The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2)
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Alphonse Daudet >> The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2)
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"What is the matter with her?" Pere Ruys would ask; and Jenkins, with
the authority of a physician, would attribute it to her age and a
physical trouble. He himself avoided speaking to the girl, relying upon
time to efface the sinister impression, and not despairing of obtaining
what he desired, for he desired more eagerly than ever, being in the
grasp of the insane passion of a man of forty-seven, the incurable
passion of maturity; and that was the hypocrite's punishment. His
daughter's strange state caused the sculptor genuine distress; but it
was of brief duration. Ruys suddenly expired, fell to pieces all at
once, like all those whom Jenkins attended. His last words were:
"Jenkins, I place my daughter in your care."
The words were so ironical in all their mournfulness that Jenkins, who
was present at the last, could not avoid turning pale.
Felicia was even more stupefied than sorrowful. To the feeling of
amazement at death, which she had never seen before, and which appeared
in a guise so dear to her, was added the feeling of a terrible
loneliness surrounded by darkness and perils.
Several friends of the sculptor assembled in a family council to
deliberate concerning the future of the unfortunate, penniless orphan.
They had found fifty francs in the catch-all in which Sebastien kept
his money on a little commode in the studio, well known to his needy
friends, who had recourse to it without scruple. No other patrimony, in
cash at all events; only a most superb collection of artistic objects
and curios, a few valuable pictures and some scattered outstanding
claims hardly sufficient to cover his innumerable debts. They talked of
a sale at auction. Felicia, on being consulted, replied that it was a
matter of indifference to her whether they sold all or none, but that
she begged them, for God's sake, to leave her in peace.
The sale did not take place, however, thanks to the godmother, the
excellent Crenmitz, who suddenly made her appearance, as tranquil and
gentle as always:
"Don't listen to them, my child, sell nothing. Your old Constance has
fifteen thousand francs a year which were intended for you. You shall
have the benefit of them now, that's all. We will live together here. I
will not be in the way, you will see. You can work at your sculpture,
while I keep the house. Does that suit you?"
It was said so affectionately, in the childish accent of foreigners
expressing themselves in French, that the girl was deeply moved. Her
stony heart opened, a burning flood poured from her eyes and she threw
herself, buried herself in the ex-dancer's arms: "Oh! godmother, how
good you are! Yes, yes; don't leave me again--stay with me always. Life
frightens and disgusts me. I see so much hypocrisy and lying!" And when
the old woman had made herself a silky, embroidered nest in the house,
which resembled a traveller's camp filled with the treasures of all
lands, those two widely different natures took up their life together.
It was no small sacrifice that Constance had made to the little demon,
to leave her retreat at Fontainebleau for Paris, which she held in
horror. From the day when the ballet-dancer, once famous for her
extravagant caprices, who squandered princely fortunes between her five
parted fingers, had descended from the realm of apotheoses with a last
remnant of their dazzling glare still lingering in her eyes, and had
tried to resume the life of ordinary mortals, to administer her little
income and her modest household, she had been subjected to a multitude
of unblushing attempts at extortion and schemes which were readily
successful in view of the ignorance of that poor butterfly, who was
afraid of reality and constantly coming in contact with all its unknown
difficulties. In Felicia's house the responsibility became far more
serious, because of the extravagant methods long ago inaugurated by the
father and continued by the daughter, both artists having the utmost
contempt for economy. She had other difficulties, too, to overcome. She
could not endure the studio, with its permanent odor of tobacco smoke,
with the cloud, impenetrable to her, in which artistic discussions and
ideas, expressed in their baldest form, were confounded in vague eddies
of glowing vapor which invariably gave her the sick headache. The
_blague_ was especially terrifying to her. Being a foreigner, a former
divinity of the ballet greenroom, fed upon superannuated compliments,
gallantries _a la Dorat_ she was unable to understand it, and was
dismayed at the wild exaggerations, the paradoxes of those Parisians
whose wits were sharpened by the liberty of the studio.
