The Nabob Volume 1 Read online

  THE NABOB.

  A hundred years ago Le Sage wrote these words at the head of _GilBlas_:

  "As there are persons who cannot read a book without making personal application of the vicious or absurd characters they find therein, I hereby declare for the benefit of such evil-minded readers that they will err in making such application of the portraits in this book. I make public avowal that my only aim has been to represent the life of mankind as it is."

  Without attempting to draw any comparison between Le Sage's novel andmy own, I may say that I should have liked to place a declaration ofthe same nature on the first page of _The Nabob_, at the time of itspublication. Several reasons prevented my doing so. In the first place,the fear that such an advertisement might seem too much like a baitthrown out to the public, an attempt to compel its attention. Secondly,I was far from suspecting that a book written with a purely literarypurpose could acquire at a bound such anecdotal importance, and bringdown upon me such a buzzing swarm of complaints. Indeed, such a thingwas never seen before. Not a line of my work, not one of its heroes,not even a character of secondary importance, but has become a pretextfor allusions and protestations. To no purpose does the author deny theimputation, swear by all the gods that there is no key to hisnovel--every one forges at least one, with whose assistance he claimsto open that combination lock. It must be that all these types havelived, bless my soul! that they live to-day, exactly identical fromhead to foot. Monpavon is So-and-So, is he not? Jenkins' resemblance isstriking. One man is angry because he is in it, another one because heis not in it; and, beginning with this eagerness for scandal, there isnothing, not even chance similarities of name, fatal in the modernnovel, descriptions of streets, numbers of houses selected at random,that has not served to give identity to beings built of a thousandpieces and, moreover, absolutely imaginary.

  The author is too modest to take all this outcry to himself. He knowshow great a part the friendly or treacherous indiscretions of thenewspapers have had therein; and without thanking the former more thanis seemly, without too great ill-will to the latter, he resigns himselfto the stormy prospect as something inevitable, and simply deemshimself in duty bound to affirm that he has never, in twenty years ofupright, literary toil, resorted to that element of success, neither onthis occasion nor on any other. As he turned the leaves of his memory,which it is every novelist's right and duty to do, he recalled astrange episode that occurred in cosmopolitan Paris some fifteen yearsago. The romance of a dazzling career that shot swiftly across theParisian sky like a meteor evidently served as the frame-work of _TheNabob_, a picture of manners and morals at the close of the SecondEmpire. But around that central situation and certain well-knownincidents, which it was every one's right to study and revive, what aworld of fancy, what inventions, what elaboration, and, above all, whatan outlay of that incessant, universal, almost unconscious observation,without which there could be no imaginative writers. Furthermore, toobtain an idea of the "crystallizing" labor involved in transportingthe simplest circumstances from reality to fiction, from life toromance, one need only open the _Moniteur Officiel_ of February, 1864,and compare a certain session of the Corps Legislatif with the picturethat I give of it in my book. Who could have supposed that, after thelapse of so many years, this Paris, famous for its short memory, wouldrecognize the original model in the idealized picture the novelist hasdrawn of him, and that voices would be raised to charge withingratitude one who most assuredly was not his hero's "assiduousguest," but simply, in their infrequent meetings, an inquisitiveacquaintance on whose mind the truth is quickly photographed, and whocan never efface from his memory the images that are once imprintedthereon?

  I knew the "real Nabob" in 1864. I occupied at that time asemi-official position which forced me to exhibit great reserve in myvisits to that luxurious and hospitable Levantine. Later I wasintimately associated with one of his brothers; but at that time thepoor Nabob was far away, struggling through thickets of cruel brambles,and he was seen at Paris only occasionally. Moreover, it is veryunpleasant for a courteous man to reckon thus with the dead, and tosay: "You are mistaken. Although he was an agreeable host, I was notoften seen at his table." Let it suffice therefore, for me to declarethat, in speaking of Mere Francoise's son as I have done, it has beenmy purpose to represent him in a favorable light, and that the chargeof ingratitude seems to me an absurdity from every standpoint. Thatthis is true is proved by the fact that many people consider theportrait too flattering, more interesting than nature. To such peoplemy reply is very simple: "Jansoulet strikes me as an excellent fellow;but at all events, if I am wrong, you can blame the newspapers fortelling you his real name. I gave you my novel as a novel, good or bad,without any guaranty of resemblances."

  As to Mora, that is another matter. Something has been said ofindiscretion, of political defection. Great Heaven! I have never made asecret of it. At the age of twenty, I was connected with the office ofthe high functionary who has served as my model; and my friends ofthose days know what a serious political personage I made. TheDepartment also must have strange recollections of that eccentric clerkwith the Merovingian beard, who was always the last to arrive and thefirst to depart, and who never went up to the duke's private officeexcept to ask leave of absence; of a naturally independent character,too, with hands unstained by anything like sycophancy, and so littlereconciled to the Empire that, on the day when the duke proposed to himto enter his service, the future attache deemed it his duty to declarewith touching juvenile solemnity that "he was a Legitimist."

  "So is the Empress," was His Excellency's reply, and he smiled withcalm and impertinent condescension. I always saw him with that smile onhis face, nor had I any need to look through keyholes; and I have drawnhim so, as he loved to appear, in his Richelieu-Brummel attitude.History will attend to the statesman. I have exhibited him, introducinghim at long range in my fictitious drama, as the worldly creature thathe was and wished to be, being well assured that in his lifetime itwould not have offended him to be so presented.

  This is what I had to say. And now, having made these declarations inall frankness, let us return to work with all speed. My preface willseem a little short, and the curious reader will seek in vain thereinthe anticipated piquancy. So much the worse for him. Brief as this pagemay be, it is three times too long for me. Prefaces have thisdisadvantage, that they prevent one from writing books.

  ALPHONSE DAUDET.