THE FUNERAL
"Don't weep, my fairy, you rob me of all my courage. Come, you will be agreat deal happier when you no longer have your terrible demon. You willgo back to Fontainebleau and look after your chickens. The ten thousandfrancs from Brahim will help to get you settled down. And then, don't beafraid, once you are over there I shall send you money. Since this Beywants to have sculpture done by me, he will have to pay for it, as youmay imagine. I shall return rich, rich. Who knows? Perhaps a sultana."
"Yes, you will be a sultana, but I--I shall be dead and I shall neversee you again." And the good Crenmitz in despair huddled herself into acorner of the cab so that she would not be seen weeping.
Felicia was leaving Paris. She was trying to escape the horriblesadness, the sinister disgust into which Mora's death had thrown her.What a terrible blow for the proud girl! _Ennui_, pique, had thrown herinto this man's arms; she had given him pride--modesty--all; and nowhe had carried all away with him, leaving her tarnished for life, atearless widow, without mourning and without dignity. Two or threevisits to Saint-James Villa, a few evenings in the back of some boxat some small theatre, behind the curtain that shelters forbidden andshameful pleasure, these were the only memories left to her by thisliaison of a fortnight, this loveless intrigue wherein her pride had notfound even the satisfaction of the commotion caused by a big scandal.The useless and indelible stain, the stupid fall of a woman who does notknow how to walk and who is embarrassed in her rising by the ironicalpity of the passers-by.
For a moment she thought of suicide, then the reflection that it wouldbe set down to a broken heart arrested her. She saw in a glance thesentimental compassion of the drawing-rooms, the foolish figure that hersham passion would cut among the innumberable love affairs of the duke,and the Parma violets scattered by the pretty Moessards of journalismon her grave, dug so near the other. Travelling remained to her--one ofthose journeys so distant that they take even one's thoughts into a newworld. Unfortunately the money was wanting. Then she remembered that onthe morrow of her great success at the Exhibition, old Brahim Bey hadcalled to see her, to make her, in behalf of his master, magnificentproposals for certain great works to be executed in Tunis. She hadsaid No at the time, without allowing herself to be tempted by Orientalremuneration, a splendid hospitality, the finest court in the Bardo fora studio, with its surrounding facades of stone in lacework carving. Butnow she was quite willing. She had to make but a sign, the agreementwas immediately concluded, and after an exchange of telegrams, a hastypacking and shutting up of the house, she set out for the railwaystation as if for a week's absence, astonished herself by her promptdecision, flattered on all the adventurous and artistic sides of hernature by the hope of a new life in an unknown country.
The Bey's pleasure yacht was to await her at Genoa; and in anticipation,closing her eyes in the cab which was taking her to the station, shecould see the white stone buildings of an Italian port embracing aniridescent sea where the sunshine was already Eastern, where everythingsang, to the very swelling of the sails on the blue water. Paris, as ithappened, was muddy that day, uniformly gray, flooded by one of thosecontinuous rains of which it seems to have the special property, rainsthat seem to have risen in clouds from its river, from its smoke, fromits monster's breath, and to fall in torrents from its roofs, fromits spouts, from the innumerable windows of its garrets. Feliciawas impatient to get away from this gloomy Paris, and her feverishimpatience found fault with the cabmen who made slow progress with thehorses, two sorry creatures of the veritable cab-horse type, with aninexplicable block of carriages and omnibuses crowded together in thevicinity of the Pont de la Concorde.
"But go on, driver, go on, then."
"I cannot, madame. It is the funeral procession."
She put her head out of the window and drew it back again immediately,terrified. A line of soldiers marching with reversed arms, a confusionof caps and hats raised from the forehead at the passage of an endlesscortege. It was Mora's funeral procession defiling past.
"Don't stop here. Go round," she cried to the cabman.
The vehicle turned about with difficulty, dragging itself regretfullyfrom the superb spectacle which Paris had been awaiting for four days;it remounted the avenues, took the Rue Montaigne, and, with its slowand surly little trot, came out at the Madeleine by the BoulevardMalesherbes. Here the crowd was greater, more compact.
