The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2)

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

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II.

A BREAKFAST ON PLACE VENDOME.

There were hardly more than a score of persons that morning in the
Nabob's dining-room, a dining-room finished in carved oak, supplied
only the day before from the establishment of some great
house-furnisher, who furnished at the same time the four salons which
could be seen, one beyond the other, through an open door: the
hangings, the objects of art, the chandeliers, even the plate displayed
on the sideboards, even the servants who served the breakfast. It was
the perfect type of the establishment improvised, immediately upon
alighting from the railway train, by a parvenu of colossal wealth, in
great haste to enjoy himself. Although there was no sign of a woman's
dress about the table, no bit of light and airy material to enliven the
scene, it was by no means monotonous, thanks to the incongruity, the
nondescript character of the guests, gathered together from all ranks
of society, specimens of mankind culled from every race in France, in
Europe, in the whole world, from top to bottom of the social scale.
First of all, the master of the house, a sort of giant--sunburned,
swarthy, with his head between his shoulders--to whom his short nose,
lost in the puffiness of the face, his woolly hair massed like an
Astrakhan cap over a low, headstrong forehead, his bristling eyebrows
with eyes like a wild cat's in ambush, gave the ferocious aspect of a
Kalmuk, of a savage on the frontiers of civilization, who lived by war
and marauding. Luckily the lower part of the face, the thick, double
lips which parted readily in a fascinating, good-humored smile,
tempered with a sort of Saint Vincent de Paul expression that uncouth
ugliness, that original countenance, so original that it forgot to be
commonplace. But his inferior extraction betrayed itself in another
direction by his voice, the voice of a Rhone boatman, hoarse and
indistinct, in which the southern accent became rather coarse than
harsh, and by two broad, short hands, with hairy fingers, square at the
ends and with almost no nails, which, as they rested on the white table
cloth, spoke of their past with embarrassing eloquence. Opposite the
host, on the other side of the table, at which he was a regular guest,
was the Marquis de Monpavon, but a Monpavon who in no wise resembled
the mottled spectre whom we saw in the last chapter; a man of superb
physique, in the prime of life, with a long, majestic nose, the haughty
bearing of a great nobleman, displaying a vast breastplate of spotless
linen, which cracked under the continuous efforts of the chest to bend
forward, and swelled out every time with a noise like that made by a
turkey gobbling, or a peacock spreading his tail. His name Monpavon was
well suited to him.[1]

[1] Paon_, peacock--from Latin pavo, pavonis_.

Belonging to a great family, with wealthy kindred, the Duc de Mora's
friendship had procured for him a receiver-generalship of the first
class. Unfortunately his health had not permitted him to retain that
fine berth--well-informed persons said that his health had nothing to
do with it--and he had been living in Paris for a year past, waiting
until he should be cured, he said, to return to his post. The same
persons asserted that he would never find it again, and that, were it
not for the patronage of certain exalted personages--Be that as it may,
he was the important guest at the breakfast; one could see that by the
way in which the servants waited upon him, by the way in which the
Nabob consulted him, calling him "Monsieur le Marquis," as they do at
the Comedie Francaise, less from humility than from pride because of
the honor that was reflected on himself. Filled with disdain for his
fellow-guests, Monsieur le Marquis talked little, but with a very lofty
manner, as if he were obliged to stoop to those persons whom he honored
with his conversation. From time to time he tossed at the Nabob, across
the table, sentences that were enigmatical to everybody.

"I saw the duke yesterday. He talked a good deal about you in
connection with that matter of--you know, What's-his-name,
Thingumbob--Who is the man?"

"Really! He talked about me?" And the honest Nabob, swelling with
pride, would look about him, nodding his head in a most laughable way,
or would assume the meditative air of a pious woman when she hears the
name of Our Lord.

"His Excellency would be pleased to have you go into
the--ps--ps--ps--the thing."

"Did he tell you so?"

"Ask the governor--he heard it as well as I."

The person referred to as the governor, Paganetti by name, was an
energetic, gesticulatory little man, tiresome to watch, his face
assumed so many different expressions in a minute. He was manager of
the _Caisse Territoriale_ of Corsica, a vast financial enterprise, and
was present in that house for the first time, brought by Monpavon; he
also occupied a place of honor. On the Nabob's other side was an old
man, buttoned to the chin in a frock-coat without lapels and with a
standing collar, like an oriental tunic, with a face marred by
innumerable little gashes, and a white moustache trimmed in military
fashion. It was Brahim Bey, the most gallant officer of the regency of
Tunis, _aide-de-camp_ to the former bey, who made Jansoulet's fortune.
This warrior's glorious exploits were written in wrinkles, in the scars
of debauchery, on his lower lip which hung down helplessly as if the
spring were broken, and in his inflamed, red eyes, devoid of lashes.
His was one of the faces we see in the felon's dock in cases that are
tried behind closed doors. The other guests had seated themselves
pell-mell, as they arrived, or beside such acquaintances as they
chanced to meet, for the house was open to everybody, and covers were
laid for thirty every morning.

