The Nabob Volume 1 Read online

  XI.

  THE FETES IN HONOR OF THE BEY.

  In the regions of the South, of the civilization of long ago, thehistoric chateaux still standing are very few. At rare intervals someold abbey rears its tottering and dismantled facade on a hillside,pierced with holes which once were windows, which see naught now butthe sky,--monuments of dust, baked by the sun, dating from the days ofthe Crusades or of Courts of Love, without a trace of man among theirstones, where even the ivy has ceased to climb, and the acanthus, butwhere the dried lavender and the _ferigoule_ perfume the air. Amidall these ruins the chateau de Saint-Romans stands forth a gloriousexception. If you have travelled in the South you have seen it, and youshall see it again in a moment. It is between Valence and Montelimart,in a neighborhood where the railroad runs straight along the Rhone, atthe base of the hills of Beaume, Rancoule and Mercurol, the wholeglowing vintage of the Hermitage, spread out over five leagues of vinesgrowing in close, straight lines in the vineyards, which seem to theeye like fields of fleece, and extend to the very brink of the river,as green and full of islands at that spot as the Rhine near Bale, butwith such a flood of sunshine as the Rhine never had. Saint-Romans isopposite, on the other bank; and, notwithstanding the swiftness of thevision, the headlong rush of the railway carriages, which seemdetermined at every curve to plunge madly into the Rhone, the chateauis so huge, extends so far along the neighboring slope, that it seemsto follow the wild race of the train and fixes in your eyes forever thememory of its flights of steps, its balcony-rails, its Italianarchitecture, two rather low stones surmounted by a terrace with littlepillars, flanked by two wings with slated roofs, and overlooking thesloping banks, where the water from the cascades rushes down to theriver, the network of gravelled paths, the vista formed by hedges ofgreat height with a white statue at the end sharply outlined againstthe blue sky as against the luminous background of a stained-glasswindow. Far up, among the vast lawns whose brilliant verdure defies theblazing climate, a gigantic cedar rears, terrace-like, its masses ofgreen foliage, with its swaying dark shadows,--an exotic figure, whichmakes one think, as he stands before that sometime abode of afarmer-general of the epoch of Louis XIV., of a tall negro carrying acourtier's umbrella.

  From Valence to Marseille, throughout the valley of the Rhone,Saint-Romans de Bellaigue is as famous as a fairy palace; and a genuinefairyland in those regions, scorched by the mistral, is that oasis ofverdure and of lovely, gushing water.

  "When I am rich, mamma," Jansoulet, when he was a mere urchin, used tosay to his mother whom he adored, "I'll give you Saint-Romans deBellaigue."

  And as that man's life seemed the realization of a tale of the_Thousand and One Nights_, as all his wishes were gratified, eventhe most unconscionable, as his wildest chimeras took definite shapebefore him, and licked his hands like docile pet spaniels, he hadpurchased Saint-Romans in order to present it to his mother, newlyfurnished and gorgeously restored. Although ten years had passed sincethen, the good woman was not yet accustomed to that magnificentestablishment. "Why, you have given me Queen Jeanne's palace, my dearBernard," she wrote to her son; "I shall never dare to live in it." Asa matter of fact she never had lived in it, having installed herself inthe steward's house, a wing of modern construction at the end of themain buildings, conveniently situated for overlooking the servants'quarters and the farm, the sheepfolds and the oil-presses, with theirrustic outlook of grain in stacks, of olive-trees and vines stretchingout over the fields as far as the eye could see. In the great chateaushe would have fancied herself a prisoner in one of those enchanteddwellings where sleep seizes you in the fulness of your joy and doesnot leave you for a hundred years. Here at all events the peasantwoman, who had never been able to accustom herself to that colossalfortune, which had come too late, from too great a distance and like athunderbolt, felt in touch with real life by virtue of the going andcoming of the laborers, the departure and return of the cattle, theirvisits to the watering-place, all the details of pastoral life, whichawakened her with the familiar crowing of the roosters, the shrillcries of the peacocks, and sent her down the winding staircase beforedaybreak. She deemed herself simply a trustee of that magnificentproperty, of which she had charge for her son's benefit, and which sheproposed to turn over to him in good condition on the day when,considering himself wealthy enough and weary of living among the_Turs_, he should come, as he had promised, and live with herbeneath the shade of Saint-Romans.

  Imagine then her untiring, all-pervading watchfulness.

  In the twilight of early dawn, the farm servants heard her hoarse,husky voice:

  "Olivier--Peyrol--Audibert--Come! It's four o'clock." Then a dive intothe huge kitchen, where the maids, heavy with sleep, were warming thesoup over the bright, crackling peat fire. They gave her her littleplate of red Marseille earthenware, filled with boiled chestnuts, thefrugal breakfast of an earlier time which nothing could induce her tochange. Off she went at once with long strides, the keys jingling onthe great silver key-ring fastened to her belt, her plate in her hand,held in equilibrium by the distaff which she held under her arm as ifready for battle, for she spun all day long, and did not stop even toeat her chestnuts. A glance, as she passed, at the stable, still dark,where the horses were sluggishly moving about, at the stiflingcow-shed, filled with heads impatiently stretched toward the door; andthe first rays of dawn, stealing over the courses of stone thatsupported the embankment of the park, fell upon the old woman runningthrough the dew with the agility of a girl, despite her seventy years,verifying exactly each morning all the treasures of the estate, anxiousto ascertain whether the night had stolen the statues and urns,uprooted the centenary trees, dried up the sparkling fountains thatplashed noisily in their bowls. Then the bright southern sun, hummingand vibrating, outlined upon the gravel of a path, or against the whitesupporting wall of a terrace, that tall old woman's figure, slender andstraight as her distaff, picking up pieces of dead wood, breaking off abranch from a shrub that was out of line, heedless of the scorchingreflection which affected her tough skin no more than an old stonebench. About that hour another promenader appeared in the park, lessactive, less bustling, dragging himself along rather than walking,leaning on the walls and railings, a poor bent, palsied creature, witha lifeless face to which one could assign no age, who, when he wastired, uttered a faint, plaintive cry to call the servant, who wasalways at hand to assist him to sit down, to huddle himself up on somestep, where he would remain for hours, motionless and silent, his mouthhalf-open, blinking his eyes, soothed by the strident monotony of thelocusts, a human blot on the face of the superb landscape.

  He was the _oldest_, Bernard's brother, the cherished darling of theJansoulets, father and mother, the hope and the glory of the family ofthe junk-dealer, who, faithful like so many more in the South to thesuperstition concerning the right of primogeniture, had made everyconceivable sacrifice to send that handsome, ambitious youth to Paris;and he had started with four or five marshals' batons in his trunk, theadmiration of all the girls in the village; but Paris--after it hadbeaten and twisted and squeezed that brilliant Southern rag in itsgreat vat for ten years, burned him in all its acids, rolled him in allits mire--relegated him at last to the state of battered flotsam andjetsam, embruted, paralyzed, which had killed his father with grief andcompelled his mother to sell everything in her house and to live bydomestic service in the well-to-do families of the neighborhood.Luckily, just about the time that that relic of Parisian hospitals,sent back to his home by public charity, appeared in Bourg-Saint-Andeol,Bernard,--who was called Cadet, as in all the half-Arab Southernfamilies, where the eldest son always takes the family name and thelast comer the name of Cadet,--Bernard was already in Tunis, in processof making his fortune, and sending money home regularly. But whatremorse it caused the poor mother to owe everything, even life itself,and the comfort of the wretched invalid, to the brave, energetic lad,of whom his father and she had always been fond, but without genuinetenderness, and whom, from the time he was five years old,
they hadbeen accustomed to treat as a day-laborer, because he was very strongand hairy and ugly, and was already shrewder than any one else in thehouse in the matter of dealing in old iron. Ah! how she would haveliked to have her Cadet with her, to repay him a little of all he wasdoing for her, to pay in one sum all the arrears of affection, ofmotherly cosseting that she owed him.

