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

fall, how many fortunes undermined by the weakened reverberations of the catastrophe! None so completely as that of the big man sitting motionless downstairs, on the bench in the monkey-house.
For the Nabob, this death was his own death, the ruin, the end of all things. He was so deeply conscious of it that, when he entered the house, on learning the hopeless condition of the duke, no expression of pity, no regrets of any sort, had escaped him, only the ferocious word of human egoism, "I am ruined!" And this word kept recurring to his lips; he repeated it mechanically each time that he awoke suddenly afresh to all the horror of his situation, as in those dangerous mountain storms, when a sudden flash of lightning illumines the abyss to its depths, showing the wounding spurs and the bushes on its sides, ready to tear and scratch the man who should fall.
The rapid clairvoyance which accompanies cataclysms spared him no detail. He saw the invalidation of his election almost certain, now that Mora would no longer be there to plead his cause; then the consequences of the defeat--bankruptcy, poverty, and still worse; for when these incalculable riches collapse they always bury a little of a man's honour beneath their ruins. But how many briers, how many thorns, how many cruel scratches and wounds before arriving at the end! In a week there would be the Schwalbach bills--that is to say, eight hundred thousand francs--to pay; indemnity for Moessard, who wanted a hundred thousand francs, or as the alternative he would apply for the permission of the Chamber to prosecute him for a misdemeanour, a suit still more sinister instituted by the families of two little martyrs of Bethlehem against the founders of the Society; and, on top of all, the complications of the Territorial Bank. There was one solitary hope, the mission of Paul de Gery to the Bey, but so vague, so chimerical, so remote!
"Ah, I am ruined! I am ruined!"
In the immense entrance-hall no one noticed his distress. The crowd of senators, of deputies, of councillors of state, all the high officials of the administration, came and went around him without seeing him, holding mysterious consultations with uneasy importance near the two fireplaces of white marble which faced one another. So many ambitions disappointed, deceived, hurled down, met in this visit _in extremis_, that personal anxieties dominated every other preoccupation.
The faces, strangely enough, expressed neither pity nor grief, rather a sort of anger. All these people seemed to have a grudge against the duke for dying, as though he had deserted them. One heard remarks of this kind: "It is not surprising, with such a life as he has lived!" And looking out of the high windows, these gentlemen pointed out to each other, amid the going and coming of the equipages in the court-yard, the drawing up of some little brougham from within which a well-gloved hand, with its lace sleeve brushing the sash of the door, would hold out a card with a corner turned back to the footman.
From time to time one of the _habitues_ of the palace, one of those whom the dying man had summoned to his bedside, appeared in the medley, gave an order, then went away, leaving the scared expression of his face reflected on twenty others. Jenkins showed himself thus for a moment, with his cravat untied, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his cuffs crumpled, in all the disorder of the battle in which he was engaged upstairs against a terrible opponent. He was instantly surrounded, besieged with questions.
Certainly the monkeys flattening their short noses against the bars of their cage, excited by the unaccustomed tumult, and very attentive to all that passed about them as though they were occupied in making a methodical study of human hypocrisy, had a magnificent model in the Irish physician. His grief was superb, a splendid grief, masculine and strong, which compressed his lips and made him pant.
"The agony has begun," he said mournfully. "It is only a matter of hours."
And as Jansoulet came towards him, he said to him emphatically:
"Ah, my friend, what a man! What courage! He has forgotten nobody. Only just now he was speaking to me of you."
"Really?"
"'The poor Nabob,' said he, 'how does the affair of his election stand?'"
And that was all. The duke had added no further word.
Jansoulet bowed his head. What had he been hoping? Was it not enough that at such a moment a man like Mora had given him a thought? He returned and sat down on his bench, falling back into the stupor which had been galvanized by one moment of mad hope, and remained until, without his noticing it, the hall had become nearly deserted. He did not remark that he was the only and last visitor left, until he heard the men-servants talking aloud in the waning light of the evening:
"For my part, I've had enough of it. I shall leave service."
"I shall stay on with the duchess."
And these projects, these arrangements some hours in advance of death, condemned the noble duke still more surely than the faculty.
The Nabob understood then that it was time for him to go, but, first, he wished to inscribe his name in the visitors' book kept by the porter. He went up to the table, and leaned over it to see distinctly. The page was full. A blank space was pointed out to him below a signature in a very small, spidery hand, such as is frequently written by very fat fingers, and when he had signed, it proved to be the name of Hemerlingue dominating his own, crushing it, clasping it round with insidious flourish. Superstitious, like the true Latin he was, he was struck by this omen, and went away frightened by it.
