The Nabob Volume 1 Page 10

  VII.

  JANSOULET AT HOME.

  Married he had been for twelve years, but had never mentioned the factto any one of his Parisian acquaintances, by virtue of an acquiredOriental habit, the habit that Oriental peoples have of maintainingsilence concerning their female relations. Suddenly it was learned thatMadame was coming, that apartments must be made ready for her, herchildren and her women. The Nabob hired the whole second floor of thehouse on Place Vendome, the previous tenant being sacrificed to Nabobprices. The stables were increased in size, the staff of servants wasdoubled; and then, one day, coachmen and carriages went to the Lyonstation to fetch Madame, who arrived with a retinue of negresses,little negroes and gazelles, completely filling a long train that hadbeen heated expressly for her all the way from Marseille.

  She alighted in a terrible state of prostration, exhausted andbewildered by her long railroad journey, the first in her life, for shehad been taken to Tunis as a child and had never left it. Two negroescarried her from the carriage to her apartments in an armchair, whichwas always kept in the vestibule thereafter, ready for that difficulttransportation. Madame Jansoulet could not walk upstairs, for it madeher dizzy; she would not have an elevator because her weight made itsqueak; besides, she never walked. An enormous creature, so bloatedthat it was impossible to assign her an age, but somewhere betweentwenty-five and forty, with rather a pretty face, but features alldeformed by fat, lifeless eyes beneath drooping lids grooved likeshells, trussed up in exported gowns, loaded with diamonds and jewelslike a Hindoo idol, she was a most perfect specimen of the transplantedEuropeans who are called Levantines. A strange race of obese Creoles,connected with our society by naught save language and dress, butenveloped by the Orient in its stupefying atmosphere, the subtlepoisons of its opium-laden air, in which everything becomes limp andnerveless, from the tissues of the skin to the girdle around the waist,ay, even to the mind itself and the thought.

  She was the daughter of an enormously wealthy Belgian, a dealer incoral at Tunis, in whose establishment Jansoulet had been employed forseveral months on his first arrival in the country. MademoiselleAfchin, at that time a fascinating doll, with dazzling complexion andhair, and perfect health, came often to the counting-room for herfather, in the great chariot drawn by mules which conveyed them totheir beautiful villa of La Marse in the outskirts of Tunis. The child,always _decollete_, with gleaming white shoulders seen for a moment ina luxurious frame, dazzled the adventurer; and years after, when he hadbecome rich, the favorite of the bey, and thought of settling down, hismind reverted to her. The child had changed into a stout, heavy, sallowgirl. Her intellect, never of a high order, had become still moreobtuse in the torpor of such a life as dormice lead, in the neglect ofa father whose whole time and thought were given to business, and inthe use of tobacco saturated with opium and of sweetmeats,--the torporof her Flemish blood conjoined with Oriental indolence; and with allthe rest, ill-bred, gluttonous, sensual, arrogant, a Levantine trinketbrought to perfection.

  But Jansoulet saw nothing of all that.

  In his eyes she was then, she was always, down to the time of herarrival in Paris, a superior being, a person of the highest refinement,a Demoiselle Afchin; he spoke to her with respect, maintained aslightly humble and timid attitude toward her, gave her money withoutcounting it, indulged her most extravagant caprices, her wildest whims,all the strange conceits of a Levantine's brain distracted by ennui andidleness. A single word justified everything; she was a DemoiselleAfchin. And yet they had nothing in common; he was always at the Kasbahor the Bardo, in attendance on the bey, paying his court to him, orelse in his counting-room; she passed her day in bed, on her head adiadem of pearls worth three hundred thousand francs, which she neverlaid aside, brutalizing herself by smoking, living as in a harem,admiring herself in the mirror, arraying herself in fine clothes, incompany with several other Levantines, whose greatest joy consisted inmeasuring with their necklaces the girth of arms and legs whichrivalled one another in corpulency, bringing forth children with whomshe never concerned herself, whom she never saw, who had never evencaused her suffering, for she was delivered under the influence ofchloroform. A "bale" of white flesh perfumed with musk. And Jansouletwould say with pride: "I married a Demoiselle Afchin!"

