The Nabob - Alphonse Daudet (read ebook pdf TXT) 📗

/> "I? Never in my life. Who told you that?"
"Indeed! I thought--" answered the young man; and immediately, a host of reflections crowding into his mind:
"What, then, have you done to this Baron Hemerlingue? It is a hatred to the death between you."
For a moment the Nabob was taken aback. That name of Hemerlingue, thrown suddenly into his glee, recalled to him the one annoying episode of the evening.
"To him as to the others," said he in a saddened voice, "I have never done anything save good. We began together in poverty. We made progress and prospered side by side. Whenever he wished to try a flight on his own wings, I always aided and supported him to the best of my ability. It was I who during ten consecutive years secured for him the contracts for the fleet and the army; almost his whole fortune came from that source. Then one fine morning this slow-blooded imbecile of a Bernese goes crazy over an odalisk whom the mother of the Bey had caused to be expelled from the harem. The hussy was beautiful and ambitious, she made him marry her, and naturally, after this brilliant match, Hemerlingue was obliged to leave Tunis. Somebody had persuaded him to believe that I was urging the Bey to close the principality to him. It was not true. On the contrary, I obtained from his Highness permission for Hemerlingue's son--a child by his first wife--to remain in Tunis in order to look after their suspended interests, while the father came to Paris to found his banking-house. Moreover, I have been well rewarded for my kindness. When, at the death of my poor Ahmed, the Mouchir, his brother, ascended the throne, the Hemerlingues, restored to favour, never ceased to work for my undoing with the new master. The Bey still keeps on good terms with me; but my credit is shaken. Well, in spite of that, in spite of all the shabby tricks that Hemerlingue has played me, that he plays me still, I was ready this evening to hold out my hand to him. Not only does the blackguard refuse it, but he causes me to be insulted by his wife, a savage and evil-disposed creature, who does not pardon me for always having declined to receive her in Tunis. Do you know what she called me just now as she passed me? 'Thief and son of a dog.' As free in her language as that, the odalisk--That is to say, that if I did not know my Hemerlingue to be as cowardly as he is fat--After all, bah! let them say what they like. I snap my fingers at them. What can they do against me? Ruin me with the Bey? That is a matter of indifference to me. There is nothing any longer for me to do in Tunis, and I shall withdraw myself from the place altogether as soon as possible. There is only one town, one country in the world, and that is Paris--Paris welcoming, hospitable, not prudish, where every intelligent man may find space to do great things. And I, now, do you see, de Gery, I want to do great things. I have had enough of mercantile life. For twenty years I have worked for money; to-day I am greedy of glory, of consideration, of fame. I want to be somebody in the history of my country, and that will be easy for me. With my immense fortune, my knowledge of men and of affairs, the things I know I have here in my head, nothing is beyond my reach and I aspire to everything. Believe me, therefore, my dear boy, never leave me"--one would have said that he was replying to the secret thought of his young companion--"remain faithfully on board my ship. The masts are firm; I have my bunkers full of coal. I swear to you that we shall go far, and quickly, _nom d'un sort_!"
The ingenuous southerner thus poured out his projects into the night with many expressive gestures, and from time to time, as they walked rapidly to and fro in the vast and deserted square, majestically surrounded by its silent and closed palaces, he raised his head towards the man of bronze on the column, as though taking to witness that great upstart whose presence in the midst of Paris authorizes all ambitions, endows every chimera with probability.
There is in young people a warmth of heart, a need of enthusiasm which is awakened by the least touch. As the Nabob talked, de Gery felt his suspicion take wing and all his sympathy return, together with a shade of pity. No, very certainly this man was not a rascal, but a poor, illuded being whose fortune had gone to his head like a wine too heavy for a stomach long accustomed to water. Alone in the midst of Paris, surrounded by enemies and people ready to take advantage of him, Jansoulet made upon him the impression of a man on foot laden with gold passing through some evil-haunted wood, in the dark and unarmed. And he reflected that it would be well for the _protege_ to watch, without seeming to do so, over the protector, to become the discerning Telemachus of the blind Mentor, to point out to him the quagmires, to defend him against the highwaymen, to aid him, in a word, in his combats amid all that swarm of nocturnal ambuscades which he felt were prowling ferociously around the Nabob and his millions.


THE JOYEUSE FAMILY
Every morning of the year, at exactly eight o'clock, a new and almost tenantless house in a remote quarter of Paris, echoed to cries, calls, merry laughter, ringing clear in the desert of the staircase:
"Father, don't forget my music."
"Father, my crochet wool."
"Father, bring us some rolls."
And the voice of the father calling from below:
"Yaia, bring me down my portfolio, please."