Where should he dine? At the club? Place Vendome? To hear still more talk of this death that obsessed him! He preferred to go somewhere by chance, walking straight before him, like all those who are a prey to some fixed idea which they hope to conjure away by rapid movement. The evening was warm, the air full of sweet scents. He walked along the quays, and reached the trees of the Cours-la-Reine, then found himself breathing that air in which is mingled the freshness of watered roads and the odour of fine dust so characteristic of summer evenings in Paris. At that hour all was deserted. Here and there chandeliers were being lighted for the concerts, blazes of gaslight flared among the green trees. A sound of glasses and plates from a restaurant gave him the idea of going in.
The strong man was hungry despite all his troubles. He was served under a veranda with glazed walls backed by shrubs, and facing the great porch of the Palais de l'Industrie, where the duke, in the presence of a thousand people, had greeted him as a deputy. The refined, aristocratic face rose before his memory in the darkness of the sky, while he could see it also as it lay over yonder on the funereal whiteness of the pillow; and suddenly, as he ran his eye over the bill of fare presented to him by the waiter, he noticed with stupefaction that it bore the date of the 20th of May. So a month had not elapsed since the opening of the exhibition. It seemed to him like ten years ago. Gradually, however, the warmth of the meal cheered him. In the corridor he could hear waiters talking:
"Has anybody heard news of Mora? It appears he is very ill."
"Nonsense! He will get over it, you will see. Men like him get all the luck."
And so deeply is hope implanted in the human soul, that, despite what Jansoulet had himself seen and heard, these few words, helped by two bottles of burgundy and a few glasses of cognac, sufficed to restore his courage. After all, people had been known to recover from illnesses quite as desperate. Doctors often exaggerate the ill in order to get more credit afterward for curing it. "Suppose I called to inquire." He made his way back towards the house, full of illusion, trusting to that chance which had served him so many times in his life. And indeed the aspect of the princely abode had something about it to fortify his hope. It presented the reassuring and tranquil appearance of ordinary evenings, from the avenue with its lights at long intervals, majestic and deserted, to the steps where stood waiting a huge carriage of old-fashioned shape.
In the antechamber, peaceful also, two enormous lamps were burning. A footman slept in a corner; the porter was reading before the fireplace. He looked at the new arrival over his spectacles, made no remark, and Jansoulet dared ask no question. Piles of newspapers lying on the table in their wrappers, addressed to the duke, seemed to have been thrown there as useless. The Nabob took up one of them, opened it, and tried to read, but quick and gliding steps, a muttered chanting, made him lift his eyes, and he saw a white-haired and bent old man, decked out in lace as though he had been an altar, who was praying aloud as he departed with a long priestly stride, his ample red cassock spreading in a train over the carpet. It was the Archbishop of Paris, accompanied by two assistants. The vision, with its murmur as of an icy north wind, passed quickly before Jansoulet, plunged into the great carriage and disappeared, carrying away with it his last hope.
"Doing the right thing, _mon cher_," remarked Monpavon, appearing suddenly at his side. "Mora is an epicurean, brought up in the ideas of how do you say--you know--what is it you call it? Eighteenth century. Very bad for the masses, if a man in his position--ps--ps--ps--Ah, he is the master who sets us all an example--ps--ps--irreproachable manners!"
"Then, it is all over?" said Jansoulet, overwhelmed. "There is no longer any hope?"
Monpavon signed to him to listen. A carriage rolled heavily along the avenue on the quay. The visitors' bell rang sharply several times in succession. The marquis counted aloud: "One, two, three, four." At the fifth he rose:
"No more hope now. Here comes the other," said he, alluding to the Parisian superstition that a visit from the sovereign was always fatal to dying persons. From every side the lackeys hastened up, opened the doors wide, ranged themselves in line, while the porter, his hat cocked forward and his staff resounding on the marble floor, announced the passage of two august shadows, of whom Jansoulet only caught a confused glimpse behind the liveried domestics, but whom he saw beyond a long perspective of open doors climbing the great staircase, preceded by a footman bearing a candelabrum. The woman ascended, erect and proud, enveloped in a black Spanish mantilla; the man supported himself by the baluster, slower in his movements and tired, the collar of his light overcoat turned up above a rather bent back, which was shaken by a convulsive sob.
"Let us be off, Nabob. Nothing more to be done here," said the old beau, taking Jansoulet by the arm and drawing him outside. He paused on the threshold, with raised hand, making a little gesture of farewell in the direction of the man who lay dying upstairs. "Good-bye old fellow!" The gesture and the tone were polite, irreproachable, but the voice trembled a little.
The club in the Rue Royale, which was famous for its gambling parties, rarely saw one so desperate as the gaming of that night. It commenced at eleven o'clock and was still going on at five in the morning. Enormous sums were scattered over the green cloth, changing hands, moved now to one side, now to the other, heaped up, distributed, regained. Fortunes