There was the manager of the theatre in which the Nabob was a sleeping
partner,--Cardailhac, almost as renowned for his wit as for his
failures, that wonderful carver, who would prepare one of his _bons
mots_ as he detached the limbs of a partridge, and deposit it with a
wing in the plate that was handed him. He was a sculptor rather than an
_improvisateur_, and the new way of serving meats, having them carved
beforehand in the Russian fashion, had been fatal to him by depriving
him of all excuse for a preparatory silence. So it was generally said
that he was failing. He was a thorough Parisian, a dandy to his
fingers' ends, and as he himself boasted, "not full to bursting with
superstition," which fact enabled him to give some very piquant details
concerning the women in his theatrical company to Brahim Bey, who
listened to him as one turns the pages of an obscene book, and to talk
theology to his nearest neighbor, a young priest, cure of some little
Southern village, a thin, gaunt fellow, with a complexion as dark
as his cassock, with glowing cheek-bones, pointed nose, all the
characteristics of an ambitious man, who said to Cardailhac, in a very
loud voice, in a tone of condescension, of priestly authority:

"We are very well satisfied with Monsieur Guizot. He is doing well,
very well--it's a victory for the Church."

Beside that pontiff with the starched band, old Schwalbach, the famous
dealer in pictures, displayed his prophet's beard, yellow in spots like
a dirty fleece, his three mouldy-looking waistcoats and all the
slovenly, careless attire which people forgave him in the name of art,
and because he had the good taste to have in his employ, at a time when
the mania for galleries kept millions of money in circulation, the one
man who was most expert in negotiating those vainglorious transactions.
Schwalbach did not talk, contenting himself with staring about through
his enormous lens-shaped monocle, and smiling in his beard at the
extraordinary juxtapositions to be observed at that table, which stood
alone in all the world. For instance Monpavon had very near him--and
you should have seen how the disdainful curve of his nose was
accentuated at every glance in his direction--Garrigou the singer, a
countryman of Jansoulet, distinguished as a ventriloquist, who sang
_Figaro_ in the patois of the South and had not his like for imitating
animals. A little farther on, Cabassu, another fellow-countryman, a
short, thick-set man, with a bull-neck, a biceps worthy of Michel
Angelo, who resembled equally a Marseillais hair-dresser and the
Hercules at a country fair, a _masseur_, pedicurist, manicurist and
something of a dentist, rested both elbows on the table with the
assurance of a quack whom one receives in the morning and who knows the
petty weaknesses, the private miseries of the house in which he happens
to be. M. Bompain completed that procession of subalterns, all
classified with reference to some one specialty. Bompain, the
secretary, the steward, the man of confidence, through whose hands all
the business of the establishment passed; and a single glance at that
stupidly solemn face, that vague expression, that Turkish fez poised
awkwardly on that village schoolmaster's head, sufficed to convince one
what manner of man he was to whom interests like the Nabob's had been
entrusted.

Lastly, to fill the gaps between the figures we have sketched, Turks of
every variety! Tunisians, Moors, Egyptians, Levantines; and, mingled
with that exotic element, a whole multicolored Parisian Bohemia of
decayed gentlemen, squinting tradesmen, penniless journalists,
inventors of strange objects, men from the South landed in Paris
without a sou--all the tempest-tossed vessels to be revictualled, all
the flocks of birds whirling about in the darkness, that were attracted
by that great fortune as by the light of a lighthouse. The Nabob
received that motley crew at his table through kindness of heart,
generosity, weakness, and entire lack of dignity, combined with
absolute ignorance, and partly as a result of the same exile's
melancholy, the same need of expansion that led him to receive, in his
magnificent palace on the Bardo in Tunis, everybody who landed from
France, from the petty tradesman and exporter of small wares, to the
famous pianist on a tour and the consul-general.