In the misty rain, the illuminated stained-glass windows of the church,the dull echo of the funeral chants beneath the lavishly distributedblack hangings under which the very outline of the Greek temple waslost, filled the whole square with a sense of the office in course ofcelebration, while the greater part of the immense procession was stillsqueezed up in the Rue Royale, and as far even as the bridges a longblack line connecting the dead man with that gate of the LegislativeAssembly through which he had so often passed. Beyond the Madeleinethe highway of the boulevard stretched away empty, and looking biggerbetween two lines of soldiers with arms reversed, confining the curiousto the pavements black with people, all the shops closed, and thebalconies, in spite of the rain, overflowing with human beings allleaning forward in the direction of the church, as if to see a mid-Lentfestival or the home-coming of victorious troops. Paris, hungry for thespectacular, constructs it indifferently out of anything, civil war asreadily as the burial of a statesman.
It was necessary for the cab to retrace its course again and to make anew circuit; and it is easy to imagine the bad temper of the driver andhis beasts, all three of them Parisian in soul and passions, at havingto deprive themselves of so fine a show. Then, as all the life of Parishad been drawn into the great artery of the boulevard, there beganthrough the deserted and silent streets--a capricious and irregulardrive--the snail-like progress of a cab taken by the hour. Firsttouching the extreme points of the Faubourg Saint-Martin and theFaubourg Saint-Denis, returning again towards the centre, and at theconclusion of circuits and dodges finding always the same obstacle inambush, the same crowd, some fragment of the black defile perceived fora moment at the branching of a street, unfolding itself in the rain tothe sound of muffled drums--a dull and heavy sound, like that of earthfalling on a coffin-lid.
What torture for Felicia! It was her weakness and her remorse crossingParis in this solemn pomp, this funeral train, this public mourningreflected by the very clouds; and the proud girl revolted against thisaffront done her by fate, and tried to escape from it to the back ofthe carriage, where she remained exhausted with eyes closed, while oldCrenmitz, believing her nervousness to be grief, did her best to comforther, herself wept over their separation, and hiding also, left theentire window of the cab to the big Algerian hound with his finelymodelled head scenting the wind, and his two paws resting in thesash with an heraldic stiffness of pose. Finally, after a thousandinterminable windings, the cab suddenly came to a halt, jolted on againwith difficulty amid cries and abuse, then, tossed about, the luggage ontop threatening its equilibrium, it ended by coming to a full stop, heldprisoner, as it were, at anchor.
"_Bon Dieu!_ what a mass of people!" murmured the Crenmitz, terrified.
Felicia came out of her stupor.
"Where are we?"
Under a colourless, smoky sky, blotted out by a fine network of rain andstretched like gauze over everything, there lay an immense space filledby an ocean of humanity surging from all the streets that led to it,and motionless around a lofty column of bronze, which dominated this sealike the gigantic mast of a sunken vessel. Cavalry in squadrons,with swords drawn, guns in batteries stood at intervals along an openpassage, awaiting him who was to come by, perhaps in order to try toretake him, to carry him off by force from the formidable enemy who wasbearing him away. Alas! all the cavalry charges, all the guns could beof no avail here. The prisoner was departing, firmly guarded, defendedby a triple wall of hardwood, metal, and velvet, impervious togrape-shot; and it was not from those soldiers that he could hope forhis deliverance.
"Get away from this. I will not stay h
ere," said Felicia, furious,plucking at the wet box-coat of the driver, and seized by a wild dreadat the thought of the nightmare which was pursuing her, of _that_which she could hear coming in a frightful rumbling, still distant,but growing nearer from minute to minute. At the first movement of thewheels, however, the cries and shouts broke out anew. Thinking that hewould be allowed to cross the square, the driver had penetrated withgreat difficulty to the front ranks of the crowd; it now closed behindhim and refused to allow him to go forward. There they had to remain,to endure those odours of common people and of alcohol, those curiousglances, already fired by the prospect of an exceptional spectacle. Theystared rudely at the beautiful traveller who was starting off withso many trunks, and a dog of such size for her defender. Crenmitz washorribly afraid; Felicia, for her part, could think of only one thing,and that was that _he_ was about to pass before her eyes, that she wouldbe in the front rank to see him.
Suddenly a great shout "Here it comes!" Then silence fell on the wholesquare at last at the end of three weary hours of waiting.
It came.
