THE JENKINS PEARLS
About a week after his adventure with Moessard, that new complication inthe terrible muddle of his affairs, Jansoulet, on leaving the Chamber,one Thursday, ordered his coachman to drive him to Mora's house. He hadnot paid a visit there since the scuffle in the Rue Royale, and the ideaof finding himself in the duke's presence gave him, through his thickskin, something of the panic that agitates a boy on his way upstairsto see the head-master after a fight in the schoolroom. However, theembarrassment of this first interview had to be gone through. They saidin the committee-rooms that Le Merquier had completed his report, amasterpiece of logic and ferocity, that it meant an invalidation, andthat he was bound to carry it with a high hand unless Mora, so powerfulin the Assembly, should himself intervene and give him his word ofcommand. A serious matter, and one that made the Nabob's cheeks flush,while in the curved mirrors of his brougham he studied his appearance,his courtier's smiles, trying to think out a way of effecting abrilliant entry, one of those strokes of good-natured effrontery whichhad brought him fortune with Ahmed, and which served him likewise in hisrelations with the French ambassador. All this accompanied by beatingsof the heart and by those shudders between the shoulder-blades whichprecede decisive actions, even when these are settled within a gildedchariot.
When he arrived at the mansion by the river, he was much surprised tonotice that the porter on the quay, as on the days of great receptions,was sending carriages up the Rue de Lille, in order to keep a door freefor those leaving. Rather anxious, he wondered, "What is there goingon?" Perhaps a concert given by the duchess, a charity bazaar, somefestivity from which Mora might have excluded him on account of thescandal of his last adventure. And this anxiety was augmented stillfurther when Jansoulet, after having passed across the principalcourt-yard amid a din of slamming doors and a dull and continuous rumbleof wheels over the sand, found himself--after ascending the steps--inthe immense entrance-hall filled by a crowd which did not extend beyondany of the doors leading to the rooms; centring its anxious goingand coming around the porter's table, where all the famous names offashionable Paris were being inscribed. It seemed as though a disastrousgust of wind had gone through the house, carrying off a little of itscalm, and allowing disquiet and danger to filter into its comfort.
"What a misfortune!"
"Ah! it is terrible."
"And so suddenly!"
Such were the remarks that people were exchanging as they met.
An idea flashed into Jansoulet's mind:
"Is the duke ill?" he inquired of a servant.
"Ah, monsieur, he is dying! He will not live through the night!"
If the roof of the palace had fallen in upon his head he would nothave been more utterly stunned. Red lights flashed before his eyes, hetottered, and let himself drop into a seat on a velvet-covered benchbeside the great cage of monkeys. The animals, over-excited by all thisbustle, suspended by their tails, by their little long-thumbedhands, were hanging to the bars in groups, and came, inquisitive andfrightened, to make the most ludicrous grimaces at this big, stupefiedman as he sat staring at the marble floor, repeating aloud to himself,"I am ruined! I am ruined!"
The duke was dying. He had been seized suddenly with illness on theSunday after his return from the Bois. He had felt intolerable burningsin his bowels, which passed through his whole body, searing as with ared-hot iron, and alternating with a cold lethargy and long periods ofcoma. Jenkins, summoned at once, did not say much, but ordered certainsedatives. The next day the pains came on again with greater intensityand followed by the same icy torpor, also more accentuated, as if life,torn up by the roots, were departing in violent spasms. Among thosearound him, none was greatly concerned. "The day after a visit toSaint-James Villa," was muttered in the antechamber, and Jenkins'shandsome face preserved its serenity. He had spoken to two orthree people, in the course of his morning rounds, of the duke'sindisposition, and that so lightly that nobody had paid much attentionto the matter.
Mora himself, notwithstanding his extreme weakness, although he felt hishead absolutely blank, and, as he said, "not an idea anywhere," was farfrom suspecting the gravity of his condition. It was only on the thirdday, on waking in the morning, that the sight of a tiny stream of blood,which had trickled from his mouth over his beard and the stained pillow,had frightened this fastidious man, who had a horror of all humanills, especially sickness, and now saw it arrive stealthily with itspollutions, its weaknesses, and the loss of physical self-control,the first concession made to death. Monpavon, entering the room behindJenkins, surprised the anxious expression of the great seigneur facedby the terrible truth, and at the same time was horrified by theravages made in a few hours upon Mora's emaciated face, in which all thewrinkles of age, suddenly evident, were mingled with lines of suffering,and those muscular depressions which tell of serious internal lesions.He took Jenkins aside, while the duke's toilet necessaries were carriedto him--a whole apparatus of crystal and silver contrasting with theyellow pallor of the invalid.
