felicia's to-day." Among them Paul de Gery, silent, engrossed by an
admiration which sank a little deeper in his heart day by day, strove
to comprehend the beautiful sphinx, arrayed in purple cashmere and
unbleached lace, who worked bravely away in the midst of her clay, a
burnisher's apron--reaching nearly to the neck--leaving naught visible
save the proud little face with those transparent tones, those gleams
as of veiled rays with which intellect and inspiration give animation
to the features. Paul never forgot what had been said of her in his
presence, he tried to form an opinion for himself, was beset by doubt
and perplexity, yet fascinated; vowed every time that he would never
come again, yet never missed a Sunday. There was another fixture,
always in the same spot, a little woman with gray, powdered hair and a
lace handkerchief around her pink face; a pastel somewhat worn by
years, who smiled sweetly in the discreet light of a window recess, her
hands lying idly upon her lap, in fakir-like immobility. Jenkins,
always in good humor, with his beaming face, his black eyes, and his
apostolic air, went about from one to another, known and loved by all.
He too never missed one of Felicia's days; and in very truth he
displayed great patience, for all the sharp words of the artist and of
the pretty woman as well were reserved for him alone. Without seeming
to notice it, with the same smiling indulgent serenity, he continued to
court the society of the daughter of his old friend Ruys, of whom he
had been so fond and whom he had attended until his last breath.

On this occasion, however, the question that Felicia propounded to him
on the subject of his son seemed to him extremely disagreeable; and
there was a frown upon his face, a genuine expression of ill-humor, as
he replied:

"Faith, I know no more than you as to what has become of him. He has
turned his back upon us altogether. He was bored with us. He cares for
nothing but his Bohemia--"

Felicia gave a bound which made them all start, and with flashing eye
and quivering nostril retorted:

"That is too much. Look you, Jenkins, what do you call Bohemia? A
charming word, by the way, which should evoke visions of long wandering
jaunts in the sunlight, halting in shady nooks, the first taste of
luscious fruits and sparkling fountains, taken at random on the
highroads. But since you have made of the word with all the charm
attaching to it a stigma and an insult, to whom do you apply it? To
certain poor long-haired devils, in love with freedom in rags and
tatters, who starve to death on fifth floors, looking at the sky at too
close quarters, or seeking rhymes under tiles through which the rain
drips; to those idiots, fewer and fewer in number, who in their horror
of the conventional, the traditional, of the dense stupidity of life,
have taken a standing jump over the edge. But that's the way it used to
be, I tell you. That's the Bohemia of Murger, with the hospital at the
end, the terror of children, the comfort of kindred, Little Red Riding
Hood eaten by the wolf. That state of things came to an end a long
while ago. To-day you know perfectly well that artists are the most
well-behaved people on earth, that they earn money, pay their debts and
do their best to resemble the ordinary man. There is no lack of genuine
Bohemians, however; our society is made up of them, but they are found
more particularly in your circle. _Parbleu!_ they are not labelled
on the outside, and no one distrusts them; but so far as the
uncertainty of existence and lack of order are concerned, they have no
reason to envy those whom they so disdainfully call 'irregulars.' Ah!
if one knew all the baseness, all the unheard-of, monstrous experiences
that may be masked by a black coat, the most correct of your horrible
modern garments! Jenkins, at your house the other evening, I amused
myself counting all those adventurers of high--"

The little old lady, pink-cheeked and powdered, said to her softly from
her seat:

"Felicia--take care--"

But she went on without listening to her:

"Who is this Monpavon, Doctor? And Bois-l'Hery? And Mora himself?
And--"

She was on the point of saying, "And the Nabob?" but checked herself.

"And how many others! Oh! really, I advise you to speak contemptuously
of Bohemia. Why, your clientage as a fashionable physician, O sublime
Jenkins, is made up of nothing else. Bohemia of manufacturing, of
finance, of politics; fallen stars, the tainted of all castes, and the
higher you go the more of them there are, because high rank gives
impunity and wealth closes many mouths."

She spoke with great animation, harshly, her lip curling in fierce
disdain. The other laughed a false laugh and assumed an airy,
condescending tone. "Ah! madcap! madcap!" And his glance, anxious and
imploring, rested upon the Nabob, as if to beseech his forgiveness for
that flood of impertinent paradoxes.

