The Nabob

A >> Alphonse Daudet >> The Nabob


The Nabob told himself all this, as he sat on the oak bench which ran
round the room, a bench polished with serge dresses and the rough cloth
of cassocks. In spite of the early hour several persons were waiting
there with him. A Dominican, ascetic and serene, walking up and down
with great strides; two sisters of charity, buried under their caps,
counting long rosaries which measured their time of waiting; priests
from Lyons, recognisable by the shape of their hats; others reserved and
severe in air, sitting at the great ebony table which filled the middle
of the room, and turning over some of those pious journals printed at
Fouvieres, just above Lyons, the _Echo of Purgatory_, the _Rose-bush
of Mary_, which give as a present to all yearly subscribers pontifical
indulgences and remissions of future sins. Some muttered words, a
stifled cough, the light whispered prayers of the sisters, recalled to
Jansoulet the distant and confused sensation of the hours of waiting in
the corner of his village church round the confessional on the eves of
the great festivals of the Church.

At last his turn came, and if a doubt as to M. Le Merquier had remained,
he doubted no longer when he saw this great office, simple and severe,
yet a little more ornate than the waiting-room, a fitting frame for
the austerity of the lawyer's principles, and for his thin form, tall,
stooping, narrow-shouldered, squeezed into a black coat too short in
the sleeves, from which protruded two black fists, broad and flat,
two sticks of Indian ink with hieroglyphs of great veins. The clerical
deputy had, with the leaden hue of a Lyonnese grown mouldy between his
two rivers, a certain life of expression which he owed to his double
look--sometimes sparkling, but impenetrable behind the glass of his
spectacles; more often, vivid, mistrustful, and dark, above these same
glasses, surrounded by the shadow which a lifted eye and a stooping head
gives the eyebrow.

After a greeting almost cordial in comparison with the cold bow which
the two colleagues exchanged at the Chamber, an "I was expecting you" in
which perhaps an intention showed itself, the lawyer pointed the Nabob
into a seat near his desk, told the smug domestic in black not to come
till he was summoned, arranged a few papers, after which, sinking into
his arm-chair with the attitude of a man ready to listen, who becomes
all ears, his legs crossed, he rested his chin on his hand, with his
eyes fixed on a great rep curtain falling to the ground in front of him.

The moment was decisive, the situation embarrassing. Jansoulet did not
hesitate. It was one of the poor Nabob's pretensions to know men as
well as Mora. And this instinct, which, said he, had never deceived
him, warned him that he was at that moment dealing with a rigid and
unshakable honesty, a conscience in hard stone, untouchable by pick-axe
or powder. "My conscience!" Suddenly he changed his programme, threw to
the winds the tricks and equivocations which embarrassed his open and
courageous disposition, and, head high and heart open, held to this
honest man a language he was born to understand.

"Do not be astonished, my dear colleague,"--his voice trembled, but soon
became firm in the conviction of his defence--"do not be astonished if
I am come to find you here instead of asking simply to be heard by
the third committee. The explanation which I have to make to you is so
delicate and confidential that it would have been impossible to make it
publicly before my colleagues."

Maitre Le Merquier, above his spectacles, looked at the curtain with a
disturbed air. Evidently the conversation was taking an unexpected turn.

"I do not enter on the main question," said the Nabob. "Your report, I
am assured, is impartial and loyal, such as your conscience has dictated
to you. Only there are some heart-breaking calumnies spread about me to
which I have not answered, and which have perhaps influenced the opinion
of the committee. It is on this subject that I wish to speak to you. I
know the confidence with which you are honoured by your colleagues, M.
Le Merquier, and that, when I shall have convinced you, your word will
be enough without forcing me to lay bare my distress to them all. You
know the accusation--the most terrible, the most ignoble. There are so
many people who might be deceived by it. My enemies have given names,
dates, addresses. Well, I bring you the proofs of my innocence. I lay
them bare before you--you only--for I have grave reasons for keeping the
whole affair secret."

Then he showed the lawyer a certificate from the Consulate of Tunis,
that during twenty years he had only left the principality twice--the
first time to see his dying father at Bourg-Saint Andeol; the second,
to make, with the Bey, a visit of three days to his chateau of
Saint-Romans.

