The Nabob, Alphonse Daudet [new books to read .txt] 📗

opposite him, by the side of this giant brute, and the wretch has put his arm round her waist under her cape.
"Remove your hand, sir!" M. Joyeuse has already said twice over. The other has only sneered. Now he wishes to kiss Elise.
"Ah, rascal!"
Too feeble to defend his daughter, M. Joyeuse, foaming with rage, draws his knife from his pocket, stabs the insolent fellow full in the breast, and with head high goes off, strong in the right of an outraged father, to make his declaration at the nearest police-station.
"I have just killed a man in an omnibus!" At the sound of his own voice actually uttering these sinister words, but not in the police-station, the poor fellow wakes us, guesses from the bewildered manner of the passengers that he must have spoken the words aloud, and very quickly takes advantage of the conductor's call, "Saint-Philippe--Pantheon--Bastille--" to alight, feeling greatly confused, amid general stupefaction.
This imagination constantly on the stretch, gave to M. Joyeuse a singular physiognomy, feverish and worn, in strong contrast with the general correct appearance of a subordinate clerk which he presented. In one day he lived so many passionate existences. The race is more numerous than one thinks of these waking dreamers, in whom a too restricted fate compresses forces unemployed and heroic faculties. Dreaming is the safety-valve through which all those expend themselves with terrible ebullitions, as of the vapour of a furnace and floating images that are forthwith dissipated into air. From these visions some return radiant, others exhausted and discouraged, as they find themselves once more on the every-day level. M. Joyeuse was of these latter, rising without ceasing to heights whence a man cannot but re-descend, somewhat bruised by the velocity of the transit.
Now, one morning that our "visionary" had left his house at his habitual hour, and under the usual circumstances, he began at the turning of the Rue Saint-Ferdinand one of his little private romances. As the end of the year was at hand, perhaps it was the hammer-strokes on a wooden hut which was being erected in the neighbouring timber-yard that caused his thoughts to turn to "presents--New Year's Day." And immediately the word bounty implanted itself in his mind as the first landmark of a marvelous story. In the month of December all persons in Hemerlingue's service received double pay, and you know that in small households there are founded on windfalls of this kind a thousand projects, ambitious or kind, presents to be made, a piece of furniture to be replaced, a little sum of money to be saved in a drawer against the unforeseen.
In simple fact, M. Joyeuse was not rich. His wife, a Mlle. de Saint-Armand, tormented with ideas of greatness and society, had set this little clerk's household on a ruinous footing, and though since her death three years had passed during which Bonne Maman had managed the housekeeping with so much wisdom, they had not yet been able to save anything, so heavy had proved the burden of the past. Suddenly it occurred to the good fellow that this year the bounty would be larger by reason of the increase of work which had been caused by the Tunisian loan. The loan constituted a very fine stroke of business for the firm, too fine even, for M. Joyeuse had permitted himself to remark in the office that this time "Hemerlingue & Son had shaved the Turk a little too close."
"Certainly, yes, the bounty will be doubled," reflected the visionary, as he walked; and already he saw himself, a month thence, mounting with his comrades, for the New Year's visit, the little staircase that led to Hemerlingue's apartment. He announced the good news to them; then he detained M. Joyeuse for a few words in private. And, behold, that master habitually so cold in his manner, sheathed in his yellow fat as in a bale of raw silk, became affectionate, paternal, communicative. He desired to know how many daughters Joyeuse had.
"I have three; no, I should say, four, M. le Baron. I always confuse them. The eldest is such a sensible girl."
Further he wished to know their ages.
"Aline is twenty, M. le Baron. She is the eldest. Then we have Elise, who is preparing for the examination which she must pass when she is eighteen. Henriette, who is fourteen, and Zara or Yaia who is only twelve."
That pet name of Yaia intensely amused M. le Baron, who inquired next what were the resources of this interesting family.
"My salary, M. le Baron; nothing else. I had a little money put aside, but my poor wife's illness, the education of the girls--"
"What you are earning is not sufficient, my dear Joyeuse. I raise your salary to a thousand francs a month."
"Oh, M. le Baron, it is too much."
But although he had uttered this last sentence aloud, in the ear of a policeman who watched with a mistrustful eye the little man pass, gesticulating and nodding his head, the poor visionary awoke not. With admiration he saw himself returning home, announcing the news to his daughters, taking them to the theatre in the evening in celebration of the happy day. _Dieu!_ how pretty they looked in the front of their box, the Demoiselles Joyeuse, what a bouquet of rosy faces! And then, the next day, the two eldest asked in marriage by--Impossible to determine by whom, for M. Joyeuse had just suddenly found himself once more beneath the arch of the Hemerlingue establishment, before the swing-door surmounted by a "counting-house" in letters of gold.