"Look here, Jenkins, the duke is very ill."
"I am afraid so," said the Irishman, in a low voice.
"But what is the matter with him?"
"What he wanted, _parbleu_!" answered the other in a fury. "One cannotbe young at his age with impunity. This intrigue will cost him dear."
Some evil passion was getting the better of him but he subdued itimmediately, and, puffing out his cheeks as though his head were full ofwater, he sighed deeply as he pressed the old nobleman's hands.
"Poor duke! poor duke! Ah, my friend, I am most unhappy!"
"Take care, Jenkins," said Monpavon coldly, disengaging his hands, "youare assuming a terrible responsibility. What! is the duke as badas that?--ps--ps--ps--Will you see nobody? You have arranged noconsultation?"
The Irishman raised his hands as if to say, "What good can it do?"
The other insisted. It was absolutely necessary that Brisset,Jousseline, Bouchereau, all the great physicians should be called in.
"But you will frighten him."
De Monpavon expanded his chest, the one pride of the old broken-downcharger.
"_Mon Cher_, if you had seen Mora and me in the trenches ofConstantine--ps--ps. Never looked away. We don't know fear. Give noticeto your colleagues. I undertake to inform him."
The consultation took place in the evening with great privacy, the dukehaving insisted on this from a singular sense of shame produced by hisillness, by that suffering which discrowned him, making him the equal ofother men. Like those African kings who hide themselves in the recessesof their palaces to die, he would have wished that men should believehim carried off, transfigured, become a god. Then, too, he dreaded aboveall things the expressions of pity, the condolences, the compassion withwhich he knew that his sick-bed would be surrounded; the tears becausehe suspected them to be hypocritical, and because, if sincere, theydispleased him still more by their grimacing ugliness.
He had always detested scenes, exaggerated sentiments, everything thatcould move him to emotion or disturb the harmonious equilibrium of hislife. Every one knew this, and the order was to keep away from him thedistress, the misery, which from one end of France to the other flowedtowards Mora as to one of those forest refuges lighted during thenight at which all wanderers may knock. Not that he was hard to theunfortunate; perhaps he may have been too easily moved to the pity whichhe regarded as an inferior sentiment, a weakness unworthy of the strong,and, refusing it to others, he dreaded it for himself, for the integrityof his courage. Nobody in the palace, then, except Monpavon and Louisthe _valet de chambre_, knew of the visit of those three personagesintroduced mysteriously into the Minister of State's apartments. Theduchess herself was ignorant of it. Separated from her husband by thebarriers frequently placed by the political and fashionable life ofthe great world between married people, she believed him slightlyindisposed, nervous more than anything else; and had so little suspicionof a catastrophe that at the very hour when the doctors were mountingth
e great, dimly lit staircase at the other end of the palace, herprivate apartments were being lit up for a girls' dance, one of those_bals blancs_ which the ingenuity of the idle world had begun to makefashionable in Paris.
This consultation was like all others: solemn and sinister. Doctors nolonger wear their great periwigs of the time of Moliere, but they stillassume the same gravity of the priests of Isis, of astrologers bristlingwith cabalistic formulae pronounced with sage noddings of the head, towhich, for comical effect, there is only wanting the high pointed cap offormer days. In this case the scene borrowed an imposing aspect from itssetting. In the vast bed-chamber, transformed, heightened, as it were,in dignity by the immobility of the owner, these grave figures cameforward round the bed on which the light was concentrated, illuminatingamid the whiteness of the linen and the purple of the hangings a faceworn into hollows, pale from lips to eyes, but wrapped in serenity as ina veil, as in a shroud. The consultants spoke in low tones, cast furtiveglances as each other, or exchanged some barbarous word, remainingimpassive, without even a frown. But this mute and reticent expressionof the doctor and magistrate, this solemnity with which science andjustice hedge themselves about to hide their frailty or ignorance, hadno power to move the duke.
