The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2)

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

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"I have just killed a man in an omnibus!"

The poor fellow wakes at the sound of his own voice actually uttering
those sinister words, but not at the police-station; he realizes
from the horrified faces of the passengers that he must have spoken
aloud, and speedily avails himself of the conductor's call:
"Saint-Philippe--Pantheon--Bastille," to alight, in dire confusion and
amid general stupefaction.

That imagination, always on the alert, gave to M. Joyeuse's face a
strangely feverish, haggard expression, in striking contrast to the
faultlessly correct dress and bearing of the petty clerk. He lived
through so many passionate existences in a single day. Such waking
dreamers as he, in whom a too restricted destiny holds in check
unemployed forces, heroic faculties, are more numerous than is
generally supposed. Dreaming is the safety valve through which it all
escapes, with a terrible spluttering, an intensely hot vapor and
floating images which instantly disappear. Some come forth from these
visions radiant, others downcast and abashed, finding themselves once
more on the commonplace level of everyday life. M. Joyeuse was of the
former class, constantly soaring aloft to heights from which one cannot
descend without being a little shaken by the rapidity of the journey.

Now, one morning when our _Imaginaire_ had left his house at the usual
hour and under the usual circumstances, he started upon one of his
little private romances as he turned out of Rue Saint-Ferdinand. The
end of the year was close at hand, and, perhaps it was the sight of a
board shanty under construction in the neighboring woodyard that made
him think of "New Year's gifts." And thereupon the word _bonus_
planted itself in his mind, as the first landmark in an exciting story.
In the month of December all Hemerlingue's clerks received double pay,
and in small households, you know, a thousand ambitious or generous
projects are based upon such windfalls,--presents to be given, a piece
of furniture to be replaced, a small sum tucked away in a drawer for
unforeseen emergencies.

The fact is that M. Joyeuse was not rich. His wife, a Mademoiselle de
Saint-Amand, being tormented with aspirations for worldly grandeur, had
established the little household on a ruinous footing, and in the three
years since her death, although _Grandmamma_ had managed affairs so
prudently, they had not been able as yet to save anything, the burden
of the past was so heavy. Suddenly the excellent man fancied that the
honorarium would be larger than usual that year on account of the
increased work necessitated by the Tunisian loan. That loan was a very
handsome thing for his employers, too handsome indeed, for M. Joyeuse
had taken the liberty to say at the office that on that occasion
"Hemerlingue and Son had shaved the Turk a little too close."

"Yes, the bonus will certainly be doubled," thought the visionary as he
walked along; and already he saw himself, a month hence, ascending the
staircase leading to Hemerlingue's private office, with his
fellow-clerks, for their New Year's call. The banker announced the good
news; then he detained M. Joyeuse for a private interview. And lo! that
employer, usually so cold, and encased in his yellow fat as in a bale
of raw silk, became affectionate, fatherly, communicative. He wished to
know how many daughters Joyeuse had.

"I have three--that is to say, four, Monsieur le Baron. I always get
confused about them. The oldest one is such a little woman."

How old were they?

"Aline is twenty, Monsieur le Baron. She's the oldest. Then we have
Elise who is eighteen and preparing for her examination, Henriette who
is fourteen, and Zaza or Yaia who is only twelve."

The pet name Yaia amused Monsieur le Baron immensely; he also inquired
as to the resources of the family.

"My salary, Monsieur le Baron, nothing but that. I had a little money
laid by, but my poor wife's sickness and the girls' education--"

"What you earn is not enough, my dear Joyeuse. I raise you to a
thousand francs a month."

"Oh! Monsieur le Baron, that is too much!"

But, although he had uttered this last phrase aloud, in the face of a
policeman who watched with a suspicious eye the little man who
gesticulated and shook his head so earnestly, the poor visionary did
not awake. He joyously imagined himself returning home, telling the
news to his daughters, and taking them to the theatre in the evening to
celebrate that happy day. God! how pretty the Joyeuse girls were,
sitting in the front of their box! what a nosegay of rosy cheeks! And
then, on the next day, lo and behold the two oldest are sought in
marriage by--Impossible to say by whom, for M. Joyeuse suddenly found
himself under the porch of the Hemerlingue establishment, in front of a
swing-door surmounted by the words, "Counting Room" in gold letters.

"I shall always be the same," he said to himself with a little laugh,
wiping his forehead, on which the perspiration stood in beads.

