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

magic words Jenkins will obtain everything he desires. In his merry, guttural voice, which seems always as though it were hailing a boat in a fog, the Nabob calls, "Bompain!"
The man in the fez, quickly leaving the liqueur-stand, walks majestically across the room, whispers, moves away, and returns with an inkstand and a counterfoil check-book from which the slips detach themselves and fly away of their own accord. A fine thing, wealth! To sign a check on his knee for two hundred thousand francs troubles Jansoulet no more than to draw a louis from his pocket.
Furious, with noses in their cups, the others watch this little scene from a distance. Then, as Jenkins takes his departure, bright, smiling, with a nod to the various groups, Monpavon seizes the governor: "Now is our chance." And both, springing on the Nabob, drag him off towards a couch, oblige him almost forcibly to sit down, press upon each side of him with a ferocious little laugh that seems to signify, "What shall we do with him now?" Get the money out of him, the largest amount possible. It is needed, to set afloat once more the Territorial Bank, for years lain aground on a sand-bank, buried to the very top of its masts. A superb operation, this re-flotation, if these two gentlemen are to be believed, for the submerged bank is full of ingots, of precious things, of the thousand various forms of wealth of a new country discussed by everybody and known by none.
In founding this unique establishment, Paganetti of Porto-Vecchio had as his aim to monopolize the commercial development of the whole of Corsica: iron mines, sulphur mines, copper mines, marble quarries, coral fisheries, oyster beds, water ferruginous and sulphurous, immense forests of thuya, of cork-oak, and to establish for the facilitation of this development a network of railways over the island, with a service of packet-boats in addition. Such is the gigantic undertaking to which he has devoted himself. He has sunk considerable capital in it, and it is the new-comer, the workman of the last hour, who will gain the whole profit.
While with his Italian accent and violent gestures the Corsican enumerates the "splendours" of the affair, Monpavon, haughty, and with an air calculated to command confidence, nods his head approvingly with conviction, and from time to time, when he judges the moment propitious, throws into the conversation the name of the Duc de Mora, which never fails in its effect on the Nabob.
"Well, in short, how much would be required?"
"Millions," says Monpavon boldly, in the tone of a man who would have no difficulty in addressing himself elsewhere. "Yes, millions; but the enterprise is magnificent. And, as his excellency was saying, it would provide even a political position. Just think! In that district without a metallic currency, you might become counsellor-general, deputy." The Nabob gives a start. And the little Paganetti, who feels the bait quiver on his hook: "Yes, deputy. You will be that whenever I choose. At a sign from me all Corsica is at your disposal." Then he launches out into an astonishing improvisation, counting the votes which he controls, the cantons which will obey his call. "You bring me your capital. I--I give you an entire people." The cause is gained.
"Bompain, Bompain!" calls the Nabob, roused to enthusiasm. He has now but one fear, that is lest the thing escape him; and in order to bind Paganetti, who has not concealed his need of money, he hastens to effect the payment of a first instalment to the Territorial bank. New appearance of the man in red breeches with the check-book which he carries clasped gravely to his chest, like a choir-boy moving the Gospel from one side to the other. New inscription of Jansoulet's signature upon a slip, which the governor pockets with a negligent air and which operates on his person a sudden transformation. The Paganetti who was so humble and spiritless just now, goes away with the assurance of a man worth four hundred thousand francs, while Monpavon, carrying it even higher than usual, follows after him in his steps, and watches over him with a more than paternal solicitude.
"That's a good piece of business done," says the Nabob to himself. "I can drink my coffee now."
But the borrowers are waiting for him to pass. The most prompt, the most adroit, is Cardailhac, the manager, who lays hold of him and bears him off into a side-room.
"Let us have a little talk, old friend. I must explain to you the situation of affairs in connection with our theatre." Very complicated, doubtless, the situation; for here is M. Bompain who advances once more, and there are the slips of blue paper flying away from the check-book. Whose turn now? There is the journalist Moessard coming to draw his pay for the article in the _Messenger_; the Nabob will find out what it costs to have one's self called "benefactor of childhood" in the morning papers. There is the parish priest from the country who demands funds for the restoration of his church, and takes checks by assault with the brutality of a Peter the Hermit. There is old Schwalbach coming up with nose in his beard and winking mysteriously.
"Sh! He had found a pearl for monsieur's gallery, an Hobbema from the collection of the Duc de Mora. But several people are after it. It will be difficult--"
"I must have it at any price," says the Nabob, hooked by the name of Mora. "You understand, Schwalbach. I must have this Hobbema. Twenty thousand francs for you if you secure it."
"I shall do my utmost, M. Jansoulet."