"How comes it, then, that with a document so conclusive in my hands
I have not brought my accusers before the courts to contradict and
confound them? Alas, monsieur, there are cruel responsibilities in
families. I have a brother, a poor fellow, weak and spoiled, who has for
long wallowed in the mud of Paris, who has left there his intelligence
and his honour. Has he descended to that degree of baseness which I, in
his name, am accused of? I have not dared to find out. All I can say
is, that my poor father, who knew more than any one in the family of
it, whispered to me in dying, 'Bernard, it is your elder brother who has
killed me. I die of shame, my child.'"

He paused, compelled by his suppressed emotion; then:

"My father is dead, Maitre Le Merquier, but my mother still lives, and
it is for her sake, for her peace, that I have held back, that I hold
back still, before the scandal of my justification. Up to now, in fact,
the mud thrown at me has not touched her; it only comes from a certain
class, in a special press, a thousand leagues away from the poor woman.
But law courts, a trial--it would be proclaiming our misfortune from
one end of France to the other, the articles of the official paper
reproduced by all the journals, even those of the little district where
my mother lives. The calumny, my defence, her two children covered
with shame by the one stroke, the name--the only pride of the old
peasant--forever disgraced. It would be too much for her. It would be
enough to kill her. And truly, I find it enough, too. That is why I
have had the courage to be silent, to weary, if I could, my enemies by
silence. But I need some one to answer for me in the Chamber. It must
not have the right to expel me for reasons which would dishonour me, and
since it has chosen you as the chairman of the committee, I am come to
tell you everything, as to a confessor, to a priest, begging you not to
divulge anything of this conversation, even in the interests of my case.
I only ask you, my dear colleague, absolute silence; for the rest, I
rely on your justice and your loyalty."

He rose, ready to go, and Le Merquier did not move, still asking the
green curtain in front of him, as if seeking inspiration for his answer
there. At last he said:

"It shall be as you desire, my dear colleague. This confidence shall
remain between us. You have told me nothing, I have heard nothing."

The Nabob, still heated with his burst of confidence, which demanded,
it seemed to him, a cordial response, a pressure of the hand, was seized
with a strange uneasiness. This coolness, this absent look, so unnerved
him that he was at the door with the awkward bow of one who feels
himself importunate, when the other stopped him.

"Wait, then, my dear colleague. What a hurry you are in to leave me! A
few moments, I beg of you. I am too happy to have a chat with a man like
you. Besides, we have more than one common bond. Our friend Hemerlingue
has told me that you, too, are much interested in pictures."

Jansoulet trembled. The two words--"Hemerlingue," "pictures"--meeting
in the same phrase so unexpectedly, restored all his doubts, all his
perplexities. He did not give himself away yet, however, and let Le
Merquier advance, word by word, testing the ground for his stumbling
advances. People had told him often of the collection of his honourable
colleague. "Would it be indiscreet to ask the favour of being admitted,
to--"

"On the contrary, I should feel much honoured," said the Nabob, tickled
in the most sensible--since the most costly--point of his vanity; and
looking round him at the walls of the room, he added with the tone of a
connoisseur, "You have some fine things, too."

"Oh," said the other modestly, "just a few canvases. Painting is so dear
now, it is a taste so difficult to satisfy, a true passion _de luxe_--a
passion for a Nabob," said he, smiling, with a furtive look over his
glasses.

They were two prudent players, face to face; but Jansoulet was a little
astray in this new situation, where he who only knew how to be bold, had
to be on his guard.

"When I think," murmured the lawyer, "that I have been ten years
covering these walls, and that I have still this panel to fill."

In fact, at the most conspicuous place on the wall there was an empty
place, emptied rather, for a great gold-headed nail near the ceiling
showed the visible, almost clumsy, trace of a snare laid for the poor
simpleton, who let himself be taken in it so foolishly.

"My dear M. Le Merquier," said he with his engaging, good-natured voice,
"I have a Virgin of Tintoretto's just the size of your panel."

Impossible to read anything in the eyes of the lawyer, this time hidden
under their overhanging brows.

"Permit me to hang it there, opposite your table. That will help you to
think sometimes of me."

"And to soften the severities of my report, too, sir?" cried Le
Merquier, formidable and upright, his hand on the bell. "I have seen
many shameless things in my life, but never anything like this. Such
offers to me, in my own house!"

"But, my dear colleague, I swear to you----"

"Show him out," said the lawyer to the hang-dog servant who had just
entered; and from the middle of his office, whose door remained open,
before all the waiting-room, where the paternosters were silent, he
pursued Jansoulet--who slunk off murmuring excuses to the door--with
these terrible words:

"You have outraged the honour of the Chamber in my person, sir. Our
colleagues shall be informed of it this very day; and, this crime coming
after your others, you will learn to your cost that Paris is not the
East, and that here we do not make shameless traffic of the human
conscience."