She whose wit had consisted entirely in the agility of her feet was
awed by her new surroundings and relegated to the position of a simple
companion; and to see that amiable old creature, silent and smiling,
sitting in the bright light of the rounded window, her knitting on her
knees, like one of Chardin's bourgeoises, or walking quickly up the
long Rue de Chaillot where the nearest market was situated, with her
cook at her side, one would never have dreamed that the worthy woman
had once held kings, princes, all the susceptible portion of the
nobility and the world of finance, subject to the whim of her toes and
her gauze skirts.
Paris is full of these extinct stars which have fallen back into the
crowd.
Some of these celebrities, these conquerors of a former time, retain a
gnawing rage in their hearts; others, on the contrary, dwell blissfully
upon the past, ruminate in ineffable content all their glorious, bygone
joys, seeking only repose, silence and obscurity, wherein they may
remember and meditate, so that, when they die, we are amazed to learn
that they were still living.
Constance Crenmitz was one of those happy mortals. But what a strange
artists' household was that of those two women, equally childlike,
contributing to the common stock inexperience and ambition, the
tranquillity of an accomplished destiny and the feverish activity of a
life in its prime, all the differences indeed that were indicated by
the contrast between that blonde, white as a withered rose, who seemed
to be dressed, beneath her fair complexion, in a remnant of Bengal
fire, and that brunette, with the regular features, who almost
invariably enveloped her beauty in dark stuffs, simply made, as if with
a semblance of masculinity.
Unforeseen emergencies, caprice, ignorance of even the most trivial
things, led to extreme confusion in the management of the household,
from which they were sometimes unable to extricate themselves except by
enforced privations, by dismissing servants, by reforms laughable in
their exaggeration. During one of those crises Jenkins made delicate,
carefully veiled offers of assistance which were repelled with scorn by
Felicia.
"It isn't right," said Constance, "to be so rude to that poor doctor.
After all, there was nothing insulting in what he said. An old friend
of your father's."
"That man, anybody's friend! Oh! what a superb Tartuffe!"
And Felicia, hardly able to contain herself, twisted her wrath into
irony, mimicked Jenkins, the affected gestures, the hand on the heart;
then, puffing out her cheeks, said in a hoarse, whistling voice, full
of false effusiveness:
"We must be kind, we must be humane. To do good without hope of
reward!--that is the secret."
Constance laughed, in spite of herself, till the tears ran down her
cheeks, the resemblance was so perfect.
"Never mind, you were too harsh--you will end by driving him away."
"Oh! indeed!" said a shake of the girl's head.
In truth, he continued to come to the house, always affable and sweet,
dissembling his passion, which was visible only when he became jealous
of new-comers, overwhelming with attentions the ex-ballet-dancer, to
whom his pleasant manners were gratifying in spite of everything, and
who recognized in him a man of her own time, of the time when men paid
their respects to women by kissing their hand, with a complimentary
remark as to their appearance.
* * *
One morning, Jenkins, having looked in during his round of visits,
found Constance alone and unoccupied in the reception room.
"I am mounting guard, Doctor, as you see," she said calmly.
"How does that happen?"
"Why, Felicia's at work. She doesn't want to be disturbed and the
servants are so stupid. I am carrying out her orders myself."
Then, as she saw the Irishman walk toward the studio, she added:
"No, no, don't go there. She gave me strict orders not to let any one
go in."
"Very good, but I--"
"I beg you not--you will get me a scolding."
Jenkins was about to withdraw, when a peal of laughter from Felicia
reached their ears through the portiere and made him raise his head.
"So she isn't alone?"
"No. The Nabob is with her. They are having a sitting--for the bust."
"But why this mystery? It's very strange."
He strode back and forth, raging inwardly, but holding himself back.
At last he broke out.
It was improper beyond expression to allow a girl to be closeted in
that way with a man.
He was astonished that so serious-minded, so devout a person as
Constance--What did it look like?