Sitting up in bed, he continued to talk quietly, with the upward glanceof the eye in which it seems as if thought rises before it finally takeswing, and Monpavon coldly followed his cue, hardening himself againsthis own emotion, taking from his friend a last lesson in "form"; whileLouis, in the background, stood leaning against the door leading to theduchess's apartment, the spectre of a silent domestic in whom detachedindifference is a duty.
The most agitated, nervous man present was Jenkins. Full of obsequiousattentions for his "illustrious colleagues," as he called them, with hislips pursed up, he hung round their consultation and attempted totake part in it; but the colleagues kept him at a distance and hardlyanswered him, as Fagon--the Fagon of Louis XIV--might have addressedsome empiric summoned to the royal bedside. Old Bouchereau especiallyhad black looks for the inventor of the Jenkins pearls. Finally, whenthey had thoroughly examined and questioned their patient, they retiredto deliberate among themselves in a little room with lacquered ceilingsand walls, filled by an assortment of _bric-a-brac_ the triviality ofwhich contrasted strangely with the importance of the discussion.
Solemn moment! Anguish of the accused awaiting the decision of hisjudges--life, death, reprieve, or pardon!
With his long, white hand Mora continued to stroke his mustache with afavourite gesture, to talk with Monpavon of the club, of the foyerof the _Varietes_, asking news of the Chamber, how matters stood withregard to the Nabob's election--all this coldly, without the leastaffectation. Then, tired, no doubt, or fearing lest his glance,constantly drawn to that curtain opposite him, from behind which thesentence was to come presently, should betray the emotion which he musthave felt in the depths of his soul, he laid his head on the pillow,closed his eyes, and did not open them again until the return of thedoctors. Still the same cold and sinister faces, veritable physiognomiesof judges having on their lips the terrible decree of human fate, thefinal word which the courts pronounce fearlessly, but which the doctors,whose science it mocks, elude, and express in periphrases.
"Well, gentlemen, what says the faculty?" demanded the sick man.
There were sundry murmurs of hypocritical encouragement, vaguerecommendations; then the three learned physicians hastened to depart,eager to escape from the responsibility of this disaster. Monpavonrushed after them. Jenkins remained at the bedside, overwhelmed by thecruel truths which he had just heard during the consultation. In vainhad he laid his hand on his heart, quoted his famous motto; Bouchereauhad not spared him. It was not the first of the Irishman's clients whomhe had seen thus suddenly collapse; but he fervently hoped that thedeath of Mora would act as a salutary warning to the world of fashion,and that the prefect of police, after this great calamity, would sendthe "dealer in cantharides" to retail his drugs on the other side of theChannel.
The duke understood immediately that neither Jenkins nor Louis wouldtell him the true issue of the consultation. He abstained, therefore,from any insistence in his questionings of them, submitted to theirpretended confidence, affected even to share it, to believe the mosthopeful things they announced to him. But when Monpavon returned, hesummoned him to his bedside, and, confronted by the lie visible evenbeneath the make-up of the decrepit old man, remarked:
"Oh, you know--no humbug! From you to me, truth. What do they say? I amin a very bad way, eh?"
Monpavon prefaced his reply with a significant silence; then brutally,cynically, for fear of breaking down as he spoke:
"Done for, my poor Augustus!"
The duke received the sentence full in the face without flinching.
"Ah!" he said simply.
He pulled his mustache with a mechanical gesture, but his featuresremained motionless. And immediately he made up his mind.
That the poor wretch who dies in a hospital, without home or family,without other name than the number of his bed, that he should acceptdeath as a deliverance or bear it as his last trial; that the oldpeasant who passes away, bent double, worn out, in his dark and smokycellar, that he should depart without regret, savouring in advancethe taste of that fresh earth which he has so many times dug over andover--that is intelligible. And yet how many, even among such, cling toexistence despite all their misery! how many there are who cry, holdingon to their sordid furniture and to their rags, "I don't want to die!"and depart with nails broken and bleeding from that supreme wrench. Buthere there was nothing of the kind.