Felicia's first impulse was to lower the blind on her side, on the sidepast which the procession was about to pass. But at the rolling of thedrums close at hand, seized by the nervous wrath at her inability toescape the obsession of the thing, perhaps also infected by the morbidcuriosity around her, she suddenly let the blind fly up, and her paleand passionate little face showed itself at the window, supported by hertwo clinched hands.
"There! since you will have it: I am watching you."
As a funeral it was as fine a thing as can be seen, the supreme honoursrendered in all their vain splendour, as sonorous, as hollow as therhythmic accompaniment on the muffled drums. First the white surplicesof the clergy, amid the mourning drapery of the first five carriages;next, drawn by six black horses, veritable horses of Erebus, thereadvanced the funeral car, all beplumed, fringed and embroidered insilver, with big tears, heraldic coronets surmounting gigantic M's,prophetic initials which seemed those of Death himself, _La Mort_ madea duchess decorated with the eight waving plumes. So many canopies andmassive hangings hid the vulgar body of the hearse, as it trembled andquivered at each step from top to bottom as though crushed beneath themajesty of its dead burden. On the coffin, the sword, the coat, theembroidered hat, parade undress--which had never been worn--shone withgold and mother-of-pearl in the darkened little tent formed by thehangings and among the bright tints of fresh flowers telling of springin spite of the sullenness of the sky. At a distance of ten paces camethe household servants of the duke; then, behind, in majestic isolation,the cloaked officer bearing the emblems of honour--a veritable displayof all the orders of the whole world--crosses, multicoloured ribbons,which covered to overflowing the cushion of black velvet with silverfringe.
The master of ceremonies came next, in front of the representatives ofthe Legislative Assembly--a dozen deputies chosen by lot, among themthe tall figure of the Nabob, wearing the official costume for the firsttime, as if ironical Fortune had desired to give to the representativeon probation a foretaste of all parliamentary joys. The friends of thedead man, who followed, formed a rather small group, singularly wellchosen to exhibit in its crudity the superficiality and the void of thatexistence of a great personage reduced to the intimacy of a theatricalmanager thrice bankrupt, of a picture-dealer grown wealthy throughusuary, of a nobleman of tarnished reputation, and of a few men abouttown without distinction. Up to this point everybody was walking on footand bareheaded; among the parliamentary representatives there were onlya few black skull-caps, which had been put on timidly as they approachedthe populous districts. After them the carriages began.
At the death of a great warrior it is the custom for the funeral convoyto be followed by the favourite horse of the hero, his battle charger,regulating to the slow step of the procession that dancing step excitedby the smell of powder and the pageantry of standards. In this case,Mora's great brougham, that "C-spring" which used to bear him tofashionable or political gatherings, took the place of that companionin victory, its panels draped with black, its lamps veiled in longstreamers of light crape, floating to the ground with undulatingfeminine grace. These veiled lamps constituted a new fashion forfunerals--the supreme "chic" of mourning; and it well became this dandyto give a last lesson in elegance to the Parisians, who flocked to hisobsequies as to a "Longchamps" of death.
Three more masters of ceremony; then came the impassive officialprocession, always the same for marriages, deaths, baptisms, openingsof Parliament, or receptions of sovereigns, the interminable cortege ofglittering carriages, with large windows and showy liveries bedizenedwith gilt, which passed through the midst of the dazzled people, towhom they recalled fairy-tales, Cinderella chariots, while evoking those"Oh's!" of admiration that mount and die away with the rockets on theevenings of firework displays. And in the crowd there was always to befound some good-natured policeman, some learned little grocer saunteringround on the lookout for public ceremonies, ready to name in a loudvoice all the people in the carriages, as they defiled past, with theirregulation escorts of dragoons, cuirassiers, or Paris guards.
First the representatives of the Emperor, the Empress and all theImperial family; after these, in the hierarchic order, cunninglyelaborated, and the least infraction of which might have been the causeof grave conflicts between the various departments of the State--themembers of the Privy Council, the Marshals, the Admirals, the HighChancellor of the Legion of Honour; then the Senate, the LegislativeAssembly, the Council of State, the whole organization of the law and ofthe university, the costumes, the ermine, the headgear of which tookyou back to the days of old Paris--an air of something stately andantiquated, out of date in our sceptical epoch of the workman's blouseand the dress-coat.
