The Nabob Part 23

"It is a great honour that you have done me, mademoiselle, to a.s.sociate my name with yours, my humble person with your triumph, and to prove to all this vermin gnawing at my heels that you do not believe the calumnies which have been spread with regard to me. Yes, truly, I shall never forget it. In vain I may cover this magnificent bust with gold and diamonds, I shall still be your debtor."

Fortunately for the good Nabob, with more feeling than eloquence, he is obliged to make way for all the others attracted by a dazzling talent, the personality in view; extravagant enthusiasms which, for want of words to express themselves, disappear as they come; the conventional admirations of society, moved by good-will, by a lively desire to please, but of which each word is a douche of cold water; and then the hearty hand-shakes of rivals, of comrades, some very frank, others that communicate to you the weakness of their grasp; the pretentious great b.o.o.by, at whose idiotic eulogy you must appear to be transported with gladness, and who, lest he should spoil you too much, accompanies it with "a few little reserves," and the other, who, while overwhelming you with compliments, demonstrates to you that you have not learned the first word of your profession; and the excellent busy fellow, who stops just long enough to whisper in your ear "that so-and-so, the famous critic, does not look very pleased." Felicia listened to it all with the greatest calm, raised by her success above the littleness of envy, and quite proud when a glorious veteran, some old comrade of her father, threw to her a "You've done very well, little one!" which took her back to the past, to the little corner reserved for her in the old days in her father's studio, when she was beginning to carve out a little glory for herself under the protection of the renown of the great Ruys. But, taken altogether, the congratulations left her rather cold, because there lacked one which she desired more than any other, and which she was surprised not to have yet received. Decidedly he was more often in her thoughts than any other man had ever been. Was it love at last, the great love which is so rare in an artist's soul, incapable as that is of giving itself entirely up to the sway of sentiment, or was it perhaps simply a dream of honest _bourgeoise_ life, well sheltered against _ennui_, that spiritless _ennui_, the precursor of storms, which she had so much reason to dread? In any case, she was herself taken in by it, and had been living for some days past in a state of delicious trouble, for love is so strong, so beautiful a thing, that its semblances, its mirages, allure and can move us as deeply as itself.

Has it ever happened to you in the street, when you have been preoccupied with thoughts of some one dear to you, to be warned of his approach by meeting persons with a vague resemblance to him, preparatory images, sketches of the type to appear directly afterward, which stand out for you from the crowd like successive appeals to your overexcited attention? Such presentiments are magnetic and nervous impressions at which one should not be too disposed to smile, since they const.i.tute a faculty of suffering. Already, in the moving and constantly renewed stream of visitors, Felicia had several times thought to recognise the curly head of Paul de Gery, when suddenly she uttered a cry of joy. It was not he, however, this time again, but some one who resembled him closely, whose regular and peaceful physiognomy was always now connected in her mind with that of her friend Paul through the effect of a likeness more moral than physical, and the gentle authority which both exercised over her thoughts.

"Aline!"

"Felicia!"

If nothing is more open to suspicion than the friendship of two fashionable ladies sharing the prerogatives of drawing-room royalty and lavishing on each other epithets, and the trivial graces of feminine fondness, the friendships of childhood keep in the grown woman a frankness of manner which distinguishes them, and makes them recognisable among all others, bonds woven naively and firm as the needlework of little girls in which an experienced hand had been prodigal of thread and big knots; plants reared in fresh soil, in flower, but with strong roots, full of vitality and new shoots. And what a joy, hand in hand--you glad dances of boarding-school days, where are you?--to retrace some steps of one's way with somebody who has an equal acquaintance with it and its least incidents, and the same laugh of tender retrospection. A little apart, the two girls, for whom it has been sufficient to find themselves once more face to face to forget five years of separation, carry on a rapid exchange of recollections, while the little _pere_ Joyeuse, his ruddy face brightened by a new cravat, straightens himself in pride to see his daughter thus warmly welcomed by such an ill.u.s.trious person. Proud certainly he had reason to be, for the little Parisian, even in the neighbourhood of her brilliant friend, holds her own in grace, youth, fair candour, beneath her twenty smooth and golden years, which the gladness of this meeting brings to fresh bloom.

"How happy you must be! For my part, I have seen nothing yet; but I hear everybody saying it is so beautiful."

"Happy above all to see you again, little Aline. It is so long--"

"I should think so, you naughty girl! Whose the fault?"

And from the saddest corner of her memory, Felicia recalls the date of the breaking off of their relations, coinciding for her with another date on which her youth came to its end in an unforgettable scene.

