The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2)

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

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"Ah! is it you, doctor? Deuce take it! What time is it, pray? I'm not
at home."

"Not even to the doctor?"

"Oh! not to anybody. A question of costume, my dear fellow. Never mind,
come in all the same. Toast your feet a moment while Francois finishes
my hair."

Jenkins entered the bedroom, which was as prosaic a place as all
furnished apartments are, and approached the fire, where curling-tongs
of all dimensions were heating, while from the adjoining laboratory,
separated from the bedroom by an Algerian curtain, the Marquis de
Monpavon submitted to the manipulations of his valet. Odors of
patchouli, cold cream, burned horn and burned hair escaped from the
restricted quarters; and from time to time, when Francois came out to
take a fresh pair of tongs, Jenkins caught a glimpse of an enormous
dressing-table laden with innumerable little instruments of ivory,
steel, and mother-of-pearl, files, scissors, powder-puffs and brushes,
phials, cups, cosmetics, labelled, arranged in lines, and amid all that
rubbish, petty ironmongery and dolls' playthings, a hand, the hand of
an old man, awkward and trembling, dry and long, with nails as
carefully kept as a Japanese painter's.

While making up his face, the longest and most complicated of his
matutinal occupations, Monpavon chatted with the doctor, told him of
his aches and pains and of the good effect of the pearls, which were
making him younger, he said. And listening to him thus, at a little
distance, without seeing him, one would have believed he was the Duc de
Mora, he had so faithfully copied his way of speaking. There were the
same unfinished sentences, ending in a _ps_--_ps_--_ps_--uttered
between the teeth. "What's-his-names" and "What-d'ye-call-'ems" at
every turn, a sort of lazy, bored, aristocratic stammer, in which one
divined profound contempt for the vulgar art of speech. In the duke's
circle everybody strove to copy that accent, those disdainful
intonations, in which there was an affectation of simplicity.

Jenkins, finding the session a little tedious, rose to go.

"Adieu, I am going. Shall I see you at the Nabob's?"

"Yes, I expect to breakfast there--promised to take What's-his-name,
Thingumbob, you know, about our great affair--ps--ps--ps. Weren't for
that, I'd stay away--downright menagerie, that house."

The Irishman, despite his kindly feeling, agreed that the society at
his friend's house was a little mixed. But what of that! they must not
blame him for that. He didn't know any better, poor man.

"Doesn't know and won't learn," said Monpavon sourly. "Instead of
consulting men of experience--ps--ps--ps--takes the first sycophant
that comes. Did you see the horses Bois-l'Hery bought for him?
Downright swindle, those beasts. And he paid twenty thousand francs for
them. I'll wager Bois-l'Hery got 'em for six thousand."

"Oh! fie, fie--a gentleman!" said Jenkins, with the indignation of a
noble soul refusing to believe in evil.

Monpavon went on, as if he did not hear:

"And all because the horses came from Mora's stable!"

"To be sure, the dear Nabob's heart is set on the duke. So that I shall
make him very happy when I tell him--"

The doctor stopped, in some embarrassment.

"When you tell him what, Jenkins?"

Jenkins, looking decidedly sheepish, was forced to admit that he had
obtained permission from His Excellency to present his friend
Jansoulet. He had hardly finished his sentence when a tall spectre with
flabby cheeks and multicolored hair and whiskers darted from the
dressing-room into the chamber, holding together with both hands at his
skinny but very straight neck, a dressing-gown of light silk with
violet dots, in which he had enveloped himself like a bonbon in its
paper wrapper. The most salient feature in that heroi-comic countenance
was a great arched nose shining with cold cream, and a keen, piercing
eye, too youthful, too clear for the heavy, wrinkled lid that covered
it. All of Jenkins' patients had that same eye.

Verily Monpavon must have been deeply moved to show himself thus shorn
of all prestige. In fact it was with white lips and in a changed voice
that he now addressed the doctor, without the affected stammer,
speaking rapidly and without stopping to breathe:--

"Come, come, my dear fellow, there's no nonsense between us, is there?
We have met in front of the same porringer; but I let you have your
share and I propose that you shall let me have mine." Jenkins' air of
amazement did not check him. "Let it be understood once for all. I
promised the Nabob that I'd present him to the duke as I presented you
long ago. Don't you interfere in what concerns me and me alone."