The old lady gazed at him in stupefaction. As if Felicia were like
other girls! And then, what danger could there be with the Nabob, such
a serious man and so ugly? Moreover, Jenkins ought to know well enough
that Felicia never consulted anybody, that she did only what she chose.
"No, no, it's impossible; I cannot allow this," exclaimed the Irishman.
And, paying no further heed to the dancer, who threw up her arms to
call heaven to witness what was taking place, he walked toward the
studio; but, instead of entering at once, he opened the door gently and
raised a corner of the hanging, so that a part of the room, just that
part where the Nabob was posing, was visible to him, although at a
considerable distance.
Jansoulet was seated, without a cravat, with his waistcoat thrown open,
talking excitedly, in an undertone. Felicia answered in laughing
whispers. The sitting was very animated. Then there was a pause, a
rustling of skirts, and the artist, going up to her model, turned his
linen collar back all the way around, with a familiar gesture, letting
her hand run lightly over the tanned skin.
That Ethiopian face, in which the muscles quivered with the
intoxication of supreme content, with its great eyelids lowered like
those of a sleeping beast being tickled with a straw, the bold outline
of the girl as she leaned over that outlandish face to verify its
proportions, and then a violent, irresistible gesture, seizing the
slender hand as it passed and pressing it to two thick, trembling
lips,--Jenkins saw all this in a red glare.
The noise that he made in entering caused the two to resume their
respective positions, and in the bright light which dazzled his prying,
catlike eyes, he saw the girl standing before him, indignant,
dumfounded: "What is this? Who has dared?" and the Nabob on his
platform, with his collar turned back, petrified, monumental.
Jenkins, somewhat abashed, dismayed by his own audacity, stammered some
words of apology. He had something very urgent to say to M. Jansoulet,
very important information which could not be delayed. He knew from a
reliable source that there would be a distribution of crosses on March
16th. The Nabob's face, momentarily contracted, at once relaxed.
"Ah! really?"
He abandoned his pose. The matter was well worth considering, deuce
take it! M. de La Perriere, one of the Empress's secretaries, had been
directed by her to visit the shelter of Bethlehem. Jenkins had come to
take the Nabob to the secretary's office at the Tuileries and make
inquiries. That visit to Bethlehem meant a cross for him.
"Come, let us be off; I am with you, my dear doctor."
He bore Jenkins no ill-will for disturbing him, and he feverishly tied
his cravat, forgetting under the stress of his new emotion the
agitation of a moment before, for with him ambition took precedence of
everything.
While the two men talked together in undertones, Felicia, standing
before them, with quivering nostrils and lip curling in scorn, watched
them as if to say: "Well! I am waiting."
Jansoulet apologized for being obliged to interrupt the sitting; but a
visit of the utmost importance--She smiled pityingly.
"Go, go. At the point where we are now, I can work without you."
"Oh! yes," said the doctor, "the bust is almost finished. It's a fine
piece of work," he added, with the air of a connoisseur.
And, relying on the compliment to cover his retreat, he was slinking
away, crestfallen; but Felicia fiercely called him back:
"Stay, you. I have something to say to you."
He saw by her expression that he must comply, under pain of an
outbreak.
"With your permission, my friend? Mademoiselle has a word to say to me.
My coupe is at the door. Get in, I will be with you in a moment."
When the studio door closed upon those heavy departing footsteps, they
looked each other in the face.
"You must be either drunk or mad to venture to do such a thing. What!
you presume to enter my studio when I do not choose to receive? Why
this violence? By what right?"
"By the right that desperate, unconquerable passion gives."
"Be quiet, Jenkins; those are words that I do not wish to hear. I let
you come here through pity, through habit, because my father was fond
of you. But never speak to me again of your--love"--she said the word
very low, as if it were a disgrace--"or you will see me no more, even
though I should be driven to die in order to escape you for good and
all."