  But, you see, these kingly fortunes have the burdens, the vexations ofkingly existences. Poor Mother Jansoulet, in her dazzling surroundings,was much like a genuine queen, having undergone the long banishments,the cruel separations and trials which atone for earthly grandeur; oneof her sons in a state of stupid lethargy for all time, the other faraway, writing little, engrossed by his great interests, always saying,"I will come," and never coming. In twelve years she had seen him butonce, in the confusion of the bey's visit at Saint-Romans: a bewilderingsuccession of horses, carriages, fireworks, and festivities. Then hehad whirled away again behind his sovereign, having had hardly time toembrace his old mother, who had retained naught of that great joy, soimpatiently awaited, save a few newspaper pictures, in which BernardJansoulet was exhibited arriving at the chateau with Ahmed andpresenting his aged mother to him,--is not that the way in which kingsand queens have their family reunions illustrated in the journals?--plusa cedar of Lebanon, brought from the end of the world,--a great_caramantran_ of a tree, which was as costly to move and as much in theway as the obelisk--being hoisted and planted by force of men and moneyand horses; a tree which had wrought confusion among the shrubbery asthe price of setting up a souvenir commemorative of the royal visit. Onhis present trip to France, at least, knowing that he had come forseveral months, perhaps forever, she hoped to have her Bernard all toherself. And lo! he swooped down upon her one fine evening, envelopedin the same triumphant splendor, in the same official pomp, surroundedby a multitude of counts, marquises, fine gentlemen from Paris, whowith their servants filled the two great breaks she had sent to meetthem at the little station of Giffas, on the other side of the Rhone.

  "Come, come, embrace me, my dear mamma. There's no shame in huggingyour boy, whom you haven't seen for years, close to your heart.Besides, all these gentlemen are friends of ours. This is Monsieur leMarquis de Monpavon, and Monsieur le Marquis de Bois-l'Hery. Ah! thetime has gone by when I used to bring you to eat bean soup with us,little Cabassu and Bompain Jean-Baptiste. You know Monsieur deGery--he, with my old friend Cardailhac, whom I introduce to you, makeup the first batch. But others are coming. Prepare for a terriblehow-d'ye-do. We receive the bey in four days."

  "The bey again!" said the good woman in dismay. "I thought he wasdead."

  Jansoulet and his guests could but laugh at her comical alarm,heightened by her Southern accent.

  "But there's another, mamma. There are always beys--luckily for me,_sapristi_! But don't you be afraid. You won't have so much trouble onyour hands. Friend Cardailhac has undertaken to look after things.We're going to have some superb fetes. Meanwhile give us some dinnerquick, and show us our rooms. Our Parisian friends are tired out."

  "Everything is ready, my son," said the old woman simply, standingstiffly erect in her cap of Cambrai linen, with points yellowed by age,which she never laid aside even on great occasions. Wealth had notchanged _her_. She was the typical peasant of the Rhone valley,independent and proud, with none of the cunning humility of the rusticsdescribed by Balzac, too simple, too, to be puffed up by wealth. Heronly pride was to show her son with what painstaking zeal she hadacquitted herself of her duties as care-taker. Not an atom of dust, nota trace of dampness on the walls. The whole magnificent ground-floor,the salons with the silk draperies and upholstery of changing hue,taken at the last moment from their coverings; the long summergalleries, with cool, resonant inlaid floors, which the Louis XV.couches, with cane seats and backs upholstered with flowered stuffs,furnished with summer-like coquetry; the enormous dining-hall,decorated with flowers and branches; even the billiard-room, with itsrows of gleaming balls, its chandeliers and cue-racks,--the whole vastextent of the chateau, seen through the long door-windows, wide openupon the broad seignorial porch, displayed its splendor to theadmiration of the visitors, and reflected the beauty of that marvellouslandscape, lying serene and peaceful in the setting sun, in themirrors, the waxed or varnished wainscoting, with the same fidelitywith which the poplars bowing gracefully to each other, and the swans,placidly swimming, were reproduced on the mirror-like surface of theponds. The frame was so beautiful, the general outlook so superb, thatthe obtrusive, tasteless luxury melted away, disappeared even to themost sensitive eye.

  "There's something to work with," said Cardailhac the manager, with hismonocle at his eye, his hat on one side, already planning hisstage-setting.

  And the haughty mien of Monpavon, who had been somewhat offended atfirst by the old lady's head-dress when she received them on the porch,gave place to a condescending smile. Certainly there was something towork with, and their friend Jansoulet, under the guidance of men oftaste, could give his Maugrabin Highness a very handsome reception.They talked about nothing else all the evening. Sitting in thesumptuous dining-room, with their elbows on the table, warmed by wineand with full stomachs, they planned and discussed. Cardailhac, whoseviews were broad, had his plan all formed.

  "Carte blanche, of course, eh, Nabob?"

  "Carte blanche, old fellow. And let old Hemerlingue burst with rage."

  Thereupon the manager detailed his plans, the festivities to be dividedby days, as at Vaux when Fouquet entertained Louis XIV.; one day aplay, another day Provencal fetes, _farandoles_, bull-fights, localmusic; the third day--And, in his mania for management, he was alreadyoutlining programmes, posters, while Bois-l'Hery, with both hands inhis pockets, lying back in his chair, slept peacefully with his cigarstuck in the corner of his sneering mouth, and the Marquis de Monpavon,always on parade, drew up his breastplate every moment, to keep himselfawake.

  De Gery had left them early. He had gone to take refuge with the oldlady--who had known him, and his brothers, too, when they werechildren--in the modest parlor in the wing, with the white curtains andlight wall-paper covered with figures, where the Nabob's mother triedto revive her past as an artisan, with the aid of some relics savedfrom the wreck.

  Paul talked softly, sitting opposite the handsome old woman with thesevere and regular features, the white hair piled on top of her headlike the flax on her distaff, who sat erect upon her chair, her flatbust wrapped in a little green shawl;--never in her life had she restedher back against the back of a chair or sat in an armchair. He calledher Francoise and she called him Monsieur Paul. They were old friends.And what do you suppose they were talking about? Of her grandchildren,_pardi!_ of Bernard's three boys whom she did not know, whom she wouldhave loved so dearly to know.

  "Ah! Monsieur Paul, if you knew how I long for them! I should have beenso happy if he had brought me my three little ones instead of all thesefine gentlemen. Just think, I have never seen them, except in thosepictures yonder. Their mother frightens me a bit, she's a great ladyout-and-out, a Demoiselle Afchin. But the children, I'm sure they'renot little coxcombs, but would be very fond of their old _granny_.It would seem to me as if it was their father a little boy again, andI'd give them what I didn't give the father--for, you see, MonsieurPaul, parents aren't always just. They have favorites. But God is just.You ought to see how He deals with the faces that you paint and fix upthe best, to the injury of the others. And the favoritism of the oldpeople often does harm to the young."

  She sighed as she glanced in the direction of the great alcove, fromwhich, through the high lambrequins and falling draperies, issued atintervals a long, shuddering breath like the moan of a sleeping childwho has been whipped and has cried bitterly.

  A heavy step on the stairs, an unmelodious but gentle voice, saying ina low tone: "It's I--don't move,"--and Jansoulet appeared. As everybodyhad gone to bed at the chateau, he, knowing his mother's habits andthat hers was always the last light to be extinguished in the house,had come
to see her, to talk with her a little, to exchange the realgreeting of the heart which they had been unable to exchange in thepresence of others. "Oh! stay, my dear Paul; we don't mind you." And,becoming a child once more in his mother's presence, he threw his wholelong body on the floor at her feet, with cajoling words and gesturesreally touching to behold. She was very happy too to have him by herside, but she was a little embarrassed none the less, looking upon himas an all-powerful, strange being, exalting him in her artlessinnocence to the level of an Olympian encompassed by thunder-bolts andlightning-flashes, possessing the gift of omnipotence. She talked tohim, inquired if he was still satisfied with his friends, with thecondition of his affairs, but did not dare to ask the question she hadasked de Gery: "Why didn't you bring me my little grandsons?"--But hebroached the subject himself.

  "They're at boarding-school, mamma; as soon as the vacation comes, I'llsend them to you with Bompain. You remember him, don't you, BompainJean-Baptiste? And you shall keep them two whole months. They'll cometo you to have you tell them fine stories, they'll go to sleep withtheir heads on your apron, like this--"

  And he himself, placing his curly head, heavy as lead, on the oldwoman's knees, recalling the happy evenings of his childhood when hewent to sleep that way if he were allowed to do so, if his olderbrother's head did not take up all the room--he enjoyed, for the firsttime since his return to France, a few moments of blissful repose,outside of his tumultuous artificial life, pressed against that oldmotherly heart which he could hear beating regularly, like the pendulumof the century-old clock standing in a corner of the room, in theprofound silence of the night, which one can feel in the country,hovering over the boundless expanse. Suddenly the same long sigh, as ofa child who has fallen asleep sobbing, was repeated at the farther endof the room.

  "Is that--?"

  "Yes," she said, "I have him sleep here. He might need me in thenight."

  "I should like to see him, to embrace him."

  "Come."