To possess all, and to lose all. What a catastrophe!
In the first silence of that dreadful moment, while he heard the soundof the music coming faintly from the duchess's ball at the other end ofthe palace, whatever attached this man to life, power, honour, wealth,all that splendour must have seemed to him already far away and in anirrevocable past. A courage of a quite exceptional temper must havebeen required to bear up under such a blow without any spur of personalvanity. No one was present save the friend, the doctor, the servant,three intimates acquainted with all his secrets; the lights moved back,left the bed in shadow, and the dying man might quite well have turnedhis face to the wall in lamentation of his own fate without beingnoticed. But not an instant of weakness, nor of useless demonstration.Without breaking a branch of the chestnut-trees in the garden, withoutwithering a flower on the great staircase of the palace, his footstepsmuffled on the thick pile of the carpets, Death had opened the door ofthis man of power and signed to him "Come!" And he answered simply, "Iam ready." The true exit of a man of the world, unforeseen, rapid, anddiscreet.
Man of the world! Mora was nothing if not that. Passing through lifemasked, gloved, breast-plated--breast-plate of white satin, such asthe masters of fence wear on great days; preserving his fighting dressimmaculate and clean; sacrificing everything to that irreproachableexterior which with him did duty for armour; he had determined on his_role_ as statesman in the passage from the drawing-room to a widerscene, and made, indeed, a statesman of the first rank on the strengthalone of his qualities as a man about town, the art of listening and ofsmiling, knowledge of men, scepticism, and coolness. That coolness didnot leave him at the supreme moment.
With eyes fixed on the time, so short, which still remained to him--forthe dark visitor was in a hurry, and he could feel on his face thedraught from the door which he had not closed behind him--his onethought now was to occupy the time well, to satisfy all the obligationsof an end like his, which must leave no devotion unrecompensed norcompromise any friend. He gave a list of certain persons whom he wishedto see and who were sent for immediately, summoned the head of hiscabinet, and, as Jenkins ventured the opinion that it was a greatfatigue for him, said:
"Can you guarantee that I shall wake to-morrow morning? I feel strong atthis moment; let me take advantage of it."
Louis inquired whether the duchess should be info
rmed. The duke, beforereplying, listened to the sounds of music that reached his room throughthe open windows from the little ball, sounds that seemed prolonged inthe night on an invisible bow, then answered:
"Let us wait a little. I have something to finish."
They brought to his bedside the little lacquered table that he mighthimself sort out the letters which were to be destroyed; but feeling hisstrength give way, he called Monpavon.
"Burn everything," said he to him in a faint voice; and seeing him movetowards the fireplace, where a fire was burning despite the warmth ofthe season.
"No," he added, "not here. There are too many of them. Some one mightcome."
Monpavon took up the writing-table, which was not heavy, and signed tothe _valet de chambre_ to go before him with a light. But Jenkins sprangforward:
"Stay here, Louis; the duke may want you."
He took hold of the lamp; and moving carefully down the whole length ofthe great corridor, exploring the waiting-rooms, the galleries, in whichthe fireplaces proved to be filled with artificial plants and quiteemptied of ashes, they wandered like spectres in the silence anddarkness of the vast house, alive only over yonder on the right, werepleasure was singing like a bird on a roof which is about to fall inruins.
"There is no fire anywhere. What is to be done with all this?" theyasked each other in great embarrassment. They might have been twothieves dragging away a chest which they did not know how to open. Atlast Monpavon, out of patience, walked straight to a door, the only onewhich they had not yet opened.
"_Ma foi_, so much the worse! Since we cannot burn them, we will drownthem. Hold the light, Jenkins."
And they entered.
Where were they? Saint-Simon relating the downfall of one of thosesovereign existences, the disarray of ceremonies, of dignities,of grandeurs, caused by death and especially by sudden death, onlySaint-Simon might have found words to tell you. With his delicate,carefully kept hands, the Marquis de Monpavon did the pumping. The otherpassed to him the letters after tearing them into small pieces, packetsof letters, on satin paper, tinted, perfumed, adorned with crests, coatsof arms, small flags with devices, covered with handwritings, fine,hurried, scrawling, entwining, persuasive; and all those flimsy pageswent whirling one over the other in eddying streams of water whichcrumpled them, soiled them, washed out their tender links beforeallowing them to disappear with a gurgle down the drain.