But Jansoulet, far from appearing to be vexed,--he who was so proud to
pose for that lovely artist, so puffed up by the honor conferred upon
him--nodded his head approvingly.

"She is right, Jenkins," he said, "she is right. We are the real
Bohemia. Look at me, for instance, and Hemerlingue, two of the greatest
handlers of money in Paris. When I think where we started from, all the
trades that we tried our hands at! Hemerlingue, an old regimental
sutler; and myself, who carried bags of grain on the wharves at
Marseille for a living. And then the strokes of luck by which our
fortunes were made, as indeed all fortunes are made nowadays. Bless my
soul! Just look under the peristyle at the Bourse from three to five.
But I beg your pardon, mademoiselle, with my mania for gesticulating
when I talk, I've spoiled my pose--let's see, will this do?"

"It's of no use," said Felicia, throwing down her modelling-tool with
the gesture of a spoiled child. "I can do nothing more to-day."

She was a strange girl, this Felicia. A true child of an artist, a
genial and dissipated artist, according to the romantic tradition, such
as Sebastien Ruys was. She had never known her mother, being the fruit
of one of those ephemeral passions which suddenly enter a sculptor's
bachelor life, as swallows enter a house of which the door is always
open, and go out again at once, because they cannot build nests there.

On that occasion the lady, on taking flight, had left with the great
artist, then in the neighborhood of forty, a beautiful child whom he
had acknowledged and reared, and who became the joy and passion of his
life. Felicia had remained with her father until she was thirteen,
importing a childish, refining element into that studio crowded with
idlers, models, and huge greyhounds lying at full length on divans.
There was a corner set aside for her, for her attempts at sculpture, a
complete equipment on a microscopic scale, a tripod and wax; and old
Ruys would say to all who came in:

"Don't go over there. Don't disturb anything. That's the little one's
corner."

The result was that at ten years of age she hardly knew how to read and
handled the modelling-tool with marvellous skill. Ruys would have liked
to keep the child, who never annoyed him in any way, with him
permanently, a tiny member of the great brotherhood. But it was a
pitiful thing to see the little maid exposed to the free and easy
manners of the habitues of the house, the incessant going and coming of
models, the discussions concerning an art that is purely physical, so
to speak; and at the uproarious Sunday dinner-table, too, sitting in
the midst of five or six women, with all of whom her father was on the
most intimate terms, actresses, dancers, singers, who, when dinner was
at an end, smoked with the rest, their elbows on the table, revelling
in the salacious anecdotes so relished by the master of the house.
Luckily, childhood is protected by the resistant power of innocence, a
polished surface over which all forms of pollution glide harmlessly.
Felicia was noisy, uproarious, badly brought up, but was untainted by
all that passed over her little mind because it was so near the ground.

Every summer she went to pass a few days with her godmother, Constance
Crenmitz, the elder Crenmitz, who was for so long a time called by all
Europe the "illustrious dancer," and who was living quietly in
seclusion at Fontainebleau.

The arrival of the "little devil" introduced into the old lady's life,
for a time, an element of excitement from which she had the whole year
to recover. The frights that the child caused her with her audacious
exploits in leaping and riding, the passionate outbreaks of that
untamed nature, made the visit both a delight and a terrible trial to
her,--a delight, because she worshipped Felicia, the only domestic tie
left the poor old salamander, retired after thirty years of _battus_ in
the glare of the footlights; a trial, because the demon pitilessly
pillaged the ex-dancer's apartments, which were as dainty and neat and
sweet-smelling as her dressing-room at the Opera, and embellished with
a museum of souvenirs dated from all the theatres in the world.

Constance Crenmitz was the sole feminine element in Felicia's
childhood. Frivolous, shallow, having all her life kept her mind
enveloped in pink swaddling-clothes, she had at all events a dainty
knack at housekeeping, and agile fingers clever at sewing,
embroidering, arranging furniture, and leaving the trace of their deft,
painstaking touch in every corner of a room. She alone undertook to
train that wild young plant, and to awaken with care the womanly
instincts in that strange creature, on whose figure cloaks and furs,
all the elegant inventions of fashion, fell in folds too stiff, or
performed other strange antics.