  Under Parisian skies and in the cold light of the capital, hisdisillusionment began. Having determined to set up a regularestablishment, to receive, to give entertainments, the Nabob had sentfor his wife, in order to place her at the head of his house. But whenhe saw that mass of stiff, crackling dry-goods, of Palais-Royal finery,alight at his door, and all the extraordinary outfit that followed her,he had a vague impression of a Queen Pomare in exile. The difficultywas that he had seen some genuine women of fashion and he madecomparisons. He had planned a grand ball to celebrate her arrival, buthe prudently abstained. Indeed Madame Jansoulet refused to receive anyone. Her natural indolence was augmented by the homesickness which thecold yellow fog and the pouring rain had brought upon her as soon asshe landed. She passed several days in bed, crying aloud like a child,declaring that they had brought her to Paris to kill her, and evenrejecting the slightest attentions from her women. She lay thereroaring among her lace pillows, her hair in a tangled mass around herdiadem, the windows closed and curtains tightly drawn, lamps lightedday and night, crying out that she wanted to go away--ay, to goaway--ay; and it was a pitiful thing to see, in that tomb-likedarkness, the half-filled trunks scattered over the carpet, thefrightened gazelles, the negresses crouching around their hystericalmistress, groaning in unison, with haggard eyes, like the dogs oftravellers in polar countries which go mad when they cannot see thesun.

  The Irish doctor, upon being admitted to that distressing scene, had nosuccess with his fatherly ways, his fine superficial phrases. Not atany price would the Levantine take the pearls with arsenical base, togive tone to her system. The Nabob was horrified. What was he to do?Send her back to Tunis with the children? That was hardly possible. Hewas definitively in disgrace there. The Hemerlingues had triumphed. Alast insult had filled the measure to overflowing: on Jansoulet'sdeparture the bey had commissioned him to have several millions of goldcoined after a new pattern at the Paris Mint; then the commission hadbeen abruptly withdrawn and given to Hemerlingue. Jansoulet, beingpublicly insulted, retorted with a public manifesto, offering all hisproperty for sale, his palace on the Bardo presented to him by theformer bey, his villas at La Marse, all of white marble, surrounded bymagnificent gardens, his counting rooms, the most commodious and mostsumptuously furnished in the city, and instructing the intelligentBompain to bring his wife and children to Paris in order to put theseal of finality to his departure. After such a display, it would behard to return; that is what he tried to make Mademoiselle Afchinunderstand, but she replied only by prolonged groans. He strove tocomfort her, to amuse her, but what form of distraction could be madeto appeal to that abnormally apathetic nature? And then, could hechange the skies of Paris, give back to the wretched Levantine hermarble-tiled _patio_, where she used to pass long hours in a cool,delicious state of drowsiness, listening to the plashing of the waterin the great alabaster fountain with three basins one above the other,and her gilded boat, covered with a purple awning and rowed by eightsupple, muscular Tripolitan oarsmen over the lovely lake of El-Baheira,when the sun was setting? Sumptuous as were the apartments on PlaceVendome, they could not supply the place of those lost treasures. Andshe plunged deeper than ever in her despair. One habitue of the housesucceeded, however, in drawing her out of it, Cabassu, who styledhimself on his cards "professor of massage;" a stout dark thick-setman, redolent of garlic and hair-oil, square-shouldered, covered withhair to his eyes, who knew stories of Parisian seraglios, trivialanecdotes within the limited range of Madame's intellect. He came onceto rub her, and she wished to see him again, detained him. He wasobliged to abandon all his other customers and to become the _masseur_of that able-bodied creature, at a salary equal to that of a senator,her page, her reader, her body-guard. Jansou
let, overjoyed to see thathis wife was contented, was not conscious of the disgusting absurdityof the intimacy.