Then, after having chased the seller from the temple, the just man
closed his door, and approaching the mysterious green curtain, said in a
tone that sounded soft amidst his pretended anger:

"Is that what you wanted, Baroness Marie?"




THE SITTING

That morning there were no guests to lunch at 32 Place Vendome, so
that towards one o'clock might have been seen the majestic form of M.
Barreau, gleaming white at the gate, among four or five of his scullions
in their cook's caps, and as many stable-boys in Scotch caps--an
imposing group, which gave to the house the aspect of an hotel where the
staff was taking the air between the arrivals of the trains. To complete
the resemblance, a cab drew up before the door and the driver took down
an old leather trunk, while a tall old woman, her upright figure wrapped
in a little green shawl, jumped lightly to the footpath, a basket on
her arm, looked at the number with great attention, then approached the
servants to ask if it was there that M. Bernard Jansoulet lived.

"It is here," was the answer; "but he is not in."

"That does not matter," said the old lady simply.

She returned to the driver, who put her trunk in the porch, and paid
him, returning her purse to her pocket at once with a gesture that said
much for the caution of the provincial.

Since Jansoulet had been deputy for Corsica, the domestics had seen
so many strange and exotic figures at his house, that they were not
surprised at this sunburnt woman, with eyes glowing like coals, a
true Corsican under her severe coif, but different from the ordinary
provincial in the ease and tranquility of her manners.

"What, the master is not here?" said she, with an intonation which
seemed better fitted for farm people in her part of the country, than
for the insolent servants of a great Parisian mansion.

"No, the master is not here."

"And the children?"

"They are at lessons. You cannot see them."

"And madame?"

"She is asleep. No one sees her before three o'clock."

It seemed to astonish the good woman a little that any one could stay
in bed so late; but the tact which guides a refined nature, even without
education, prevented her from saying anything before the servants, and
she asked for Paul de Gery.

"He is abroad."

"Bompain Jean-Baptiste, then."

"He is with monsieur at the sitting."

Her great gray eyebrows wrinkled.

"It does not matter; take up my trunk just the same."

And with a little malicious twinkle of her eye, a proud revenge for
their insolent looks, she added: "I am his mother."

The scullions and stable-boys drew back respectfully. M. Barreau raised
his cap:

"I thought I had seen madame somewhere."

"And I too, my lad," answered Mme. Jansoulet, who shivered still at the
remembrance of the Bey's _fete_.

"My lad," to M. Barreau, to a man of his importance! It raised her at
once to a very high place in the esteem of the others.

Well! grandeur and splendour hardly dazzled this courageous old lady.
She did not go into ecstasies over gilding and petty baubles, and as she
walked up the grand staircase behind her trunk, the baskets of flowers
on the landings, the lamps held by bronze statues, did not prevent her
from noticing that there was an inch of dust on the balustrade, and
holes in the carpet. She was taken to the rooms on the second floor
belonging to the Levantine and her children; and there, in an apartment
used as a linen-room, which seemed to be near the school-room (to judge
by the murmur of children's voices), she waited alone, her basket on
her knees, for the return of her Bernard, perhaps the waking of her
daughter-in-law, or the great joy of embracing her grandchildren. What
she saw around her gave her an idea of the disorder of this house
left to the care of the servants, without the oversight and foreseeing
activity of a mistress. The linen was heaped in disorder, piles on
piles in great wide-open cupboards, fine linen sheets and table-cloths
crumpled up, the locks prevented from shutting by pieces of torn lace,
which no one took the trouble to mend. And yet there were many servants
about--negresses in yellow Madras muslin, who came to snatch here
a towel, there a table-cloth, walking among the scattered domestic
treasures, dragging with their great flat feet frills of fine lace
from a petticoat which some lady's-maid had thrown down--thimble here,
scissors there--ready to pick up again in a few minutes.