Jenkins, with his hand upon his heart, protested his innocence. He had
never had any such intention. Of course Monpavon was too close a friend
of the duke for any one else to--How could he have imagined such a
thing?

"I imagine nothing," said the old nobleman, more subdued, but still
very cold. "I simply wanted to have a perfectly frank explanation with
you on this subject."

The Irishman held out his broad open palm.

"My dear marquis, explanations are always frank between men of honor."

"Honor is a great word, Jenkins. Let us say men of good-breeding. That
is sufficient."

And as that same good-breeding, which he put forward as a supreme guide
of conduct, suddenly reminded him of his absurd plight, the marquis
offered a finger for his friend's demonstrative grasp and passed
hastily behind his curtain, while the other took his leave, in haste to
continue his round of visits.

* * *

What a magnificent practice this Jenkins had, to be sure! Nothing but
princely mansions, halls comfortably heated and filled with flowers on
every floor, downy, silk-lined alcoves, wherein disease became quiet
and refined, where nothing suggested the brutal hand that tosses upon a
bed of misery those who cease to work only to die. To tell the truth,
these clients of Dr. Jenkins were not patients at all. They would not
have been received at a hospital. As their organs had not even strength
enough to feel a shock, it was impossible to find the seat of their
trouble, and the physician leaning over them would have listened in
vain for the palpitation of suffering in those bodies which were
already inhabited by the inertia and silence of death. They were
weakened, exhausted, anaemic, consumed by their absurd mode of life, and
yet so attached to it that they strove desperately to prolong it. And
the Jenkins Pearls became famous just because of the lashing they
administered to jaded constitutions.

"Doctor, I implore you, let me go to the ball this evening!" a young
woman would say, as she lay, utterly prostrated, in her invalid's
chair, her voice hardly more than a breath.

"You shall go, my dear child."

And go she would, and look lovelier than ever before.

"Doctor, at any price, even if it's the death of me, I must be at the
council of ministers to-morrow morning."

He would be there and would win new triumphs by his eloquence and
ambitious diplomacy. And afterward--oh! afterward, indeed. But no
matter! to their last day Jenkins' patients went about, showed
themselves, deceived the consuming selfishness of the multitude. They
died on their feet, like men and women of the world.

After innumerable turns on the Chaussee d'Antin and Champs-Elysees,
after visiting all the millionaires and titled personages in Faubourg
Saint-Honore, the doctor drew up at the corner of Cours-la-Reine and
Rue Francois I., before a house with a swell front which stood at
the corner of the quay, and entered an apartment on the ground floor
which in no wise resembled those he had visited since the morning.
Immediately upon entering, the tapestries that covered the walls, the
old stained glass windows intersecting with their lead sashes the soft,
many-hued light, a gigantic saint in carved wood facing a Japanese
monster with bulging eyes and back covered with highly polished scales,
indicated the imaginative and eccentric taste of an artist. The small
servant who opened the door held in leash an Arabian greyhound larger
than himself.

"Madame Constance is at mass," he said, "and mademoiselle is in the
studio, alone. We have been working since six o'clock this morning,"
the child added, with a terrible yawn, which the dog caught on the
wing, and which caused him to open wide his red mouth with its rows of
sharp teeth.

Jenkins, whom we have seen enter the private apartments of the Minister
of State with such perfect tranquillity, trembled slightly as he raised
the portiere that hid the open doorway of the studio. It was a
magnificent sculptor's workroom, the rounded front being entirely of
glass, with columns at either side: a large bay-window flooded with
light and at that moment tinged with opal by the mist. More ornate than
the majority of these workrooms, to which the daubs of plaster, the
modelling tools, the clay scattered about and the splashes of water
give something of the appearance of a mason's yard, this one blended a
little coquetry with its artistic equipment. Green plants in every
corner, a few good pictures hanging on the bare wall, and here and
there--on oak pedestals--two or three of the works of Sebastien Ruys,
whose very last work, not exhibited until after his death, was covered
with black gauze.

The mistress of the establishment, Felicia Ruys, daughter of the famous
sculptor, and already known to fame herself by two masterpieces, the
bust of her father and that of the Duc de Mora, stood in the centre of
the studio, at work modelling a figure. Dressed in a blue cloth
riding-habit with long folds, a scarf of China silk twisted around her
neck like a boy's cravat, her fine, black hair, gathered carelessly on
top of her little Grecian head, Felicia was working with extreme zeal,
which added to her beauty by the condensation, so to speak, the
concentration of all her features in a scrutinizing and satisfied
expression. But it changed abruptly on the doctor's arrival.

