The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2)

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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19

And the little tiger, in the aforesaid attitude, with his prematurely
old, vicious child's face, copied his master so perfectly that it
seemed to me as if I were looking at the man himself sitting in our
administrative council, facing the Governor, and overwhelming him with
his cynical jests. After all, we must agree that Paris is a wonderful
great city, for any one to be able to live here in that way for fifteen
years, twenty years of tricks and dodges and throwing dust in people's
eyes, without everybody finding him out, and to go on making a
triumphant entry into salons in the wake of a footman shouting his name
at the top of his voice: "Monsieur le Marquis de Bois-l'Hery."

You see, you must have been to a servants' party before you can believe
all that one learns there, and what a curious thing Parisian society is
when you look at it thus from below, from the basement. For instance,
happening to be between M. Francis and M. Louis, I caught this scrap of
confidential conversation concerning Sire de Monpavon. M. Louis said:

"You are doing wrong, Francis, you are in funds just now. You ought to
take advantage of it to return that money to the Treasury."

"What can you expect?" replied M. Francis, disconsolately. "Play is
consuming us."

"Yes, I know. But beware. We shall not always be at hand. We may die or
go out of the government. In that case you will be called to account
over yonder. It will be a terrible time."

I had often heard a whisper of the marquis's forced loan of two hundred
thousand francs from the State, at the time when he was
receiver-general; but the testimony of his valet de chambre was the
worst of all. Ah! if the masters suspected what the servants know, all
that they tell in their quarters, if they could hear their names
dragged about in the sweepings of the salons and the kitchen refuse,
they would never again dare to say so much as: "Close the door," or
"Order the carriage." There's Dr. Jenkins, for example, with the
richest practice in Paris, has lived ten years with a magnificent wife,
who is eagerly welcomed everywhere; he has done everything he could to
conceal his real position, announced his marriage in the newspapers in
the English style, and hired only foreign servants who know barely
three words of French, but all to no purpose. With these few words,
seasoned with faubourg oaths and blows on the table, his coachman Joe,
who detests him, told us his whole history while we were at supper.

"She's going to croak, his Irishwoman, his real wife. Now we'll see if
he'll marry the other one. Forty-five years old Mistress Maranne is,
and not a shilling. You ought to see how afraid she is that he'll turn
her out. Marry her, not marry her--_kss-kss_--what a laugh we'll have."
And the more they gave him to drink, the more he told, speaking of his
unfortunate mistress as the lowest of the low. For my part, I confess
that she excited my interest, that false Madame Jenkins, who weeps in
every corner, implores her husband as if he were the headsman, and is
in danger of being sent about her business when all society believes
her to be married, respectable, established for life. The others did
nothing but laugh, especially the women. _Dame!_ it is amusing when one
is in service to see that these ladies of the upper ten have their
affronts too, and tormenting cares which keep them awake.

At that moment our party presented a most animated aspect, a circle of
merry faces turned toward the Irishman, who carried off the palm by his
anecdote. That aroused envy; every one rummaged his memory and dragged
out whatever he could find there of old scandals, adventures of
betrayed husbands, all the domestic secrets that are poured out on the
kitchen table with the remains of dishes and the dregs of bottles. The
champagne was beginning to lay hold of its victims among the guests.
Joe insisted on dancing a jig on the cloth. The ladies, at the
slightest suggestion that was a trifle broad, threw themselves back
with the piercing laughter of a person who is being tickled, letting
their embroidered skirts drag under the table, which was piled with
broken victuals, and covered with grease. M. Louis had prudently
withdrawn. The glasses were filled before they were emptied; a
chambermaid dipped a handkerchief in hers, which was full of water, and
bathed her forehead with it because her head was going round, she said.
It was time that it should end; in fact, an electric bell, ringing
loudly in the hall, warned us that the footman on duty at the theatre
had called the coachmen. Thereupon Monpavon proposed a toast to the
master of the house, thanking him for his little party. M. Noel
announced that he would repeat it at Saint-Romans, during the
festivities in honor of the bey, to which most of those present would
probably be invited. And I was about to rise in my turn, being
sufficiently familiar with banquets to know that on such occasions the
oldest of the party is expected to propose a toast to the ladies, when
the door was suddenly thrown open and a tall footman, all muddy,
breathless and perspiring, with a dripping umbrella in his hand, roared
at us, with no respect for the guests:

"Come, get out of here, you pack of cads; what are you doing here?
Don't I tell you it's done!"