Felicia, to avoid her thoughts, voluntarily fixed her eyes upon thismonotonous defile, exasperating in its length; and little by little atorpor stole over her, as if on a rainy day she had been turning overthe leaves of an album of engravings, a history of official costumesfrom the most remote times down to our own day. All these people, seenin profile, still and upright, behind the large glass panes of thecarriage windows, had indeed the appearance of personages in colouredplates, sitting well forward on the edge of the seats in order thatthe spectators should miss nothing of their golden embroideries, theirpalm-leaves, their galloons, their braids--puppets given over to thecuriosity of the crowd--and exposing themselves to it with an air ofindifference and detachment.
Indifference! That was the most special characteristic of this funeral.It was to be felt everywhere, on people's faces and in their hearts, aswell among these functionaries of whom the greater part had only knownthe duke by sight, as in the ranks on foot between his hearse and hisbrougham, his closest friends, or those who had been in daily attendanceupon him. The fat minister, Vice-President of the Council, seemedindifferent, and even glad, as he held in his powerful fist the stringsof the pall and seemed to draw it forward, in more haste than the horsesand the hearse to conduct to his six feet of earth the enemy of twentyyears' standing, the eternal rival, the obstacle to all his ambitions.The other three dignitaries did not advance with the same vigour, andthe long cords floated loosely in their weary or careless hands withsignificant slackness. The priests were indifferent by profession.Indifferent were the servants of his household, whom he never calledanything but "_chose_," and whom he treated really like "things."Indifferent was M. Louis, for whom it was the last day of servitude, aslave become emancipated, rich enough to enjoy his ransom. Even amongthe intimate friends of the dead man this glacial cold had penetrated.Yet some of them had been deeply attached to him. But Cardailhac was toobusy superintending the order and the progress of the procession to giveway to the least emotion, which would, besides, have been foreign to hisnature. Old Monpavon, stricken to the heart, would have considered theleast bending of his linen cuirass and of his tall figure a piece ofdeplorably bad taste, totally unworthy of his illustrious friend. Hiseyes remained as dry
and glittering as ever, since the undertakersprovide the tears for great mournings, embroidered in silver on blackcloth. Some one was weeping, however, away yonder among the members ofthe committee; but he was expending his compassion very naively uponhimself. Poor Nabob! softened by that music and splendour, it seemed tohim that he was burying all his ambitions of glory and dignity. And hiswas but one more variety of indifference.
Among the public, the enjoyment of a fine spectacle, the pleasure ofturning a week-day into a Sunday, dominated every other sentiment.Along the line of the boulevards, the spectators on the balconies almostseemed disposed to applaud; here, in the populous districts, irreverencewas still more frankly manifest. Jests, blackguardly wit at the expenseof the dead man and his doings, known to all Paris, laughter raised bythe tall hats of the rabbis, the pass-word of the council experts, allwere heard in the air between two rolls of the drum. Poverty, forcedlabour, with its feet in the wet, wearing its blouse, its apron, itscap raised from habit, with sneering chuckle watched this inhabitant ofanother sphere pass by, this brilliant duke, severed now from all hishonours, who perhaps while living had never paid a visit to that end ofthe town. But there it is. To arrive up yonder, where everybody has togo, the common route must be taken, the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, the Ruede la Roquette as far as that great gate where the _octroi_ is collectedand the infinite begins. And well! it does one good to see that lordlypersons like Mora, dukes, ministers, follow the same road towardsthe same destination. This equality in death consoles for many of theinjustices of life. To-morrow bread will seem less dear, wine better,the workman's tool less heavy, when he will be able to say to himselfas he rises in the morning, "That old Mora, he has come to it like therest!"
The procession still went on, more fatiguing even than lugubrious. Nowit consisted of choral societies, deputations from the army and thenavy, officers of all descriptions, pressing on in a troop in advanceof a long file of empty vehicles--mourning-coaches, privatecarriages--present for reasons of etiquette. Then the troops followedin their turn, and into the sordid suburb, that long Rue de la Roquette,already swarming with people as far as eye could reach, there plungeda whole army, foot-soldiers, dragoons, lancers, carabineers, heavy gunswith their great mouths in the air, ready to bark, making pavementand windows tremble, but not able to drown the rolling of the drums--asinister and savage rolling which suggested to Felicia's imaginationsome funeral of an African chief, at which thousands of sacrificedvictims accompany the soul of a prince so that it shall not pass aloneinto the kingdom of spirits, and made her fancy that perhaps thispompous and interminable retinue was about to descend and disappear inthe superhuman grave large enough to receive the whole of it.