"Ah! it's you, is it?" she said brusquely, as if waking from a dream.
"Did you ring? I did not hear."

And in the ennui, the weariness that suddenly overspread that lovely
face, only the eyes retained their expression and brilliancy, eyes in
which the factitious gleam of the Jenkins Pearls was heightened by a
natural fierceness.

Oh! how humble and condescending the doctor's voice became, as he
replied:

"Your work absorbs you completely, does it not, my dear Felicia? Is it
something new that you're doing? I should say that it is very pretty."

He drew near to the still formless sketch in which a group of two
animals could be vaguely distinguished, one of them, a greyhound,
flying over the ground at a truly extraordinary pace.

"The idea came to me last night. I began to work by lamplight. My poor
Kadour doesn't find it amusing," said the girl, looking with a
caressing expression of affection at the greyhound, whose paws the
small servant was trying to separate in order to force him into the
proper pose.

Jenkins observed with a fatherly air that she did wrong to tire herself
so, and added, taking her wrist with ecclesiastical precautions:

"Let us see, I am sure that you are feverish."

At the touch of that hand Felicia had a feeling of something very like
repulsion.

"Let me alone--let me alone--your pearls can do nothing for me. When I
am not working, I am bored, bored to death, so bored that I could kill
myself; my ideas are of the color of that thick, brackish water flowing
yonder. To be just at the beginning of life and to be disgusted with
it! It's hard. I am reduced to the point of envying my poor Constance,
who passes her days in her chair, never opening her mouth, but smiling
all by herself at her memories of the past. I have not even that, not
even any pleasant memories to recall. I have nothing but work--work!"

[Illustration: _In Felicia's Studio_]

As she spoke, she worked fiercely, sometimes with the tool, sometimes
with her fingers, which she wiped from time to time on a little sponge
kept on the wooden frame on which the group stood; so that her
complaints, her lamentations, inexplicable in a mouth of twenty years
which had in repose the purity of a Grecian smile, seemed to be uttered
at random, and addressed to no one in particular. And yet Jenkins
seemed anxious and disturbed, notwithstanding the apparent interest he
displayed in the artist's work, or rather in the artist herself, in the
queenly grace of that mere girl, whose style of beauty seemed to have
predestined her to the study of the plastic arts.

Annoyed by that admiring glance, which she felt like a weight, Felicia
resumed:

"By the way, do you know that I saw your Nabob? He was pointed out to
me at the Opera, Friday."

"Were you at the Opera, Friday?"

"Yes. The duke sent me his box."

Jenkins changed color.

"I persuaded Constance to go with me. It was the first time in twenty
years, since her farewell performance, that she had entered the Opera.
It made a great impression on her. During the ballet especially, she
trembled, she beamed, all her former triumphs sparkled in her eyes. How
fortunate one is to have such emotions. A perfect type of his class,
that Nabob. You must bring him to see me. It would amuse me to do his
head."

"What! why he is frightful! You can't have had a good look at him."

"Indeed I did, on the contrary. He was opposite us. That white
Ethiopian visage would be superb in marble. And not commonplace, at all
events. Moreover, if he's so ugly as all that, you won't be so unhappy
as you were last year when I was doing Mora's bust. What a wicked face
you had at that time, Jenkins!"

"Not for ten years of life," muttered Jenkins in a threatening voice,
"would I go through those hours again. But it amuses you to see people
suffer."

"You know very well that nothing amuses me," she said, shrugging her
shoulders with supreme impertinence.

Then, without looking at him, without another word, she plunged into
one of those periods of intense activity by means of which true artists
escape from themselves and all their surroundings.

Jenkins took a few hurried steps, deeply moved, his lip swollen with
avowals that dared not come forth, and began two or three sentences
that met with no reply; at last, feeling that he was dismissed, he took
his hat and walked toward the door.

"It's understood then, is it? I am to bring him here?"

"Who, pray?"

"Why, the Nabob. Only a moment ago you said yourself--"

"Oh! yes," said the strange creature, whose caprices were not of long
duration, "bring him if you choose; I don't care particularly about
it."

And her musical, listless voice, in which something seemed to have
broken, the utter indifference of her whole bearing showed that it was
true, that she cared for nothing on earth.