  Cabassu was seen in the Bois, in the enormous and sumptuous calechebeside the favorite gazelle, at the back of the theatre boxes which theLevantine hired, for she went abroad now, revivified by her masseur'streatment and determined to be amused. She liked the theatre,especially farces or melodramas. The apathy of her unwieldy body wasminimized in the false glare of the footlights. But she enjoyedCardailhac's theatre most of all. There the Nabob was at home. From thefirst manager down to the last box-opener, the whole staff belonged tohim. He had a key to the door leading from the corridor to the stage;and the salon attached to his box, decorated in Oriental fashion, withthe ceiling hollowed out like a bee-hive, divans upholstered in camel'shair, the gas-jet enclosed in a little Moorish lantern, was admirablyadapted for a nap during the tedious _entr'actes_: a delicatecompliment from the manager to his partner's wife. Nor had that monkeyof a Cardailhac stopped at that: detecting Mademoiselle Afchin's likingfor the stage, he had succeeded in persuading her that she possessed anintuitive knowledge of all things pertaining to it, and had ended byasking her to cast a glance in her leisure moments, the glance of anexpert, upon such pieces as he sent to her. An excellent way of bindingthe partnership more firmly.

  Poor manuscripts in blue or yellow covers, which hope has tied withslender ribbons, ye who take flight swelling with ambition and withdreams, who knows what hands will open you, turn your leaves, whatprying fingers will deflower your unknown charm, that shining duststored up by every new idea? Who passes judgment on you, and whocondemns you? Sometimes, before going out to dinner, Jansoulet, ongoing up to his wife's room, would find her smoking in her easy-chair,with her head thrown back and piles of manuscript by her side, andCabassu, armed with a blue pencil, reading in his hoarse voice and withhis Bourg-Saint-Andeol intonation some dramatic lucubration which hecut and slashed remorselessly at the slightest word of criticism fromthe lady. "Don't disturb yourselves," the good Nabob's wave of the handwould say, as he entered the room on tiptoe. He would listen and nodhis head admiringly as he looked at his wife. "She's an astonishingcreature," he would say to himself, for he knew nothing of literature,and in that direction at all events he recognized Mademoiselle Afchin'ssuperiority.

  "She had the theatrical instinct," as Cardailhac said; but as anoffset, the maternal instinct was entirely lacking. She never gave athought to her children, abandoning them to the hands of strangers,and, when they were brought to her once a month, contenting herselfwith giving them the flabby, lifeless flesh of her cheeks to kiss,between two puffs of a cigarette, and never making inquiries concerningthe details of care and health which perpetuate the physical bond ofmotherhood, and make the true mother's heart bleed in sympathy with herchild's slightest suffering.

  They were three stout, heavy, apathetic boys, of eleven, nine, andseven years, with the Levantine's sallow complexion and prematurebloated appearance, and their father's velvety, kindly eyes. They wereas ignorant as young noblemen of the Middle Ages; in Tunis M. Bompainhad charge of their studies, but in Paris the Nabob, intent upon givingthem the benefit of a Parisian education, had placed them in the moststylish and most expensive boarding school, the College Bourdaloue,conducted by excellent Fathers, who aimed less at teaching their pupilsthan at moulding them into well-bred, reflecting men of the world, andwho succeeded in producing little monstrosities, affected andridiculous, scornful of play, absolutely ignorant, with no trace ofspontaneity or childishness, and despairingly pert and forward. Thelittle Jansoulets did not enjoy themselves overmuch in that hothousefor early fruits, notwithstanding the special privileges accorded totheir immense wealth; they were really too neglected. Even the Creolesin the institution had correspondents and visitors; but they were nevercalled to the parlor, nor was any relative of theirs known to theschool authorities; from time to time they received baskets ofsweetmeats or windfalls of cake, and that was all. The Nabob, as hedrove through Paris, would strip a confectioner's shop-window for theirbenefit and send the contents to the college with that affectionateimpulsiveness blended with negro-like ostentation which characterizedall his acts. It was the same with their toys, always too fine, tooelaborate, of no earthly use, the toys which are made only for show andwhich the Parisian never buys. But the thing to which above all othersthe little Jansoulets owed the respectful consideration of pupils andmasters was their well-filled purse, always ready for collections, forprofessorial entertainments, and for the charitable visits, the famousvisits inaugurated by the College Bourdaloue, one of the tempting itemson the programme of the institution, the admiration of impressionableminds.