  The old woman rose, took her lamp, led the way gravely to the alcove,where she softly drew aside the long curtain and motioned to her son tocome, without making a noise.

  He was asleep. And it was certain that something lived in him that wasnot there the day before, for, instead of the flaccid immobility inwhich he was mired all day, he was shaken at that moment by violenttremors, and on his expressionless, dead face there was a wrinkle ofsuffering life, a contraction as of pain. Jansoulet, profoundly moved,gazed at that thin, wasted, earth-colored face, on which the beard,having appropriated all the vitality of the body, grew with surprisingvigor; then he stooped, placed his lips on the forehead moist withperspiration, and, feeling that he started, he said in a low tone,gravely, respectfully, as one addresses the head of the family:

  "Good-evening, Aine."

  Perhaps the imprisoned mind heard him in the depths of its dark,degrading purgatory. But the lips moved and a long groan made answer; afar-off wail, a despairing appeal caused the glance Francoise and herson exchanged to overflow with impotent tears, and drew from them botha simultaneous cry in which their sorrows met: _Pecaire!_ the localword expressive of all pity, all affection.

  * * *

  Early the next morning the uproar began with the arrival of the actorsand actresses, an avalanche of caps, chignons, high boots, shortpetticoats, affected screams, veils floating over the fresh coats ofrouge; the women were in a large majority, Cardailhac having reflectedthat, where a bey was concerned, the performance was of littleconsequence, that one need only emit false notes from pretty lips, showlovely arms and well-turned legs in the free-and-easy neglige of theoperetta. All the plastic celebrities of his theatre were on hand,therefore, Amy Ferat at their head, a hussy who had already tried hereye-teeth on the gold of several crowns; also two or three famous comicactors, whose pallid faces produced the same effect of chalky, spectralblotches amid the bright green of the hedgerows as was produced by theplaster statuettes. All that motley crew, enlivened by the journey, theunfamiliar fresh air, and the copious hospitality, as well as by thehope of hooking something in that procession of beys, nabobs, and otherpurse-bearers, asked nothing better than to caper and sing and makemerry, with the vulgar enthusiasm of a crowd of Seine boatmen ashore ona lark. But Cardailhac did not propose to have it so. As soon as theyhad arrived, made their toilets and eaten their first breakfast, outcame the books; we must rehearse!--There was no time to lose. Therehearsals took place in the small salon near the summer gallery, wherethey were already beginning to build the stage; and the noise of thehammers, the humming of the refrains, the thin voices supported by thesqueaking of the orchestra leader's violin, mingled with the loudtrumpet-calls of the peacocks on their perches, were blown to shreds inthe mistral, which, failing to recognize the frantic chirping of itsgrasshoppers, contemptuously whisked it all away on the whirling tipsof its wings.

  Sitting in the centre of the porch, as if it were the proscenium of histheatre, Cardailhac, while superintending the rehearsals, issued hiscommands to a multitude of workmen and gardeners, ordered trees to befelled which obstructed the view, drew sketches of the triumphalarches, sent despatches and messengers to mayors, to sub-prefects, toArles to procure a deputation of girls of the province in the nationalcostume, to Barbantane, where the most skilful dancers of the_farandole_ are to be found, to Faraman renowned for its herds of wildbulls and Camarguese horses; and as Jansoulet's name blazed forth atthe foot of all these despatches, as the name of the Bey of Tunis alsofigured in them, everybody acquiesced with the utmost eagerness, thetelegraphic messages arrived in an endless stream, and that littleSardanapalus from Porte-Saint-Martin, who was called Cardailhac, wasforever repeating: "There is something to work with;" delighted tothrow gold about like handfuls of seed, to have a stage fifty leaguesin circumference to arrange, all Provence, of which country thatfanatical Parisian was a native, and thoroughly familiar with itsresources in the direction of the picturesque.

  Dispossessed of her functions, the old lady seldom appeared, gave herattention solely to the farm and her invalid, terrified by that crowdof visitors, those insolent servants whom one could not distinguishfrom their masters, those women with brazen, coquettish manners, thoseclosely-shaven old villains who resembled wicked priests, all those madcreatures who chased one another through the halls at night with muchthrowing of pillows, wet sponges, and curtain tassels which they toreoff to use as projectiles. She no longer had her son in the evening,for he was obliged to remain with his guests, whose number increased asthe time for the fetes drew near; nor had she even the resource oftalking about her grandsons with "Monsieur Paul," whom Jansoulet,always the kindest of men, being a little awed by his friend'sseriousness of manner, had sent away to pass a few days with hisbrothers. And the careful housekeeper, to whom some one came everymoment and seized her keys to get spare linen or silverware, to openanother room, thinking of the throwing open of her stores of treasures,of the plundering of her wardrobes and her sideboards, remembering thecondition in which the visit of the former bey had left the chateau,devastated as by a cyclone, said in her patois, feverishly moisteningthe thread of her distaff:

  "May God's fire devour all beys and all future beys!"

  At last the day arrived, the famous day of which people still talkthroughout the whole province. Oh! about three o'clock in theafternoon, after a sumptuous breakfast presided over by the old motherwith a new Cambrai cap on her head,--a breakfast at which, side by sidewith Parisian celebrities, prefects were present and deputies, all infull dress, with swords at their sides, mayors in their scarfs ofoffice, honest cures cleanly shaven,--when Jansoulet, in black coat andwhite cravat, surrounded by his guests, went out upon the stoop andsaw, framed in that magnificent landscape, amid flags and arches andensigns, that swarm of heads, that sea of brilliant costumes risingtier above tier on the slopes and thronging the paths; here, groupedin a nosegay on the lawn, the prettiest girls of Arles, whose littlewhite faces peeped sweetly forth from lace
neckerchiefs; below, the_farandole_ from Barbantane, its eight tambourines in a line, ready forthe word, hand in hand, ribbons fluttering in the wind, hats over oneear, the red _taillote_ about the loins; still lower, in the successionof terraces, the choral societies drawn up in line, all black beneaththeir bright-hued caps, the banner-bearer in advance, serious andresolved, with clenched teeth, holding aloft his carved staff; lowerstill, on an immense _rond-point_, black bulls in shackles, andCamargue gauchos on their little horses with long white manes, theirleggings above their knees, brandishing their spears; and after themmore flags and helmets and bayonets, reaching to the triumphal arch atthe entrance; then, as far as the eye could see on the other side ofthe Rhone,--over which two gangs of workmen had just thrown a bridge ofboats, so that they could drive from the station to Saint-Romans in astraight line,--was an immense crowd, whole villages pouring down fromall the hills, overflowing on the Giffas road in a wilderness of noiseand dust, seated on the edge of the ditches, swarming among the elms,piled upon wagons, a formidable living lane for the procession to passthrough; and over it all a huge white sun whose arrows a capriciousbreeze sent in every direction, from the copper of a tambourine to thepoint of a spear and the fringe of a banner, while the mighty Rhone,high-spirited and free, bore away to the ocean the shifting tableaux ofthat royal fete. In presence of those marvels, in which all the gold inhis coffers shone resplendent, the Nabob felt a thrill of admirationand pride.

  "It is fine," he said, turning pale, and his mother, standing behindhim, as pale as he, but from indescribable terror, murmured:

  "It is too fine for any man. One would think that God was coming."

  The feeling of the devout old peasant woman was much the same as thatvaguely experienced by all those people who had assembled on the roadsas if to watch the passage of a colossal procession on Corpus Christi,and who were reminded by that visit of an Oriental prince to a child ofthe province, of the legends of the Magian kings, the arrival ofGaspard the Moor bringing to the carpenter's son the myrrh and thecrown.

  Amid the heartfelt congratulations that were showered on Jansoulet,Cardailhac, who had not been seen since morning, suddenly appeared,triumphant and perspiring.

  "Didn't I tell you that there was something to work with! Eh? Isn'tthis _chic_? There's a grouping for you! I fancy our Parisians wouldpay something handsome to attend a first performance like this."

  He lowered his voice because the mother was close by:

  "Have you seen our Arles girls? No, look at them more carefully--thefirst one, the one standing in front to offer the bouquet."

  "Why, that's Amy Ferat!"

  "_Parbleu!_ you can see yourself, my dear fellow, that if the beythrows his handkerchief into that bevy of pretty girls, there must beat least one who knows enough to pick it up. Those innocent creatureswouldn't know what it meant! Oh! I have thought of everything, you'llsee. It's all mounted and arranged as if it were on the stage. Farmside, garden side."