Jenkins went away in sore perplexity, with clouded brow. But as soon as
he had passed the door he resumed his smiling, cordial manner, being
one of those men who wear a mask on the street. The mist, still visible
in the neighborhood of the Seine, was reduced to a few floating shreds,
which gave an air of vapory unsubstantiality to the houses on the quay,
to the steam-boats of which only the paddle-wheels could be seen, and
to the distant horizon, where the dome of the Invalides hovered like a
gilded balloon, whose netting shed rays of light. The increasing
warmth, the activity in the quarter indicated that noon was not far
away and that it would soon be announced by the ringing of all the
bells.

Before calling upon the Nabob, however, Jenkins had another call to
make. But it seemed to be a great nuisance to him. However, as he had
promised! So he said, with sudden decision, as he jumped into the
carriage:

"68 Rue Saint-Ferdinand, aux Ternes."

Joe, the coachman, was scandalized and made his master repeat the
address; even the horse showed some little hesitation, as if the
valuable beast and the spotless new livery were disgusted at having to
visit a faubourg so far away, outside the restricted but brilliant
circle in which their master's patients were grouped together. They
arrived, however, without hindrance, at the end of an unfinished
provincial street, and at the last of its houses, a five-story
building, which the street seemed to have sent out to reconnoitre and
ascertain if it could safely continue in that direction, isolated as it
was between desolate tracts of land awaiting prospective buildings or
filled with the materials of demolished structures, with blocks of
stone, old blinds with no rooms to shelter, boards with hanging hinges,
a vast boneyard of a whole demolished quarter.

Innumerable signs swayed in the wind over the door, which was adorned
with a large case of photographs, white with dust, before which Jenkins
paused for a moment. Had the illustrious physician come so far to have
his picture taken? One might have thought so from the interest which
detained him in front of that case, containing fifteen or twenty
photographs representing the same family in different groups and
attitudes and with different expressions: an old gentleman with his
chin supported by a high white stock, and a leather satchel under his
arm, surrounded by a bevy of maidens with their hair arranged in braids
or in curls. Sometimes the old gentleman had sat with only two of his
daughters; or perhaps one of those pretty, graceful figures appeared
alone, her elbow resting on a truncated column, her head bending over a
book, in a natural and unstudied pose. But it was always the same
motive with variations, and there was no other male figure in the case
but the old gentleman in the white cravat, and no other female figures
than those of his numerous daughters.

"Studios on the fifth floor," said a sign over the case. Jenkins
sighed, measured with his eye the distance from the ground to the
little balcony up among the clouds; then he made up his mind to enter.
In the hall he passed a white cravat and a majestic leather satchel,
evidently the old gentleman of the showcase. Upon being questioned, he
replied that M. Maranne did in fact live on the fifth floor. "But," he
added with an engaging smile, "the floors are not high." With that
encouragement the Irishman started up an entirely new and narrow
staircase, with landings no larger than a stair, a single door on each
floor and windows which afforded glimpses of a melancholy paved
courtyard and other stairways, all empty: one of those horrible modern
houses, built by the dozen by contractors without a son, their greatest
disadvantage consisting in the thinness of the partitions, which forces
all the lodgers to live together as in a Fourierite community. For the
moment that disadvantage was not of serious consequence, only the
fourth and fifth floors being occupied, as if the tenants had fallen
from the sky.

On the fourth, behind a door bearing a copper plate with the words: M.
JOYEUSE, _Expert in Handwriting_, the doctor heard the sound of fresh,
young laughter and conversation and active footsteps, which accompanied
him to the door of the photographic establishment above.

These little industries, perching in out-of-the-way corners, and
seeming to have no communication with the outer world, are one of the
surprises of Paris. We wonder how people live who take to them for a
living. What scrupulous providence, for instance, could send customers
to a photographer on a fifth floor among waste lands, at the far end of
Rue Ferdinand, or documents for examination to the expert on the floor
below. Jenkins, as he made that reflection, smiled a pitying smile,
then entered without ceremony as he was invited to do by this
inscription: "Walk in without knocking." Alas! the permission was not
abused.--A tall youth in spectacles, who was writing at a small table,
his legs wrapped in a traveling shawl, rose hurriedly to greet the
visitor, whom his short-sightedness prevented him from recognizing.

"Good-morning, Andre," said the doctor, extending his hand cordially.

"Monsieur Jenkins!"