Listening to those different voices, those foreign accents, incisive or
stammering, glancing at those varying types of countenance, some
uncivilized, passionate, unrefined, others over-civilized, faded, of
the type that haunts the boulevards, over-ripe as it were, and
observing the same varieties in the corps of servants, where
"flunkeys," taken the day before from some office, insolent fellows,
with the heads of dentists or bath-attendants, bustled about among the
motionless Ethiopians, who shone like black marble torch-holders,--it
was impossible to say exactly where you were; at all events, you would
never have believed that you were on Place Vendome, at the very heart
and centre of the life of our modern Paris. On the table there was a
similar outlandish collection of foreign dishes, sauces with saffron or
anchovies, elaborately spiced Turkish delicacies, chickens with fried
almonds; all this, taken in conjunction with the commonplace
decorations of the room, the gilded wainscotings and the shrill jangle
of the new bells, gave one the impression of a table-d'hote in some
great hotel in Smyrna or Calcutta, or of the gorgeous saloon of a
trans-Atlantic liner, the _Pereire_ or the _Sinai_.

It would seem that such a variety of guests--I had almost said of
passengers--would make the repast animated and noisy. Far from it. They
all ate nervously, in silence, watching one another out of the corner
of the eye; and even the most worldly, those who seemed most at ease,
had in their eyes the wandering, distressed expression indicating a
persistent thought, a feverish anxiety which caused them to speak
without answering, to listen without understanding a word of what was
said.

Suddenly the door of the dining-room was thrown open.

"Ah! there's Jenkins," exclaimed the Nabob, joyfully. "Hail, doctor,
hail! How are you, my boy?"

A circular smile, a vigorous handshake for the host, and Jenkins took
his seat opposite him, beside Monpavon and in front of a plate which a
servant brought in hot haste, exactly as at a table-d'hote. Amid those
preoccupied, feverish faces, that one presented a striking contrast
with its good-humor, its expansive smile, and the loquacious,
flattering affability which makes the Irish to a certain extent the
Gascons of Great Britain. And what a robust appetite! with what energy,
what liberty of conscience, he managed his double row of white teeth,
talking all the while.

"Well, Jansoulet, did you read it?"

"Read what, pray?"

"What! don't you know? Haven't you read what the _Messager_ said
about you this morning?"

Beneath the thick tan on his cheeks the Nabob blushed like a child, and
his eyes sparkled with delight as he replied:

"Do you mean it? The _Messager_ said something about me?"

"Two whole columns. How is it that Moessard didn't show it to you?"

"Oh!" said Moessard modestly, "it wasn't worth the trouble."

He was a journalist in a small way, fair-haired and spruce, a pretty
fellow enough, but with a face marked by the faded look peculiar to
waiters at all-night restaurants, actors and prostitutes, made up of
conventional grimaces and the sallow reflection of the gas. He was
reputed to be the plighted lover of an exiled queen of very easy
virtue. That rumor was whispered about wherever he went, and gave him
an envied and most contemptible prominence in his circle.

Jansoulet insisted upon reading the article, being impatient to hear
what was said of him. Unfortunately Jenkins had left his copy at the
duke's.

"Let some one go at once and get me a _Messager_," said the Nabob
to the servant behind his chair.

Moessard interposed:

"That isn't necessary; I must have the thing about me."

And with the free and easy manner of the tap-room habitue, of the
reporter who scrawls his notes as he sits in front of his mug of beer,
the journalist produced a pocketbook stuffed with memoranda, stamped
papers, newspaper clippings, notes on glossy paper with crests--which
he scattered over the table, pushing his plate away, to look for the
proof of his article.

"Here it is." He passed it to Jansoulet; but Jenkins cried out:

"No, no, read it aloud."

As the whole party echoed the demand, Moessard took back his proof and
began to read aloud the WORK OF BETHLEHEM AND M. BERNARD JANSOULET, a
long deliverance in favor of artificial nursing, written from Jenkins'
notes, which were recognizable by certain grandiloquent phrases of the
sort that the Irishman affected: "the long martyrology of infancy--the
venality of the breast--the goat, the beneficent nurse,"--and
concluding, after a turgid description of the magnificent establishment
at Nanterre, with a eulogy of Jenkins and the glorification of
Jansoulet: "O Bernard Jansoulet, benefactor of infancy!"