Put in good humor by his fancy, by the blazing fires in the long line
of offices, with inlaid floors and wire gratings, keeping the secrets
confided to them in the subdued light of the ground floor, where one
could count gold pieces without being dazzled by them, M. Joyeuse bade
the other clerks a cheery good-morning, and donned his working-coat and
black velvet cap. Suddenly there was a whistle from above; and the
cashier, putting his ear to the tube, heard the coarse, gelatinous
voice of Hemerlingue, the only, the genuine Hemerlingue--the other, the
son, was always absent--asking for M. Joyeuse. What! was he still
dreaming? He was greatly excited as he took the little inner stairway,
which he had ascended so jauntily just before, and found himself in the
banker's office, a narrow room with a very high ceiling, and with no
other furniture than green curtains and enormous leather arm-chairs,
proportioned to the formidable bulk of the head of the house. He was
sitting there at his desk, which his paunch prevented him from
approaching, corpulent, puffing, and so yellow that his round face with
its hooked nose, the face of a fat, diseased owl, shone like a beacon
light in that solemn, gloomy office. A coarse, Moorish merchant
mouldering in the dampness of his little courtyard. His eyes gleamed an
instant beneath his heavy slow-moving eyelids when the clerk entered;
he motioned to him to approach, and slowly, coldly, with frequent
breaks in his breathless sentences, instead of: "M. Joyeuse, how many
daughters have you?" he said this:

"Joyeuse, you have assumed to criticize in our offices our recent
operations on the market in Tunis. No use to deny it. What you said has
been repeated to me word for word. And as I can't allow such things
from one of my clerks, I notify you that with the end of this month you
will cease to be in my employ."

The blood rushed to the clerk's face, receded, returned, causing each
time a confused buzzing in his ears, a tumult of thoughts and images in
his brain.

His daughters!

What would become of them?

Places are so scarce at that time of year!

Want stared him in the face, and also the vision of a poor devil
falling at Hemerlingue's feet, imploring him, threatening him, leaping
at his throat in an outburst of desperate frenzy. All this agitation
passed across his face like a gust of wind which wrinkles the surface
of a lake, hollowing out shifting caverns of all shapes therein; but he
stood mute on the same spot, and at a hint from his employer that he
might withdraw, went unsteadily down to resume his task in the
counting-room.

That evening, on returning to Rue Saint-Ferdinand, M. Joyeuse said
nothing to his daughters. He dared not. The thought of casting a shadow
upon that radiant gayety, which was the whole life of the house, of
dimming with great tears those sparkling eyes, seemed to him
unendurable. Moreover he was timid and weak, one of those who always
say: "Let us wait till to-morrow." So he waited before speaking, in the
first place until the month of November should be at an end, comforting
himself with the vague hope that Hemerlingue might change his mind, as
if he did not know that unyielding will, like the flabby, tenacious
grasp of a mollusk clinging to its gold ingot. Secondly, when his
accounts were settled and another clerk had taken his place at the tall
desk at which he had stood so long, he hoped speedily to find something
else and to repair the disaster before he was obliged to avow it.

Every morning he pretended to start for the office, allowed himself to
be equipped and escorted to the door as usual, his great leather bag
all ready for the numerous parcels he was to bring home at night.
Although he purposely forgot some of them because of the approach of
the perplexing close of the month, he no longer lacked time in which to
do his daughters' errands. He had his day to himself, an interminable
day, which he passed in running about Paris in search of a place. They
gave him addresses and excellent recommendations. But in that month of
December, when the air is so cold and the days are so short, a month
overburdened with expenses and anxieties, clerks suffer in patience and
employers too. Every one tries to end the year in tranquillity,
postponing to the month of January, when time takes a great leap onward
toward another station, all changes, ameliorations, attempts to lead a
new life.

Wherever M. Joyeuse called, he saw faces suddenly turn cold as soon as
he explained the purpose of his visit. "What! you are no longer with
Hemerlingue and Son? How does that happen?" He would explain the
condition of affairs as best he could, attributing it to a caprice of
his employer, that violent-tempered Hemerlingue whom all Paris knew;
but he was conscious of a cold, suspicious accent in the uniform reply:
"Come and see us after the holidays." And, timid as he was at best, he
reached a point at which he hardly dared apply anywhere, but would walk
back and forth twenty times in front of the same door, nor would he
ever have crossed the threshold but for the thought of his daughters.
That thought alone would grasp his shoulder, put heart into his legs
and send him to opposite ends of Paris in the same day, to exceedingly
vague addresses given him by comrades, to a great bone-black factory at
Aubervilliers, for instance, where they made him call three days in
succession, and all for nothing.

