Finally, to fill the gaps among these figures I have sketched, the Turkish crowd--Tunisians, Moors, Egyptians, Levantines; and, mingled with this exotic element, a whole variegated Parisian Bohemia of ruined n.o.bleman, doubtful traders, penniless journalists, inventors of strange products, people arrived from the south without a farthing, all the lost ships needing revictualling, or flocks of birds wandering aimlessly in the night, which were drawn by this great fortune as by the light of a beacon. The Nabob admitted this miscellaneous collection of individuals to his table out of kindness, out of generosity, out of weakness, by reason of his easy-going manners, joined to an absolute ignorance and a survival of that loneliness of the exile, of that need for expansion which, down yonder in Tunis, in his splendid palace of the Bardo, had caused him to welcome everybody who hailed from France, from the small tradesman exporting Parisian wares to the famous pianist on tour and the consul-general himself.
As one listened to those various accents, those foreign intonations, gruff or faltering, as one gazed upon those widely different physiognomies, some violent, barbarous, vulgar, others hyper-civilized, worn, suggestive only of the Boulevard and as it were flaccid, one noted that the same diversity was evident also among the servants who, some apparently lads just out of an office, insolent in manner, with heads of hair like a dentist"s or a bath-attendant"s, busied themselves among Ethiopians standing motionless and shining like candelabra of black marble, and it was impossible to say exactly where one was; in any case, you would never have imagined yourself to be in the Place Vendome, right in the beating heart and very centre of the life of our modern Paris.
Upon the table there was a like importation of exotic dishes, saffron or anchovy sauces, spices mixed up with Turkish delicacies, chickens with fried almonds, and all this taken together with the ba.n.a.lity of the interior, the gilding of the panels, the shrill ringing of the new bells, gave the impression of a _table d"hote_ in some big hotel in Smyrna or Calcutta, or of a luxurious dining-saloon on board a transatlantic liner, the "Pereire" or the "Sinai."
It might seem that this diversity among the guests--I was about to say among the pa.s.sengers--ought to have caused the meal to be animated and noisy. Far otherwise. They all ate nervously, watching each other out of eye-corners, and even those most accustomed to society, those who appeared the most at their ease, had in their glance the wandering look and the distraction of a fixed idea, a feverish anxiety which caused them to speak without relevance and to listen without understanding a word of what was being said to them.
Suddenly the door of the dining-room opened.
"Ah, here comes Jenkins!" exclaimed the Nabob delightedly. "Welcome, welcome, doctor. How are you, my friend?"
A smile to those around, a hearty shake of his host"s hand, and Jenkins sat down opposite him, next to Monpavon, before a place at the table which a servant had just prepared in all haste and without having received any order, exactly as at a _table d"hote_. Among those preoccupied and feverish faces, this one at any rate stood out in contrast by its good humour, its cheerfulness, and that loquacious and flattering benevolence which makes the Irish in a way the Gascons of England. And what a splendid appet.i.te! With what heartiness, what ease of conscience he used his white teeth as he talked!
"Well, Jansoulet, you have read it?"
"What?"
"How, then! you do not know? You have not read what the _Messenger_ says about you this morning?"
Beneath the dark tan of his cheeks the Nabob blushed like a child, and, his eyes shining with pleasure:
"Is it possible--the _Messenger_ has spoken of me?"
"Through two columns. How is it that Moessard has not shown it to you?"
"Oh," put in Moessard modestly, "it was not worth the trouble."
He was a little journalist, with a fair complexion and smart in his dress, sufficiently good-looking, but with a face which presented that worn appearance noticeable as the special mark of waiters in night-restaurants, actors, and light women, and produced by conventional grimacing and the wan reflection of gaslight. He was reputed to be the paid lover of an exiled and profligate queen. The rumour was whispered around him, and, in his own world, secured him an envied and despicable position.
Jansoulet insisted on reading the article, impatient to know what had been said of him. Unfortunately Jenkins had left his copy at the duke"s.
"Let some one go fetch me a _Messenger_ quickly," said the Nabob to the servant behind him.