"And what have you been doing, darling, all this time?"

"Oh, I, always the same thing--or, nothing to speak of."

"Yes, yes, we know what you call doing nothing, you brave little thing!

Giving your life to other people, isn't it?"

But Aline was no longer listening. She was smiling affectionately to some one straight in front of her; and Felicia, turning round to see who it was, perceived Paul de Gery replying to the shy and tender greeting of Mlle. Joyeuse.

"You know each other, then?"

"Do I know M. Paul! I should think so, indeed. We talk of you very often. He has never told you, then?"

"Never. He must be a terribly sly fellow."

She stopped short, her mind enlightened by a flash; and quickly without heed to de Gery, who was coming up to congratulate her on her triumph, she leaned over towards Aline and spoke to her in a low voice. That young lady blushed, protested with smiles and words under her breath: "How can you think of such a thing? At my age--a 'grandmamma'!" and finally seized her father's arm in order to escape some friendly teasing.

When Felicia saw the two young people going off together, when she had realized the fact, which they had not yet grasped themselves, that they were in love with each other, she felt as it were a crumbling all around her. Then upon her dream, now fallen to the ground in a thousand fragments, she set herself to stamp furiously. After all, he was quite right to prefer this little Aline to herself. Would an honest man ever dare to marry Mlle. Ruys? She, a home, a family--what nonsense! A harlot's daughter you are, my dear; you must be a harlot too if you want to become anything at all.

The day wore on. The crowd, more active now that there were empty s.p.a.ces here and there, commenced to stream towards the door of exit after great eddyings round the successes of the year, satisfied, rather tired, but excited still by that air charged with the electricity of art. A great flood of sunlight, such as sometimes occurs at four o'clock in the afternoon, fell on the stained-gla.s.s rose-window, threw on the sand tracks of rainbow-coloured lights, softly bathing the bronze or the marble of the statues, imparting an iridescent hue to the nudity of a beautiful figure, giving to the vast museum something of the luminous life of a garden. Felicia, absorbed in her deep and sad reverie, did not notice the man who advanced towards her, superb, elegant, fascinating, through the respectfully opened ranks of the public, while the name of "Mora" was everywhere whispered.

"Well, mademoiselle, you have made a splendid success. I only regret one thing about it, and that is the cruel symbol which you have hidden in your masterpiece."

As she saw the duke before her, she shuddered.

"Ah, yes, the symbol," she said, lifting her face towards his with a smile of discouragement; and leaning against the pedestal of the large, voluptuous statue near which they happened to be standing, with the closed eyes of a woman who gives or abandons herself, she murmured low, very low:

"Rabelais lied, as all men lie. The truth is that the fox is utterly wearied, that he is at the end of his breath and his courage, ready to fall into the ditch, and that if the greyhound makes another effort----"

Mora started, became a shade paler, all the blood he had in his body rushing back to his heart. Two sombre flames met with their eyes, two rapid words were exchanged by lips that hardly moved; then the duke bowed profoundly, and walked away with a step gay and light, as though the G.o.ds were bearing him.

At that moment there was in the palace only one man as happy as he, and that was the Nabob. Escorted by his friends, he occupied, quite filled up, the princ.i.p.al bay with his own party alone, speaking loudly, gesticulating, proud to such a degree that he looked almost handsome, as though by dint of naive and long contemplation of his bust he had been touched by something of the splendid idealization with which the artist had haloed the vulgarity of his type. The head, raised to the three-quarters position, standing freely out from the wide, loose collar, drew contradictory remarks on the resemblance from the pa.s.sers-by; and the name of Jansoulet, so many times repeated by the electoral ballot-boxes, was repeated over again now by the prettiest mouths, by the most authoritative voices, in Paris. Any other than the Nabob would have been embarra.s.sed to hear uttered, as he pa.s.sed, these expressions of curiosity which were not always friendly. But the platform, the springing-board, well suited that nature which became bolder under the fire of glances, like those women who are beautiful or witty only in society, and whom the least admiration transfigures and completes.

When he felt this delirious joy growing calmer, when he thought to have drunk the whole of its proud intoxication, he had only to say to himself, "Deputy! I am a Deputy!" And the triumphal cup foamed once more to the brim. It meant the embargo raised from all his possessions, the awakening from a nightmare that had lasted two months, the puff of cool wind sweeping away all his anxieties, all his inquietudes, even to the affront of Saint-Romans, very heavy though that was in his memory.