  Twice a month, turn and turn about, the pupils belonging to the littleSociety of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, established at the college on themodel of the great society of that name, went in small detachments,unattended, like grown men, to carry succor and consolation to thefarthest corners of the thickly-peopled faubourgs. In that way it wassought to teach them charity by experience, the art of finding out thewretchedness, the necessities of the people and of dressing theirsores, always more or less repulsive, with a balsam of kind words andecclesiastical maxims. To console, to convert the masses by the aid ofchildhood, to disarm religious incredulity by the youth and innocenceof the apostles; such was the purpose of that little society, a purposethat failed absolutely of realization, by the way. The children,well-dressed, well-fed, in excellent health, went only to addressesdesignated beforehand and found respectable poor people, sometimes alittle ailing, but far too clean, already enrolled and relieved by therich charitable organizations of the Church. They never happened uponone of those loathsome homes, where hunger, mourning, abject poverty,all forms of misery, physical and moral, are written in filth on thewalls, in indelible wrinkles on the faces. Their visit was arranged inadvance like that of the sovereign to the guard-house to taste thesoldier's soup; the guard-house is notified and the soup seasoned forthe royal palate. Have you seen those pictures in religious books,where a little communicant, with his bow on his arm and his taper inhis hand, all combed and curled, goes to assist a poor old man lying onhis wretched pallet with the whites of his eyes turned up to the sky?These charitable visits had the same conventional stage-setting andaccent. The machine-like gestures of the little preachers with arms tooshort for the work, were answered by words learned by rote, so false asto set one's teeth on edge. The comical words of encouragement, the"consolation lavishly poured forth" in prize-book phrases by voicessuggestive of young roosters with the influenza, called forth emotionalblessings, the whining, sickening mummery of a church porch aftervespers. And as soon as the young visitors' backs were turned, what anexplosion of laughter and shouting in the garret, what a dancing aroundthe offerings brought, what an overturning of armchairs in which theyhave been feigning illness, what a pouring of boluses into the fire, afire of ashes, very artistically arranged! When the little Jansouletswent to visit their parents, they were placed in charge of the man withthe red fez, Bompain the indispensable. It was Bompain who took them tothe Champs-Elysees, arrayed in English jackets, silk hats of the lateststyle--at seven years!--and with little canes dangling from the ends oftheir dogskin gloves. It was Bompain who superintended the victuallingof the break on which he went with the children to the races,race-cards stuck in their hats around which green veils were twisted,wonderfully like the characters in lilliputian pantomimes whosecomicality consists solely in the size of their heads compared withtheir short legs and dwarfish movements. They smoked and drankoutrageously. Sometimes the man in the fez, himself hardly able tostand, brought them home horribly ill. And yet Jansoulet loved hislittle ones, especially the youngest, who, with his long hair and hisdoll-like aspect, reminded him of little Afchin in her carriage. Butthey were still at the age when children belong to the mother, whenneither a stylish tailor nor accomplished masters nor a fashionableboarding-school nor the ponies saddled for the little men in thestable, when nothing in short takes the place of the watchful
andattentive hand, the warmth and gayety of the nest. The father wasunable to give them that in any event; and then he was so busy!

  A thousand matters, the _Caisse Territoriale_, the arrangement ofthe picture gallery, races at Tattersall's with Bois-l'Hery, somegimcrack to go and see, here or there, at the houses of collectors towhom Schwalbach recommended him, hours passed with trainers, jockeys,dealers in curiosities, the occupied, varied existence of a bourgeoisgentleman in modern Paris. In all this going and coming he succeeded inParisianizing himself a little more each day, was admitted toMonpavon's club, made welcome in the green-room at the ballet, behindthe scenes at the theatre, and continued to preside at his famousbachelor breakfasts, the only entertainments possible in hisestablishment. His existence was really very full, and yet de Geryrelieved him from the most difficult part of it, the complicateddepartment of solicitations and contributions.

