The Nabob

A >> Alphonse Daudet >> The Nabob


Bleeding after bleeding, cuppings, mustard leaves--nothing brought even
a quiver to the skin of the patient, insensible apparently to all the
remedies usually employed in cases of apoplexy. The whole being seemed
to be surrendering to death, to be preparing the way for the rigidity
of the corpse; and this in the most sinister place in the world, this
chaos, lighted by a lantern merely, amid which there lie about pell-mell
in the dust all the remains of former plays--gilt furniture, curtains
with gay fringes, coaches, boxes, card-tables, dismantled staircases
and balusters, among ropes and pulleys, a confusion of out-of-date
theatrical properties, thrown down, broken, and damaged. Bernard
Jansoulet, as he lay among this wreckage, his shirt opened over his
chest, pale and covered with blood, was indeed a man come to the
shipwreck of his life, bruised and tossed aside along with the pitiful
ruins of his artificial luxury dispersed and broken up, in the whirlpool
of Paris. Paul, with aching heart, contemplated the scene sadly, that
face with its short nose, preserving in its inertia the savage yet
kindly expression of an inoffensive creature that tried to defend itself
before it died and had not time to bite. He reproached himself bitterly
with his inability to be of any service to him. Where was that fine
project of leading Jansoulet across the bogs, of guarding him against
ambushes? All that he had been able to do had been to save a few
millions for him, and even these had come too late.


The windows had just been thrown open upon the curved balcony over
the boulevard, now at the height of its noisy and brilliant stir. The
theatre was surrounded by, as it were, a plinth of gas-jets, a zone of
fire which brought the gloomiest recesses into light, pricked out with
revolving lanterns, like stars journeying through a dark sky. The play
was over. People were coming out. The black and dense crowd on the steps
was dispersing over the white pavements, on its way to spread through
the town the news of a great success and the name of an unknown author
who to-morrow would be triumphant and famous. A splendid evening, so
that the windows of the restaurants were lighted up in gaiety and files
of carriages passed through the streets at a late hour. This tumult of
festivity which the poor Nabob had loved so keenly, which seemed to go
so well with the dizzy whirl of his existence, roused him to life for
a moment. His lips moved, and into his dilated eyes, turned towards
de Gery, there came before he died a pained expression, beseeching and
protesting, as though to call upon him as witness of one of the greatest
and most cruel acts of injustice that Paris has ever committed.