Oh! the long walks in the rain and frost, the closed doors, the
employer who has gone out or has visitors, the promises given and
suddenly retracted, the disappointed hopes, the enervating effect of
long suspense, the humiliation in store for every man who asks for
work, as if it were a shameful thing to be without it. M. Joyeuse
experienced all those heartsickening details, and he learned too how
the will becomes weary and discouraged in the face of persistent
ill-luck. And you can imagine whether the bitter martyrdom of "the man
in search of a place" was intensified by the fantasies of his
imagination, by the chimeras which rose before him from the pavements
of Paris, while he pursued his quest in every direction.

For a whole month he was like one of those pitiful marionettes who
soliloquize and gesticulate on the sidewalks, and from whom the
slightest jostling on the part of the crowd extorts a somnambulistic
ejaculation: "I said as much," or "Don't you doubt it, monsieur." You
pass on, you almost laugh, but you are moved to pity at the
unconsciousness of those poor devils, possessed by a fixed idea, blind
men led by dreams, drawn on by an invisible leash. The terrible feature
of it all was this, that when M. Joyeuse returned home, after those
long, cruel days of inaction and fatigue, he must enact the comedy of
the man returning from work, must describe the events of the day, tell
what he had heard, the gossip of the office, with which he was always
accustomed to entertain the young ladies.

In humble households there is always one name that comes to the lips
more frequently than others, a name that is invoked on days of
disaster, that plays a part in every wish, in every hope, even in the
play of the children, who are permeated with the idea of its
importance, a name that fills the role of a sub-providence in the
family, or rather of a supernatural household god. It is the name of
the employer, the manager of the factory, the landlord, the minister,
the man, in short, who holds in his powerful hand the welfare, the very
existence of the family. In the Joyeuse household it was Hemerlingue,
always Hemerlingue; ten, twenty times a day the name was mentioned in
the conversation of the girls, who associated it with all their plans,
with the most trivial details of their girlish ambitions: "If
Hemerlingue would consent. It all depends on Hemerlingue." And nothing
could be more delightful than the familiar way in which those children
spoke of the wealthy boor whom they had never seen.

They asked questions about him. Had their father spoken to him? Was he
in good humor? To think that all of us, however humble we may be,
however cruelly enslaved by destiny, have always below us some poor
creature more humble, more enslaved than ourselves, in whose eyes we
are great, in whose eyes we are gods, and, as gods, indifferent,
scornful or cruel.

We can fancy M. Joyeuse's torture when he was compelled to invent
incidents, to manufacture anecdotes concerning the villain who had
dismissed him so heartlessly after ten years of faithful service.
However, he played his little comedy in such way as to deceive them all
completely. They had noticed only one thing, and that was that their
father, on returning home at night, always had a hearty appetite for
the evening meal. I should say as much! Since he had lost his place,
the poor man had ceased to eat any luncheon.

The days passed. M. Joyeuse found nothing. Yes, he was offered a
clerkship at the _Caisse Territoriale_, which he declined, being too
well acquainted with the banking operations, with all the nooks and
corners of financial Bohemia in general and the _Caisse Territoriale_
in particular, to step foot in that den.

"But," said Passajon--for it was Passajon, who, happening to meet the
good man and finding that he was unemployed, had spoken to him of
taking service with Paganetti--"but I tell you again that it's all
right. We have plenty of money. We pay our debts. I have been paid;
just see what a dandy I am."

In truth, the old clerk had a new livery, and his paunch protruded
majestically beneath his tunic with silver buttons. For all that, M.
Joyeuse had withstood the temptation, even after Passajon, opening wide
his bulging eyes, had whispered with emphasis in his ear these words
big with promise:

"The Nabob is in it."

Even after that, M. Joyeuse had had the courage to say no. Was it not
better to die of hunger than to enter the service of an unsubstantial
house whose books he might some day be called upon to examine as an
expert before a court of justice?