Deputy!

He laughed to himself as he thought of the baron's face when he learned the news, of the stupefaction of the Bey when he had been led up to his bust; and suddenly, upon the reflection that he was no longer merely an adventurer stuffed with gold, exciting the stupid admiration of the crowd, as might an enormous rough nugget in the window of a money-changer, but that people saw in him, as he pa.s.sed, one of the men elected by the will of the nation, his simple and mobile face grew thoughtful with a deliberate gravity, there suggested themselves to him projects of a career, of reform, and the wish to profit by the lessons that had been latterly taught by destiny. Already, remembering the promise which he had given to de Gery, for the household troop that wriggled ign.o.bly at his heels, he made exhibition of certain disdainful coldnesses, a deliberate pose of authoritative contradiction. He called the Marquis de Bois l'Hery "my good fellow," imposed silence very sharply on the governor, whose enthusiasm was becoming scandalous, and made a solemn vow to himself to get rid as soon as possible of all that mendicant and promising Bohemian set, when he should have occasion to begin the process.

Penetrating the crowd which surrounded him, Moessard--the handsome Moessard, in a sky-blue cravat, pale and bloated like a white embodiment of disease, and pinched at the waist in a fine frock-coat--seeing that the Nabob, after having gone twenty times round the hall of sculpture, was making for the door, dashed forward, and pa.s.sing his arm through his, said:

"You are taking me with you, you know."

Especially of late, since the time of the election, he had a.s.sumed, in the establishment of the Place Vendome, an authority almost equal to that of Monpavon, but more impudent; for, in point of impudence, the Queen's lover was without his equal on the pavement that stretches from the Rue Drouot to the Madeleine. This time he had gone too far. The muscular arm which he pressed was shaken violently, and the Nabob answered very dryly:

"I am sorry, _mon cher_, but I have not a place to offer you."

No place in a carriage that was as big as a house, and which five of them had come in!

Moessard gazed at him in stupefaction.

"I had, however, a few words to say to you which are very urgent. With regard to the subject of my note--you received it, did you not?"

"Certainly; and M. de Gery should have sent you a reply this very morning. What you ask is impossible. Twenty thousand francs! _Tonnerre de Dieu!_ You go at a fine rate!"

"Still, it seems to me that my services--" stammered the beauty-man.

"Have been amply paid for. That is how it seems to me also. Two hundred thousand francs in five months! We will draw the line there, if you please. Your teeth are long, young man; you will have to file them down a little."

They exchanged these words as they walked, pushed forward by the surging wave of the people going out. Moessard stopped:

"That is your last word?"

The Nabob hesitated for a moment, seized by a presentiment as he looked at that pale, evil mouth; then he remembered the promise which he had given to his friend:

"That is my last word."

"Very well! We shall see," said the handsome Moessard, whose switch-cane cut the air with the hiss of a viper; and, turning on his heel, he made off with great strides, like a man who is expected somewhere on very urgent business.

Jansoulet continued his triumphal progress. That day much more would have been required to upset the equilibrium of his happiness; on the contrary, he felt himself relieved by the so-quickly achieved fulfilment of his purpose.

The immense vestibule was thronged by a dense crowd of people whom the approach of the hour of closing was bringing out, but whom one of those sudden showers, which seem inseparable from the opening of the _Salon_, kept waiting beneath the porch, with its floor beaten down and sandy like the entrance to the circus where the young dandies strut about. The scene that met the eye was curious, and very Parisian.

Outside, great rays of sunshine traversing the rain, attaching to its limpid beads those sharp and brilliant blades which justify the proverbial saying, "It rains halberds"; the young greenery of the Champs-Elysees, the clumps of rhododendrons, rustling and wet, the carriages ranged in the avenue, the mackintosh capes of the coachmen, all the splendid harness-trappings of the horses receiving from the rain and the sunbeams an added richness and effect, and blue everywhere looming out, the blue of a sky which is about to smile in the interval between two downpours.

Within, laughter, gossip, greetings, impatience, skirts held up, satins bulging out above the delicate folds of frills, of lace, of flounces gathered up in the hands of their wearers in heavy, terribly frayed bundles. Then, to unite the two sides of the picture, these prisoners framed in by the vaulted ceiling of the porch and in the gloom of its shadow, with the immense background in brilliant light, footmen running beneath umbrellas, crying out names of coachmen or of masters, broughams coming up at walking pace, and fl.u.s.tered couples getting into them.

"M. Jansoulet's carriage!"