A child taken in fault does not bend his head more humbly than Jenkins
as he replied:
"True--I was wrong. A moment of madness, of blindness. But why do you
take pleasure in tearing my heart as you do?"
"As if I were thinking of you!"
"Whether you are thinking of me or not, I am here, I see what is going
on, and your coquetry pains me terribly."
A slight flush rose in her cheeks at that reproach.
"I, a coquette! With whom?"
"With him," said the Irishman, pointing to the superb apelike bust.
She tried to laugh.
"The Nabob. What nonsense!"
"Do not lie. Do you think I am blind, that I don't understand all your
manoeuvres? You stay alone with him a long while. I was at the door
just now. I saw you." He lowered his voice as if his breath had failed
him. "What are you after, in heaven's name, you strange, heartless
child? I have seen you repel the handsomest, the noblest, the greatest.
That little de Gery devours you with his eyes, but you pay no heed to
him. Even the Duc de Mora has not succeeded in reaching your heart. And
this man, a shocking, vulgar creature, who isn't thinking of you, who
has something very different from love in his head--you saw how he went
away just now! What are you aiming at? What do you expect from him?"
"I intend--I intend that he shall marry me. There."
Coolly, in a softer tone, as if the confession had drawn her nearer to
the man she despised so bitterly, she set forth her reasons. She had
luxurious, extravagant tastes, unmethodical habits which nothing could
overcome and which would infallibly lead her to poverty and
destitution, and good Crenmitz too, who allowed herself to be ruined
without a word. In three years, four years at most, it would be all
over. And then would come debts and desperate expedients, the ragged
gowns and old shoes of poor artists' households. Or else the lover, the
keeper, that is to say slavery and degradation.
"Nonsense," said Jenkins. "What of me, am I not here?"
"Anything rather than you," she said, drawing herself up. "No, what I
must have, what I will have, is a husband to protect me from others and
from myself, to keep me from a mass of black things of which I am
afraid when life becomes a bore to me, from abysses into which I feel
that I may plunge,--some one who will love me while I work, and will
relieve my poor old exhausted fairy from doing sentry duty. That man
suits me and I have had my eye on him ever since I first saw him. He is
ugly to look at, but he seems kind; and then he is absurdly rich, and
wealth, in that degree, must be amusing. Oh! I know all about it. There
probably is some black spot in his life which has brought him good
luck. All that gold can't have been honestly come by. But tell me
truly, Jenkins, with your hand on that heart which you invoke so often,
do you think that I am a very tempting wife for an honest man?
Consider: of all these young men who ask as a favor to be allowed to
come here, what one has ever thought of asking for my hand? Never a
single one. De Gery no more than the rest. I charm, but I terrify. That
is easily understood. What can anyone expect of a girl brought up as I
was, with no mother or family, tossed in a heap with my father's models
and mistresses? Such mistresses, great God! And Jenkins for my only
protector. Oh! when I think of it! When I think of it!"
And, with the memory of that already distant episode, thoughts came to
her mind which inflamed her wrath. "Oh! yes, I am a child of chance,
and this adventurer is just the husband for me."[2]
[2] Je suis une fille _d'aventure_, et cet _aventurier_ est bien
le mari qu'il me faut.
"At least you will wait until he's a widower," retorted Jenkins
tranquilly. "And in that case you may have to wait a long while, for
his Levantine looks to be in excellent health."
Felicia Ruys became livid.
"He is married?"
"Married, why, to be sure, and father of a lot of children. The whole
outfit landed here two days ago."
She stood for a moment, speechless, her cheeks quivering.
In front of her the Nabob's broad visage, in shining clay, with its
flat nose, its sensual good-humored mouth, seemed to cry aloud in its
fidelity to life. She gazed at it a moment, then stepped toward it, and
with a gesture of disgust overturned the high, wooden stand and the
gleaming, greasy block itself, which fell to the floor a shapeless mass
of mud.
VII.
JANSOULET AT HOME.
