The Nabob

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And now, in conclusion, how can we best characterize briefly this
fascinating, versatile genius, the most delightful humorist of his time,
one of the most artistic story-tellers, one of the greatest novelists?
It is impossible to classify him, for he was more than a humorist, he
nearly outgrew romance, he never accepted unreservedly the canons of
naturalism. He obviously does not belong to the small class of the
supreme writers of fiction, for he has no consistent or at least
profound philosophy of life. He is a true poet, yet for the main he has
expressed himself not in verse, but in prose, and in a form of prose
that is being so extensively cultivated that its permanence is daily
brought more and more into question. What is Daudet, and what will he
be to posterity? Some admirers have already answered the first question,
perhaps as satisfactorily as it can be answered, by saying, "Daudet is
simply Daudet." As for the second question, a whole school of critics is
inclined to answer it and all similar queries with the curt statement,
"That concerns posterity, not us." If, however, less evasive answers are
insisted upon, let the following utterance, which might conceivably be
more indefinite and oracular, suffice: Alphonse Daudet is one of
those rare writers who combine greatness with a charm so intimate and
appealing that some of us would not, if we could, have their greatness
increased.

W. P. TRENT.




BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Alphonse Daudet was born at Nimes on the 13th of May, 1840. He was the
younger son of a rich and enthusiastically Royalist silk-manufacturer
of that town, the novelist, Ernest Daudet (born 1837), being his elder
brother. In their childhood, the father, Vincent Daudet, suffered
reverses, and had to settle with his family, in reduced circumstances,
at Lyons. Alphonse, in 1856, obtained a post as usher in a school at
Alais, in the Gard, where he was extremely unhappy. All these painful
early experiences are told very pathetically in "Le Petit Chose." On
the 1st of November, 1857, Alphonse fled from the horrors of his life at
Alais, and joined his brother Ernest, who had just secured a post in the
service of the Duc de Morny in Paris. Alphonse determined to live by
his pen, and presently obtained introductions to the "Figaro." His early
volumes of verse, "Les Amoureuses" of 1858 and "La Double Conversion"
of 1861, attracted some favourable notice. In this latter year his
difficulties ceased, for he had the good fortune to become one of the
secretaries of the Duc de Morny, a post which he held for four years,
until the popularity of his writings rendered him independent. To the
generosity of his patron, moreover, he owed the opportunity of visiting
Italy and the East. His first novel, "Le Chaperon Rouge," 1863, was not
very remarkable, and Daudet turned to the stage. His principal dramatic
efforts of this period were "Le Dernier Idole," 1862, and "L'OEillet
Blanc," 1865. Alphonse Daudet's earliest important work, however, was
"Le Petit Chose," 1868, a very pathetic autobiography of the first
eighteen years of his life, over which he cast a thin veil of romance.
After the death of the Duc de Morny, Daudet retired to Provence, leasing
a ruined mill at Fortvielle, in the valley of the Rhone; from this
romantic solitude, among the pines and green oaks, he sent forth those
exquisite studies of Provencal life, the "Lettres de mon Moulin." After
the war, Daudet reappeared in Paris, greatly strengthened and ripened
by his hermit-existence in the heart of Provence. He produced one
masterpiece after another. He had studied with laughter and joy the
mirthful side of southern exaggeration, and he created a figure in which
its peculiar qualities should be displayed, as it were, in excelsis.
This study resulted, in 1872, in "The Prodigious Feats of Tartarin of
Tarascon," one of the most purely delightful works of humour in the
French language. Alphonse Daudet now, armed with his cahiers, his little
green-backed books of notes, set out to be a great historian of
French manners in the second half of the nineteenth century. His first
important novel, "Fromont Jeune et Risler Aine," 1874, enjoyed a notable
success; it was followed in 1876 by "Jack," in 1878 by "Le Nabob," in
1879 by "Les Rois en Exil," in 1881 by "Numa Roumestan," in 1883 by
"L'Evangeliste," and in 1884 by "Sapho." These are the seven great
romances of modern French life on which the reputation of Alphonse
Daudet as a novelist is mainly built. They placed him, for the moment at
all events, near the head of contemporary European literature. By this
time, however, a physical malady, which Charcot was the first to locate
in the spinal cord, had begun to exhaust the novelist's powers. This
disease, which took the form of what was supposed to be neuralgia in
1881, racked him with pain during the sixteen remaining years of his
life, and gradually destroyed his powers of locomotion. It spared
the functions of the brain, but it cannot be denied that after 1884
something of force and spontaneous charm was lacking in Daudet's books.
He continued, however, the adventures of Tartarin, first with unabated
gusto in the Alps, then less happily as a colonist in the South Seas. He
wrote, in the form of a novel, a bitter satire on the French Academy,
of which he was never a member; this was "L'Immortel" of 1888. He wrote
romances, of little power, the best being "Rose et Ninette" of 1892, but
his imaginative work steadily declined in value. He published in 1887
his reminiscences, "Trente Ans de Paris," and later on his "Souvenirs
d'un Homme de Lettres." He suffered more and more from his complaint,
from the insomnia it caused, and from the abuse of chloral. He was
able, however, to the last, to enjoy the summer at his country-house, at
Champrosay, and even to travel in an invalid's chair; in 1896 he visited
for the first time London and Oxford, and saw Mr. George Meredith. In
Paris he had long occupied rooms in the Rue de Bellechasse, where Madame
Alphonse Daudet was accustomed to entertain a brilliant company. But in
1897 it became impossible for him to mount five flights of stairs any
longer, and he moved to the first floor of No. 41 Rue de l'Universite.
Here on the 16th of December, 1897, as he was chatting gaily at the
dinner-table, he uttered a cry, fell back in his chair, and was dead.
The personal appearance of Alphonse Daudet, in his prime, was very
striking; he had clearly cut features, large brilliant eyes, and an
amazing exuberance of curled hair and forked beard.