"_Now and in the hour of our death. Amen_," Crenmitz murmured, while thecab swayed from side to side in the lighted square, and high in spacethe golden statue of Liberty seemed to be taking a magic flight; and theold dancer's prayer was perhaps the one note of sincere feeling calledforth on the immense line of the funeral procession.
All the speeches are over; three long speeches as icy as the vaultinto which the dead man has just descended, three official declamationswhich, above all, have provided the orators with an opportunity ofgiving loud voice to their own devotion to the interests of the dynasty.Fifteen times the guns have roused the many echoes of the cemetery,shaken the wreaths of jet and everlasting flowers--the light _ex-voto_offerings suspended at the corners of the monuments--and while a reddishmist floats and rolls with a smell of gunpowder across the city of thedead, ascends and mingles slowly with the smoke of factories in theplebeian district, the innumerable assembly disperses also, scatteredthrough the steep streets, down the lofty steps all white among thefoliage, with a confused murmur, a rippling as of waves over rocks.Purple robes, black robes, blue and green coats, shoulder-knots of gold,slender swords, of whose safety the wearers assure themselves withtheir hands as they walk, all hasten to regain their carriages. Peopleexchange low bows, discreet smiles, while the mourning-coaches tear downthe carriage-ways at a gallop, revealing long lines of black coachmen,with backs bent, hats tilted forward, the box-coats flying in the windmade by their rapid motion.
The general impression is one of thankfulness to have reached the endof a long and fatiguing performance, a legitimate eagerness to quit theadministrative harness and ceremonial costumes, to unbuckle sashes, toloosen stand-up collars and neckbands, to slacken the tension of facialmuscles, which had been subject to long restraint.
Heavy and short, dragging along his swollen legs with difficulty,Hemerlingue was hastening towards the exit, declining the offers whichwere made to him of a seat in this or that carriage, since he knew wellthat his own alone was of size adequate to cope with his proportions.
"Baron, Baron, this way. There is room for you."
"No, thank you. I want to walk to straighten my legs."
And to avoid these invitations, which were beginning to embarrass him,he took an almost deserted pathway, one that proved too deserted indeed,for hardly had he taken a step along it before he regretted it. Eversince entering the cemetery he had had but one preoccupation--the fearof finding himself face to face with Jansoulet, whose violence of temperhe knew, and who might well forget the sacredness of the place, and evenin Pere Lachaise renew the scandal of the Rue Royale. Two or three timesduring the ceremony he had seen the great head of his old chum emergefrom among the crowd of insignificant types which largely composed thecompany and move in his direction, as though seeking him and desiringa meeting. Down there, in the main road, there would, at any rate,have been people about in case of trouble, while here--Brr--It was thisanxiety that made him quicken his short step, his panting breaths, butin vain. As he looked round, in his fear of being followed, the strong,erect shoulders of the Nabob appeared at the entrance to the path.Impossible for the big man to slip away through one of the narrowpassages left between the tombs, which are placed so close together thatthere is not even space to kneel. The damp, rich soil slipped and gaveway beneath his feet. He decided to walk on with an air of indifference,hoping that perhaps the other might not recognise him. But a hoarse andpowerful voice cried behind him:
"Lazarus!"
His name--the name of this rich man--was Lazarus. He made no reply, buttried to catch up a group of officers who were moving on, very far infront of him.
"Lazarus! Oh, Lazarus!"
Just as in old times on the quay of Marseilles. Under the influence ofold habit he was tempted to stop; then the remembrance of his infamies,of all the ill he had done the Nabob, that he was still occupied indoing him, came back to him suddenly with a horrible fear so strongthat it amounted to a paroxysm, when an iron hand laid hold of himunceremoniously. A sweat of terror broke out over all his flabby limbs,his face became still more yellow, his eyes blinked in anticipation ofthe formidable blow which he expected to come, while his fat arms wereinstinctively raised to ward it off.
"Oh, don't be afraid. I wish you no harm," said Jansoulet sadly. "Only Ihave come to beg you to do no more to me."