"I am a good fellow as always, you see. Your conduct to us, your
persistence in living apart from your relatives, commended to my
dignity the utmost reserve in dealing with you; but your mother wept.
And here I am."

As he was speaking, he glanced about the poor little studio, where the
bare walls, the scanty furniture the brand-new photographic apparatus,
the little fireplace _a la prussienne_, also new, which had never seen
a fire, were disastrously apparent in the bright light that fell from
the glass roof. The drawn features and straggling beard of the young
man, whose very light eyes, high, narrow forehead, and long fair hair
thrown back in disorder gave him the appearance of a visionary, all
were accentuated in the uncompromising light; and so was the dogged
will expressed in that limpid glance which met Jenkins' eye coldly, and
offered in anticipation an unconquerable opposition to all his
arguments, all his protestations.

But the excellent Jenkins pretended not to notice it.

"You know how it is, my dear Andre. From the day that I married your
mother, I have looked upon you as my son. I expected to leave you my
office, my practice, to place your foot in a golden stirrup, and I was
overjoyed to see you follow a career devoted to the welfare of mankind.
Suddenly, without a word of explanation, without a thought for the
effect such a rupture might produce in the eyes of the world, you cut
loose from us, you dropped your studies and renounced your future
prospects, to embark in some degrading mode of life, to adopt an absurd
trade, the refuge and the pretext of all those who are shut out from
the society to which they belong."

"I am working at this trade for a living. It's a means of earning my
bread while I wait."

"Wait for what?--literary renown?"

He glanced contemptuously at the papers scattered over the table.

"But all this does not touch the question; this is what I came here to
say to you: an opportunity is offered you, a door thrown wide open to
the future. The Work of Bethlehem is founded. The noblest of my
humanitarian dreams has taken shape. We have bought a magnificent villa
at Nanterre in which to install our first branch. The superintendence,
the management of that establishment is what it has occurred to me to
offer to you, as to another myself. A princely house to live in, the
salary of a major-general, and the satisfaction of rendering a service
to the great human family. Say the word and I will take you to see the
Nabob, the noble-hearted man who pays the expenses of our undertaking.
Do you accept?"

"No," said the author, so abruptly that Jenkins was disconcerted.

"That's it. I expected a refusal when I came here, but I came none the
less. I took for my motto, 'Do what is right, without hope.' And I am
faithful to my motto. So, it's understood, is it--that you prefer a
life dependent on chance, without prospects and without dignity, to the
honorable, dignified, useful life that I offer you?"

Andre made no reply; but his silence spoke for him.

"Beware--you know to what this decision of yours will lead, a final
estrangement; but you have always desired it. I need not tell you,"
continued Jenkins, "that to break with me is to break with your mother
also. She and I are one."

The young man turned pale, hesitated a second, then said with an
effort:

"If my mother cares to come and see me here, I shall certainly be very
happy--but my determination to remain apart from you, to have nothing
in common with you, is irrevocable."

"At least, you will tell me why?"

He made a gesture signifying, "no," that he would not tell him.

For the moment the Irishman was really angry. His whole face assumed a
savage, cunning expression which would have greatly surprised those who
knew only the good-humored, open-hearted Jenkins; but he was careful to
go no farther in the direction of an explanation, which he dreaded
perhaps no less than he desired it.

"Adieu," he said from the doorway, half turning his head. "Never apply
to us."

"Never," replied his stepson in a firm voice.

This time, when the doctor said to Joe: "Place Vendome," the horse, as
if he understood that they were going to call on the Nabob, proudly
shook his shining curb, and the coupe drove away at full speed,
transforming the hub of each of its wheels into a gleaming sun. "To
come such a distance to meet with such a reception! One of the
celebrities of the day treated so by that Bohemian! This comes of
trying to do good!" Jenkins vented his wrath in a long monologue in
that vein; then suddenly exclaimed with a shrug: "Oh! pshaw!" And such
traces of care as remained on his brow soon vanished on the pavement of
Place Vendome. On all sides the clocks were striking twelve in the
sunshine. Emerging from her curtain of mist, fashionable Paris, awake
and on her feet, was beginning her day of giddy pleasure. The
shop-windows on Rue de la Paix shone resplendent. The mansions on the
square seemed to be drawn up proudly in line for the afternoon
receptions; and, at the end of Rue Castiglione with its white arcades,
the Tuileries, in the glorious sunlight of winter, marshalled its
shivering statues, pink with cold, among the leafless quincunxes.

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