  At that point, to give an idea of the perfectness of his organization,the manager raised his cane; his gesture was instantly repeated fromend to end of the park, with the result that all the musical societies,all the trumpets, all the tambourines burst forth in unison in themajestic strains of the familiar song of the South: _Grand Soleil dela Provence_. The voices, the brazen notes ascended into the light,swelling the folds of the banners, giving the signal to the dancers ofthe _farandole_, who began to sway back and forth, to go through theirfirst antics where they stood, while, on the other side of the river, amurmur ran through the crowd like a breeze, caused doubtless by thefear that the bey had arrived unexpectedly from another direction. Asecond gesture from the manager and the great orchestra subsided, moregradually, with _rallentando_ passages and meteoric showers of notesscattered among the foliage; but nothing better could be expected froma company of three thousand persons.

  Just then the carriages appeared, the state carriages which had figuredin the festivities in honor of the former bey, two great pink and goldchariots _a la mode de Tunis_, which Mother Jansoulet had taken care ofas precious relics, and which came forth from the carriage-house withtheir varnished panels, their hangings and gold fringe as bright andfresh as when they were new. There again Cardailhac's ingenuity hadexerted itself freely, and instead of horses, which were a little heavyfor those fragile-looking, daintily decorated vehicles, the white reinsguided eight mules with ribbons, plumes, and silver bells upon theirheads, and caparisoned from head to foot with those marvellous_sparteries_, of which Provence seems to have borrowed the secretfrom the Moors and to have perfected the cunning art of manufacturing.If the bey were not satisfied with that!

  The Nabob, Monpavon, the prefect and one of their generals entered thefirst carriage, the others took their places in the second andfollowing ones. The cures and mayors, all excited by the wine they haddrunk, ran to place themselves at the head of the singing societies oftheir respective parishes, which were to go to meet the procession; andthe whole multitude set forth on the Giffas road.

  It was a superbly clear day, but warm and oppressive, three months inadvance of the season, as often happens in those impetuous regionswhere everything is in a hurry, where everything arrives before itstime. Although there was not a cloud to be seen, the deathlikestillness of the atmosphere, the wind having fallen suddenly as onelowers a veil, the dazzling expanse, heated white-hot, a solemn silencehovering over the landscape, all indicated that a storm was brewing insome corner of the horizon. The extraordinary torpidity of thesurrounding objects gradually affected the persons. Naught could beheard save the tinkling bells of the mules as they ambled slowly along,the measured, heavy tread, through the burning dust, of the bands ofsingers whom Cardailhac stationed at intervals in the procession, andfrom time to time, in the double, swarming line of human beings thatbordered the road as far as the eye could see, a call, the voices ofchildren, the cry of a peddler of fresh water, the inevitableaccompaniment of all open-air fetes in the South.

  "For heaven's sake, open the window on your side, General, it'sstifling," said Monpavon, with crimson face, fearing for his paint; andthe lowered sashes afforded the worthy populace a view of those exaltedfunctionaries mopping their august faces, which were terribly flushedand wore the same agonized expression of anticipation,--anticipation ofthe bey's arrival, of the storm, of something.

  Another triumphal arch. Giffas and its long stony street strewn withgreen palm leaves, its old, dirty houses covered with flowers anddecorations. Outside of the village the station, a square whitestructure, planted like a die at the side of the track, a genuine typeof the little country station lost among vineyards, its only roomalways empty, except for an occasional old woman with a quantity ofparcels, waiting in a corner, three hours too early for her train.

  In the bey's honor the little building was decked with flags andbanners, furnished with rugs and divans and a splendid buffet, on whichwas a light lunch and water ices all ready for his Highness. When hehad arrived and alighted from his carriage, the Nabob shook off thespecies of haunting disquiet which had oppressed him for a moment past,without his knowing why. Prefects, generals, deputies, black coats andembroidered military coats stood on the broad inner platform, inimpressive, solemn groups, with the pursed lips, the shifting from onefoot to the other, the self-conscious starts of a public functionarywho feels that he is being stared at. And you can imagine whether noseswere flattened against window-panes in order to obtain a glimpse ofthose hierarchic embroideries, of Monpavon's breastplate, whichexpanded and rose like an omelette soufflee, of Cardailhac gasping forbreath as he issued his final orders, and of the beaming face ofJansoulet, their Jansoulet, whose eyes, sparkling between the bloated,sunburned cheeks, resembled two great gilt nails in a piece of Cordovaleather. Suddenly the electric bells began to ring. The station-agentrushed frantically out to the track: "The train is signalled,messieurs. It will be here in eight minutes." Everybody started. Then ageneral instinctive impulse caused every watch to be drawn from itsfob. Only
six minutes more. Thereupon, in the profound silence, someone exclaimed: "Look there!" On the right, in the direction from whichthe train was to come, two high vine-covered hills formed a tunnel intowhich the track plunged and disappeared, as if swallowed up. At thatmoment the whole sky in that direction was as black as ink, obscured byan enormous cloud, a threatening wall cutting the blue as with a knife,rearing palisades, lofty cliffs of basalt on which the light broke likewhite foam with the pallid gleam of moonlight. In the solemn silence ofthe deserted track, along that line of rails where one felt thateverything, so far as the eye could see, stood aside for the passage ofhis Highness, that aerial cliff was a terrifying spectacle as itadvanced, casting its shadow before it with that illusion ofperspective which gave to the cloud a slow, majestic movement and toits shadow the rapid pace of a galloping horse. "What a storm we aregoing to have directly!" That was the thought that came to them all;but they had not time to express it, for an ear-piercing whistle washeard and the train appeared in the depths of the dark tunnel. Atypical royal train, short and travelling fast, decorated with Frenchand Tunisian flags, its groaning, puffing locomotive, with an enormousbouquet of roses on its breast, representing the maid of honor at awedding of Leviathans.

  It came rushing on at full speed, but slackened its pace as it drewnear. The functionaries formed a group, drawing themselves up,arranging their swords, adjusting their false collars, while Jansouletwalked along the track toward the train, the obsequious smile on hislips and his back already bent for the "Salem alek!" The traincontinued to move, very slowly. Jansoulet thought that it had stopped,and placed his hand on the door of the royal carriage glittering withgold under the black sky; but the headway was too great, doubtless, forthe train still went forward, the Nabob walking beside it, trying toopen that infernal door which resisted all his efforts, and with theother hand making a sign of command to the machine. But the machine didnot obey. "Stop, I tell you!" It did not stop. Impatient at the delay,he sprang upon the velvet-covered step, and with the somewhatpresumptuous impetuosity, which used to please the former bey so much,he cried out, thrusting his great curly head in at the window:

  "Station for Saint-Romans, your Highness!"

  You know that sort of vague light peculiar to dreams, that colorless,empty atmosphere, in which everything assumes a ghostly aspect? well,Jansoulet was suddenly enveloped, made prisoner, paralyzed by it. Hetried to speak, but the words would not come; his nerveless fingersclung so feebly to their support that he nearly fell backward. Inheaven's name, what had he seen? Half reclining on a divan whichextended across one end of the car, his fine head with its dead-whitecomplexion and its long, silky black beard resting on his hand, thebey, buttoned to the chin in his Oriental frock-coat, without otherornament than the broad ribbon of the Legion of Honor across his breastand the diamond clasp in his cap, was fanning himself impassively witha little fan of _spartum_, embroidered with gold. Two aides-de-campwere standing near him and an engineer of the French company. Oppositehim, upon another divan, in a respectful attitude, but one indicatinghigh favor, as they alone remained seated in presence of the bey, bothas yellow as saffron, their long whiskers falling over their whitecravats, sat two owls, one fat, the other thin. They were theHemerlingues, father and son, who had reconquered his Highness and werecarrying him in triumph to Paris. A ghastly dream! All those people,although they knew Jansoulet well, stared coolly at him as if his faceconveyed no idea to them. Pitiably pale, with the perspiration standingon his brow, he stammered: "But, your Highness, do you not mean toleave--" A livid flash, like that of a sabre stroke, followed by afrightful peal of thunder, cut him short. But the flash that shot fromthe monarch's eyes seemed far more terrible to him. Rising to his feetand stretching out his arm, the bey crushed him with these words,prepared in advance and uttered slowly in a rather guttural voiceaccustomed to the harsh Arabic syllables, but in very pure French:

  "You may return home, Mercanti. The foot goes where the heart leads it,mine shall never enter the door of the man who has robbed my country."

  Jansoulet tried to say a word. The bey waved his hand: "Begone!" Andthe engineer having pressed the button of an electric bell, to which awhistle replied, the train, which had not come to a full stop,stretched and strained its iron muscles and started ahead under fullsteam, waving its flags in the wind of the storm amid whirling cloudsof dense smoke and sinister flashes.