"I shall always be the same, it seems," said he to himself, laughing a little and passing his hand over his forehead, on which the perspiration stood in drops.
In a good humour as the result of this pleasant fancy and at the sight of the fire crackling in the suite of parquet-floored offices, with their screens of iron trellis-work and their air of secrecy in the cold light of the ground floor, where one could count the pieces of gold without dazzling his eyes, M. Joyeuse gave a gay greeting to the other clerks and slipped on his working coat and his black velvet cap. Suddenly, some one whistled from upstairs, and the cashier, applying his ear to the tube, heard the oily and gelatinous voice of Hemerlingue, the sole and veritable Hemerlingue--the other, the son, was always absent--asking for M. Joyeuse.
What! Could the dream be continuing?
He was conscious of a great agitation; took the little inside staircase which he had seen himself ascending just before so bravely, and found himself in the banker's private room, a narrow apartment, with a very high ceiling, furnished only with green curtains and enormous leather easy chairs of a size proportioned to the terrific bulk of the head of the house. He was there, seated at his desk which his belly prevented him from approaching very closely, obese, ill-shaped, and so yellow that his round face with its hooked nose, the head of a fat and sick owl, suggested as it were a light at the end of the solemn and gloomy room. A rich Moorish merchant grown mouldy in the damp of his little court-yard. Beneath his heavy eyelids, raised with an effort, his glance glittered for a second when the accountant entered; he signed to him to approach, and slowly, coldly, pausing to take breath between his sentences, instead of "M. Joyeuse, how many daughters have you?" he said this:
"Joyeuse, you have allowed yourself to criticise in the office our last operations in the Tunis market. Useless to defend yourself. Your remarks have been reported to me word for word. And as I am unable to admit them from the mouth of one in my service, I give you notice that dating from the end of this month you cease to be a member of my establishment."
A wave of blood mounted to the accountant's face, fell back, returned again, bringing each time a confused whizzing into his ears, into his brain a tumult of thoughts and images.
His daughters!
What was to become of them?
Employment is so hard to find at that period of the year.
Poverty appeared before his eyes and also the vision of an unfortunate man falling at Hemerlingue's feet, supplicating him, threatening him, springing at his throat in an access of despairing rage. All this agitation passed over his features like a gust of wind which throws the surface of a lake into ripples, fashioning there all manner of mobile whirlpools; but he remained mute, standing in the same place, and upon the master's intimation that he could withdraw, went down with tottering step to resume his work in the counting-house.
In the evening when he went home to the Rue Saint-Ferdinand, M. Joyeuse told his daughters nothing. He did not dare. The idea of darkening that radiant gaiety which was the life of the house, of making dull with heavy tears those pretty bright eyes, was insupportable to him. Timorous, too, and weak, he was of those who always say, "Let us wait till to-morrow." He waited therefore before speaking, at first until the month of November should be ended, deluding himself with the vague hope that Hemerlingue might change his mind, as though he did not know that will as of some mollusk flabby and tenacious upon its ingot of gold. Then when his salary had been paid up and another accountant had taken his place before the high desk at which he had stood for so long, he hoped to find something else quickly and repair his misfortune before being obliged to confess it.
Every morning he feigned to start for the office, allowed himself to be equipped and accompanied to the door as usual, his huge leather portfolio all ready for the evening's numerous commissions. Although he would forget some of them on purpose because of the approaching and so problematical end of the month, he did not lack time now to execute them. He had his day to himself, the whole of an interminable day which he spent in rushing about Paris in search for an employment. People gave him addresses, excellent recommendations. But in that terrible month of December, so cold and with such short hours of daylight, bringing with it so many expenses and preoccupations, employees need to take patience and employers also. Each man tries to end the year in peace, postponing to the month of January, to that great leap of time towards a fresh halting-place, any changes, ameliorations, attempts at a new life.
In every house where M. Joyeuse presented himself, he beheld faces suddenly grow cold as soon as he explained the object of his visit.
"What! You are no longer with Hemerlingue & Son? How is that?"
He would explain the matter as best he could through a caprice of the head of the firm, the ferocious Hemerlingue whom Paris knew; but he was conscious of a coldness, a mistrust in the uniform reply which he received: "Call on us again after the holidays." And, timid as he was to begin with, he reached a point at which he could no longer bring himself to call on any one, a point at which he could walk past the same door a score of times and never have crossed its threshold at all had it not been for the thought of his daughters. This alone pushed him along by the shoulders, put heart in his legs, despatched him in the course of the same day to the opposite extremities of Paris, to very vague addresses given to him by comrades, to a great manufactory of animal black at Aubervilliers, where he was made to return for nothing three days in succession.
Oh, the journeys in the rain, in the frost, the closed doors, the master who is out