Jansoulet's mother was doubly wounded. The half-rustic artisan in her
was outraged in the tenderness, the respect, the sweet unreasonableness
the woman of the provinces feels towards a full linen cupboard--a
cupboard filled piece by piece, full of relics of past struggles, whose
contents grow finer little by little, the first token of comfort, of
wealth, in the house. Besides, she had held the distaff from morning
till night, and if the housewife in her was angry, the spinner could
have wept at the profanation. At last, unable to contain herself longer,
she rose, and actively, her little shawl displaced at each movement, she
set herself to pick up, straighten, and carefully fold this magnificent
linen, as she used to do in the fields of Saint-Romans, when she gave
herself the treat of a grand washing-day, with twenty washerwomen, the
clothes-baskets flowing over with floating whiteness, and the sheets
flapping in the morning wind on the clothes-lines. She was in the midst
of this occupation, forgetting her journey, forgetting Paris, even
the place where she was, when a stout, thick-set, bearded man, with
varnished boots and a velvet jacket, over the torso of a bull, came into
the linen-room.

"What! Cabassu!"

"You here, Mme. Francoise! What a surprise!" said the _masseur_, staring
like a bronze figure.

"Yes, my brave Cabassu, it is I. I have just arrived; and as you see, I
am at work already. It made my heart bleed to see all this muddle."

"You came up for the sitting, then?"

"What sitting?"

"Why, the grand sitting of the legislative body. It's do-day."

"Dear me, no. What has that got to do with me? I should understand
nothing at all about it. No, I came because I wanted to know my little
Jansoulets, and then, I was beginning to feel uneasy. I have written
several times without getting an answer. I was afraid that there was a
child sick, that Bernard's business was going wrong--all sorts of ideas.
At last I got seriously worried, and came away at once. They are well
here, they tell me."

"Yes, Mme. Francoise. Thank God, every one is quite well."

"And Bernard. His business--is that going on as he wants it to?"

"Well, you know one has always one's little worries in life--still,
I don't think he should complain. But, now I think of it, you must be
hungry. I will go and make them bring you something."

He was going to ring, more at home and at ease than the old mother
herself. She stopped him.

"No, no, I don't want anything. I have still something left in my
basket." And she put two figs and a crust of bread on the edge of the
table. Then, while she was eating: "And you, lad, your business? You
look very much sprucer than you did the last time you were at Bourg. How
smart you are! What do you do in the house?"

"Professor of massage," said Aristide gravely.

"Professor--you?" said she with respectful astonishment; but she did
not dare ask him what he taught, and Cabassu, who felt such questions a
little embarrassing, hastened to change the subject.

"Shall I go and find the children? Haven't they told them that their
grandmother is here?"

"I didn't want to disturb them at their work. But I believe it must be
over now--listen!"

Behind the door they could hear the shuffling impatience of the children
anxious to be out in the open air, and the old woman enjoyed this state
of things, doubling her maternal desire, and hindering her from doing
anything to hasten its pleasure. At last the door opened. The tutor came
out first--a priest with a pointed nose and great cheek-bones, whom we
have met before at the great _dejeuners_. On bad terms with his bishop,
he had left the diocese where he had been engaged, and in the precarious
position of an unattached priest--for the clergy have their Bohemians
too--he was glad to teach the little Jansoulets, recently turned out of
the Bourdaloue College. With his arrogant, solemn air, overweighted with
responsibilities, which would have become the prelates charged with the
education of the dauphins of France, he preceded three curled and gloved
little gentlemen in short jackets, with leather knapsacks, and great red
stockings reaching half-way up their little thin legs, in complete suits
of cyclist dress, ready to mount.

"My children," said Cabassu, "that is Mme. Jansoulet, your grandmother,
who has come to Paris expressly to see you."

They stopped in a row, astonished, examining this old wrinkled visage
between the folds of her cap, this strange dress of a simplicity
unknown to them; and their grandmother's astonishment answered theirs,
complicated with a heart-breaking discomfiture and constraint in dealing
with these little gentlemen, as stiff and disdainful as any of the
nobles or ministers whom her son had brought to Saint-Romans. On the
bidding of their tutor "to salute their venerable grandmother," they
came in turn to give her one of those little half-hearted shakes of
the hand of which they had distributed so many in the garrets they
had visited. The fact is that this good woman, with her agricultural
appearance and clean but very simple clothes, reminded them of the
charity visits of the College Bourdaloue. They felt between them the
same unknown quality, the same distance, which no remembrance, no
word of their parents had ever helped to bridge. The abbe felt this
constraint, and tried to dispel it--speaking with the tone of voice and
gestures customary to those who always think they are in the pulpit.

"Well, madame, the day has come, the great day when Jansoulet will
confound his enemies--_confundantur hostes mei, quia injuste iniquitatem
fecerunt in me_--because they have unjustly persecuted me."