  He stood by the track, dazed, staggering, crushed, watching his fortunerecede and disappear, heedless of the great drops of rain that began tofall upon his bare head. Then, when the others rushed toward him,surrounded him and overwhelmed him with questions: "Isn't the Bey goingto stop?" he stammered a few incoherent words: "Court intrigues--infamousmachinations." And suddenly, shaking his fist at the train which hadalready disappeared, with bloodshot eyes and the foam of fierce wrathon his lips, he cried with the roar of a wild beast:

  "Vile curs!"

  "Courage, Jansoulet, courage."

  You can guess who said that, and who, passing his arm through theNabob's, tried to straighten him up, to make him throw out his breastas he did, led him to the carriages amid the stupefied silence of thebraided coats, and helped him to enter, crushed and bewildered, as arelative of the deceased is hoisted into a mourning carriage at theclose of the lugubrious ceremony. The rain was beginning to fall, thepeals of thunder followed one another rapidly. They crowded into thecarriages, which started hurriedly homeward. Thereupon a heart-rending,yet comical thing took place, one of those cruel tricks which cowardlydestiny plays upon its victims when they are down. In the fading light,the increasing obscurity caused by the squall, the crowd that filledall the approaches to the station believed that it could distinguish aRoyal Highness amid such a profusion of gold lace, and as soon as thewheels began to revolve, a tremendous uproar, an appalling outcry whichhad been brewing in all those throats for an hour past, arose andfilled the air, rebounded from hill to hill and echoed through thevalley: "Vive le Bey!" Warned by that signal, the first flourishes rangout, the singing societies struck up in their turn, and as the noiseincreased from point to point, the road from Giffas to Saint-Romans wasnaught but one long, unbroken wave of sound. In vain did Cardailhac,all the gentlemen, Jansoulet himself, lean out of the windows and makedesperate signs: "Enough! enough!" Their gestures were lost in theconfusion, in the darkness; what was seen of them seemed anencouragement to shout louder. And I give you my word that it was in nowise needed. All those Southerners, whose enthusiasm had been kept atfever heat since morning, excited still more by the tedium of the longwait and by the storm, gave all that they had of voice, of breath, ofnoisy energy, blending with the national hymn of Provence thatoft-repeated cry, which broke in upon it like a refrain: "Vive le Bey!"The majority had no sort of idea what a bey might be, did not evenpicture him to themselves, and gave a most extraordinary pronunciationto the unfamiliar title, as if it had three _b's_ and ten _y's_. But nomatter, they worked themselves into a frenzy over it, threw up theirhands, waved their hats, and waxed excited over their own antics.Women, deeply affected, wiped their eyes; and suddenly the piercing cryof a child came from the topmost branches of an elm: "Mamma, mamma, Isee him!" He saw him! They all saw him for that matter; to this daythey would all take their oath that they saw him.

  Confronted with such delirious excitement, finding it impossible toimpose silence and tranquillity upon that mob, there was but one coursefor the people in the carriages to pursue: to let them alone, raise thewindows and drive at full speed in order to abridge that unpleasantmartyrdom as much as possible. Then it was terrible. Seeing the cortegequicken its pace, the whole road began to run with it. The _farandoleurs_of Barbantane, hand-in-hand, bounded from side to side, to the muffledwheezing of their tambourines, forming a human garland around thecarriage doors. The singing societies, unable to sing at that breathlesspace, but howling none the less, dragged their banner-bearers along,the banners thrown over their shoulders; and the stout, red-facedcures, panting, pushing their huge overburde
ned paunches before them,still found strength to shout in the mules' ears, in sympathetic,effusive tones: "Vive notre bon Bey!" And with it all, the rain, therain falling in bucketfuls, in sheets, soiling the pink carriages,increasing the confusion, giving to that triumphal return the aspect ofa rout, but a laughable rout, compounded of songs, laughter, blasphemy,frantic embraces and infernal oaths, something like the return from aCorpus Christi procession in the storm, with cassocks tucked up,surplices thrown over the head, and the good Lord hastily housed undera porch.

  A dull rumbling announced to the poor Nabob, sitting silent andmotionless in a corner of his carriage, that they were crossing thebridge of boats. They had arrived.

  "At last!" he said, looking out through the dripping windows at thefoam-tipped waves of the Rhone, where the storm seemed to him likerepose after that through which he had passed. But, when the firstcarriage reached the triumphal arch at the end of the bridge, bombswere exploded, the drums beat, saluting the monarch's arrival upon hisfaithful subject's domain, and the climax of irony was reached when, inthe half light, a blaze of gas suddenly illuminated the roof of thechateau with letters of fire, over which the rain and wind caused greatshadows to run to and fro, but which still displayed very legibly thelegend: "Viv' L' B'Y M'H'MED."

  "That's the bouquet," said the unhappy Nabob, unable to restrain asmile, a very pitiful, very bitter smile. But no, he was mistaken. Thebouquet awaited him at the door of the chateau; and it was Amy Feratwho came forward to present it to him, stepping out of the group ofmaidens from Arles, who were sheltering their watered silk skirts andfigured velvet caps under the marquee, awaiting the first carriage. Herbunch of flowers in her hand, modestly, with downcast eyes and roguishankle, the pretty actress darted to the door and stood almost kneelingin an attitude of salutation, which she had been rehearsing for a week.Instead of the bey, Jansoulet stepped out, excited, stiffly erect, andpassed her by without even looking at her. And as she stood there, hernosegay in her hand, with the stupid expression of a balked fairy,Cardailhac said to her with the _blague_ of a Parisian who speedilymakes the best of things:

  "Take away your flowers, my dear, your affair has fallen through. TheBey isn't coming--he forgot his handkerchief, and as that's what heuses to talk to ladies, why, you understand--"

  * * *

  Now, it is night. Everybody is asleep at Saint-Romans after thetremendous hurly-burly of the day. The rain is still falling intorrents, the banners feebly wave their drenched carcasses, one canhear the water rushing down the stone steps, transformed into cascades.Everything is streaming and dripping. A sound of water, a deafeningsound of water. Alone in his magnificently furnished chamber with itsseignorial bed and its curtains of Chinese silk with purple stripes,the Nabob is still stirring, striding back and forth, revolving bitterthoughts. His mind is no longer intent upon the affront to himself, thepublic affront in the presence of thirty thousand persons, nor upon themurderous insult that the Bey addressed to him in presence of hismortal enemies. No, that Southerner with his wholly physicalsensations, swift as the action of new weapons, has already cast awayall the venom of his spleen. Moreover court favorites are alwaysprepared, by many celebrated precedents, for such overwhelming fallsfrom grace. What terrifies him is what he can see behind that insult.He reflects that all his property is over yonder, houses,counting-rooms, vessels, at the mercy of the bey, in that lawlessOrient, the land of arbitrary power. And, pressing his burning browagainst the streaming glass, with the perspiration standing on hisback, and hands cold as ice, he stares vacantly out into the night, nodarker, no more impenetrable than his own destiny.

  Suddenly he hears footsteps, hurried footsteps, at his door.

  "Who's there?"

  "Monsieur," says Noel, entering the room half-dressed, "a very urgentdespatch sent from the telegraph office by special messenger."

  "A despatch!--What is the next thing?"

  He takes the blue paper and opens it with trembling hand. The god,having already been wounded twice, is beginning to feel that he isvulnerable, to lose his assurance; he experiences the apprehensions,the nervous tremors of other men. The signature first. _Mora!_ Is itpossible? The duke, the duke telegraph to him! Yes, there is no doubtabout it. _M-o-r-a._

  And above:

  _Popolasca is dead. Election in Corsica soon. You are official candidate._

  A deputy! That means salvation. With that he has nothing to fear. Arepresentative of the great French nation is not to be treated like asimple _mercanti_. Down with the Hemerlingues!

  "O my duke, my noble duke!"

  He was so excited that he could not sign the receipt.

  "Where's the man who brought this despatch?" he asked abruptly.

  "Here, Monsieur Jansoulet," replied a hearty voice from the hall, inthe familiar Southern dialect.

  He was a lucky dog, that messenger.

  "Come in," said the Nabob.

  And, after handing him his receipt, he plunged his hands into hispockets, which were always full, grasped as many gold pieces as hecould hold and threw them into the poor devil's cap as he stood therestammering, bewildered, dazzled by the fortune that had befallen him inthe darkness of that enchanted palace.

  XII.

  A CORSICAN ELECTION.

  "POZZONEGRO, near Sartene.