Married he had been for twelve years, but had never mentioned the fact
to any one of his Parisian acquaintances, by virtue of an acquired
Oriental habit, the habit that Oriental peoples have of maintaining
silence concerning their female relations. Suddenly it was learned that
Madame was coming, that apartments must be made ready for her, her
children and her women. The Nabob hired the whole second floor of the
house on Place Vendome, the previous tenant being sacrificed to Nabob
prices. The stables were increased in size, the staff of servants was
doubled; and then, one day, coachmen and carriages went to the Lyon
station to fetch Madame, who arrived with a retinue of negresses,
little negroes and gazelles, completely filling a long train that had
been heated expressly for her all the way from Marseille.
She alighted in a terrible state of prostration, exhausted and
bewildered by her long railroad journey, the first in her life, for she
had been taken to Tunis as a child and had never left it. Two negroes
carried her from the carriage to her apartments in an armchair, which
was always kept in the vestibule thereafter, ready for that difficult
transportation. Madame Jansoulet could not walk upstairs, for it made
her dizzy; she would not have an elevator because her weight made it
squeak; besides, she never walked. An enormous creature, so bloated
that it was impossible to assign her an age, but somewhere between
twenty-five and forty, with rather a pretty face, but features all
deformed by fat, lifeless eyes beneath drooping lids grooved like
shells, trussed up in exported gowns, loaded with diamonds and jewels
like a Hindoo idol, she was a most perfect specimen of the transplanted
Europeans who are called Levantines. A strange race of obese Creoles,
connected with our society by naught save language and dress, but
enveloped by the Orient in its stupefying atmosphere, the subtle
poisons of its opium-laden air, in which everything becomes limp and
nerveless, from the tissues of the skin to the girdle around the waist,
ay, even to the mind itself and the thought.
She was the daughter of an enormously wealthy Belgian, a dealer in
coral at Tunis, in whose establishment Jansoulet had been employed for
several months on his first arrival in the country. Mademoiselle
Afchin, at that time a fascinating doll, with dazzling complexion and
hair, and perfect health, came often to the counting-room for her
father, in the great chariot drawn by mules which conveyed them to
their beautiful villa of La Marse in the outskirts of Tunis. The child,
always _decollete_, with gleaming white shoulders seen for a moment in
a luxurious frame, dazzled the adventurer; and years after, when he had
become rich, the favorite of the bey, and thought of settling down, his
mind reverted to her. The child had changed into a stout, heavy, sallow
girl. Her intellect, never of a high order, had become still more
obtuse in the torpor of such a life as dormice lead, in the neglect of
a father whose whole time and thought were given to business, and in
the use of tobacco saturated with opium and of sweetmeats,--the torpor
of her Flemish blood conjoined with Oriental indolence; and with all
the rest, ill-bred, gluttonous, sensual, arrogant, a Levantine trinket
brought to perfection.
But Jansoulet saw nothing of all that.
In his eyes she was then, she was always, down to the time of her
arrival in Paris, a superior being, a person of the highest refinement,
a Demoiselle Afchin; he spoke to her with respect, maintained a
slightly humble and timid attitude toward her, gave her money without
counting it, indulged her most extravagant caprices, her wildest whims,
all the strange conceits of a Levantine's brain distracted by ennui and
idleness. A single word justified everything; she was a Demoiselle
Afchin. And yet they had nothing in common; he was always at the Kasbah
or the Bardo, in attendance on the bey, paying his court to him, or
else in his counting-room; she passed her day in bed, on her head a
diadem of pearls worth three hundred thousand francs, which she never
laid aside, brutalizing herself by smoking, living as in a harem,
admiring herself in the mirror, arraying herself in fine clothes, in
company with several other Levantines, whose greatest joy consisted in
measuring with their necklaces the girth of arms and legs which
rivalled one another in corpulency, bringing forth children with whom
she never concerned herself, whom she never saw, who had never even
caused her suffering, for she was delivered under the influence of
chloroform. A "bale" of white flesh perfumed with musk. And Jansoulet
would say with pride: "I married a Demoiselle Afchin!"