XI.

THE FETES IN HONOR OF THE BEY.

In the regions of the South, of the civilization of long ago, the
historic chateaux still standing are very few. At rare intervals some
old abbey rears its tottering and dismantled facade on a hillside,
pierced with holes which once were windows, which see naught now but
the sky,--monuments of dust, baked by the sun, dating from the days of
the Crusades or of Courts of Love, without a trace of man among their
stones, where even the ivy has ceased to climb, and the acanthus, but
where the dried lavender and the _ferigoule_ perfume the air. Amid
all these ruins the chateau de Saint-Romans stands forth a glorious
exception. If you have travelled in the South you have seen it, and you
shall see it again in a moment. It is between Valence and Montelimart,
in a neighborhood where the railroad runs straight along the Rhone, at
the base of the hills of Beaume, Rancoule and Mercurol, the whole
glowing vintage of the Hermitage, spread out over five leagues of vines
growing in close, straight lines in the vineyards, which seem to the
eye like fields of fleece, and extend to the very brink of the river,
as green and full of islands at that spot as the Rhine near Bale, but
with such a flood of sunshine as the Rhine never had. Saint-Romans is
opposite, on the other bank; and, notwithstanding the swiftness of the
vision, the headlong rush of the railway carriages, which seem
determined at every curve to plunge madly into the Rhone, the chateau
is so huge, extends so far along the neighboring slope, that it seems
to follow the wild race of the train and fixes in your eyes forever the
memory of its flights of steps, its balcony-rails, its Italian
architecture, two rather low stones surmounted by a terrace with little
pillars, flanked by two wings with slated roofs, and overlooking the
sloping banks, where the water from the cascades rushes down to the
river, the network of gravelled paths, the vista formed by hedges of
great height with a white statue at the end sharply outlined against
the blue sky as against the luminous background of a stained-glass
window. Far up, among the vast lawns whose brilliant verdure defies the
blazing climate, a gigantic cedar rears, terrace-like, its masses of
green foliage, with its swaying dark shadows,--an exotic figure, which
makes one think, as he stands before that sometime abode of a
farmer-general of the epoch of Louis XIV., of a tall negro carrying a
courtier's umbrella.

From Valence to Marseille, throughout the valley of the Rhone,
Saint-Romans de Bellaigue is as famous as a fairy palace; and a genuine
fairyland in those regions, scorched by the mistral, is that oasis of
verdure and of lovely, gushing water.

"When I am rich, mamma," Jansoulet, when he was a mere urchin, used to
say to his mother whom he adored, "I'll give you Saint-Romans de
Bellaigue."

And as that man's life seemed the realization of a tale of the
_Thousand and One Nights_, as all his wishes were gratified, even
the most unconscionable, as his wildest chimeras took definite shape
before him, and licked his hands like docile pet spaniels, he had
purchased Saint-Romans in order to present it to his mother, newly
furnished and gorgeously restored. Although ten years had passed since
then, the good woman was not yet accustomed to that magnificent
establishment. "Why, you have given me Queen Jeanne's palace, my dear
Bernard," she wrote to her son; "I shall never dare to live in it." As
a matter of fact she never had lived in it, having installed herself in
the steward's house, a wing of modern construction at the end of the
main buildings, conveniently situated for overlooking the servants'
quarters and the farm, the sheepfolds and the oil-presses, with their
rustic outlook of grain in stacks, of olive-trees and vines stretching
out over the fields as far as the eye could see. In the great chateau
she would have fancied herself a prisoner in one of those enchanted
dwellings where sleep seizes you in the fulness of your joy and does
not leave you for a hundred years. Here at all events the peasant
woman, who had never been able to accustom herself to that colossal
fortune, which had come too late, from too great a distance and like a
thunderbolt, felt in touch with real life by virtue of the going and
coming of the laborers, the departure and return of the cattle, their
visits to the watering-place, all the details of pastoral life, which
awakened her with the familiar crowing of the roosters, the shrill
cries of the peacocks, and sent her down the winding staircase before
daybreak. She deemed herself simply a trustee of that magnificent
property, of which she had charge for her son's benefit, and which she
proposed to turn over to him in good condition on the day when,
considering himself wealthy enough and weary of living among the
_Turs_, he should come, as he had promised, and live with her
beneath the shade of Saint-Romans.