You should have seen the annoyed, scandalized faces of the guests. What
a schemer that Moessard was! What impudent sycophancy! And the same
envious, disdainful smile distorted every mouth. The devil of it was
that they were forced to applaud, to appear enchanted, as their host's
sense of smell was not surfeited by the odor of incense, and as he took
everything very seriously, both the article and the applause that it
called forth. His broad face beamed during the reading. Many and many a
time, far away in Africa, he had dreamed of being thus belauded in the
Parisian papers, of becoming a person of some consequence in that
society, the first of all societies, upon which the whole world has its
eyes fixed as upon a beacon-light. Now that dream was fulfilled. He
gazed at all those men around his table, at that sumptuous dessert, at
that wainscoted dining-room, certainly as high as the church in his
native village; he listened to the dull roar of Paris, rumbling and
tramping beneath his windows, with the unspoken thought that he was
about to become a great wheel in that ever-active, complicated
mechanism. And thereupon, while he sat, enjoying the sense of
well-being that follows a substantial meal, between the lines of that
triumphant apology he evoked, by way of contrast, the panorama of his
own life, his wretched childhood, his haphazard youth, no less
distressing to recall, the days without food, the nights without a
place to lay his head. And suddenly, when the reading was at an end, in
the midst of a veritable overflow of joy, of one of those outbursts of
Southern effusiveness which compel one to think aloud, he cried,
protruding his thick lips toward the guests in his genial smile:

"Ah! my friends, my dear friends, if you knew how happy I am, how proud
I feel!"

It was barely six weeks since he landed in France. With the exception
of two or three compatriots, he had known these men whom he called his
friends hardly more than a day, and only from having loaned them money.
Wherefore that sudden expansiveness seemed decidedly strange; but
Jansoulet, too deeply moved to notice anything, continued:

"After what I have just heard, when I see myself here in this great
city of Paris, surrounded by all the illustrious names and
distinguished minds within its limits, and then recall my father's
peddler's stall! For I was born in a peddler's stall. My father sold
old iron at a street corner in Bourg-Saint-Andeol! It was as much as
ever if we had bread to eat every day, and stew every Sunday. Ask
Cabassu. He knew me in those days. He can tell you if I am lying. Oh!
yes, I have known what poverty is." He raised his head in an outburst
of pride, breathing in the odor of truffles with which the heavy
atmosphere was impregnated. "I have known poverty, genuine poverty too,
and for a long time. I have been cold, I have been hungry, and horribly
hungry, you know, the kind of hunger that makes you stupid, that twists
your stomach, makes your head go round, and prevents you from seeing,
just as if some one had dug out the inside of your eyes with an
oyster-knife. I have passed whole days in bed for lack of a coat to
wear; lucky when I had a bed, which I sometimes hadn't. I have tried to
earn my bread at every trade; and the bread cost me so much suffering,
it was so hard and tough that I still have the bitter, mouldy taste of
it in my mouth. And that's the way it was till I was thirty years old.
Yes, my friends, at thirty--and I'm not fifty yet--I was still a
beggar, without a sou, with no future, with my heart full of remorse
for my poor mother who was dying of hunger in her hovel down in the
provinces, and to whom I could give nothing."

The faces of the people who surrounded that strange host as he told the
story of his evil days were a curious spectacle. Some seemed disgusted,
especially Monpavon. That display of old rags seemed to him in
execrable taste, and to denote utter lack of breeding. Cardailhac, that
sceptic and man of refined taste, a foe to all emotional scenes, sat
with staring eyes and as if hypnotized, cutting a piece of fruit with
the end of his fork into strips as thin as cigarette papers. The
Governor, on the contrary, went through a pantomime expressive of
perfunctory admiration, with exclamations of horror and compassion;
while, in striking contrast to him, and not far away, Brahim Bey, the
thunderbolt of war, in whom the reading of the article, followed by
discussion after a substantial repast, had induced a refreshing nap,
was sleeping soundly, with his mouth like a round O in his white
moustache, and with the blood congested in his face as a result of the
creeping up of his gorget. But the general expression was indifference
and ennui. What interest had they, I ask you, in Jansoulet's childhood
at Bourg-Saint-Andeol, in what he had suffered, and how he had been
driven from pillar to post? They had not come there for such stuff as
that. So it was that expressions of feigned interest, eyes that counted
the eggs in the ceiling or the crumbs of bread on the table-cloth, lips
tightly compressed to restrain a yawn, betrayed the general impatience
caused by that untimely narrative. But he did not grow weary. He took
pleasure in the recital of his past suffering, as the sailor in a safe
haven delights in recalling his voyages in distant seas, and the
dangers, and the terrible shipwrecks. Next came the tale of his good
luck, the extraordinary accident that suddenly started him on the road
to fortune. "I was wandering about the harbor of Marseille, with a
comrade as out-at-elbows as myself, who also made his fortune in the
Bey's service, and, after being my chum, my partner, became my
bitterest enemy. I can safely tell you his name, _pardi_! He is well
enough known, Hemerlingue. Yes, messieurs, the head of the great
banking-house of Hemerlingue and Son hadn't at that time the money to
buy two sous' worth of crabs on the quay. Intoxicated by the air of
travel that you breathe in those parts, it occurred to us to go and
seek a living in some sunny country, as the foggy countries were so
cruel to us. But where should we go? We did what sailors sometimes do
to decide what den they shall squander their wages in. They stick a bit
of paper on the rim of a hat. Then they twirl the hat on a cane, and
when it stops, they go in the direction in which the paper points. For
us the paper needle pointed to Tunis. A week later I landed at Tunis
with half a louis in my pocket, and I return to-day with twenty-five
millions."