EDMUND GOSSE, LL.D.




CONTENTS

Introduction, William Peterfield Trent

Life of Alphonse Daudet, Edmund Gosse


THE NABOB:

Dr. Jenkins's patients
A luncheon in the Place Vendome
Memoirs of an office porter--A mere glance at the Territorial Bank
A debut in society
The Joyeuse family
Felicia Ruys
Jansoulet at home
The Bethlehem Society
Bonne Maman
Memoirs of an office porter--Servants
The festivities in honour of the Bey
A Corsican election
A day of spleen
The Exhibition
Memoirs of an office porter--In the antechamber
A public man
The apparition
The Jenkins pearls
The funeral
La Baronne Hemerlingue
The sitting
Dramas of Paris
Memoirs of an office porter--The last leaves
At Bordighera
The first night of "Revolt"




THE NABOB

by Alphonse Daudet




DOCTOR JENKIN'S PATIENTS

Standing on the steps of his little town-house in the Rue de Lisbonne,
freshly shaven, with sparkling eyes, and lips parted in easy enjoyment,
his long hair slightly gray flowing over a huge coat collar, square
shouldered, strong as an oak, the famous Irish doctor, Robert Jenkins,
Knight of the Medjidjieh and of the distinguished order of Charles III
of Spain, President and Founder of the Bethlehem Society. Jenkins in a
word, the Jenkins of the Jenkins Pills with an arsenical base--that
is to say, the fashionable doctor of the year 1864, the busiest man in
Paris, was preparing to step into his carriage when a casement opened
on the first floor looking over the inner court-yard of the house, and a
woman's voice asked timidly:

"Shall you be home for luncheon, Robert?"

Oh, how good and loyal was the smile that suddenly illumined the
fine apostle-like head with its air of learning, and in the tender
"good-morning" which his eyes threw up towards the warm, white
dressing-gown visible behind the raised curtains; how easy it was to
divine one of those conjugal passions, tranquil and sure, which habit
re-enforces and with supple and stable bonds binds closer.

"No, Mrs. Jenkins." He was fond of thus bestowing upon her publicly
her title as his lawful wife, as if he found in it an intimate
gratification, a sort of acquittal of conscience towards the woman who
made life so bright for him. "No, do not expect me this morning. I lunch
in the Place Vendome."

"Ah! yes, the Nabob," said the handsome Mrs. Jenkins with a very marked
note of respect for this personage out of the _Thousand and One Nights_
of whom all Paris had been talking for the last month; then, after a
little hesitation, very tenderly, in a quite low voice, from between the
heavy tapestries, she whispered for the ears of the doctor only:

"Be sure you do not forget what you promised me."

Apparently it was something very difficult to fulfil, for at the
reminder of this promise the eyebrows of the apostle contracted into
a frown, his smile became petrified, his whole visage assumed an
expression of incredible hardness; but it was only for an instant. At
the bedside of their patients the physiognomies of these fashionable
doctors become expert in lying. In his most tender, most cordial manner,
he replied, disclosing a row of dazzling white teeth:

"What I promised shall be done, Mrs. Jenkins. And now, go in quickly and
shut your window. The fog is cold this morning."