Imagine then her untiring, all-pervading watchfulness.

In the twilight of early dawn, the farm servants heard her hoarse,
husky voice:

"Olivier--Peyrol--Audibert--Come! It's four o'clock." Then a dive into
the huge kitchen, where the maids, heavy with sleep, were warming the
soup over the bright, crackling peat fire. They gave her her little
plate of red Marseille earthenware, filled with boiled chestnuts, the
frugal breakfast of an earlier time which nothing could induce her to
change. Off she went at once with long strides, the keys jingling on
the great silver key-ring fastened to her belt, her plate in her hand,
held in equilibrium by the distaff which she held under her arm as if
ready for battle, for she spun all day long, and did not stop even to
eat her chestnuts. A glance, as she passed, at the stable, still dark,
where the horses were sluggishly moving about, at the stifling
cow-shed, filled with heads impatiently stretched toward the door; and
the first rays of dawn, stealing over the courses of stone that
supported the embankment of the park, fell upon the old woman running
through the dew with the agility of a girl, despite her seventy years,
verifying exactly each morning all the treasures of the estate, anxious
to ascertain whether the night had stolen the statues and urns,
uprooted the centenary trees, dried up the sparkling fountains that
plashed noisily in their bowls. Then the bright southern sun, humming
and vibrating, outlined upon the gravel of a path, or against the white
supporting wall of a terrace, that tall old woman's figure, slender and
straight as her distaff, picking up pieces of dead wood, breaking off a
branch from a shrub that was out of line, heedless of the scorching
reflection which affected her tough skin no more than an old stone
bench. About that hour another promenader appeared in the park, less
active, less bustling, dragging himself along rather than walking,
leaning on the walls and railings, a poor bent, palsied creature, with
a lifeless face to which one could assign no age, who, when he was
tired, uttered a faint, plaintive cry to call the servant, who was
always at hand to assist him to sit down, to huddle himself up on some
step, where he would remain for hours, motionless and silent, his mouth
half-open, blinking his eyes, soothed by the strident monotony of the
locusts, a human blot on the face of the superb landscape.

He was the _oldest_, Bernard's brother, the cherished darling of the
Jansoulets, father and mother, the hope and the glory of the family of
the junk-dealer, who, faithful like so many more in the South to the
superstition concerning the right of primogeniture, had made every
conceivable sacrifice to send that handsome, ambitious youth to Paris;
and he had started with four or five marshals' batons in his trunk, the
admiration of all the girls in the village; but Paris--after it had
beaten and twisted and squeezed that brilliant Southern rag in its
great vat for ten years, burned him in all its acids, rolled him in all
its mire--relegated him at last to the state of battered flotsam and
jetsam, embruted, paralyzed, which had killed his father with grief and
compelled his mother to sell everything in her house and to live by
domestic service in the well-to-do families of the neighborhood.
Luckily, just about the time that that relic of Parisian hospitals,
sent back to his home by public charity, appeared in Bourg-Saint-Andeol,
Bernard,--who was called Cadet, as in all the half-Arab Southern
families, where the eldest son always takes the family name and the
last comer the name of Cadet,--Bernard was already in Tunis, in process
of making his fortune, and sending money home regularly. But what
remorse it caused the poor mother to owe everything, even life itself,
and the comfort of the wretched invalid, to the brave, energetic lad,
of whom his father and she had always been fond, but without genuine
tenderness, and whom, from the time he was five years old, they had
been accustomed to treat as a day-laborer, because he was very strong
and hairy and ugly, and was already shrewder than any one else in the
house in the matter of dealing in old iron. Ah! how she would have
liked to have her Cadet with her, to repay him a little of all he was
doing for her, to pay in one sum all the arrears of affection, of
motherly cosseting that she owed him.

But, you see, these kingly fortunes have the burdens, the vexations of
kingly existences. Poor Mother Jansoulet, in her dazzling surroundings,
was much like a genuine queen, having undergone the long banishments,
the cruel separations and trials which atone for earthly grandeur; one
of her sons in a state of stupid lethargy for all time, the other far
away, writing little, engrossed by his great interests, always saying,
"I will come," and never coming. In twelve years she had seen him but
once, in the confusion of the bey's visit at Saint-Romans: a bewildering
succession of horses, carriages, fireworks, and festivities. Then he
had whirled away again behind his sovereign, having had hardly time to
embrace his old mother, who had retained naught of that great joy, so
impatiently awaited, save a few newspaper pictures, in which Bernard
Jansoulet was exhibited arriving at the chateau with Ahmed and
presenting his aged mother to him,--is not that the way in which kings
and queens have their family reunions illustrated in the journals?--plus
a cedar of Lebanon, brought from the end of the world,--a great
_caramantran_ of a tree, which was as costly to move and as much in the
way as the obelisk--being hoisted and planted by force of men and money
and horses; a tree which had wrought confusion among the shrubbery as
the price of setting up a souvenir commemorative of the royal visit. On
his present trip to France, at least, knowing that he had come for
several months, perhaps forever, she hoped to have her Bernard all to
herself. And lo! he swooped down upon her one fine evening, enveloped
in the same triumphant splendor, in the same official pomp, surrounded
by a multitude of counts, marquises, fine gentlemen from Paris, who
with their servants filled the two great breaks she had sent to meet
them at the little station of Giffas, on the other side of the Rhone.

"Come, come, embrace me, my dear mamma. There's no shame in hugging
your boy, whom you haven't seen for years, close to your heart.
Besides, all these gentlemen are friends of ours. This is Monsieur le
Marquis de Monpavon, and Monsieur le Marquis de Bois-l'Hery. Ah! the
time has gone by when I used to bring you to eat bean soup with us,
little Cabassu and Bompain Jean-Baptiste. You know Monsieur de
Gery--he, with my old friend Cardailhac, whom I introduce to you, make
up the first batch. But others are coming. Prepare for a terrible
how-d'ye-do. We receive the bey in four days."

"The bey again!" said the good woman in dismay. "I thought he was
dead."

Jansoulet and his guests could but laugh at her comical alarm,
heightened by her Southern accent.

"But there's another, mamma. There are always beys--luckily for me,
_sapristi_! But don't you be afraid. You won't have so much trouble on
your hands. Friend Cardailhac has undertaken to look after things.
We're going to have some superb fetes. Meanwhile give us some dinner
quick, and show us our rooms. Our Parisian friends are tired out."

"Everything is ready, my son," said the old woman simply, standing
stiffly erect in her cap of Cambrai linen, with points yellowed by age,
which she never laid aside even on great occasions. Wealth had not
changed _her_. She was the typical peasant of the Rhone valley,
independent and proud, with none of the cunning humility of the rustics
described by Balzac, too simple, too, to be puffed up by wealth. Her
only pride was to show her son with what painstaking zeal she had
acquitted herself of her duties as care-taker. Not an atom of dust, not
a trace of dampness on the walls. The whole magnificent ground-floor,
the salons with the silk draperies and upholstery of changing hue,
taken at the last moment from their coverings; the long summer
galleries, with cool, resonant inlaid floors, which the Louis XV.
couches, with cane seats and backs upholstered with flowered stuffs,
furnished with summer-like coquetry; the enormous dining-hall,
decorated with flowers and branches; even the billiard-room, with its
rows of gleaming balls, its chandeliers and cue-racks,--the whole vast
extent of the chateau, seen through the long door-windows, wide open
upon the broad seignorial porch, displayed its splendor to the
admiration of the visitors, and reflected the beauty of that marvellous
landscape, lying serene and peaceful in the setting sun, in the
mirrors, the waxed or varnished wainscoting, with the same fidelity
with which the poplars bowing gracefully to each other, and the swans,
placidly swimming, were reproduced on the mirror-like surface of the
ponds. The frame was so beautiful, the general outlook so superb, that
the obtrusive, tasteless luxury melted away, disappeared even to the
most sensitive eye.

"There's something to work with," said Cardailhac the manager, with his
monocle at his eye, his hat on one side, already planning his
stage-setting.

And the haughty mien of Monpavon, who had been somewhat offended at
first by the old lady's head-dress when she received them on the porch,
gave place to a condescending smile. Certainly there was something to
work with, and their friend Jansoulet, under the guidance of men of
taste, could give his Maugrabin Highness a very handsome reception.
They talked about nothing else all the evening. Sitting in the
sumptuous dining-room, with their elbows on the table, warmed by wine
and with full stomachs, they planned and discussed. Cardailhac, whose
views were broad, had his plan all formed.

"Carte blanche, of course, eh, Nabob?"

"Carte blanche, old fellow. And let old Hemerlingue burst with rage."

Thereupon the manager detailed his plans, the festivities to be divided
by days, as at Vaux when Fouquet entertained Louis XIV.; one day a
play, another day Provencal fetes, _farandoles_, bull-fights, local
music; the third day--And, in his mania for management, he was already
outlining programmes, posters, while Bois-l'Hery, with both hands in
his pockets, lying back in his chair, slept peacefully with his cigar
stuck in the corner of his sneering mouth, and the Marquis de Monpavon,
always on parade, drew up his breastplate every moment, to keep himself
awake.

De Gery had left them early. He had gone to take refuge with the old
lady--who had known him, and his brothers, too, when they were
children--in the modest parlor in the wing, with the white curtains and
light wall-paper covered with figures, where the Nabob's mother tried
to revive her past as an artisan, with the aid of some relics saved
from the wreck.

Paul talked softly, sitting opposite the handsome old woman with the
severe and regular features, the white hair piled on top of her head
like the flax on her distaff, who sat erect upon her chair, her flat
bust wrapped in a little green shawl;--never in her life had she rested
her back against the back of a chair or sat in an armchair. He called
her Francoise and she called him Monsieur Paul. They were old friends.
And what do you suppose they were talking about? Of her grandchildren,
_pardi!_ of Bernard's three boys whom she did not know, whom she would
have loved so dearly to know.

"Ah! Monsieur Paul, if you knew how I long for them! I should have been
so happy if he had brought me my three little ones instead of all these
fine gentlemen. Just think, I have never seen them, except in those
pictures yonder. Their mother frightens me a bit, she's a great lady
out-and-out, a Demoiselle Afchin. But the children, I'm sure they're
not little coxcombs, but would be very fond of their old _granny_.
It would seem to me as if it was their father a little boy again, and
I'd give them what I didn't give the father--for, you see, Monsieur
Paul, parents aren't always just. They have favorites. But God is just.
You ought to see how He deals with the faces that you paint and fix up
the best, to the injury of the others. And the favoritism of the old
people often does harm to the young."

She sighed as she glanced in the direction of the great alcove, from
which, through the high lambrequins and falling draperies, issued at
intervals a long, shuddering breath like the moan of a sleeping child
who has been whipped and has cried bitterly.

A heavy step on the stairs, an unmelodious but gentle voice, saying in
a low tone: "It's I--don't move,"--and Jansoulet appeared. As everybody
had gone to bed at the chateau, he, knowing his mother's habits and
that hers was always the last light to be extinguished in the house,
had come to see her, to talk with her a little, to exchange the real
greeting of the heart which they had been unable to exchange in the
presence of others. "Oh! stay, my dear Paul; we don't mind you." And,
becoming a child once more in his mother's presence, he threw his whole
long body on the floor at her feet, with cajoling words and gestures
really touching to behold. She was very happy too to have him by her
side, but she was a little embarrassed none the less, looking upon him
as an all-powerful, strange being, exalting him in her artless
innocence to the level of an Olympian encompassed by thunder-bolts and
lightning-flashes, possessing the gift of omnipotence. She talked to
him, inquired if he was still satisfied with his friends, with the
condition of his affairs, but did not dare to ask the question she had
asked de Gery: "Why didn't you bring me my little grandsons?"--But he
broached the subject himself.

"They're at boarding-school, mamma; as soon as the vacation comes, I'll
send them to you with Bompain. You remember him, don't you, Bompain
Jean-Baptiste? And you shall keep them two whole months. They'll come
to you to have you tell them fine stories, they'll go to sleep with
their heads on your apron, like this--"

And he himself, placing his curly head, heavy as lead, on the old
woman's knees, recalling the happy evenings of his childhood when he
went to sleep that way if he were allowed to do so, if his older
brother's head did not take up all the room--he enjoyed, for the first
time since his return to France, a few moments of blissful repose,
outside of his tumultuous artificial life, pressed against that old
motherly heart which he could hear beating regularly, like the pendulum
of the century-old clock standing in a corner of the room, in the
profound silence of the night, which one can feel in the country,
hovering over the boundless expanse. Suddenly the same long sigh, as of
a child who has fallen asleep sobbing, was repeated at the farther end
of the room.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19