And the old rascal calculates, as he goes away, that the twenty thousand of the Nabob added to the ten thousand promised him by the duke if he gets rid of his picture for him, will make a nice little profit for himself.
While these fortunate ones follow each other, others look on around, wild with impatience, biting their nails to the quick, for all are come on the same errand. From the good Jenkins, who opened the advance, to the masseur Cabassu, who closes it, all draw the Nabob away to some room apart. But, however far they lead him down this gallery of reception-rooms, there is always some indiscreet mirror to reflect the profile of the host and the gestures of his broad back. That back has eloquence. Now and then it straightens itself up in indignation. "Oh, no; that is too much." Or again it sinks forward with a comical resignation. "Well, since it must be so." And always Bompain's fez in some corner of the view.
When those are finished, others arrive. They are the small fry who follow in the wake of the big eaters in the ferocious hunts of the rivers. There is a continual coming and going through these handsome white-and-gold drawing rooms, a noise of doors, an established current of bare-faced and vulgar exploitation attracted from the four corners of Paris and the suburbs by this gigantic fortune and incredible facility.
For these small sums, these regular distributions, recourse was not had to the check-book. For such purposes the Nabob kept in one of his rooms a mahogany chest of drawers, a horrible little piece of furniture representing the savings of a house porter, the first that Jansoulet had bought when he had been able to give up living in furnished apartments; which he had preserved since, like a gambler's fetish; and the three drawers of which contained always two hundred thousand francs in cash. It was to this constant supply that he had recourse on the days of his large receptions, displaying a certain ostentation in the way in which he would handle the gold and silver, by great handfuls, thrusting it to the bottom of his pockets to draw it out thence with the gesture of a cattle dealer; a certain vulgar way of raising the skirts of his frock-coat and of sending his hand "to the bottom and into the pile." To-day there must be a terrible void in the drawers of the little chest.
After so many mysterious whispered confabulations, demands more or less clearly formulated, chance entries and triumphant departures, the last client having been dismissed, the chest of drawers closed and locked, the flat in the Place Vendome began to empty in the uncertain light of the afternoon towards four o'clock, that close of the November days so exceedingly prolonged afterward by artificial light. The servants were clearing away the coffee and the raki, and bearing off the open and half-emptied cigar-boxes. The Nabob, thinking himself alone, gave a sigh of relief. "Ouf! that's over." But no. Opposite him, some one comes out from a corner that is already dark, and approaches with a letter in his hand.
Another!
And at once, mechanically, the poor man made that eloquent, horse-dealer's gesture of his. Instinctively, also, the visitor showed a movement of recoil so prompt, so hurt, that the Nabob understood that he was making a mistake, and took the trouble to examine the young man who stood before him, simply but correctly dressed, of a dull complexion, without the least sign of a beard, with regular features, perhaps a little too serious and fixed for his age, which, aided by his hair of pale blond colour, curled in little ringlets like a powdered wig, gave him the appearance of a young deputy of the Commons under Louis XVI, the head of a Barnave at twenty! This face, although the Nabob beheld it for the first time, was not absolutely unknown to him.
"What do you desire, monsieur?"
Taking the letter which the young man held out to him, he went to a window in order to see to read it.
"Te! It is from mamma."
He said it with so happy an air; that word "mamma" lit up all his face with so young, so kind a smile, that the visitor, who had been at first repulsed by the vulgar aspect of this _parvenu_, felt himself filled with sympathy for him.
In an undertone the Nabob read these few lines written in an awkward hand, incorrect and shaky, which contrasted with the large glazed note-paper, with its heading "Chateau de Saint-Romans."
"My dear son, this letter will be delivered to you by the eldest son of M. de Gery, the former justice of the peace for Bourg-Saint-Andeol, who has shown us so much kindness."
The Nabob broke off his reading.
"I ought to have recognised you, M. de Gery. You resemble your father. Sit down, I beg of you."
Then he finished running through the letter. His mother asked him nothing precise, but, in the name of the services which the de Gery family had rendered them in former years, she recommended M. Paul to him. An orphan, burdened with the care of his two young brothers, he had been called to the bar in the south, and was now coming to Paris to seek his fortune. She implored Jansoulet to aid him, "for he needed it badly, poor fellow," and she signed herself, "Thy mother who pines for thee, Francoise."
This letter from his mother, whom he had not seen for six years, those expressions of the south country of which he could hear the intonations that he knew so well, that coarse handwriting which sketched for him an adored face, all wrinkled, scored, and cracked, but smiling beneath its peasant's head-dress, had affected the Nabob. During the six weeks that he had been in France, lost in the whirl of Paris, the business of getting settled in his new habitation, he had not yet given a thought to his dear old lady at home; and now he saw all of her again in these lines. He remained a moment looking at the letter, which trembled in his heavy fingers.