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

or engaged, the promises given and immediately withdrawn, the hopes deceived, the enervation of hours of waiting, the humiliations reserved for every man who asks for work, as though it were a shameful thing to lack it. M. Joyeuse knew all these melancholy things and, too, the good will that tires and grows discouraged before the persistence of evil fortune. And you may imagine how the hard martyrdom of "the man who seeks a place" was rendered tenfold more bitter by the mirages of his imagination, by those chimeras which rose before him from the Paris pavements as over them he journeyed along on foot in every direction.
For a month he was one of those woeful puppets, talking in monologue, gesticulating on the footways, from whom every chance collision with the crowd wrests an exclamation as of one walking in his sleep. "I told you so," or "I have no doubt of it, sir." One passes by, almost one would laugh, but one is seized with pity before the unconsciousness of those unhappy men possessed by a fixed idea, blind whom the dream leads, drawn along by an invisible leash. The terrible thing was that after those long, cruel days of inaction and fatigue, when M. Joyeuse returned home, he had perforce to play the comedy of the man returning from his work, to recount the incidents of the day, the things he had heard, the gossip of the office with which he had been always wont to entertain his girls.
In humble homes there is always a name which comes up more often than all others, which is invoked in days of stress, which is mingled with every wish, with every hope, even with the games of the children, penetrated as they are with its importance, a name which sustains in the dwelling the part of a sub-Providence, or rather of a household divinity, familiar and supernatural. In the Joyeuse family, it was Hemerlingue, always Hemerlingue, returning ten times, twenty times a day in the conversation of the girls, who associated it with all their plans, with the most intimate details of their feminine ambitions. "If Hemerlingue would only----" "All that depends on Hemerlingue." And nothing could be more charming than the familiarity with which these young people spoke of that enormously wealthy man whom they had never seen.
They would ask for news of him. Had their father spoken to him? Was he in a good temper? And to think that we all of us, whatever our position, however humble we be, however weighed down by fate, we have always beneath us unfortunate beings more humble, yet more weighed down, for whom we are great, for whom we are as gods, and in our quality of gods, indifferent, disdainful, or cruel.
One imagines the torture of M. Joyeuse, obliged to invent stories and anecdotes about the wretch who had so ruthlessly discharged him after ten years of good service. He played his little comedy, however, so well as completely to deceive everybody. Only one thing had been remarked, and that was that father when he came home in the evening always sat down to table with a great appetite. I believe it! Since he lost his place the poor man had gone without his luncheon.
The days passed. M. Joyeuse found nothing. Yes, one place as accountant in the Territorial Bank, which he refused, however, knowing too much about banking operations, about all the corners and innermost recesses of the financial Bohemia in general, and of the Territorial bank in particular, to set foot in that den.
"But," said Passajon to him--for it was Passajon who, meeting the honest fellow and hearing that he was out of employment, had suggested to him that he should come to Paganetti's--"but since I repeat that it is serious. We have lots of money. They pay one. I have been paid. See how prosperous I look."
In effect, the old office porter had a new livery, and beneath his tunic with its buttons of silver-gilt his paunch protruded, majestic. All the same M. Joyeuse had not allowed himself to be tempted, even after Passajon, opening wide his shallow-set blue eyes, had whispered into his ear with emphasis these words rich in promises:
"The Nabob is in the concern."
Even after that, M. Joyeuse had had the courage to say No. Was it not better to die of hunger than to enter a fraudulent house of which he might perhaps one day be summoned to report upon the books in the courts?
So he continued to wander; but, discouraged, he no longer sought employ. As it was necessary that he should absent himself from home, he used to linger over the stalls on the quays, lean for hours on the parapets, watch the water flow and the unladening of the vessels. He became one of those idlers whom one sees in the first rank whenever a crowd collects in the street, taking shelter from the rain under the porches, warming himself at the stoves where, in the open air, the tar of the asphalters reeks, sinking on a bench of some boulevard when his legs could no longer carry him.
To do nothing! What a fine way of making life seem longer!
On certain days, however, when M. Joyeuse was too weary or the sky too unkind, he would wait at the end of the street until his daughters should have closed their window again and, returning to the house, keeping close to the walls, would mount the staircase very quickly, pass before his own door holding his breath, and take refuge in the apartment of the photographer Andre Maranne, who, aware of his ill-fortune, always gave him that kindly welcome which the poor have for each other. Clients are rare so near the outskirts of the town. He used to remain long hours in the studio, talking in a very low voice, reading at his friend's side, listening to the rain on the window-panes or the wind that blew as it does on the open sea, shaking the old doors and the window-sashes below in the wood-sheds. Beneath him he could hear sounds well known and full of charm, songs that escaped in the satisfaction of work accomplished, assembled laughter, the pianoforte lesson being given by Bonne Maman, the tic-tac of the metronome, all the delicious household stir that pleased his heart. He lived with his darlings, who certainly never could have guessed that they had him so near them.