Yes, the fog was cold, but white as snow mist; and, filling the air
outside the glasses of the large brougham, it brightened with soft
gleams the unfolded newspaper in the doctor's hands. Over yonder, in the
populous quarters, confined and gloomy, in the Paris of tradesman
and mechanic, that charming morning haze which lingers in the great
thoroughfares is not known. The bustle of awakening, the going and
coming of the market-carts, of the omnibuses, of the heavy trucks
rattling their old iron, have early and quickly cut it up, unravelled
and scattered it. Every passer-by carries away a little of it in a
threadbare overcoat, a muffler which shows the woof, and coarse gloves
rubbed one against the other. It soaks through the thin blouses, and
the mackintoshes thrown over the working skirts; it melts away at every
breath that is drawn, warm from sleeplessness or alcohol; it is engulfed
in the depths of empty stomachs, dispersed in the shops as they are
opened, and the dark courts, or even to the fireless attics. That is
the reason why there remains so little of it out of doors. But in that
spacious and grandiose region of Paris, which was inhabited by Jenkins's
clients, on those wide boulevards planted with trees, and those deserted
quays, the fog hovered without a stain, like so many sheets, with
waverings and cotton wool-like flakes. The effect was of a place
inclosed, secret, almost sumptuous, as the sun after his slothful
rising began to diffuse softly crimsoned tints, which gave to the mist
enshrouding the rows of houses to their summits the appearance of white
muslin thrown over some scarlet material. One might have fancied it a
great curtain beneath which nothing could be heard save the cautious
closing of some court-yard gate, the tin measuring-cans of the milkmen,
the little bells of a herd of she-asses passing at a quick trot followed
by the short and panting breath of their shepherd, and the dull rumble
of Jenkins's brougham commencing its daily round.

First, to Mora House. This was a magnificent palace on the Quai d'Orsay,
next door to the Spanish embassy, whose long terraces succeeded its own,
having its principal entrance in the Rue de Lille, and a door upon the
side next the river. Between two lofty walls overgrown with ivy, and
united by imposing vaulted arches, the brougham shot in, announced by
two strokes of a sonorous bell which roused Jenkins from the reverie
into which the reading of his newspaper seemed to have plunged him.
Then the noise of the wheels became deadened on the sand of a vast
court-yard, and they drew up, after describing an elegant curve, before
the steps of the mansion, which were surrounded by a large circular
awning. In the obscurity of the fog, a dozen carriages could be seen
ranged in line, and along an avenue of acacias, quite withered at
that season and leafless in their bark, the profiles of English grooms
leading out the saddle-horses of the duke for their exercise. Everything
revealed a luxury thought-out, settled, grandiose, and assured.

"It is quite useless for me to come early; others always arrive before
me," said Jenkins to himself as he saw the file in which his brougham
took its place; but, certain of not having to wait, with head carried
high, and an air of tranquil authority, he ascended that official flight
of steps which is mounted every day by so many trembling ambitions, so
many anxieties on hesitating feet.

From the very antechamber, lofty and resonant like a church, which,
although calorifers burned night and day, possessed two great wood-fires
that filled it with a radiant life, the luxury of this interior reached
you by warm and heady puffs. It suggested at once a hot-house and
a Turkish bath. A great deal of heat and yet brightness; white
wainscoting, white marbles, immense windows, nothing stifling or shut
in, and yet a uniform atmosphere meet for the surrounding of some
rare existence, refined and nervous. Jenkins always expanded in this
factitious sun of wealth; he greeted with a "good-morning, my lads,"
the powdered porter, with his wide golden scarf, the footmen in
knee-breeches and livery of gold and blue, all standing to do him
honour; lightly drew his finger across the bars of the large cages of
monkeys full of sharp cries and capers, and, whistling under his breath,
stepped quickly up the staircase of shining marble laid with a carpet
as thick as the turf of a lawn, which led to the apartments of the duke.
Although six months had passed since his first visit to Mora House,
the good doctor was not yet become insensible to the quite physical
impression of gaiety, of frivolity, which he received from this
dwelling.