Moessard intervened.
"It is needless. I must have the thing on me somewhere."
And with the absence of ceremony of the tavern _habitue_, of the reporter who scribbles his paragraph with his gla.s.s beside him, the journalist drew out a pocket-book, crammed full of notes, stamped papers, newspaper cuttings, notes written on glazed paper with crests, which he proceeded to litter over the table, pushing away his plate in order to search for the proof of his article.
"There you are." He pa.s.sed it over to Jansoulet; but Jenkins besought him:
"No, no; read it aloud."
The company having echoed the request in chorus, Moessard took back his proof and commenced to read in a loud voice, "The Bethlehem Society and Mr. Bernard Jansoulet," a long dithyramb in favour of artificial lactation, written from notes made by Jenkins, which were recognisable through certain fine phrases much affected by the Irishman, such as "the long martyrology of childhood," "the sordid traffic in the breast," "the beneficent nanny-goat as foster-mother," and finishing, after a pompous description of the splendid establishment at Nanterre, with a eulogy of Jenkins and a glorification of Jansoulet: "O Bernard Jansoulet, benefactor of childhood!" It was a sight to see the vexed, scandalized faces of the guests. What an intriguer was this Moessard! What an impudent piece of sycophantry! And the same envious, disdainful smile quivered on every mouth. And the deuce of it was that a man had to applaud, to appear charmed, the master of the house not being weary as yet of incense, and taking everything very seriously, both the article and the applause it provoked. His big face shone during the reading.
Often, down yonder, far away, had he dreamed a dream of having his praises sung like this in the newspapers of Paris, of being somebody in that society, the first among all, on which the entire world has its eyes fixed as on the bearer of a torch. Now, that dream was becoming a reality. He gazed upon all these people seated at his board, the sumptuous dessert, this panelled dining-room as high, certainly, as the church of his native village; he listened to the dull murmur of Paris rolling along in its carriages and treading the pavements beneath his windows, with the intimate conviction that he was about to become an important piece in that active and complicated machine. And then, through the atmosphere of physical well-being produced by the meal, between the lines of that triumphant vindication, by an effect of contrast, he beheld unfold itself his own existence, his youth, adventurous as it was sad, the days without bread, the nights without shelter. Then suddenly, the reading having come to an end, his joy overflowing in one of those southern effusions which force thought into speech, he cried, beaming upon his guests with that frank and thick-lipped smile of his:
"Ah, my friends, my dear friends, if you could know how happy I am! What pride I feel!"
Scarce six weeks had pa.s.sed since he had landed in France. Excepting two or three compatriots, those whom he thus addressed as his friends were but the acquaintances of a day, and that through his having lent them money. This sudden expansion, therefore, appeared sufficiently extraordinary; but Jansoulet, too much under the sway of emotion to notice anything, continued:
"After what I have just heard, when I behold myself here in this great Paris, surrounded by all its wealth of ill.u.s.trious names, of distinguished intellects, and then call up the remembrance of my father"s booth! For I was born in a booth. My father used to sell old nails at the corner of a boundary stone in the Bourg-Saint-Andeol. If we had bread in the house every day and stew every Sunday it was the most we had to expect. Ask Caba.s.su whether it was not so. He knew me in those days. He can tell you whether I am not speaking the truth. Oh, yes, I have known what poverty is." He threw back his head with an impulse of pride as he savoured the odour of truffles diffused through the suffocating atmosphere. "I have known it, and the real thing too, and for a long time. I have been cold. I have known hunger--genuine hunger, remember--the hunger that intoxicates, that wrings the stomach, sets circles dancing in your head, deprives you of sight as if the inside of your eyes was being gouged out with an oyster-knife. I have pa.s.sed days in bed for want of an overcoat to go out in; fortunate at that when I had a bed, which was not always. I have sought my bread from every trade, and that bread cost me such bitter toil, it was so black, so tough, that in my mouth I keep still the flavour of its acrid and mouldy taste. And thus until I was thirty. Yes, my friends, at thirty years of age--and I am not yet fifty--I was still a beggar, without a sou, without a future, with the remorseful thought of the poor old mother, become a widow, who was half-dying of hunger away yonder in her booth, and to whom I had nothing to give."