He stooped to breathe. The banker, bewildered and frightened, openedwide his round owl's eyes in presence of this suffocating emotion.
"Listen, Lazarus; it is you who are the stronger in this war wehave been waging on each other for so long. I am down; yes, down. Myshoulders have touched the ground. Now, be generous; spare your oldchum. Give me quarter; come, give me quarter."
This southerner was trembling, defeated and softened by the emotionaldisplay of the funeral ceremony. Hemerlingue, as he stood facing him,was hardly more courageous. The gloomy music, the open grave, thespeeches, the cannonade of that lofty philosophy of inevitable death,all these things had worked on the feelings of this fat baron. The voiceof his old comrade completed the awakening of whatever there remained ofhuman in that packet of gelatine.
His old chum! It was the first time for ten years--since theirquarrel--that he had seen him so near. How many things were recalled tohim by those sun-tanned features, those broad shoulders, so ill
adaptedfor the wearing of embroidered coats! The thin woollen rug full ofholes, in which they used to wrap themselves both to sleep on the bridgeof the _Sinai_, the food shared in brotherly fashion, the wanderingsthrough the burned-up country round Marseilles, where they used to stealbig onions and eat them raw by the side of some ditch, the dreams, theschemings, the pence put into a common fund, and, when fortune had begunto smile on them, the fun they had had together, those excellent quietlittle suppers over which they would tell each other everything, withtheir elbows on the table.
How can one ever reach the point of seriously quarrelling when one knowsthe other so well, when they have lived together like two twins at thebreast of the lean and strong nurse, Poverty, sharing her sour milk andher rough caresses! These thoughts passed through Hemerlingue's mindlike a flash of lightning. Almost instinctively he let his heavy handfall into the one which the Nabob was holding out to him. Something ofthe primitive animal was roused in them, something stronger than theirenmity, and these two men, each of whom for ten years had been tryingto bring the other to ruin and disgrace, fell to talking without anyreserve.
Generally, between friends newly met, after the first effusions areover, a silence comes as if they had no more to tell each other, whileit is in reality the abundance of things, their precipitate rush, thatprevents them from finding utterance. The two chums had touched thatcondition; but Jansoulet kept a tight grasp on the banker's arm, fearingto see him escape and resist the kindly impulse he had just roused.
"You are not in a hurry, are you? We can take a little walk, if youlike. It has stopped raining, the air is pleasant; one feels twentyyears younger."
"Yes, it is pleasant," said Hemerlingue; "only I cannot walk for long;my legs are heavy."
"True, your poor legs. See, there is a bench over there. Let us go andsit down. Lean on me, old friend."
And the Nabob, with brotherly aid, led him to one of those benchesdotted here and there among the tombs, on which those inconsolablemourners rest who make the cemetery their usual walk and abode. Hesettled him in his seat, gazed upon him tenderly, pitied him for hisinfirmity, and, following what was quite a natural channel in such aspot, they came to talking of their health, of the old age that wasapproaching. This one was dropsical, the other subject to apoplecticfits. Both were in the habit of dosing themselves with the Jenkinspearls, a dangerous remedy--witness Mora, so quickly carried off.
"My poor duke!" said Jansoulet.
"A great loss to the country," remarked the banker with an air ofconviction.
And the Nabob added naively:
"For me above all, for me; for, if he had lived--Ah! what luck you have,what luck you have!"
Fearing to have wounded him, he went on quickly:
"And then, too, you are clever, so very clever."
The baron looked at him with a wink so droll, that his little blackeyelashes disappeared amid his yellow fat.
"No," said he, "it is not I who am clever. It is Marie."
"Marie?"
"Yes, the baroness. Since her baptism she has given up her name ofYamina for that of Marie. She is a real sort of woman. She knows morethan I do myself about banking and Paris and business. It is she whomanages everything at home."
"You are very fortunate," sighed Jansoulet. His air of gloom told a longstory of qualities missing in Mlle. Afchin. Then, after a silence, thebaron resumed:
"She has a great grudge against you, Marie, you know. She will not bepleased when she hears that we have been talking together."
A frown passed over his heavy brow, as though he were regretting theirreconciliation, at the thought of the scene which he would have with hiswife. Jansoulet stammered:
"I have done her no harm, however."