The old lady bent religiously before the Latin of the Church, but her
face expressed a vague expression of uneasiness at this idea of enemies
and of persecutions.

"These enemies are powerful and numerous, my noble lady, but let us
not be alarmed beyond measure. Let us have confidence in the decrees of
Heaven and in the justice of our cause. God is in the midst of it, it
shall not be overthrown--_in medio ejus non commovebitur_."

A gigantic negro, resplendent with gold braid, interrupted him by
announcing that the bicycles were ready for the daily lesson on the
terrace of the Tuileries. Before setting out, the children again
shook solemnly their grandmother's wrinkled and hardened hand. She
was watching them go, stupefied and oppressed, when all at once, by an
adorable spontaneous movement, the youngest turned back when he had got
to the door and, pushing the great negro aside, came to throw himself
head foremost, like a little buffalo, into Mme. Jansoulet's skirts,
squeezing her to him, while holding out his smooth forehead, covered
with brown curls, with the grace of a child offering its kiss like a
flower. Perhaps this one, nearer the warmth of the nest, the cradling
knees of the nurses with their peasant songs, had felt the maternal
influence, of which the Levantine had deprived him, reach his heart.
The old woman trembled all over with the surprise of this instinctive
embrace.

"Oh! little one, little one," said she, seizing the little silky, curly
head which reminded her so much of another and she kissed it wildly.
Then the child unloosed himself, and ran off without saying anything,
his head moist with hot tears.

Left alone with Cabassu, the mother, comforted by this embrace, asked
some explanation of the priest's words. Had her son many enemies?

"Oh!" said Cabassu, "it is not astonishing, in his position."

"But what is this great day--this sitting of which you all speak?"

"Well, then, it is to-day that we shall know whether Bernard will be
deputy or no."

"What? He is not one now, then? And I have told them everywhere in the
country. I illuminated Saint-Romans a month ago. Then they have made me
tell a lie."

The _masseur_ had a great deal of trouble in explaining to her the
parliamentary formalities of the verification of elections. She only
listened with one ear, walking up and down the linen-room feverishly.

"That's where my Bernard is now, then?"

"Yes, madame."

"And can women go to the Chamber? Then why is his wife not there? For
one does not need telling that it is an important matter for him. On a
day like this he needs to feel all those whom he loves at his side. See,
my lad, you must take me there, to this sitting. Is it far?"

"No, quite near. Only, it must have begun already. And then," added he,
a little disconcerted, "it is the hour when madame wants me."

"Ah! Do you teach her this thing you are professor of? What do you call
it?"

"Massage. We have learned it from the ancients. Yes, there she is
ringing for me, and some one will come to fetch me. Shall I tell her you
are here?"

"No, no; I prefer to go there at once."

"But you have no admission ticket."

"Bah! I will tell them I am Jansoulet's mother, come to hear him
judged." Poor mother, she spoke truer than she knew.

"Wait, Mme. Francoise. I will give you some one to show you the way, at
least."

"Oh, you know, I have never been able to put up with servants. I have a
tongue. There are people in the streets. I shall find my way."

He made a last attempt, without letting her see all his thought. "Take
care; his enemies are going to speak against him in the Chamber. You
will hear things to hurt you."

Oh, the beautiful smile of belief and maternal pride with which she
answered: "Don't I know better than them all what my child is worth?
Could anything make me mistaken in him? I should have to be very
ungrateful then. Get along with you!"

And shaking her head with its flapping cap wings, she set off fiercely
indignant.

With head erect and upright bearing the old woman strode along under the
great arcades which they had told her to follow, a little troubled by
the incessant noise of the carriages, and by the idleness of this walk,
unaccompanied by the faithful distaff which had never quitted her
for fifty years. All these ideas of enmities and persecutions, the
mysterious words of the priest, the guarded talk of Cabassu, frightened
and agitated her. She found in them the meaning of the presentiments
which had so overpowered her as to snatch her from her habits, her
duties, the care of the house and of her invalid. Besides, since Fortune
had thrown on her and her son this golden mantle with its heavy folds,
Mme. Jansoulet had never become accustomed to it, and was always waiting
for the sudden disappearance of these splendours. Who knows if the
break-up was not going to begin this time? And suddenly, through these
sombre thoughts, the remembrance of the scene that had just passed,
of the little one rubbing himself on her woollen gown, brought on her
wrinkled lips a tender smile, and she murmured in her peasant tongue: