The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2)

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

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A dull rumbling announced to the poor Nabob, sitting silent and
motionless in a corner of his carriage, that they were crossing the
bridge of boats. They had arrived.

"At last!" he said, looking out through the dripping windows at the
foam-tipped waves of the Rhone, where the storm seemed to him like
repose after that through which he had passed. But, when the first
carriage reached the triumphal arch at the end of the bridge, bombs
were exploded, the drums beat, saluting the monarch's arrival upon his
faithful subject's domain, and the climax of irony was reached when, in
the half light, a blaze of gas suddenly illuminated the roof of the
chateau with letters of fire, over which the rain and wind caused great
shadows to run to and fro, but which still displayed very legibly the
legend: "Viv' L' B'Y M'H'MED."

"That's the bouquet," said the unhappy Nabob, unable to restrain a
smile, a very pitiful, very bitter smile. But no, he was mistaken. The
bouquet awaited him at the door of the chateau; and it was Amy Ferat
who came forward to present it to him, stepping out of the group of
maidens from Arles, who were sheltering their watered silk skirts and
figured velvet caps under the marquee, awaiting the first carriage. Her
bunch of flowers in her hand, modestly, with downcast eyes and roguish
ankle, the pretty actress darted to the door and stood almost kneeling
in an attitude of salutation, which she had been rehearsing for a week.
Instead of the bey, Jansoulet stepped out, excited, stiffly erect, and
passed her by without even looking at her. And as she stood there, her
nosegay in her hand, with the stupid expression of a balked fairy,
Cardailhac said to her with the _blague_ of a Parisian who speedily
makes the best of things:

"Take away your flowers, my dear, your affair has fallen through. The
Bey isn't coming--he forgot his handkerchief, and as that's what he
uses to talk to ladies, why, you understand--"

* * *

Now, it is night. Everybody is asleep at Saint-Romans after the
tremendous hurly-burly of the day. The rain is still falling in
torrents, the banners feebly wave their drenched carcasses, one can
hear the water rushing down the stone steps, transformed into cascades.
Everything is streaming and dripping. A sound of water, a deafening
sound of water. Alone in his magnificently furnished chamber with its
seignorial bed and its curtains of Chinese silk with purple stripes,
the Nabob is still stirring, striding back and forth, revolving bitter
thoughts. His mind is no longer intent upon the affront to himself, the
public affront in the presence of thirty thousand persons, nor upon the
murderous insult that the Bey addressed to him in presence of his
mortal enemies. No, that Southerner with his wholly physical
sensations, swift as the action of new weapons, has already cast away
all the venom of his spleen. Moreover court favorites are always
prepared, by many celebrated precedents, for such overwhelming falls
from grace. What terrifies him is what he can see behind that insult.
He reflects that all his property is over yonder, houses,
counting-rooms, vessels, at the mercy of the bey, in that lawless
Orient, the land of arbitrary power. And, pressing his burning brow
against the streaming glass, with the perspiration standing on his
back, and hands cold as ice, he stares vacantly out into the night, no
darker, no more impenetrable than his own destiny.

Suddenly he hears footsteps, hurried footsteps, at his door.

"Who's there?"

"Monsieur," says Noel, entering the room half-dressed, "a very urgent
despatch sent from the telegraph office by special messenger."

"A despatch!--What is the next thing?"

He takes the blue paper and opens it with trembling hand. The god,
having already been wounded twice, is beginning to feel that he is
vulnerable, to lose his assurance; he experiences the apprehensions,
the nervous tremors of other men. The signature first. _Mora!_ Is it
possible? The duke, the duke telegraph to him! Yes, there is no doubt
about it. _M-o-r-a._

And above:

_Popolasca is dead. Election in Corsica soon. You are official
candidate._

A deputy! That means salvation. With that he has nothing to fear. A
representative of the great French nation is not to be treated like a
simple _mercanti_. Down with the Hemerlingues!

"O my duke, my noble duke!"

He was so excited that he could not sign the receipt.

"Where's the man who brought this despatch?" he asked abruptly.

"Here, Monsieur Jansoulet," replied a hearty voice from the hall, in
the familiar Southern dialect.

He was a lucky dog, that messenger.

"Come in," said the Nabob.

And, after handing him his receipt, he plunged his hands into his
pockets, which were always full, grasped as many gold pieces as he
could hold and threw them into the poor devil's cap as he stood there
stammering, bewildered, dazzled by the fortune that had befallen him in
the darkness of that enchanted palace.

XII.

A CORSICAN ELECTION.

"POZZONEGRO, near Sartene.

"I am able at last to write you of my movements, my dear Monsieur
Joyeuse. In the five days that we have been in Corsica we have
travelled about so much, talked so much, changed carriages and
steeds so often, riding sometimes on mules, sometimes on asses, and
sometimes even on men's backs to cross streams, have written so
many letters, made notes on so many petitions, given away so many
chasubles and altar-cloths, propped up so many tottering church
steeples, founded so many asylums, proposed and drunk so many
toasts, absorbed so much talk and Talano wine and white cheese,
that I have found no time to send an affectionate word to the
little family circle around the big table, from which I have been
missing for two weeks. Luckily my absence will not last much
longer, for we expect to leave day after to-morrow and travel
straight through to Paris. So far as the election is concerned, I
fancy that our trip has been successful. Corsica is a wonderful
country, indolent and poor, a mixture of poverty and of pride which
makes both the noble and bourgeois families keep up a certain
appearance of opulence even at the price of the most painful
privations. They talk here in all seriousness of the great wealth
of Popolasca, the indigent deputy whom death robbed of the hundred
thousand francs his resignation in the Nabob's favor would have
brought him. All these people have, moreover, a frenzied longing
for offices, an administrative mania, a craving to wear a uniform
of some sort and a flat cap on which they can write: "Government
clerk." If you should give a Corsican peasant his choice between
the richest farm in Beauce and the baldric of the humblest
forest-warden, he would not hesitate a moment, he would choose the
baldric. Under such circumstances you can judge whether a candidate
with a large fortune and governmental favors at his disposal has a
good chance of being elected. Elected M. Jansoulet will be,
therefore, especially if he succeeds in the move which he is making
at this moment and which has brought us to the only inn of a small
village called Pozzonegro (Black Well), a genuine well, all black
with verdure, fifty cottages built of red stone clustered around a
church of the Italian type, in the bottom of a ravine surrounded by
steep hills, by cliffs of bright-colored sandstone, scaled by vast
forests of larches and junipers. Through my open window, at which I
am writing, I can see a bit of blue sky overhead, the orifice of
the black well; below, on the little square, shaded by an enormous
walnut tree, as if the shadows were not dense enough already, two
shepherds dressed in skins are playing cards on the stone curb of a
fountain. Gambling is the disease of this country of sloth, where
the crops are harvested by men from Lucca. The two poor devils
before me could not find a sou in their pockets; one stakes his
knife, the other a cheese wrapped in vine leaves, the two stakes
being placed beside them on the stone. A little cure is watching
them, smoking his cigar, and apparently taking the liveliest
interest in their game.

"And that is all--not a sound anywhere except the regular dropping
of the water on the stone, the exclamations of one of the gamblers,
who swears by the _sango del seminario_; and in the common-room of
the inn, under my chamber, our friend's earnest voice, mingled with
the buzzing of the illustrious Paganetti, who acts as interpreter
in his conversation with the no less illustrious Piedigriggio.

"M. Piedigriggio (Grayfoot) is a local celebrity. He is a tall old
man of seventy-five, still very erect in his short cloak over which
his long white beard falls, his brown woollen Catalan cap on his
hair, which is also white, a pair of scissors in his belt, which he
uses to cut the great leaves of green tobacco in the hollow of his
hand; a venerable old fellow in fact, and when he crossed the
square and shook hands with the cure, with a patronizing smile at
the two gamblers, I never would have believed that I had before me
the famous brigand Piedigriggio, who, from 1840 to 1860, _held the
thickets_ in Monte-Rotondo, tired out gendarmes and troops of the
line, and who to-day, his seven or eight murders with the rifle or
the knife being outlawed by lapse of time, goes his way in peace
throughout the region that saw his crimes, and is a man of
considerable importance. This is the explanation: Piedigriggio has
two sons, who, following nobly in his footsteps, have toyed with
the rifle and now hold the thickets in their turn. Impossible to
lay hands upon or to find, as their father was for twenty years,
informed by the shepherds of the movements of the gendarmerie, as
soon as the gendarmes leave a village, the brigands appear there.
The older of the two, Scipion, came last Sunday to Pozzonegro to
hear mass. To say that people are fond of them, and that the grasp
of the bloodstained hand of these villains is agreeable to all
those who receive it, would be to calumniate the pacific
inhabitants of this commune; but they fear them, and their will is
law.

"Now it appears that the Piedigriggios have taken it into their
heads to espouse the cause of our rival in the election, a
formidable alliance, which may cause two whole cantons to vote
against us, for the knaves have legs as long, in proportion, as the
range of their guns. Naturally we have the gendarmes with us, but
the brigands are much more powerful. As our host said to us this
morning: 'The gendarmes, they go, but the banditti, they stay.' In
the face of that very logical reasoning, we realized that there was
but one thing to do, to treat with the Piedigriggios, and make a
bargain with them. The mayor said a word to the old man, who
consulted his sons, and they are discussing the terms of the treaty
downstairs. I can hear the Governor's voice from here: 'Nonsense,
my dear fellow, I'm an old Corsican myself, you know.' And then the
other's tranquil reply, cut simultaneously with his tobacco by the
grating noise of the great scissors. The 'dear fellow' does not
seem to have faith; and I am inclined to think that matters will
not progress until the gold pieces ring on the table.

"The trouble is that Paganetti is well known in his native country.
The value of his word is written on the public square at Corte
which still awaits the monument to Paoli, in the vast crop of
humbuggery that he has succeeded in planting in this sterile
Ithacan island, and in the flabby, empty pocket-books of all the
wretched village cures, petty bourgeois, petty noblemen, whose
slender savings he has filched by dangling chimerical _combinazioni_
before their eyes. Upon my word, he needed all his phenomenal
assurance, together with the financial resources he now has at his
command to satisfy all demands, to venture to show his face here
again.

"After all, how much truth is there in these fabulous works
undertaken by the _Caisse Territoriale_?

"None at all.

"Mines which do not yield, which will never yield, as they exist
only on paper; quarries which as yet know not pickaxe or powder;
untilled, sandy moors, which they survey with a gesture, saying,
'We begin here, and we go way over yonder, to the devil.' It's the
same with the forests,--one whole densely wooded slope of
Monte-Rotondo, which belongs to us, it seems, but which it is not
practicable to cut unless aeronauts should do duty as woodcutters.
So as to the mineral baths, of which this wretched hamlet of
Pozzonegro is one of the most important, with its fountain, whose
amazing ferruginous properties Paganetti is constantly vaunting. Of
packet-boats, not a trace. Yes, there is an old, half-ruined
Genoese tower, on the shore of the Bay of Ajaccio, with this
inscription on a tarnished panel over its hermetically closed door:
'Paganetti Agency, Maritime Company, Bureau of Information.' The
bureau is kept by fat gray lizards in company with a screech-owl.
As for the railroads, I noticed that all the excellent Corsicans to
whom I mentioned them, replied with cunning smiles, disconnected
phrases, full of mystery; and not until this morning did I obtain
the exceedingly farcical explanation of all this reticence.

"I had read among the documents which the Governor waves before our
eyes from time to time, like a fan to inflate his _blague_, a deed
of a marble quarry at a place called Taverna, two hours from
Pozzonegro. Availing myself of our visit to this place, I jumped on
a mule this morning, without a word to any one, and, guided by a
tall rascal, with the legs of a deer,--a perfect specimen of the
Corsican poacher or smuggler, with his great red pipe between his
teeth,--I betook myself to Taverna. After a horrible journey among
cliffs intersected by crevasses, bogs, and abysses of immeasurable
depth, where my mule maliciously amused himself by walking close to
the edge, as if he were measuring it with his shoes, we descended
an almost perpendicular surface to our destination,--a vast desert
of rocks, absolutely bare, all white with the droppings of gulls
and mews; for the sea is just below, very near, and the silence of
the place was broken only by the beating of the waves and the
shrill cries of flocks of birds flying in circles. My guide, who
has a holy horror of customs officers and gendarmes, remained at
the top of the cliff, because of a small custom-house station on
the shore, while I bent my steps toward a tall red building which
reared its three stories aloft in that blazing solitude, the
windows broken, the roof-tiles in confusion, and over the rotting
door an immense sign: '_Caisse Territoriale. Carr--bre--54._' The
wind and sun and rain have destroyed the rest.