It was the dancer again--surely the little Ruys must not be
abandoned--who, triumphing over the paternal selfishness, compelled the
sculptor to assent to a necessary separation, when Felicia was twelve
or thirteen years old; furthermore, she assumed the responsibility of
finding a suitable boarding school, and purposely selected a very rich
but very bourgeois establishment, pleasantly situated in a
sparsely-settled faubourg, in a huge old-fashioned mansion, surrounded
by high walls and tall trees,--a sort of convent, minus the restraint
and contempt for serious studies.

Indeed, a great deal of hard work was done at Madame Belin's
establishment, with no opportunities to go out except on great
festivals, and no communication with the outside world except a visit
from one's relatives on Thursday, in a little garden of flowering
shrubs, or in the vast parlor with the carved and gilded panels above
the doors. Felicia's first appearance in that almost monastic
institution caused considerable commotion; her costume, selected by the
Austrian ballet-dancer, her curly hair falling to the waist, her
ungainly, boyish bearing, gave rise to some ill-natured remarks; but
she was a Parisian and readily adapted herself to all situations, to
all localities. In a few days she wore more gracefully than any of the
others the little black apron, to which the most coquettish attached
their watches, the straight skirt--a stern and cruel requirement at
that period, when the prevailing fashion enlarged the circumference of
woman with an infinite number of ruffles and flounces--and the
prescribed arrangement of the hair, in two braids fastened together
well down on the neck, after the fashion of Roman peasants.

Strangely enough, the assiduous work of the classes, their tranquil
regularity, suited Felicia's nature, all intelligence and animation, in
which a taste for study was enlivened by an overflow of childish
spirits in the hours of recreation. Every one loved her. Among those
children of great manufacturers, Parisian notaries and gentleman-farmers,
a substantial little world by themselves, somewhat inclined to
stiffness and formality, the well-known name of old Ruys, and the
respect which is universally manifested in Paris for a high reputation
as an artist, gave to Felicia a position apart from the rest and
greatly envied; a position made even more brilliant by her success in
her studies, by a genuine talent for drawing, and by her beauty, that
element of superiority which produces its effect even upon very young
girls.

In the purer atmosphere of the boarding-school, she felt the keenest
pleasure in making herself womanly, in resuming her true sex, in
learning order, regularity, in a different sense from that inculcated
by the amiable dancer, whose kisses always retained a taste of rouge,
and whose embraces always left an impression of unnaturally round arms.
Pere Ruys was enchanted, every time that he went to see his daughter,
to find her more of a young lady, able to enter and walk about and
leave a room with the pretty courtesy that made all of Madame Belin's
boarders long for the _frou-frou_ of a long train.

At first he came often, then, as he lacked time for all the commissions
accepted and undertaken, the advances upon which helped to pay for the
disorder and heedlessness of his life, he was seen less frequently in
the parlor. At last disease took a hand. Brought to earth by hopeless
anaemia, for weeks he did not leave the house, nor work. He insisted
upon seeing his daughter; and from the peaceful, health-giving shadow
of the boarding-school Felicia returned to her father's studio, still
haunted by the same cronies, the parasites that cling to every
celebrity, among whom sickness had introduced a new figure in the
person of Dr. Jenkins.

That handsome, open face, the air of frankness and serenity diffused
over the whole person of that already well known physician, who talked
of his art so freely, yet performed miraculous cures, and his assiduous
attentions to her father, made a deep impression on the girl. Jenkins
soon became the friend, the confidant, a vigilant and gentle guardian.
Sometimes in the studio, when some one--the father himself most
frequently--made a too equivocal remark or a ribald jest, the Irishman
would frown and make a little noise with his lips, or else would divert
Felicia's attention. He often took her to pass the day with Madame
Jenkins, exerting himself to prevent her from becoming once more the
wild creature of the ante-boarding school days, or indeed the something
worse than that which she threatened to become, in the moral
abandonment, the saddest of all forms of abandonment, in which she was
left.

But the girl had a more powerful protector than the irreproachable but
worldly example of the fair Madame Jenkins: the art which she adored,
the enthusiasm it aroused in her essentially open nature, the sentiment
of beauty, of truth, which passed from her thoughtful brain, teeming
with ideas, into her fingers with a little quiver of the nerves, a
longing to see the thing done, the image realized. All day she worked
at her sculpture, gave shape to her reveries, with the happy tact of
instinct-guided youth, which imparts so much charm to first works; that
prevented her from regretting too keenly the austere regime of the
Belin institution, which was as perfect a safeguard and as light as the
veil of a novice who has not taken her vows; and it also shielded her
from perilous conversations to which in her one absorbing preoccupation
she paid no heed.