They were love-letters and of every kind, from the note of theadventuress, "_I saw you pass yesterday in the Bois, M. le Duc_," to thearistocratic reproaches of the last mistress but one, and the complaintsof ladies deserted, and the page, still fresh, of recent confidences.Monpavon was in the secret of all these mysteries--put a name on each ofthem: "That is Mme. Moor. Hallo! Mme. d'Athis!" A confusion of coronetsand initials, of caprices and old habits, sullied by the promiscuity ofthis moment, all engulfed in the horrid closet by the light of a lamp,with the noise of an intermittent gush of water, departing into oblivionby a shameful road. Suddenly Jenkins paused in his work of destruction.Two satin-gray letters trembled as he held them in his fingers.
"Who is that?" asked Monpavon, noticing the unfamiliar handwriting andthe Irishman's nervous excitement. "Ah, doctor, if you want to read themall, we shall never have finished."
Jenkins, his cheeks flushed, the two letters in his hand, was consumedby a desire to carry them away, to pore over them at his ease, tomartyrize himself with delight by reading them, perhaps also to forgeout of this correspondence a weapon for himself against the imprudentwoman who had signed her name. But the rigorous correctness of themarquis made him afraid. How could he distract his attention--get himaway? The opportunity occurred of its own accord. Among the letters, atiny page written in a senile and shaky hand, caught the attentionof the charlatan, who said with an ingenuous air: "Oh, oh! here issomething that does not look much like a _billet-doux. 'Mon Duc, to therescue--I am sinking! The Court of Exchequer has once more stuck itsnose into my affairs.'_"
"What are you reading there?" exclaimed Monpavon abruptly, snatching theletter from his hands. And immediately, thanks to Mora's negligence inthus allowing such private letters to lie about, the terrible situationin which he would be left by the death of his protector returned to hismind. In his grief, he had not yet given it a thought. He told himselfthat in the midst of all his preparations for his departure, the dukemight quite possibly overlook him; and, leaving Jenkins to complete thedrowning of Don Juan's casket by himself, he returned precipitatelyin the direction of the bed-chamber. Just as he was on the point ofentering, the sound of a discussion held him back behind the lowereddoor-curtain. It was Louis's voice, tearful like that of a beggar ina church-porch, trying to move the duke to pity for his distress, andasking permission to take certain bundles of bank-notes that lay in adrawer. Oh, how hoarse, utterly wearied, hardly intelligible the answer,in which there could be detected the effort of the sick man to turn overin his bed, to bring back his vision from a far-off distance alreadyhalf in sight:
"Yes, yes; take them. But for God's sake, let me sleep--let me sleep!"
Drawers opened, closed again, a short and panting breath. Monpavon heardno more of what was going on, and retraced his steps without entering.The ferocious rapacity of his servant had set his pride upon its guard.Anything rather than degradation to such a point as that.
The sleep which Mora craved for so insistently--the lethargy, to be moreaccurate--lasted a whole night, and through the next morning also, withuncertain wakings disturbed by terrible sufferings relieved each time bysoporifics. No further attempt was made to nurse him to recovery; theytried only to soothe his last moments, to help him to slip painlesslyover that terrible last step. His eyes had opened again during thistime, but were already dimmed, fixed in the void on floating shadows,vague forms like those a diver sees quivering in the uncertain lightunder water.
In the afternoon of the Thursday, towards three o'clock, he regainedcomplete consciousness, and recognising Monpavon, Cardailhac, and twoor three other intimate friends, he smiled to them, and betrayed in asentence his only anxiety:
"What do they say about it in Paris?"
They said many things about it, different and contradictory; but verycertainly he was the only subject of conversation, and the news spreadthrough the town since the morning, that Mora was at his last breath,agitated the streets, the drawing-rooms, the cafes, the workshops,revived the question of the political situation in newspaper offices andclubs, even in porters' lodges and on the tops of omnibuses, in everyplace where the unfolded public newspapers commented on this startlingrumour of the day.