Around this Amphitryon recounting the story of his evil days the faces of his hearers expressed curiosity. Some appeared shocked, Monpavon especially. For him, this exposure of rags was in execrable taste, an absolute breach of good manners. Cardailhac, sceptical and dainty, an enemy to scenes of emotion, with face set as if it were hypnotized, sliced a fruit on the end of his fork into wafers as thin as cigarette papers.
The governor exhibited, on the contrary, a flatly admiring demeanour, uttering exclamations of amazement and compa.s.sion; while, not far away, in singular contrast, Brahmin Bey, the thunderbolt of war, upon whom this reading followed by a lecture after a heavy meal had had the effect of inducing a restorative slumber, slept with his mouth open beneath his white moustache, his face congested by his collar, which had slipped up. But the most general expression was one of indifference and boredom.
What could it matter to them, I ask you; what had they to do with Jansoulet"s childhood in the Bourg-Saint-Andeol, the trials he had endured, the way in which he had trudged his path? They had not come to listen to idle nonsense of that kind. Airs of interest falsely affected, glances that counted the ovals of the ceiling or the bread-crumbs on the table-cloth, mouths compressed to stifle a yawn, betrayed, accordingly, the general impatience provoked by this untimely story. Yet he himself seemed not to weary of it. He found pleasure in the recital of his sufferings past, even as the mariner safe in port, remembering his voyagings over distant seas, and the perils and the great shipwrecks.
There followed the story of his good luck, the prodigious chance that had placed him suddenly upon the road to fortune. "I was wandering about the quays of Ma.r.s.eilles with a comrade as poverty-stricken as myself, who is become rich, he also, in the service of the Bey, and, after having been my chum, my partner, is now my most cruel enemy. I may mention his name, _pardi_! It is sufficiently well known--Hemerlingue.
Yes, gentlemen, the head of the great banking house. "Hemerlingue & Co." had not in those days even the wherewithal to buy a pennyworth of _clauvisses_ on the quay. Intoxicated by the atmosphere of travel that one breathes down there, the idea came into our minds of starting out, of going to seek our livelihood in some country where the sun shines, since the lands of mist were so inhospitable to us. But where to go? We did what sailors sometimes do in order to decide in what low hole they will squander their pay. You fix a sc.r.a.p of paper on the brim of your hat. You make the hat spin on a walking-stick; when it stops spinning you follow the pointer. In our case the paper needle pointed towards Tunis. A week later I landed at Tunis with half a louis in my pocket, and I came back to-day with twenty-five millions!"
An electric shock pa.s.sed round the table; there was a gleam in every eye, even in those of the servants. Cardailhac said, "Phew!" Monpavon"s nose descended to common humanity.
"Yes, my boys, twenty-five millions in liquidated cash, without speaking of all that I have left in Tunis, of my two palaces at the Bardo, of my vessels in the harbour of La Goulette, of my diamonds, of my precious stones, which are worth certainly more than the double. And you know,"
he added, with his kindly smile and in his hoa.r.s.e, plebeian voice, "when that is done there will still be more."
The whole company rose to its feet, galvanized.
"Bravo! Ah, bravo!"
"Splendid!"
"Deuced clever--deuced clever!"
"Now, that is something worth talking about."
"A man like him ought to be in the Chamber."
"He will be, _per Bacco_! I answer for it," said the governor in a piercing voice; and in the transport of admiration, not knowing how to express his enthusiasm, he seized the fat, hairy hand of the Nabob and on an unreflective impulse raised it to his lips. They are demonstrative in his country. Everybody was standing up; no one sat down again.
Jansoulet, beaming, had risen in his turn, and, throwing down his serviette: "Let us go and have some coffee," he said.
A glad tumult immediately spread through the salons, vast apartments in which light, decoration, sumptuousness, were represented by gold alone.