So he continued to wander about; but he was discouraged and had
abandoned his search for employment. As it was necessary for him to
remain away from home, he loitered in front of the shop-windows on the
quays, leaned for hours on the parapets, watching the river and the
boats discharging their cargoes. He became one of those idlers whom we
see in the front rank of all street crowds, taking refuge from a shower
under porches, drawing near the stoves on which the asphalters boil
their tar in the open air, to warm themselves, and sinking on benches
along the boulevard when their feet can no longer carry them.

What an excellent way of lengthening one's days, to do nothing!

On certain days, however, when M. Joyeuse was too tired or the weather
too inclement, he waited at the end of the street until the young
ladies had closed their window, then went back to the house, hugging
the walls, hurried upstairs, holding his breath as he passed his own
door, and took refuge with the photographer, Andre Maranne, who, being
aware of his catastrophe, offered him the compassionate welcome which
poor devils extend to one another. Customers are rare so near the
barriers. He would sit for many hours in the studio, talking in an
undertone, reading by his friend's side, listening to the rain on the
window-panes or the wind whistling as in mid-ocean, rattling the old
doors and window-frames in the graveyard of demolished buildings below.
On the next floor he heard familiar sounds, full of charm for him,
snatches of song accompanying the work of willing hands, a chorus of
laughter, the piano lesson given by _Grandmamma_, the tic-tac of the
metronome, a delicious domestic hurly-burly that warmed his heart. He
lived with his darlings, who certainly had no idea that they had him so
near at hand.

Once, while Maranne was out, M. Joyeuse, acting as a faithful custodian
of the studio and its brand-new equipment, heard two little taps on the
ceiling of the fourth floor, two separate, very distinct taps, then a
cautious rumbling like the scampering of a mouse. The intimacy between
the photographer and his neighbors justified this prisoner-like method
of communication, but what did that mean? How should he answer what
seemed like a call? At all hazards he repeated the two taps, the soft
drumming sound, and the interview stopped there. When Andre Maranne
returned, he explained it. It was very simple: sometimes, during the
day, the young ladies, who never saw their neighbor except in the
evening, took that means of inquiring for his health and whether
business was improving. The signal he had heard signified: "Is business
good to-day?" and M. Joyeuse had instinctively but unwittingly replied:
"Not bad for the season." Although young Maranne blushed hotly as he
said it, M. Joyeuse believed him. But the idea of frequent
communication between the two households made him fear lest his secret
should be divulged, and thereafter he abstained from what he called his
"artistic days." However, the time was drawing near when he could no
longer conceal his plight, for the end of the month was at hand,
complicated by the end of the year.

Paris was already assuming the usual festal aspect of the last weeks of
December. That is about all that is left in the way of national or
popular merrymaking. The revels of the carnival died with Gavarni, the
religious festivals, the music of which we scarcely hear above the din
of the streets, seclude themselves behind the heavy church doors, the
Fifteenth of August has never been aught but the Saint-Charlemagne of
the barracks; but Paris has retained its respect for the first day of
the year.

Early in December a violent epidemic of childishness is apparent in the
streets. Wagons pass, laden with gilded drums, wooden horses,
playthings by the score. In the manufacturing districts, from top to
bottom of the five-story buildings, former palaces of the Marais, where
the shops have such lofty ceilings and stately double doors, people
work all night, handling gauze, flowers and straw, fastening labels on
satin-covered boxes, sorting out, marking and packing; the innumerable
details of the toy trade, that great industry upon which Paris places
the sign-manual of its refined taste. There is a smell of green wood,
of fresh paint, of glistening varnish, and in the dust of the garrets,
on the rickety stairways where the common people deposit all the mud
through which they have tramped, chips of rosewood are strewn about,
clippings of satin and velvet, bits of tinsel, all the debris of the
treasures employed to dazzle childish eyes. Then the shop-windows array
themselves. Behind the transparent glass the gilt binding of gift-books
ascends like a gleaming wave under the gas-lights, rich stuffs of
kaleidoscopic, tempting hues display their heavy, graceful folds, while
the shop-girls, with their hair piled high upon their heads and ribbons
around their necks, puff their wares with the little finger in the air,
or fill silk bags, into which the bonbons fall like a shower of pearls.