Although you were in the abode of the first official of the Empire there
was nothing here suggestive of the work of government or its boxes
of dusty old papers. The duke had only consented to accept his high
dignitaries as Minister of State and President of the Council upon the
condition that he should not quit his private mansion; he only went
to his office for an hour or two daily, the time necessary to give the
indispensable signatures, and held his receptions in his bed-chamber.
At this moment, notwithstanding the earliness of the hour, the hall was
crowded. You saw there grave, anxious faces, provincial prefects with
shaven lips, and administrative whiskers, slightly less arrogant in this
antechamber than yonder in their prefectures, magistrates of austere
air, sober in gesture, deputies important of manner, big-wigs of the
financial world, rich and boorish manufacturers, among whom stood out
here and there the slender, ambitious figure of some substitute of a
prefectorial councillor, in the garb of one seeking a favour, dress-coat
and white tie; and all, standing, sitting in groups or solitary, sought
silently to penetrate with their gaze that high door closed upon their
destiny, by which they would issue forth directly triumphant or with
cast-down head. Jenkins passed through the crowd rapidly, and every one
followed with an envious eye this newcomer whom the doorkeeper, with
his official chain, correct and icy in his demeanour, seated at a table
beside the door, greeted with a little smile at once respectful and
familiar.

"Who is with him?" asked the doctor, indicating the chamber of the duke.

Hardly moving his lips, and not without a slightly ironical glance of
the eye, the doorkeeper whispered a name which, if they had heard it,
would have roused the indignation of all these high personages who had
been waiting for an hour past until the costumier of the opera should
have ended his audience.

A sound of voices, a ray of light. Jenkins had just entered the duke's
presence; he never waited, he.

Standing with his back to the fireplace, closely wrapped in a
dressing-jacket of blue fur, the soft reflections from which gave an
air of refinement to an energetic and haughty head, the President of the
Council was causing to be designed under his eyes a Pierrette costume
for the duchess to wear at her next ball, and was giving his directions
with the same gravity with which he would have dictated the draft of a
new law.

"Let the frill be very fine on the ruff, and put no frills on the
sleeves.--Good-morning, Jenkins. I am with you directly."

Jenkins bowed, and took a few steps in the immense room, of which the
windows, opening on a garden that extended as far as the Seine, framed
one of the finest views of Paris, the bridges, the Tuileries, the
Louvre, in a network of black trees traced as it were in Indian ink upon
the floating background of fog. A large and very low bed, raised by
a few steps above the floor, two or three little lacquer screens with
vague and capricious gilding, indicating, like the double doors and the
carpets of thick wool, a fear of cold pushed even to excess, various
seats, lounges, warmers, scattered about rather indiscriminately, all
low, rounded, indolent, or voluptuous in shape, composed the furniture
of this celebrated chamber in which the gravest questions and the most
frivolous were wont to be treated alike with the same seriousness. On
the wall was a handsome portrait of the duchess; on the chimneypiece a
bust of the duke, the work of Felicia Ruys, which at the recent Salon
had received the honours of a first medal.

"Well, Jenkins, how are we this morning?" said his excellency,
approaching, while the costumier was picking up his fashion-plates,
scattered over all the easy chairs.

"And you, my dear duke? I thought you a little pale last evening at the
Varietes."

"Come, come! I have never felt so well. Your pills have a most
marvellous effect upon me. I am conscious of a vivacity, a freshness,
when I remember how run down I was six months ago."

Jenkins, without saying anything, had laid his great head against the
fur-coat of the minister of state, at the place where, in common men,
the heart beats. He listened a moment while his excellency continued to
speak in the indolent, bored tone which was one of the characteristics
of his distinction.

"And who was your companion, doctor, last night? That huge, bronzed
Tartar who was laughing so loudly in the front of your box."

"It was the Nabob, _Monsieur le Duc_. The famous Jansoulet, about whom
people are talking so much just now."

"I ought to have guessed it. The whole house was watching him. The
actresses played for him alone. You know him? What sort of man is he?"

"I know him. That is to say, I attend him professionally.--Thank you,
my dear duke, I have finished. All is right in that region.--When
he arrived in Paris a month ago, he had found the change of climate
somewhat trying. He sent for me, and since then has received me upon
the most friendly footing. What I know of him is that he possesses a
colossal fortune, made in Tunis, in the service of the Bey, that he has
a loyal heart, a generous soul, in which the ideas of humanity--"

"In Tunis?" interrupted the duke, who was by nature very little
sentimental and humanitarian. "In that case, why this name of Nabob?"