Mora was the most brilliant incarnation of the Empire. One sees from adistance, not the solid or insecure base of the building, but the gildedand delicate spire, embellished, carved into hollow tracery, addedfor the satisfaction of the age. Mora was what was seen in France andthroughout Europe of the Empire. If he fell, the monument would finditself bereft of all its elegance, split as by some long and irreparablecrack. And how many lives would be dragged down by that sudden fall,how many fortunes undermined by the weakened reverberations ofthe catastrophe! None so completely as that of the big man sittingmotionless downstairs, on the bench in the monkey-house.
For the Nabob, this death was his own death, the ruin, the end of allthings. He was so deeply conscious of it that, when he entered thehouse, on learning the hopeless condition of the duke, no expression ofpity, no regrets of any sort, had escaped him, only the ferocious wordof human egoism, "I am ruined!" And this word kept recurring to hislips; he repeated it mechanically each time that he awoke suddenlyafresh to all the horror of his situation, as in those dangerousmountain storms, when a sudden flash of lightning illumines the abyssto 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 nodetail. He saw the invalidation of his election almost certain, now thatMora would no longer be there to plea
d his cause; then the consequencesof the defeat--bankruptcy, poverty, and still worse; for when theseincalculable riches collapse they always bury a little of a man's honourbeneath their ruins. But how many briers, how many thorns, how manycruel scratches and wounds before arriving at the end! In a week therewould be the Schwalbach bills--that is to say, eight hundred thousandfrancs--to pay; indemnity for Moessard, who wanted a hundred thousandfrancs, or as the alternative he would apply for the permission of theChamber to prosecute him for a misdemeanour, a suit still more sinisterinstituted by the families of two little martyrs of Bethlehem againstthe founders of the Society; and, on top of all, the complications ofthe Territorial Bank. There was one solitary hope, the mission of Paulde 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 ofsenators, of deputies, of councillors of state, all the high officialsof the administration, came and went around him without seeing him,holding mysterious consultations with uneasy importance near the twofireplaces of white marble which faced one another. So many ambitionsdisappointed, 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 asort of anger. All these people seemed to have a grudge against the dukefor dying, as though he had deserted them. One heard remarks of thiskind: "It is not surprising, with such a life as he has lived!" Andlooking out of the high windows, these gentlemen pointed out to eachother, amid the going and coming of the equipages in the court-yard, thedrawing 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 acard with a corner turned back to the footman.
From time to time one of the _habitues_ of the palace, one of those whomthe dying man had summoned to his bedside, appeared in the medley, gavean order, then went away, leaving the scared expression of his facereflected on twenty others. Jenkins showed himself thus for a moment,with his cravat untied, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his cuffs crumpled, inall the disorder of the battle in which he was engaged upstairsagainst a terrible opponent. He was instantly surrounded, besieged withquestions.
Certainly the monkeys flattening their short noses against the bars oftheir cage, excited by the unaccustomed tumult, and very attentive toall that passed about them as though they were occupied in making amethodical study of human hypocrisy, had a magnificent model in theIrish physician. His grief was superb, a splendid grief, masculine andstrong, which compressed his lips and made him pant.
"The agony has begun," he said mournfully. "It is only a matter ofhours."
And as Jansoulet came towards him, he said to him emphatically:
"Ah, my friend, what a man! What courage! He has forgotten nobody. Onlyjust now he was speaking to me of you."
"Really?"
"'The poor Nabob,' said he, 'how does the affair of his electionstand?'"
And that was all. The duke had added no further word.
Jansoulet bowed his head. What had he been hoping? Was it not enoughthat at such a moment a man like Mora had given him a thought? Hereturned and sat down on his bench, falling back into the stupor whichhad been galvanized by one moment of mad hope, and remained until,without his noticing it, the hall had become nearly deserted. He did notremark that he was the only and last visitor left, until he heard themen-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, hewished to inscribe his name in the visitors' book kept by the porter. Hewent up to the table, and leaned over it to see distinctly. The page wasfull. A blank space was pointed out to him below a signature in a verysmall, spidery hand, such as is frequently written by very fat fingers,and when he had signed, it proved to be the name of Hemerlinguedominating his own, crushing it, clasping it round with insidiousflourish. Superstitious, like the true Latin he was, he was struck bythis omen, and went away frightened by it.