  The young man was now a witness, as he sat at his desk, of all theaudacious and burlesque inventions, all the heroi-comic schemes of thatmendicancy of a great city, organized like a ministerial department andin numbers like an army, which subscribes to the newspapers and knowsits _Bottin_ by heart. It was his business to receive the fair-hairedlady, young, brazen-faced and already faded, who asks for only ahundred louis, threatening to throw herself into the water immediatelyupon leaving the house if they are not forthcoming, and the stoutmatron, with affable, unceremonious manners, who says on entering theroom: "Monsieur, you do not know me. Nor have I the honor of knowingyou; but we shall soon know each other. Be kind enough to sit down andlet us talk." The tradesman in difficulties, on the brink ofinsolvency--it is sometimes true--who comes to entreat you to save hishonor, with a pistol all ready for suicide bulging out the pocket ofhis coat--sometimes it is only the bowl of his pipe. And oftentimescases of genuine distress, prolix and tiresome, of people who do noteven know how to tell how unfitted they are to earn their living.Besides such instances of avowed mendicancy, there were others indisguise: charity, philanthropy, good works, encouragement of artists,house-to-house collections for children's hospitals, parish churches,penitentiaries, benevolent societies or district libraries. And lastlythose that array themselves in a worldly mask: tickets to concerts,benefit performances, tickets of all colors, "platform, front row,reserved sections." The Nabob's orders were that no one should berefused, and it was a decided gain that he no longer attended to suchmatters in person. For a long time he had deluged all this hypocriticalscheming with gold, with lordly indifference, paying five hundredfrancs for a ticket to a concert by some Wurtemberg zither-player, orLanguedocian flutist, which would have been quoted at ten francs at theTuileries or the Due de Mora's. On some days young de Gery went outfrom these sessions actually nauseated. All his youthful honesty rosein revolt; he attempted to induce the Nabob to institute some reforms;but he, at the first word, assumed the bored expression characteristicof weak natures when called upon to give an opinion, or else repliedwith a shrug of his great shoulders: "Why this is Paris, my dear child.Don't you be alarmed, but just let me alone. I know where I'm going andwhat I want."

  He wanted two things at that time,--a seat in the Chamber of Deputiesand the cross of the Legion of Honor. In his view those were the firsttwo stages of the long ascent which his ambition impelled him toundertake. He certainly would be chosen a deputy through the _CaisseTerritoriale_, at the head of which he was. Paganetti fromPorto-Vecchio often said to him:

  "When the day comes, the island will rise as one man and vote for you."

  But electors were not the only thing it was necessary to have; theremust be a vacant seat in the Chamber, and the delegation from Corsicawas full. One member, however, old Popolasca, being infirm and in nocondition to perform his duties, might be willing to resign on certainconditions. It was a delicate matter to negotiate, but quitepracticable, for the good man had a large family, estates whichproduced almost nothing, a ruined palace at Bastia, where his childrenlived on _polenta_, and an apartment at Paris, in a furnishedlodging-house of the eighteenth order. By not haggling over one or twohundred thousand francs, they might come to terms with that famishedlegislator who, when sounded by Paganetti, did not say yes or no, beingallured by the magnitude of the sum but held back by the vainglory ofhis office. The affair was in that condition and might be decided anyday.

  With regard to the Cross, the prospect was even brighter. The Work ofBethlehem had certainly created a great sensation at the Tuileries.Nothing was now wanting but M. de La Perriere's visit and his report,which could not fail to be favorable, to ensure the appearance on thelist of March 16th, the date of an imperial anniversary, of theglorious name of Jansoulet. The 16th of March, that is to say, within amonth. What would old Hemerlingue say to that signal distinction?--oldHemerlingue, who had had to be content with the Nisham for so long. Andthe bey, who had been made to believe that Jansoulet was under the banof Parisian society, and the old mother, down at Saint-Romans, who wasalways so happy over her son's successes! Was not all that worth a fewmillions judiciously distributed and strewn by that road leading torenown, along which the Nabob walked like a child, with no fear ofbeing devoured at the end? And was there not in these external joys,these honors, this dearly bought consideration, a measure ofcompensation for all the chagrins of that Oriental won back to Europeanlife, who longed for a home and had naught but a caravansary, whosought a wife and found naught but a Levantine?