"Bah! the Parisians do not look at things so closely. For them, every
rich foreigner is a nabob, no matter whence he comes. Furthermore, this
nabob has all the physical qualities for the part--a copper-coloured
skin, eyes like burning coals, and, what is more, gigantic wealth, of
which he makes, I do not fear to say it, the most noble and the most
intelligent use. It is to him that I owe"--here the doctor assumed a
modest air--"that I owe it that I have at last been able to found the
Bethlehem Society for the suckling of infants, which a morning paper,
that I was looking over just now--the _Messenger_, I think--calls 'the
great philanthropic idea of the century.'"

The duke threw a listless glance over the sheet which Jenkins held out
to him. He was not the man to be caught by the turn of an advertisement.

"He must be very rich, this M. Jansoulet," said he, coldly. "He finances
Cardailhac's theatre; Monpavon gets him to pay his debts; Bois l'Hery
starts a stable for him; old Schwalbach a picture gallery. It means
money, all that."

Jenkins laughed.

"What will you have, my dear duke, this poor Nabob, you are his great
occupation. Arriving here with the firm resolution to become a Parisian,
a man of the world, he has taken you for his model in everything, and I
do not conceal from you that he would very much like to study his model
from a nearer standpoint."

"I know, I know. Monpavon has already asked my permission to bring
him to see me. But I prefer to wait; I wish to see. With these great
fortunes that come from so far away one has to be careful. _Mon Dieu_! I
do not say that if I should meet him elsewhere than in my own house, at
the theatre, in a drawing-room----"

"As it just happens, Mrs. Jenkins is proposing to give a small party
next month. If you would do us the honour----"

"I shall be glad to come, my dear doctor, and if your Nabob should
chance to be there I should make no objection to his being presented to
me."

At this moment the usher on duty opened the door.

"Monsieur the Minister of the Interior is in the blue salon. He has only
one word to say to his excellency. Monsieur the Prefect of Police is
still waiting downstairs, in the gallery."

"Very well," said the duke, "I am coming. But I should like first to
finish the matter of this costume. Let us see--friend, what's your
name--what are we deciding upon for these ruffs? Au revoir, doctor.
There is nothing to be done, is there, except to continue the pills?"

"Continue the pills," said Jenkins, bowing; and he left the room beaming
with delight at the two pieces of good fortune which were befalling him
at the same time--the honour of entertaining the duke and the pleasure
of obliging his dear Nabob. In the antechamber, the crowd of petitioners
through which he passed was still more numerous than at his entry;
newcomers had joined those who had been patiently waiting from the
first, others were mounting the staircase, with busy look and very pale,
and in the courtyard the carriages continued to arrive, and to range
themselves on ranks in a circle, gravely, solemnly, while the question
of the sleeve ruffs was being discussed upstairs with not less
solemnity.

"To the club," said Jenkins to his coachman.

The brougham bowled along the quays, recrossed the bridges, reached the
Place de la Concorde, which already no longer wore the same aspect as an
hour earlier. The fog was lifting in the direction of the Garde-Meuble
and the Greek temple of the Madeleine, allowing to be dimly
distinguished here and there the white plume of a jet of water, the
arcade of a palace, the upper portion of a statue, the tree-clumps of
the Tuileries, grouped in chilly fashion near the gates. The veil, not
raised, but broken in places, disclosed fragments of horizon; and on the
avenue which leads to the Arc de Triomphe could be seen brakes passing
at full trot laden with coachmen and jobmasters, dragoons of the
Empress, fuglemen bedizened with lace and covered with furs, going two
by two in long files with a jangling of bits and spurs, and the snorting
of fresh horses, the whole lighted by a sun still invisible, the light
issuing from the misty atmosphere, and here and there withdrawing into
it again as if offering a fleeting vision of the morning luxury of that
quarter of the town.

Jenkins alighted at the corner of the Rue Royale. From top to bottom of
the great gambling house the servants were passing to and fro, shaking
the carpets, airing the rooms where the fume of cigars still hung about
and heaps of fine glowing ashes were crumbling away at the back of the
hearths, while on the green tables, still vibrant with the night's play,
there stood burning a few silver candlesticks whose flames rose straight
in the wan light of day. The noise, the coming and going, ceased at
the third floor, where sundry members of the club had their apartments.
Among them was the Marquis de Monpavon, whose abode Jenkins was now on
his way to visit.

"What! It is you, doctor? The devil take it! What is the time then? I'm
not visible."