Where should he dine? At the club? Place Vendome? To hear still moretalk of this death that obsessed him! He preferred to go somewhere bychance, walking straight before him, like all those who are a prey tosome fixed idea which they hope to conjure away by rapid movement. Theevening was warm, the air full of sweet scents. He walked along thequays, and reached the trees of the Cours-la-Reine, then found himselfbreathing that air in which is mingled the freshness of watered roadsand the odour of fine dust so characteristic of summer evenings inParis. At that hour all was deserted. Here and there chandeliers werebeing lighted for the concerts, blazes of gaslight flared among thegreen trees. A sound of glasses and plates from a restaurant gave himthe idea of going in.
The strong man was hungry despite all his troubles. He was served undera veranda with glazed walls backed by shrubs, and facing the greatporch of the Palais de l'Industrie, where the duke, in the presence of athousand people, had greeted him as a deputy. The refined, aristocraticface rose before his memory in the darkness of the sky, while he couldsee it also as it lay over yonder on the funereal whiteness of thepillow; and suddenly, as he ran his eye over the bill of fare presentedto him by the waiter, he noticed with stupefaction that it bore the dateof the 20th of May. So a month had not elapsed since the opening of theexhibition. It seemed to him like ten years ago. Gradually, however, thewarmth of the meal cheered him. In the corridor he could hear waiterstalking:
"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 theluck."
And so deeply is hope implanted in the human soul, that, despite whatJansoulet had himself seen and heard, these few words, helped by twobottles of burgundy and a few glasses of cognac, sufficed to restorehis courage. After all, people had been known to recover from illnessesquite as desperate. Doctors often exaggerate the ill in order to getmore credit afterward for curing it. "Suppose I called to inquire." Hemade his way back towards the house, full of illusion, trusting to thatchance which had served him so many times in his life. And indeed theaspect of the princely abode had something about it to fortify hishope. It presented the reassuring and tranquil appearance of ordinaryevenings, from the avenue with its lights at long intervals, majesticand deserted, to the steps where stood waiting a huge carriage ofold-fashioned shape.
In the antechamber, peaceful also, two enormous lamps were burning. Afootman slept in a corner; the porter was reading before the fireplace.He looked at the new arrival over his spectacles, made no remark, andJansoulet dared ask no question. Piles of newspapers lying on the tablein their wrappers, addressed to the duke, seemed to have been thrownthere as useless. The Nabob took up one of them, opened it, and triedto read, but quick and gliding steps, a muttered chanting, made him lifthis eyes, and he saw a white-haired and bent old man, decked out in laceas though he had been an altar, who was praying aloud as he departedwith a long priestly stride, his ample red cassock spreading in a trainover the carpet. It was the Archbishop of Paris, accompanied by twoassistants. The vision, with its murmur as of an icy north wind,passed quickly before Jansoulet, plunged into the great carriage anddisappeared, carrying away with it his last hope.
"Doing the right thing, _mon cher_," remarked Monpavon, appearingsuddenly at his side. "Mora is an epicurean, brought up in the ideas ofhow 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 isthe master who sets us all an example--ps--ps--irreproachable manners!"
"Then, it is all over?" said Jansoulet, overwhelmed. "There is no longerany hope?"
Monpavon signed to him to listen. A carriage rolled heavily alo
ng theavenue on the quay. The visitors' bell rang sharply several times insuccession. The marquis counted aloud: "One, two, three, four." At thefifth he rose:
"No more hope now. Here comes the other," said he, alluding to theParisian superstition that a visit from the sovereign was always fatalto dying persons. From every side the lackeys hastened up, opened thedoors wide, ranged themselves in line, while the porter, his hat cockedforward and his staff resounding on the marble floor, announced thepassage of two august shadows, of whom Jansoulet only caught a confusedglimpse behind the liveried domestics, but whom he saw beyond a longperspective of open doors climbing the great staircase, preceded bya footman bearing a candelabrum. The woman ascended, erect and proud,enveloped in a black Spanish mantilla; the man supported himself by thebaluster, slower in his movements and tired, the collar of his lightovercoat turned up above a rather bent back, which was shaken by aconvulsive 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 thethreshold, with raised hand, making a little gesture of farewell in thedirection of the man who lay dying upstairs. "Good-bye old fellow!" Thegesture and the tone were polite, irreproachable, but the voice trembleda 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 ateleven o'clock and was still going on at five in the morning. Enormoussums were scattered over the green cloth, changing hands, moved now toone side, now to the other, heaped up, distributed, regained. Fortuneswere engulfed in this monster play, at the end of which the Nabob, whohad started it to forget his terrors in the hazards of chance, aftersingular alternations and runs of luck enough to turn the hair of abeginner white, retired with winnings amounting to five hundred thousandfrancs. On the boulevard the next day they said five millions, andeverybody cried out on the scandal, especially the _Messenger_,three-quarters filled by an article against certain adventurerstolerated in the clubs, and who cause the ruin of the most honourablefamilies.