  "I am able at last to write you of my movements, my dear Monsieur Joyeuse. In the five days that we have been in Corsica we have travelled about so much, talked so much, changed carriages and steeds so often, riding sometimes on mules, sometimes on asses, and sometimes even on men's backs to cross streams, have written so many letters, made notes on so many petitions, given away so many chasubles and altar-cloths, propped up so many tottering church steeples, founded so many asylums, proposed and drunk so many toasts, absorbed so much talk and Talano wine and white cheese, that I have found no time to send an affectionate word to the little family circle around the big table, from which I have been missing for two weeks. Luckily my absence will not last much longer, for we expect to leave day after to-morrow and travel straight through to Paris. So far as the election is concerned, I fancy that our trip has been successful. Corsica is a wonderful country, indolent and poor, a mixture of poverty and of pride which makes both the noble and bourgeois families keep up a certain appearance of opulence even at the price of the most painful privations. They talk here in all seriousness of the great wealth of Popolasca, the indigent deputy whom death robbed of the hundred thousand francs his resignation in the Nabob's favor would have brought him. All these people have, moreover, a frenzied longing for offices, an administrative mania, a craving to wear a uniform of some sort and a flat cap on which they can write: "Government clerk." If you should give a Corsican peasant his choice between the richest farm in Beauce and the baldric of the humblest forest-warden, he would not hesitate a moment, he would choose the baldric. Under such circumstances you can judge whether a candidate with a large fortune and governmental favors at his disposal has a good chance of being elected. Elected M. Jansoulet will be, therefore, especially if he succeeds in the move which he is making at this moment and which has brought us to the only inn of a small village called Pozzonegro (Black Well), a genuine well, all black with verdure, fifty cottages built of red stone clustered around a church of the Italian type, in the bottom of a ravine surrounded by steep hills, by cliffs of bright-colored sandstone, scaled by vast forests of larches and junipers. Through my open window, at which I am writing, I can see a bit of blue sky overhead, the orifice of the black well; below, on the little square, shaded by an enormous walnut tree, as if the shadows were not dense enough already, two shepherds dressed in skins are playing cards on the stone curb of a fountain. Gambling is the disease of this country of sloth, where the crops are harvested by men from Lucca. The two poor devils before me could not find a sou in their pockets; on
e stakes his knife, the other a cheese wrapped in vine leaves, the two stakes being placed beside them on the stone. A little cure is watching them, smoking his cigar, and apparently taking the liveliest interest in their game.

  "And that is all--not a sound anywhere except the regular dropping of the water on the stone, the exclamations of one of the gamblers, who swears by the _sango del seminario_; and in the common-room of the inn, under my chamber, our friend's earnest voice, mingled with the buzzing of the illustrious Paganetti, who acts as interpreter in his conversation with the no less illustrious Piedigriggio.

  "M. Piedigriggio (Grayfoot) is a local celebrity. He is a tall old man of seventy-five, still very erect in his short cloak over which his long white beard falls, his brown woollen Catalan cap on his hair, which is also white, a pair of scissors in his belt, which he uses to cut the great leaves of green tobacco in the hollow of his hand; a venerable old fellow in fact, and when he crossed the square and shook hands with the cure, with a patronizing smile at the two gamblers, I never would have believed that I had before me the famous brigand Piedigriggio, who, from 1840 to 1860, _held the thickets_ in Monte-Rotondo, tired out gendarmes and troops of the line, and who to-day, his seven or eight murders with the rifle or the knife being outlawed by lapse of time, goes his way in peace throughout the region that saw his crimes, and is a man of considerable importance. This is the explanation: Piedigriggio has two sons, who, following nobly in his footsteps, have toyed with the rifle and now hold the thickets in their turn. Impossible to lay hands upon or to find, as their father was for twenty years, informed by the shepherds of the movements of the gendarmerie, as soon as the gendarmes leave a village, the brigands appear there. The older of the two, Scipion, came last Sunday to Pozzonegro to hear mass. To say that people are fond of them, and that the grasp of the bloodstained hand of these villains is agreeable to all those who receive it, would be to calumniate the pacific inhabitants of this commune; but they fear them, and their will is law.

  "Now it appears that the Piedigriggios have taken it into their heads to espouse the cause of our rival in the election, a formidable alliance, which may cause two whole cantons to vote against us, for the knaves have legs as long, in proportion, as the range of their guns. Naturally we have the gendarmes with us, but the brigands are much more powerful. As our host said to us this morning: 'The gendarmes, they go, but the banditti, they stay.' In the face of that very logical reasoning, we realized that there was but one thing to do, to treat with the Piedigriggios, and make a bargain with them. The mayor said a word to the old man, who consulted his sons, and they are discussing the terms of the treaty downstairs. I can hear the Governor's voice from here: 'Nonsense, my dear fellow, I'm an old Corsican myself, you know.' And then the other's tranquil reply, cut simultaneously with his tobacco by the grating noise of the great scissors. The 'dear fellow' does not seem to have faith; and I am inclined to think that matters will not progress until the gold pieces ring on the table.

  "The trouble is that Paganetti is well known in his native country. The value of his word is written on the public square at Corte which still awaits the monument to Paoli, in the vast crop of humbuggery that he has succeeded in planting in this sterile Ithacan island, and in the flabby, empty pocket-books of all the wretched village cures, petty bourgeois, petty noblemen, whose slender savings he has filched by dangling chimerical _combinazioni_ before their eyes. Upon my word, he needed all his phenomenal assurance, together with the financial resources he now has at his command to satisfy all demands, to venture to show his face here again.

  "After all, how much truth is there in these fabulous works undertaken by the _Caisse Territoriale_?

  "None at all.

  "Mines which do not yield, which will never yield, as they exist only on paper; quarries which as yet know not pickaxe or powder; untilled, sandy moors, which they survey with a gesture, saying, 'We begin here, and we go way over yonder, to the devil.' It's the same with the forests,--one whole densely wooded slope of Monte-Rotondo, which belongs to us, it seems, but which it is not practicable to cut unless aeronauts should do duty as woodcutters. So as to the mineral baths, of which this wretched hamlet of Pozzonegro is one of the most important, with its fountain, whose amazing ferruginous properties Paganetti is constantly vaunting. Of packet-boats, not a trace. Yes, there is an old, half-ruined Genoese tower, on the shore of the Bay of Ajaccio, with this inscription on a tarnished panel over its hermetically closed door: 'Paganetti Agency, Maritime Company, Bureau of Information.' The bureau is kept by fat gray lizards in company with a screech-owl. As for the railroads, I noticed that all the excellent Corsicans to whom I mentioned them, replied with cunning smiles, disconnected phrases, full of mystery; and not until this morning did I obtain the exceedingly farcical explanation of all this reticence.

  "I had read among the documents which the Governor waves before our eyes from time to time, like a fan to inflate his _blague_, a deed of a marble quarry at a place called Taverna, two hours from Pozzonegro. Availing myself of our visit to this place, I jumped on a mule this morning, without a word to any one, and, guided by a tall rascal, with the legs of a deer,--a perfect specimen of the Corsican poacher or smuggler, with his great red pipe between his teeth,--I betook myself to Taverna. After a horrible journey among cliffs intersected by crevasses, bogs, and abysses of immeasurable depth, where my mule maliciously amused himself by walking close to the edge, as if he were measuring it with his shoes, we descended an almost perpendicular surface to our destination,--a vast desert of rocks, absolutely bare, all white with the droppings of gulls and mews; for the sea is just below, very near, and the silence of the place was broken only by the beating of the waves and the shrill cries of flocks of birds flying in circles. My guide, who has a holy horror of customs officers and gendarmes, remained at the top of the cliff, because of a small custom-house station on the shore, while I bent my steps toward a tall red building which reared its three stories aloft in that blazing solitude, the windows broken, the roof-tiles in confusion, and over the rotting door an immense sign: '_Caisse Territoriale. Carr--bre--54._' The wind and sun and rain have destroyed the rest.

  "Certainly there has been at some time an attempt made to work the mine, for there is a large, square, yawning hole, with cleanly-cut edges and patches of red streaked with brown, like leprous spots, along its sterile walls; and among the nettles at the bottom enormous blocks of marble of the variety known in commerce as _griotte_, condemned blocks of which no use can be made for lack of a proper road leading to the quarry, or a harbor which would enable boats to approach the hill; and, more than all else, for lack of sufficient funds to supply either of those needs. So the quarry, although within a few cable-lengths of the shore, is abandoned, useless, and a nuisance, like Robinson Crusoe's boat, with the same drawbacks as to availability. These details of the distressing history of our only territorial possession were furnished me by an unhappy survivor, shivering with fever, whom I found in the basement of the yellow house trying to cook a piece of kid over the acrid smoke of a fire of mastic branches.