There was a sort of electric shock around the table, a gleam in every
eye, even in those of the servants. Cardailhac exclaimed: "Mazette!"
Monpavon's nose subsided.

"Yes, my children, twenty-five millions in available funds, to say
nothing of all that I've left in Tunis, my two palaces on the Bardo, my
vessels in the harbor of La Goulette, my diamonds and my jewels, which
are certainly worth more than twice that. And you know," he added, with
his genial smile, in his hoarse, unmusical voice, "when it's all gone,
there will still be some left."

The whole table rose, electrified.

"Bravo! Ah! bravo!"

"Superb."

"Very _chic_--very _chic_."

"Well said."

"A man like that ought to be in the Chamber."

"He shall be, _per Bacco!_ my word for it," exclaimed the Governor, in
a voice of thunder; and, carried away by admiration, not knowing how to
manifest his enthusiasm, he seized the Nabob's great hairy hand and
impulsively put it to his lips. Everybody was standing; they did not
resume their seats.

Jansoulet, radiant with pleasure, had also risen.

"Let us have our coffee," he said, throwing down his napkin.

Immediately the party circulated noisily through the salons, enormous
rooms, in which the light, the decoration, the magnificence consisted
of gold alone. It fell from the ceiling in blinding rays, oozed from
the walls in fillets, window-sashes and frames of all sorts. One
retained a little of it on one's hands after moving a chair or opening
a window; and even the hangings, having been dipped in that Pactolus,
preserved upon their stiff folds the rigidity and sheen of metal. But
there was nothing individual, homelike, dainty. It was the monotonous
splendor of the furnished apartment. And this impression of a flying
camp, of a temporary establishment, was heightened by the idea of
travelling that hovered about that fortune drawn from distant sources,
like a cloud of uncertainty or a threat.

The coffee was served in the Oriental fashion, with all the grounds, in
small filigreed silver cups, and the guests stood around in groups,
drinking hastily, burning their tongues, watching one another
furtively, and keeping especially close watch on the Nabob, in order to
grasp the favorable moment to jump upon him, drag him into a corner of
one of those huge rooms, and arrange their loan at last. For it was
that for which they had been waiting for two hours, that was the object
of their visit, and the fixed idea that gave them that distraught,
falsely attentive air, during the breakfast. But now there was no more
embarrassment, no more grimacing. Everybody in that strange company
knew that, in the Nabob's crowded existence, the coffee hour alone was
left free for confidential audiences, and as every one wished to take
advantage of it, as they had all come for the purpose of tearing a
handful of wool from that golden fleece which offered itself to them so
good-naturedly, they no longer talked or listened, they attended
strictly to business.

Honest Jenkins is the one who begins. He has led his friend Jansoulet
into a window-recess and is submitting to him the drawings for the
house at Nanterre. A pretty outlay, by heaven! One hundred and fifty
thousand francs for the property, and, in addition, the very
considerable expense of installation, the staff, the bedding, the goats
for nurses, the manager's carriage, the omnibuses to meet the children
at every train. A great deal of money--But how comfortable the dear
little creatures will be there! what a service to Paris, to mankind!
The Government cannot fail to reward with a bit of red ribbon such
unselfish philanthropy. "The Cross, the 15th of August." With those
magic words Jenkins can obtain whatever he wants. With his hoarse,
cheerful voice, which seems to be hailing a vessel in the fog, the
Nabob calls, "Bompain." The man in the fez, tearing himself away from
the cellaret, crosses the salon majestically, whispers, goes away and
returns with an inkstand and a check-book, the leaves of which come out
and fly away of themselves. What a fine thing is wealth! To sign a
check for two hundred thousand francs on his knee costs Jansoulet no
more than to take a louis from his pocket.

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