"Certainly there has been at some time an attempt made to work the
mine, for there is a large, square, yawning hole, with cleanly-cut
edges and patches of red streaked with brown, like leprous spots,
along its sterile walls; and among the nettles at the bottom
enormous blocks of marble of the variety known in commerce as
_griotte_, condemned blocks of which no use can be made for lack of
a proper road leading to the quarry, or a harbor which would enable
boats to approach the hill; and, more than all else, for lack of
sufficient funds to supply either of those needs. So the quarry,
although within a few cable-lengths of the shore, is abandoned,
useless, and a nuisance, like Robinson Crusoe's boat, with the same
drawbacks as to availability. These details of the distressing
history of our only territorial possession were furnished me by an
unhappy survivor, shivering with fever, whom I found in the
basement of the yellow house trying to cook a piece of kid over the
acrid smoke of a fire of mastic branches.

"That man, who comprises the whole staff of the _Caisse
Territoriale_ in Corsica, is Paganetti's foster-father, an
ex-lighthouse-keeper who does not mind loneliness. The Governor
leaves him there partly from charity, and also because an
occasional letter from the Taverna quarry produces a good effect at
meetings of shareholders. I had great difficulty in extorting any
information from that three-fourths wild man, who gazed at me
suspiciously, in ambush behind his goat-skin _pelone_; he did
tell me, however, unintentionally, what the Corsicans understand by
the term railroad, and why they assume this mysterious manner when
they mention it. While I was trying to find out whether he knew
anything of the scheme for an iron road in the island, the old
fellow did not put on the cunning smile I had observed in his
compatriots, but said to me quite naturally, in very good French,
but in a voice as rusty and stiff as an old lock that is seldom
used:

"'Oh! moussiou, no need of railroads here--'

"'But they are very valuable, very useful to make communication
easier.'

"'I don't say that ain't true; but with the gendarmes we don't need
anything more.'

"'The gendarmes?'

"'To be sure.'

"The misunderstanding lasted fully five minutes, before I finally
comprehended that the secret police are known here as the
'railroads.' As there are many Corsican police officials on the
Continent, they make use of an honest euphemism to describe their
degrading occupation in their family circle. You ask the kinsmen of
one of them, 'Where's your brother Ambrosini?' 'What is your Uncle
Barbicaglia doing?' They will answer, with a little wink: 'He has a
place on the railroad;' and everybody knows what that means. Among
the lower classes, the peasants, who have never seen a railroad and
have no idea what it is, there is a perfectly serious belief that
the great department of the secret imperial police has no other
name than that. Our principal agent in the island shares that
touching innocence; this will give you an idea of the condition of
the _Line from Ajaccio to Bastia via Bonifacio, Porto Vecchio,
etc._, which figures on the great books with green backs in the
Paganetti establishment. In a word, all the assets of the
territorial bank are comprised in a few desks and two old
hovels--the whole hardly worthy of a place in the rubbish-yard on
Rue Saint-Ferdinand, where I hear the weathercocks creaking and the
old doors slamming every night as I fall asleep.

"But in that case what has been done, what is being done with the
enormous sums that M. Jansoulet has poured into the treasury in the
last five months, to say nothing of what has come from other
sources attracted by that magic name? I fully agreed with you that
all these soundings and borings and purchases of land, which appear
on the books in a fine round hand, were immeasurably exaggerated.
But how could any one suspect such infernal impudence? That is why
M. le Gouverneur was so disgusted at the idea of taking me on this
electoral trip. I have not thought it best to have an explanation
on the spot. My poor Nabob has enough on his mind with his
election. But, as soon as we have returned, I shall place all the
details of my long investigation before his eyes; and I will
extricate him from this den of thieves by persuasion or by force.
They have finished their negotiations downstairs. Old Piedigriggio
is crossing the square, playing with his long peasant's purse,
which looks to me to be well-filled. The bargain is concluded, I
suppose. A hasty adieu, my dear Monsieur Joyeuse; remember me to
the young ladies, and bid them keep a tiny place for me at the
work-table.

"PAUL DE GERY."

The electoral cyclone in which they had been enveloped in Corsica
crossed the sea in their wake like the blast of a sirocco, followed
them to Paris and blew madly through the apartments on Place Vendome,
which were thronged from morning till night by the usual crowd,
increased by the constant arrival of little men as dark as carob-beans,
with regular, bearded faces, some noisy, buzzing and chattering, others
silent, self-contained and dogmatic, the two types of the race in which
the same climate produces different results. All those famished
islanders made appointments, in the wilds of their uncivilized
fatherland, to meet one another at the Nabob's table, and his house had
become a tavern, a restaurant, a market-place. In the dining-room,
where the table was always set, there was always some Corsican, newly
arrived, in the act of taking a bite, with the bewildered and greedy
expression of a relation from the country.