  "That man, who comprises the whole staff of the _Caisse Territoriale_ in Corsica, is Paganetti's foster-father, an ex-lighthouse-keeper who does not mind loneliness. The Governor leaves him there partly from charity, and also because an occasional letter from the Taverna quarry produces a good effect at meetings of shareholders. I had great difficulty in extorting any information from that three-fourths wild man, who gazed at me suspiciously, in ambush behind his goat-skin _pelone_; he did tell me, however, unintentionally, what the Corsicans understand by the term railroad, and why they
assume this mysterious manner when they mention it. While I was trying to find out whether he knew anything of the scheme for an iron road in the island, the old fellow did not put on the cunning smile I had observed in his compatriots, but said to me quite naturally, in very good French, but in a voice as rusty and stiff as an old lock that is seldom used:

  "'Oh! moussiou, no need of railroads here--'

  "'But they are very valuable, very useful to make communication easier.'

  "'I don't say that ain't true; but with the gendarmes we don't need anything more.'

  "'The gendarmes?'

  "'To be sure.'

  "The misunderstanding lasted fully five minutes, before I finally comprehended that the secret police are known here as the 'railroads.' As there are many Corsican police officials on the Continent, they make use of an honest euphemism to describe their degrading occupation in their family circle. You ask the kinsmen of one of them, 'Where's your brother Ambrosini?' 'What is your Uncle Barbicaglia doing?' They will answer, with a little wink: 'He has a place on the railroad;' and everybody knows what that means. Among the lower classes, the peasants, who have never seen a railroad and have no idea what it is, there is a perfectly serious belief that the great department of the secret imperial police has no other name than that. Our principal agent in the island shares that touching innocence; this will give you an idea of the condition of the _Line from Ajaccio to Bastia via Bonifacio, Porto Vecchio, etc._, which figures on the great books with green backs in the Paganetti establishment. In a word, all the assets of the territorial bank are comprised in a few desks and two old hovels--the whole hardly worthy of a place in the rubbish-yard on Rue Saint-Ferdinand, where I hear the weathercocks creaking and the old doors slamming every night as I fall asleep.

  "But in that case what has been done, what is being done with the enormous sums that M. Jansoulet has poured into the treasury in the last five months, to say nothing of what has come from other sources attracted by that magic name? I fully agreed with you that all these soundings and borings and purchases of land, which appear on the books in a fine round hand, were immeasurably exaggerated. But how could any one suspect such infernal impudence? That is why M. le Gouverneur was so disgusted at the idea of taking me on this electoral trip. I have not thought it best to have an explanation on the spot. My poor Nabob has enough on his mind with his election. But, as soon as we have returned, I shall place all the details of my long investigation before his eyes; and I will extricate him from this den of thieves by persuasion or by force. They have finished their negotiations downstairs. Old Piedigriggio is crossing the square, playing with his long peasant's purse, which looks to me to be well-filled. The bargain is concluded, I suppose. A hasty adieu, my dear Monsieur Joyeuse; remember me to the young ladies, and bid them keep a tiny place for me at the work-table.

  "PAUL DE GERY."

  The electoral cyclone in which they had been enveloped in Corsicacrossed the sea in their wake like the blast of a sirocco, followedthem to Paris and blew madly through the apartments on Place Vendome,which were thronged from morning till night by the usual crowd,increased by the constant arrival of little men as dark as carob-beans,with regular, bearded faces, some noisy, buzzing and chattering, otherssilent, self-contained and dogmatic, the two types of the race in whichthe same climate produces different results. All those famishedislanders made appointments, in the wilds of their uncivilizedfatherland, to meet one another at the Nabob's table, and his house hadbecome a tavern, a restaurant, a market-place. In the dining-room,where the table was always set, there was always some Corsican, newlyarrived, in the act of taking a bite, with the bewildered and greedyexpression of a relation from the country.

  The noisy, blatant breed of election agents is the same everywhere; butthese men were distinguished by something more of ardor, a moreimpassioned zeal, a turkey-cock vanity heated white-hot. The mostinsignificant clerk, inspector, mayor's secretary, or villageschoolmaster talked as if he had a whole canton behind him and thepockets of his threadbare coat stuffed full of ballots. And it is afact, which Jansoulet had had abundant opportunity to verify, that inthe Corsican villages the families are so ancient, of such humbleorigin, with so many ramifications, that a poor devil who breaks stoneson the high road finds some way to work out his relationship to thegreatest personages on the island, and in that way wields a seriousinfluence. As the national temperament, proud, cunning, intriguing,revengeful, intensifies these complications, the result is that greatcare must be taken as to where one puts his foot among the snares thatare spread from one end of the island to the other.

  The most dangerous part of it was that all those people were jealous ofone another, detested one another, quarrelled openly at the table onthe subject of the election, exchanging black glances, grasping thehilts of their knives at the slightest dispute, talking very loud andall together, some in the harsh, resonant Genoese patois, others in themost comical French, choking with restrained insults, throwing at oneanother's heads the names of unknown villages, dates of local historywhich suddenly placed two centuries of family feuds upon the tablebetween two covers. The Nabob was afraid that his breakfasts would endtragically, and tried to calm all those violent natures with hiskindly, conciliatory smile. But Paganetti reassured him. According tohim, the vendetta, although still kept alive in Corsica, very rarelyemploys the stiletto and the firearm in these days. The anonymousletter has taken their place. Indeed, unsigned letters were receivedevery day at Place Vendome, after the style of this one:--

  "You are so generous, Monsieur Jansoulet, that I can do no less than point out to you Sieur Bornalinco (Ange-Marie) as a traitor who has gone over to your enemies; I have a very different story to tell of his cousin Bornalinco (Louis-Thomas), who is devoted to the good cause," etc.

  Or else:

  "Monsieur Jansoulet, I fear that your election will be badly managed and will come to nothing if you continue to employ Castirla (Josue) of the canton of Odessa, while his kinsman, Luciani, is the very man you need."

  Although he finally gave up reading such missives, the poor candidatewas shaken by all those doubts, by all those passions, being caught ina network of petty intrigues, his mind full of terror and distrust,anxious, excited, nervous, feeling keenly the truth of the Corsicanproverb:

  "If you are very ill-disposed to your enemy, pray that he may have anelection in his family."

  We can imagine that the check-book and the three great drawers in themahogany commode were not spared by that cloud of devouring locuststhat swooped down upon "Moussiou Jansoulet's" salons. Nothing could bemore comical than the overbearing way in which those worthy islandersnegotiated their loans, abruptly and with an air of defiance. And yetthey were not the most terrible, except in the matter of boxes ofcigars, which vanished in their pockets so rapidly as to make one thinkthey proposed to open a _Civette_ on their return to the island. Butjust as wounds grow red and inflamed on very hot days, so the electionhad caused an amazing recrudescence in the systematic pillage thatreigned in the house. The expenses of advertising were considerable:Moessard's articles, sent to Corsica in packages of twenty thousand,thirty thousand copies, with portraits, biographies, pamphlets, all theprinted clamor that it is possible to raise around a name. And thenthere was no diminution in the ordinary consumption of the pantingpumps established around the reservoir of millions. On one side theWork of Bethlehem, a powerful machine, pumping at regular intervals,with tremendous energy; the _Caisse Territoriale_, with marvellouspower of suction, indefatigable in its operation, with triple andquadruple action, of several thousand horse-power; and the Schwalbachpump, and the Bois-l'Hery pump, and how many more; some of enormoussize, making a great noise, with audacious pistons, others more quietand reserved, with tiny valves, bearings skilfully oiled--toy-pumps asdelicately constructed as the probosce
s of insects whose thirst causesstings, and which deposit poison on the spot from which they suck theirlife; but all working with the same unanimity, and fatally certain tocause, if not an absolute drought, at all events a serious lowering ofthe level.