Ruys was proud of the talent springing up by his side. As he grew
weaker from day to day, having already reached the stage at which the
artist regrets his vanishing powers, he followed Felicia's progress as
a consolation for the close of his own career. The modelling-tool,
which trembled in his hand, was seized at his side with virile firmness
and self-assurance, tempered by all of the innate refinement of her
being that a woman can apply to the realization of her ideal of an art.
A curious sensation is that twofold paternity, that survival of genius,
which abandons the one who is going away to pass into the one who is
coming, like the lovely domestic birds which, on the eve of a death,
desert the threatened roof for a more cheerful dwelling.

In the last days of her father's life, Felicia--a great artist, and
still a child--did half of her father's work for him, and nothing could
be more touching than that collaboration of the father and daughter, in
the same studio, sculptors of the same group. Things did not always run
smoothly. Although she was her father's pupil, Felicia's individuality
was already inclined to rebel against any arbitrary guidance. She had
the audacity of beginners, the presentiment of a great future felt only
by youthful geniuses, and, in opposition to the romantic traditions of
Sebastien Ruys, a tendency toward modern realism, a feeling that she
must plant that glorious old flag upon some new monument.

Then there would be terrible scenes, disputes from which the father
would come forth vanquished, annihilated by his daughter's logic,
amazed at the rapid progress children make on the highroads, while
their elders, who have opened the gates for them, remain stationary at
the point of departure. When she was working for him Felicia yielded
more readily; but concerning her own work she was intractable. For
instance, the _Joueur de Boules_, her first exhibited work, which
made such a tremendous hit at the Salon of 1862, was the occasion of
violent disputes between the two artists, of such fierce controversy
that Jenkins had to intervene and to superintend the removal of the
figure, which Ruys had threatened to break.

Aside from these little dramas, which had no effect upon the love of
their hearts, those two worshipped each other, with the presentiment
and, as the days passed, the cruel certainty of an impending
separation; when suddenly there came a horrible episode in Felicia's
life. One day Jenkins took her home to dinner with him, as he often
did. Madame Jenkins and her son were away for two days; but the
doctor's years, his semi-paternal intimacy, justified him in inviting
to his house, even in his wife's absence, a girl whose fifteen years,
the fifteen years of an Eastern Jewess resplendent with premature
beauty, left her still almost a child.

The dinner was very lively, Jenkins cordial and agreeable as always.
Then they went into the doctor's office; and suddenly, as they sat on
the divan, talking in the most intimate and friendly way concerning her
father, his health and their joint work, Felicia had a feeling as of
the cold blast from an abyss between herself and that man, followed by
the brutal embrace of a satyr's claw. She saw a Jenkins totally unknown
to her, wild-eyed, stammering, with brutish laugh and insulting hands.
In the surprise, the unexpectedness of that outbreak of the animal
instinct, any other than Felicia, any child of her years, but genuinely
innocent, would have been lost. The thing that saved her, poor child,
was her knowledge. She had heard so many stories at her father's table!
And then her art, her life at the studio. She was no _ingenue_. She at
once understood what that embrace meant, she squirmed and struggled,
then, finding that she was not strong enough, screamed. He was
frightened, released her, and suddenly she found herself on her feet,
free, with the man at her knees, weeping and imploring forgiveness. He
had yielded to an attack of frenzy. She was so lovely, he loved her so
dearly. He had struggled for months. But now it was all over--never
again, oh! never again. He would not even touch the hem of her dress.
She did not reply, but tremblingly rearranged her hair and her clothes
with frenzied fingers. Go, she must go at once, alone. He sent a
servant with her, and whispered, as she entered the carriage: "Above
all things, not a word of this at home. It would kill your father." He
knew her so well, he was so sure of closing her mouth by that thought,
the villain, that he came the next day as if nothing had happened,
effusive as always and with the same ingenuous face. She never did
mention the incident to her father or to anybody else. But from that
day a change took place in her, as if the springs of her pride were
relaxed. She became capricious, had fits of lassitude, a curl of
disgust in her smile, and sometimes she yielded to sudden outbursts of
wrath against her father, and cast scornful glances upon him, rebuking
him for his failure to watch over her.

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