But face to face with this bourgeois industry, firmly established and
intrenched behind its gorgeous shop fronts, is the ephemeral industry
carried on in the stalls built of plain boards, open to the wind from
the street, standing in a double row which gives the boulevard the
aspect of a foreign market place. There are to be found the real
interest, the poetry of New Year's gifts. Luxurious in the Madeleine
quarter, less ostentatious toward Boulevard Saint-Denis, cheaper and
more tawdry as you approach the Bastille, these little booths change
their character to suit their customers, estimate their chances of
success according to the condition of the purses of the passers-by.
Between them stand tables covered with trifles, miracles of the petty
Parisian trades, made of nothing, fragile and insignificant, but
sometimes whirled away by fashion in one of its fierce gusts, because
of their very lightness. And lastly, along the sidewalks, lost in the
line of vehicles which brush against them as they stroll along, the
orange-women put the final touch to this ambulatory commerce, heaping
up the sun-colored fruit under their red lanterns, and crying: "La
Valence!" in the fog, the uproar, the excessive haste with which Paris
rushes to meet the close of the year.

Ordinarily M. Joyeuse made a part of the happy crowd that throngs the
streets with a jingling of money in the pockets and packages in every
hand. He would run about with _Grandmamma_ in quest of presents for the
young ladies, stopping in front of the booths of the small shopkeepers
whom the slightest indication of a customer excites beyond measure, for
they are unfamiliar with the art of selling and have based upon that
brief season visions of extraordinary profits. And there would be
consultations and meditations, a never-ending perplexity as to the
final selection in that busy little brain, always in advance of the
present and of the occupation of the moment.

But that year, alas! there was nothing of the sort. He wandered sadly
through the joyous city, sadder and more discouraged by reason of all
the activity around him, jostled and bumped like all those who impede
the circulation of the industrious, his heart beating with constant
dread, for _Grandmamma_, for several days past, had been making
significant, prophetic remarks at table on the subject of New Year's
gifts. For that reason he avoided being left alone with her and had
forbidden her coming to meet him at the office. But, struggle as he
would, the time was drawing near, he felt it in his bones, when further
mystery would be impossible and his secret would be divulged. Was this
_Grandmamma_ of whom M. Joyeuse stood in such fear such a terrible
creature, pray? _Mon Dieu_, no! A little stern, that was all, with a
sweet smile which promised instant pardon to every culprit. But M.
Joyeuse was naturally cowardly and timid; twenty years of housekeeping
with a masterful woman, "a person of gentle birth," had enslaved him
forever, like those convicts who are subjected to surveillance for a
certain period after their sentences have expired. And he was subjected
to it for life.

One evening the Joyeuse family was assembled in the small salon, the
last relic of its splendor, where there still were two stuffed
arm-chairs, an abundance of crochet-work, a piano, two Carcel lamps
with little green caps, and a small table covered with trivial
ornaments.

The true family exists only among the lowly.

For economy's sake only one fire was lighted for the whole house, and
only one lamp around which all their occupations, all their diversions
were grouped; an honest family lamp, whose old-fashioned shade--with
night scenes, studded with brilliant points--had been the wonder and
the delight of all the girls in their infancy. Emerging gracefully from
the shadow of the rest of the room, four youthful faces, fair or dark,
smiling or engrossed, bent forward in the warm, cheerful rays, which
illumined them to the level of the eyes and seemed to feed the fire of
their glances, the radiant youth beneath their transparent brows, to
watch over them, to shelter them, to protect them from the black cold
wind without, from ghosts, pitfalls, misery and terror, from all the
sinister things that lurk in an out-of-the-way quarter of Paris on a
winter's night.

Thus assembled in a small room near the top of the deserted house, in
the warmth and security of its neatly kept and comfortable home, the
Joyeuse family resembles a family of birds in a nest at the top of a
tall tree. They sew and read and talk a little. A burst of flame, the
crackling of the fire, are the only sounds to be heard, save for an
occasional exclamation from M. Joyeuse, who sits just outside of his
little circle, hiding in the shadow his anxious brow and all the
vagaries of his imagination. Now he fancies that, in the midst of the
distress by which he is overwhelmed, the absolute necessity of
confessing everything to his children to-night, to-morrow at latest,
unforeseen succor comes to him. Hemerlingue, seized with remorse, sends
to him, to all the others who worked on the Tunisian loan, the
accustomed December bonus. It is brought by a tall footman: "From
Monsieur le Baron." The _Imaginaire_ says this aloud. The pretty faces
turn to look at him; they laugh and move about, and the poor wretch
wakes with a start.

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