It seemed to fall from the ceiling in blinding rays, it oozed from the walls in mouldings, sashes, framings of every kind. A little of it remained on your hands if you moved a piece of furniture or opened a window; and the very hangings, dipped in this Pactolus, kept on their straight folds the rigidity, the sparkle of a metal. But nothing bearing the least personal stamp, nothing intimate, nothing thought out. The monotonous luxury of the furnished flat. And there was a re-enforcement of this impression of a moving camp, of a merely provisory home, in the suggestion of travel which hovered like an uncertainty or a menace over this fortune derived from far-off sources.
Coffee having been served, in the Eastern manner, with all its grounds, in little cups filigreed with silver, the guests grouped themselves round, making haste to drink, scalding themselves, keeping watchful eyes on each other and especially on the Nabob as they looked out for the favourable moment to spring upon him, draw him into some corner of those immense rooms, and at length negotiate their loan. For this it was that they had been awaiting for two hours; this was the object of their visit and the fixed idea which gave them during the meal that absent, falsely attentive manner. But here no more constraint, no more pretence. In that peculiar social world of theirs it is of common knowledge that in the Nabob"s busy life the hour of coffee remains the only time free for private audiences, and each desiring to profit by it, all having come there in order to s.n.a.t.c.h a handful of wool from the golden fleece offered them with so much good nature, people no longer talk, they no longer listen, every man is absorbed in his own errand of business.
It is the good Jenkins who begins. Having drawn his friend Jansoulet aside into a recess, he submits to him the estimates for the house at Nanterre. A big purchase, indeed! A cash price of a hundred and fifty thousand francs, then considerable expenses in connection with getting the place into proper order, the personal staff, the bedding, the nanny-goats for milking purposes, the manager"s carriage, the omnibuses going to meet the children coming by every train. A great deal of money.
But how well off and comfortable they will be there, those dear little things! what a service rendered to Paris, to humanity! The Government cannot fail to reward with a bit of red ribbon so disinterested, so philanthropic a devotion. "The Cross, on the 15th of August." With these magic words Jenkins will obtain everything he desires. In his merry, guttural voice, which seems always as though it were hailing a boat in a fog, the Nabob calls, "Bompain!"
The man in the fez, quickly leaving the liqueur-stand, walks majestically across the room, whispers, moves away, and returns with an inkstand and a counterfoil check-book from which the slips detach themselves and fly away of their own accord. A fine thing, wealth!
To sign a check on his knee for two hundred thousand francs troubles Jansoulet no more than to draw a louis from his pocket.
Furious, with noses in their cups, the others watch this little scene from a distance. Then, as Jenkins takes his departure, bright, smiling, with a nod to the various groups, Monpavon seizes the governor: "Now is our chance." And both, springing on the Nabob, drag him off towards a couch, oblige him almost forcibly to sit down, press upon each side of him with a ferocious little laugh that seems to signify, "What shall we do with him now?" Get the money out of him, the largest amount possible.
It is needed, to set afloat once more the Territorial Bank, for years lain aground on a sand-bank, buried to the very top of its masts. A superb operation, this re-flotation, if these two gentlemen are to be believed, for the submerged bank is full of ingots, of precious things, of the thousand various forms of wealth of a new country discussed by everybody and known by none.
In founding this unique establishment, Paganetti of Porto-Vecchio had as his aim to monopolize the commercial development of the whole of Corsica: iron mines, sulphur mines, copper mines, marble quarries, coral fisheries, oyster beds, water ferruginous and sulphurous, immense forests of thuya, of cork-oak, and to establish for the facilitation of this development a network of railways over the island, with a service of packet-boats in addition. Such is the gigantic undertaking to which he has devoted himself. He has sunk considerable capital in it, and it is the new-comer, the workman of the last hour, who will gain the whole profit.
While with his Italian accent and violent gestures the Corsican enumerates the "splendours" of the affair, Monpavon, haughty, and with an air calculated to command confidence, nods his head approvingly with conviction, and from time to time, when he judges the moment propitious, throws into the conversation the name of the Duc de Mora, which never fails in its effect on the Nabob.
"Well, in short, how much would be required?"