Alas! what Jansoulet had won hardly represented enough to meet the firstSchwalbach bills.
During this wild play, of which Mora was, however, the involuntarycause, and, as it were, the soul, his name was not once uttered. NeitherCardailhac nor Jenkins put in an appearance. Monpavon had taken to hisbed, stricken more deeply than he wished it to be thought. Nobody hadany news.
"Is he dead?" Jansoulet said to himself as he left the club; and he felta desire to make a call to inquire before going home. It was no longerhope that urged him, but that sort of morbid and nervous curiosity whichafter a great fire leads the smitten unfortunate people, ruined andhomeless, back to the wreck of their dwellings.
Although it was still very early, and a pink mist of dawn hung in thesky, the whole mansion stood open as if for a solemn departure. Thelamps still smoked over the fire-places, dust floated about the rooms.The Nabob advanced amid an inexplicable solitude of desertion to thefirst floor, where at last he heard a voice he knew, that of Cardailhac,who was dictating names, and the scratching of pens over paper. Theclever stage-manager of the festivities in honour of the Bey wasorganizing with the same ardour the funeral pomps of the Duc de Mora.What activity! His excellency had died during the evening; when morningcame already ten thousand letters were being printed, and everybodyin the house who could hold a pen was busy with the writing of theaddresses. Without passing through these improvised offices, Jansouletreached the waiting-room, ordinarily so crowded, to-day with all itsarm-chairs empty. In the middle, on a table, lay the hat, cane, andgloves of M. le Duc, always ready in case he should go out unexpectedly,so as to save him even the trouble of giving an order. The objects thatwe always wear keep about them something of ourselves. The curve of thehat suggested that of the mustache; the light-coloured gloves were readyto grasp the supple and strong Chinese cane; the total effect was oneof life and energy, as if the duke were about to appear, stretch out hishand while talking, take up those things, and go out.
Oh, no. M. le Duc was not going out. Jansoulet had but to approachthe half-open door of the bed-chamber to see on the bed, raised threesteps--always the platform even after death--a rigid, haughty form, amotionless and aged profile, metamorphosed by the beard's growth of anight, quite gray; near the sloping pillow, kneeling and burying herhead in the white drapery, was a woman, whose fair hair lay in rippleddisorder, ready to fall beneath the shears of eternal widowhood; then apriest and a nun, gathered in this atmosphere of watch by the dead, inwhich are mingled the fatigue of sleepless nights and the murmurs ofprayer.
The chamber in which so many ambitions had strengthened their wings, somany hopes and disappointments had throbbed, was wholly given overnow to the peace of passing Death. Not a sound, not a sigh. Only,notwithstanding the early hour, away yonder, towards the Pont de laConcorde, a little clarinet, shrill and sharp, could be heard abovethe rumbling of the first vehicles; but its exasperating mockery washenceforth lost on him who lay there asleep, showing to the terrifiedNabob an image of his own destiny, chilled, discoloured, ready for thetomb.
Others besides Jansoulet found that death-chamber lugubrious: thewindows wide open, the night and the wind entering freely from thegarden, making a strong draught; a human form on a table; the body,which had just been embalmed; the hollow skull filled with a sponge,the brain in a basin. The weight of this brain of a statesman was trulyextraordinary. It weighed--it weighed--the newspapers of the periodmentioned the figure. But who remembers it to-day?