"There you are, you see! He has forgotten his portfolio."
And there would be a glad scurry from top to bottom of the house, a running of all those pretty faces confused by sleep, of all those heads with disordered hair which the owners made tidy as they ran, until the moment when, leaning over the baluster, half a dozen girls bade loud good-bye to a little, old gentleman, neat and well-groomed, whose reddish face and short profile disappeared at length in the spiral perspective of the stairs. M. Joyeuse had departed for his office. At once the whole band, escaped from their cage, would rush quickly upstairs again to the fourth floor, and, the door having been opened, group themselves at an open casement to gain one last glimpse of their father. The little man used to turn round, kisses were exchanged across the distance, then the windows were closed, the new and tenantless house became quiet again, except for the posters dancing their wild saraband in the wind of the unfinished street, as if made gay, they also, by all these proceedings. A moment later the photographer on the fifth floor would descend to hang at the door his showcase, always the same, in which was to be seen the old gentleman in a white tie surrounded by his daughters in various groups; he went upstairs again in his turn, and the calm which succeeded immediately upon this little morning uproar left one to imagine that the "father" and his young ladies had re-entered the case of photographs, where they remained smiling and motionless until evening.
From the Rue Saint-Ferdinand to the establishment of Hemerlingue & Son, his employers, M. Joyeuse had a good three-quarters of an hour's journey. He walked with head erect and straight, as though he had feared to disarrange the smart knot of the cravat tied by his daughters, or his hat put on by them, and when the eldest, ever anxious and prudent, just as he went out raised his coat-collar to protect him against the harsh gusts of the wind that blew round the street corner, even if the temperature were that of a hothouse M. Joyeuse would not lower it again until he reached the office, like the lover who, quitting his mistress's arms, dares not to move for fear of losing the intoxicating perfume.
A widower for some years, this worthy man lived only for his children, thought only of them, went through life surrounded by those fair little heads that fluttered around him confusedly as in a picture of the Assumption. All his desires, all his projects, bore reference to "those young ladies," returned to them without ceasing, sometimes after long circuits, for M. Joyeuse--this was connected no doubt with the fact that he possessed a short neck and a small figure whereof his turbulent blood made the circuit in a moment--was a man of fecund and astonishing imagination. In his brain the ideas performed their evolutions with the rapidity of hollow straws around a sieve. At the office, figures kept his steady attention by reason of their positive quality; but, outside, his mind took its revenge upon that inexorable occupation. The activity of the walk, the habit that led him by a route where he was familiar with the least incidents, allowed full liberty to his imaginative faculties. He invented at these times extraordinary adventures, enough of them to crank out a score of the serial stories that appear in the newspapers.
If, for example, M. Joyeuse, as he went up the Faubourg Saint-Honore, on the right-hand footwalk--he always took that one--noticed a heavy laundry-cart going along at a quick pace, driven by a woman from the country with a child perched on a bundle of linen and leaning over somewhat:
"The child!" the terrified old fellow would cry. "Have a care of the child!"
His voice would be lost in the noise of the wheels and his warning among the secrets of Providence. The cart passed. He would follow it for a moment with his eye, then resume his walk; but the drama begun in his mind would continue to unfold itself there, with a thousand catastrophes. The child had fallen. The wheels were about to pass over him. M. Joyeuse dashed forward, saved the little creature on the very brink of destruction; the pole of the cart, however, struck himself full in the chest and he fell bathed in blood. Then he would see himself borne to some chemists' shop through the crowd that had collected. He was placed in an ambulance, carried to his own house, and then suddenly he would hear the piercing cry of his daughters, his well-beloved daughters, when they beheld him in this condition. And that agonized cry touched his heart so deeply, he would hear it so distinctly, so realistically: "Papa, my dear papa," that he would himself utter it aloud in the street, to the great astonishment of the passers-by, in a hoarse voice which would wake him from his fictitious nightmare.
Will you have another sample of this prodigious imagination? It is raining, freezing; wretched weather. M. Joyeuse has taken the omnibus to go to his office. Finding himself seated opposite a sort of colossus, with the head of a brute and formidable biceps, M. Joyeuse, himself very small, very puny, with his portfolio on his knees, draws in his legs in order to make room for the enormous columns which support the monumental body of his neighbour. As the vehicle moves on and as the rain beats on the windows, M. Joyeuse falls into reverie. And suddenly the colossus opposite, whose face is kind after all, is very much surprised to see the little man change colour, look at him and grind his teeth, look at him with ferocious eyes, an assassin's eyes. Yes, with the eyes of a veritable assassin, for at that moment M. Joyeuse is dreaming a terrible dream. He sees one of his daughters sitting there