  Already unfavorable reports, vague as yet, were in circulation on theBourse. Was it a manoeuvre of the enemy, of that Hemerlingue againstwhom Jansoulet was waging ruthless financial war, trying to defeat allhis operations, and losing very considerable sums at the game, becausehe had against him his own excitable nature, his adversary'scool-headedness and the bungling of Paganetti, whom he used as a man ofstraw? In any event, the star of gold had turned pale. Paul de Gerylearned as much from Pere Joyeuse, who had entered the employ of abroker as book-keeper, and was thoroughly posted on matters connectedwith the Bourse; but what alarmed him more than all else was theNabob's strange agitation, the craving for excitement which hadsucceeded the admirable calmness of conscious strength, of serenity,the disappearance of his Southern sobriety, the way in which hestimulated himself before eating by great draughts of _raki_, talkingloud and laughing uproariously like a common sailor during his watch ondeck. One felt that the man was tiring himself out to escape someabsorbing thought, which was visible nevertheless in the suddencontraction of all the muscles of his face when it passed through hismind, or when he was feverishly turning over the pages of his tarnishedlittle memorandum-book. The serious interview, the decisive explanationthat Paul was so desirous to have with him, Jansoulet would not have atany price. He passed his evenings at the club, his mornings in bed, andas soon as he was awake had his bedroom full of people, who talked tohim while he was dressing, and to whom he replied with his face in hiswash-bowl. If, by any miracle, de Gery caught him for a second, hewould run away or cut him short with a: "Not now, I beg you." At lastthe young man resorted to heroic measures.

  One morning about five o'clock, Jansoulet, on returning from his club,found on the table beside his bed a little note which he took at firstfor one of the anonymous denunciations which he received every day. Itwas a denunciation, in very truth, but signed, written with the utmostfrankness, breathing the loyalty and youthful seriousness of the manwho wrote it. De Gery set before him very clearly all the infamousschemes, all the speculations by which he was surrounded. He called therascals by their names, without circumlocution. There was not one amongthe ordinary habitues of the house who was not a suspicious character,not one who came there for any other purpose than to steal or lie. Fromattic to cellar, pillage and waste. Bois-l'Hery's horses were unsound,the Schwalbach gallery a fraud, Moessard's articles notoriousblackmail. De Gery had drawn up a long detailed list of those impudentfrauds, with proofs in support of his allegations; but he commendedespecially to Jansoulet's attention the matter of the _CaisseTerritoriale_, as the really dangerous element in his situation. In theother matters money alone was at risk; in this, honor was involved.Attracted by the Nabob's name, by his title of president of thecouncil, hundreds of stockholders had walked into that infamous trap,seeking gold in the footsteps of that lucky miner. That fact imposed aterrible responsibility upon him which he would understand by readingthe memorandum relating to the concern, which was falsehood and fraud,pure and simple, from beginning to end.

  "You will find the memorandum to which I refer," said Paul de Gery inconclusion, "in the first drawer in my desk. Various receipts areaffixed to it. I have not put it in your room, because I am distrustfulof Noel as of all the rest. To-night, when I go away, I will hand youthe key. For I am going away, my dear friend and benefactor, I am goingaway, overflowing with gratitude for the benefits you have conferred onme, and in despair because your blind confidence has prevented me fromrepaying them in part. My conscience as a man of honor would reproachme were I to remain longer useless at my post. I am looking on at aterrible disaster, the pillage of a Summer Palace, which I am powerlessto check; but my heart rises in revolt at all that I see. I exchangegrasps of the hand which dishonor me. I am your friend, and I seem tobe their confederate. And who knows whether, by living on in such anatmosphere, I might not become so?"

  This letter, which he read slowly, thoroughly, even to the spacesbetween the words and the lines, made such a keen impression on theNabob that, instead of going to bed, he went at once to his youngsecretary. Paul occupied a study at the end of the suite of salons,where he slept on a couch, a provisional arrangement which he had nevercared to change. The whole house was still asleep. As he walked throughthe long line of great salons, which were not used for eveningreceptions, so that the curtains were always open and at that momentadmitted the uncertain light of a Parisian dawn, the Nabob paused,impressed by the melancholy aspect that his magnificent surroundingspresented. In the heavy odor of tobacco and various liquors that filledthe rooms, the furniture, the wainscotings, the decorations seemedfaded yet still new. Stains on the crumpled satin, ashes soiling thebeautiful marbles, marks of boots on the carpet reminded him of a hugefirst-class railway carriage, bearing the marks of the indolence,impatience and ennui of a long journey, with the destructive contemptof the public for a luxury for which it has paid. Amid that stagescenery, all in position and still warm from the ghastly comedy thatwas played there every day, his own image, reflected in twenty cold,pale mirrors, rose before him, at once ominous and comical, ill-at-easein his fashionable clothes, with bloated cheeks and face inflamed anddirty.

  What an inevitable and disenchanting morrow to the insane life he wasleading!

  He lost himself for a moment in gloomy thoughts; then, with thevigorous shrug of the shoulders which was so familiar in him, thatpackman's gesture with which he threw off any too painfulpreoccupation, he resumed the burden which every man carries with him,and which causes the back to bend more or less, according to hiscourage or his strength, and entered de Gery's room, where he found himalready dressed and standing in front of his open desk, arrangingpapers.

  "First of all, my boy," said Jansoulet, closing the door softly ontheir interview, "answer me this question frankly. Are the motives setforth in your letter your real motives for resolving to leave me? Isn'tthere underneath it all one of these infamous stories that I know arebeing circulated against me in Paris? I am sure you would be frankenough to tell me, and to give me a chance to--to set myself right inyour eyes."

  Paul assured him that he had no other reasons for going, but that thosehe had mentioned were surely sufficient, as it was a matter ofconscience.

  "Listen to me then, my child, and I am sure that I shall be able tokeep you. Your letter, eloquent as it was with honesty and sincerity,told me nothing new, nothing that I had not been convinced of for threemonths. Yes, my dear Paul, you were right; Paris is more complicatedthan I thought. What I lacked when I arrived here was an honest,disinterested cicerone to put me on my guard against persons andthings. I found none but people who wanted to make money out of me. Allthe degraded scoundrels in the city have left the mud from their bootson my carpets. I was looking at those poor salons of mine just now.They need a good thorough sweeping; and I promise you that they shallhave, _jour de Dieu!_ and from no light hand. But I am waiting until Iam a deputy. All these rascals are of service to me in my election; andthe election is too necessary to me for me to throw away the slightestchance. This is the situation in two words. Not only does the bey notintend to repay the money I loaned him a month ago; he has met my claimwith a counter-claim for twenty-four millions, the figure at which heestimates the sums I obtained from his brother. That is infernalrobbery, an impudent slander. My fortune is my own, honestly my own. Imade it in my dealings as a contractor. I enjoyed Ahmed's favor; hehimself furnished me with opportunities for making money. It is verypossible that I have screwed the vise a little hard sometimes. But thematter must not be judged with the eyes of a European. The enormousprofits that the Levantines make are a well-known and recognized thingover yonder; they are the ransom of the savages whom we introduce towestern comforts. This wretched Hemerlingue, who is suggesting all thispersecution of me to the bey, has done
very much worse things. Butwhat's the use of arguing? I am in the wolf's jaws. Pending myappearance to justify myself before his courts--I know all aboutjustice in the Orient--the bey has begun by putting an embargo on allmy property, ships, palaces and their contents. The affair has beencarried on quite regularly, in pursuance of a decree of the SupremeCouncil. I can feel the claw of Hemerlingue Junior under it all. If Iam chosen deputy, it is all a jest. The Council revokes its decree andmy treasures are returned with all sorts of excuses. If I am notelected, I lose everything, sixty, eighty millions, even the possibleopportunity of making another fortune; it means ruin, disgrace, thebottomless pit. And now, my son, do you propose to abandon me at such acrisis? Remember that I have nobody in the world but you. My wife? youhave seen her, you know how much support, how much good advice shegives her husband. My children? It's as if I had none. I never seethem, they would hardly know me in the street. My ghastly magnificencehas made an empty void around me, so far as affections are concerned,has replaced them by shameless selfish interests. I have no one to lovebut my mother, who is far away, and you, who come to me from my mother.No, you shall not leave me alone among all the slanders that arecrawling around me. It is horrible--if you only knew! At the club, atthe theatre, wherever I go, I see Baroness Hemerlingue's little snake'shead, I hear the echo of her hissing, I feel the venom of her hatred.Everywhere I am conscious of mocking glances, conversations broken offwhen I appear, smiles that lie, or kindness in which there is amingling of pity. And then the defections, the people who move away asif a catastrophe were coming. For instance, here is Felicia Ruys, withmy bust just finished, alleging some accident or other as an excuse fornot sending it to the Salon. I said nothing, I pretended to believe it.But I understood that there was some infamy on foot in that quarter,too,--and it's a great disappointment to me. In emergencies as grave asthat I am passing through, everything has its importance. My bust atthe Exhibition, signed by that famous name, would have been of greatbenefit to me in Paris. But no, everything is breaking, everything isfailing me. Surely you see that you must not fail me."

  END OF VOL. I.

 
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