Once, when Maranne was out, M. Joyeuse keeping faithful watch over the studio and its new apparatus, heard two little strokes given on the ceiling of the apartment below, two separate, very distinct strokes, then a cautious pattering of fingers, like the scamper of mice. The friendliness of the photographer with his neighbours sufficiently authorized these communications like those of prisoners. But what did they mean? How reply to what seemed a call? Quite at hazard, he repeated the two strokes, the light tapping, and the conversation ended there. On the return of Andre Maranne he learned the explanation of the incident. It was very simple. Sometimes, in the course of the day, the young ladies below, who only saw their neighbour in the evening, would inquire how things were going with him, whether any clients were coming in. The signal he had heard meant, "Is business good to-day?" And M. Joyeuse had replied, obeying only an instinct without any knowledge, "Fairly well for the season." Although young Maranne was very red as he made this affirmation, M. Joyeuse accepted his word at once. Only this idea of frequent communications between the two households made him afraid for the secrecy of his position, and from that time forward he cut himself off from what he used to call his "artistic days." Moreover, the moment was approaching when he would no longer be able to conceal his misfortune, the end of the month arriving, complicated by the ending of the year.
Paris was already assuming the holiday appearance which it wears during the last weeks of December. In the way of national or popular rejoicing it had little left but that. The follies of the Carnival died with Gavarni, the religious festivals with their peals of bells which one scarcely hears amid the noise of the streets confine themselves within their heavy church-doors, the 15th of August has never been anything but the Saint Charles-the-Great of the barracks; but Paris has maintained its observance of New Year's Day.
From the beginning of December an immense childishness begins to permeate the town. You see hand-carts pass laden with gilded drums, wooden horses, playthings by the dozen. In the industrial quarters, from top to bottom of the five-storied houses, the old private residences still standing in that low-lying district, where the warehouses have such lofty ceilings and majestic double doors, the nights are passed in the making up of gauze flowers and spangles, in the gumming of labels upon satin-lined boxes, in sorting, marking, packing, the thousand details of the toy, that great branch of commerce on which Paris places the seal of its elegance. There is a smell about of new wood, of fresh paint, glossy varnish, and, in the dust of garrets, on the wretched stairways where the poor leave behind them all the dirt through which they have passed, there lie shavings of rosewood, scraps of satin and velvet, bits of tinsel, all the _debris_ of the luxury whose end is to dazzle the eyes of children. Then the shop-windows are decorated. Behind the panes of clear glass the gilt of presentation-books rises like a glittering wave under the gaslight, the stuffs of various and tempting colours display their brittle and heavy folds, while the young ladies behind the counter, with their hair dressed tapering to a point and with a ribbon beneath their collar, tie up the article, little finger in the air, or fill bags of moire into which the sweets fall like a rain of pearls.
But, over against this kind of well-to-do business, established in its own house, warmed, withdrawn behind its rich shop-front, there is installed the improvised commerce of those wooden huts, open to the wind of the streets, of which the double row gives to the boulevards the aspect of some foreign mall. It is in these that you find the true interest and the poetry of New Year's gifts. Sumptuous in the district of the Madeleine, well-to-do towards the Boulevard Saint-Denis, of more "popular" order as you ascend to the Bastille, these little sheds adapt themselves according to their public, calculate their chances of success by the more or less well-lined purses of the passers-by. Among these, there are set up portable tables, laden with trifling objects, miracles of the Parisian trade that deals in such small things, constructed out of nothing, frail and delicate, and which the wind of fashion sometimes sweeps forward in its great rush by reason of their very triviality. Finally, along the curbs of the footways, lost in the defile of the carriage traffic which grazes their wandering path, the orange-girls complete this peripatetic commerce, heaping up the sun-coloured fruit beneath their lanterns of red paper, crying "La Valence" amid the fog, the tumult, the excessive haste which Paris displays at the ending of its year.
Ordinarily, M. Joyeuse was accustomed to make one of the busy crowd which goes and comes with the jingle of money in its pocket and parcels in every hand. He would wander about with Bonne Maman at his side on the lookout for New Year's presents for his girls, stop before the booths of the small dealers, who are accustomed to do much business and excited by the appearance of the least important customer, have based upon this short season hopes of extraordinary profits. And there would be colloquies, reflections, an interminable perplexity to know what to select in that little complex