Under Parisian skies and in the cold light of the capital, his
disillusionment began. Having determined to set up a regular
establishment, to receive, to give entertainments, the Nabob had sent
for his wife, in order to place her at the head of his house. But when
he saw that mass of stiff, crackling dry-goods, of Palais-Royal finery,
alight at his door, and all the extraordinary outfit that followed her,
he had a vague impression of a Queen Pomare in exile. The difficulty
was that he had seen some genuine women of fashion and he made
comparisons. He had planned a grand ball to celebrate her arrival, but
he prudently abstained. Indeed Madame Jansoulet refused to receive any
one. Her natural indolence was augmented by the homesickness which the
cold yellow fog and the pouring rain had brought upon her as soon as
she landed. She passed several days in bed, crying aloud like a child,
declaring that they had brought her to Paris to kill her, and even
rejecting the slightest attentions from her women. She lay there
roaring among her lace pillows, her hair in a tangled mass around her
diadem, the windows closed and curtains tightly drawn, lamps lighted
day and night, crying out that she wanted to go away--ay, to go
away--ay; and it was a pitiful thing to see, in that tomb-like
darkness, the half-filled trunks scattered over the carpet, the
frightened gazelles, the negresses crouching around their hysterical
mistress, groaning in unison, with haggard eyes, like the dogs of
travellers in polar countries which go mad when they cannot see the
sun.
The Irish doctor, upon being admitted to that distressing scene, had no
success with his fatherly ways, his fine superficial phrases. Not at
any price would the Levantine take the pearls with arsenical base, to
give tone to her system. The Nabob was horrified. What was he to do?
Send her back to Tunis with the children? That was hardly possible. He
was definitively in disgrace there. The Hemerlingues had triumphed. A
last insult had filled the measure to overflowing: on Jansoulet's
departure the bey had commissioned him to have several millions of gold
coined after a new pattern at the Paris Mint; then the commission had
been abruptly withdrawn and given to Hemerlingue. Jansoulet, being
publicly insulted, retorted with a public manifesto, offering all his
property for sale, his palace on the Bardo presented to him by the
former bey, his villas at La Marse, all of white marble, surrounded by
magnificent gardens, his counting rooms, the most commodious and most
sumptuously furnished in the city, and instructing the intelligent
Bompain to bring his wife and children to Paris in order to put the
seal of finality to his departure. After such a display, it would be
hard to return; that is what he tried to make Mademoiselle Afchin
understand, but she replied only by prolonged groans. He strove to
comfort her, to amuse her, but what form of distraction could be made
to appeal to that abnormally apathetic nature? And then, could he
change the skies of Paris, give back to the wretched Levantine her
marble-tiled _patio_, where she used to pass long hours in a cool,
delicious state of drowsiness, listening to the plashing of the water
in the great alabaster fountain with three basins one above the other,
and her gilded boat, covered with a purple awning and rowed by eight
supple, muscular Tripolitan oarsmen over the lovely lake of El-Baheira,
when the sun was setting? Sumptuous as were the apartments on Place
Vendome, they could not supply the place of those lost treasures. And
she plunged deeper than ever in her despair. One habitue of the house
succeeded, however, in drawing her out of it, Cabassu, who styled
himself on his cards "professor of massage;" a stout dark thick-set
man, redolent of garlic and hair-oil, square-shouldered, covered with
hair to his eyes, who knew stories of Parisian seraglios, trivial
anecdotes within the limited range of Madame's intellect. He came once
to rub her, and she wished to see him again, detained him. He was
obliged to abandon all his other customers and to become the _masseur_
of that able-bodied creature, at a salary equal to that of a senator,
her page, her reader, her body-guard. Jansoulet, overjoyed to see that
his wife was contented, was not conscious of the disgusting absurdity
of the intimacy.
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