The noisy, blatant breed of election agents is the same everywhere; but
these men were distinguished by something more of ardor, a more
impassioned zeal, a turkey-cock vanity heated white-hot. The most
insignificant clerk, inspector, mayor's secretary, or village
schoolmaster talked as if he had a whole canton behind him and the
pockets of his threadbare coat stuffed full of ballots. And it is a
fact, which Jansoulet had had abundant opportunity to verify, that in
the Corsican villages the families are so ancient, of such humble
origin, with so many ramifications, that a poor devil who breaks stones
on the high road finds some way to work out his relationship to the
greatest personages on the island, and in that way wields a serious
influence. As the national temperament, proud, cunning, intriguing,
revengeful, intensifies these complications, the result is that great
care must be taken as to where one puts his foot among the snares that
are spread from one end of the island to the other.

The most dangerous part of it was that all those people were jealous of
one another, detested one another, quarrelled openly at the table on
the subject of the election, exchanging black glances, grasping the
hilts of their knives at the slightest dispute, talking very loud and
all together, some in the harsh, resonant Genoese patois, others in the
most comical French, choking with restrained insults, throwing at one
another's heads the names of unknown villages, dates of local history
which suddenly placed two centuries of family feuds upon the table
between two covers. The Nabob was afraid that his breakfasts would end
tragically, and tried to calm all those violent natures with his
kindly, conciliatory smile. But Paganetti reassured him. According to
him, the vendetta, although still kept alive in Corsica, very rarely
employs the stiletto and the firearm in these days. The anonymous
letter has taken their place. Indeed, unsigned letters were received
every day at Place Vendome, after the style of this one:--

"You are so generous, Monsieur Jansoulet, that I can do no less
than point out to you Sieur Bornalinco (Ange-Marie) as a traitor
who has gone over to your enemies; I have a very different story to
tell of his cousin Bornalinco (Louis-Thomas), who is devoted to the
good cause," etc.

Or else:

"Monsieur Jansoulet, I fear that your election will be badly
managed and will come to nothing if you continue to employ Castirla
(Josue) of the canton of Odessa, while his kinsman, Luciani, is the
very man you need."

Although he finally gave up reading such missives, the poor candidate
was shaken by all those doubts, by all those passions, being caught in
a network of petty intrigues, his mind full of terror and distrust,
anxious, excited, nervous, feeling keenly the truth of the Corsican
proverb:

"If you are very ill-disposed to your enemy, pray that he may have an
election in his family."

We can imagine that the check-book and the three great drawers in the
mahogany commode were not spared by that cloud of devouring locusts
that swooped down upon "Moussiou Jansoulet's" salons. Nothing could be
more comical than the overbearing way in which those worthy islanders
negotiated their loans, abruptly and with an air of defiance. And yet
they were not the most terrible, except in the matter of boxes of
cigars, which vanished in their pockets so rapidly as to make one think
they proposed to open a _Civette_ on their return to the island. But
just as wounds grow red and inflamed on very hot days, so the election
had caused an amazing recrudescence in the systematic pillage that
reigned in the house. The expenses of advertising were considerable:
Moessard's articles, sent to Corsica in packages of twenty thousand,
thirty thousand copies, with portraits, biographies, pamphlets, all the
printed clamor that it is possible to raise around a name. And then
there was no diminution in the ordinary consumption of the panting
pumps established around the reservoir of millions. On one side the
Work of Bethlehem, a powerful machine, pumping at regular intervals,
with tremendous energy; the _Caisse Territoriale_, with marvellous
power of suction, indefatigable in its operation, with triple and
quadruple action, of several thousand horse-power; and the Schwalbach
pump, and the Bois-l'Hery pump, and how many more; some of enormous
size, making a great noise, with audacious pistons, others more quiet
and reserved, with tiny valves, bearings skilfully oiled--toy-pumps as
delicately constructed as the probosces of insects whose thirst causes
stings, and which deposit poison on the spot from which they suck their
life; but all working with the same unanimity, and fatally certain to
cause, if not an absolute drought, at all events a serious lowering of
the level.

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