"Come, come, neither of you has been very nice to her. Think of theaffront put upon her when we called after our marriage. Your wifesending word to us that she was not in the habit of receiving quondamslaves. As though our friendship ought not to have been stronger than aprejudice. Women don't forget things of that kind."
"But no responsibility lay with me for that, old friend. You know howproud those Afchins are."
He was not proud himself, poor man. His mien was so woebegone, sosupplicating under his friend's frown, that he moved him to pity.Decidedly, the cemetery had softened the baron.
"Listen, Bernard; there is only one thing that counts. If you want us tobe friends, as formerly, and this reconciliation not to be wasted, youwill have to get my wife to consent. Without her nothing can be done.When Mlle. Afchin shut her door in our faces you let her have her way,did you not? In the same way, on my side, if Marie said to me when I gohome, 'I will not let you be friends,' all my protestations now wouldnot prevent me from throwing you overboard. For there is no such thingas friendship in face of such difficulties. Peace at one's fireside isbetter than everything else."
"But in that case, what is to be done?" asked the Nabob, frightened.
"I am going to tell you. The baroness is at home every Saturday. Comewith your wife and pay her a visit the day after to-morrow. You willfind the best society in Paris at the house. The past shall not bementioned. The ladies will gossip together of chiffons and frocks, talkof the things women do talk about. And then the whole matter will besettled. We shall become friends as we used to be; and since you are indifficulties, well, we will find some way of getting you out of them."
"Do you think so? The fact is I am in terrible straits," said the other,shaking his head.
Hemerlingue's cunning eyes disappeared again beneath the folds of hischeeks like two flies in butter.
"Well, yes; I have played a strong game. But you don't lack shrewdness,all the same. The loan of the fifteen millions to the Bey--it was a goodstroke, that. Ah! you are bold enough; only you hold your cards badly.One can see your game."
Till now they had been talking in low tones, impressed by the silenceof the great necropolis; but little by little human interests assertedthemselves in a louder key even there where their nothingness layexposed on all those flat stones covered with dates and figures, as ifdeath was only an affair of time and calculation--the desired solutionof a problem.
Hemerlingue enjoyed the sight of his friend reduced to such humility,and gave him advice on his affairs, with which he seemed to be fullyacquainted. According to him the Nabob could still get out of hisdifficulties very well. Everything depended on the validation, on theturning up of a card. The question was to make sure that it should be agood one. But Jansoulet had no more confidence. In losing Mora, he hadlost everything.
"You lose Mora, but you regain me; so things are equalized," said thebanker tranquilly.
"No, do you see it is impossible. It is too late. Le Merquier hascompleted the report. It is a dreadful one, I believe."
"Well, if he has completed his report, he will have to prepare another."
"How is that to be done?"
The baron looked at him with surprise.
"Ah, you are losing your senses. Why, by paying him a hundred, twohundred, three hundred thousand francs, if necessary.
"How can you think of such a thing? Le Merquier, that man of integrity!'My conscience,' as they call him."
This time Hemerlingue's laugh burst forth with an extraordinaryheartiness, and must have reached the inmost recesses of theneighbouring mausoleums, little accustomed to such disrespect.
"'My conscience' a man of integrity! Ah! you amuse me. You don't know,then, that he is in my pay, conscience and all, and that--" He paused,and looked behind him, somewhat startled by a sound which he had heard."Listen."
It was the echo of his laughter sent back to them from the depths of avault, as if the idea of Le Merquier having a conscience moved even thedead to mirth.
"Suppose we walk a little," said he, "it begins to be chilly on thisbench."
Then, as they walked among the tombs, he went on to explain to him witha certain pedantic fatuity, that in France bribes played as important apart as in the East. Only one had to be a little more
delicate aboutit here. You veiled your bribes. "Thus, take this Le Merquier, forinstance. Instead of offering him your money openly, in a big purse, asyou would to a local pasha, you go about it indirectly. The man isfond of pictures. He is constantly having dealings with Schwalbach, whoemploys him as a decoy for his Catholic clients. Well, you offer himsome picture--a souvenir to hang on a panel in his study. The wholepoint is to make the price quite clear. But you will see. I will takeyou round to call on him myself. I will show you how the thing isworked."
And delighted at the amazement of the Nabob, who, to flatter him,exaggerated his surprise still further, and opened his eyes wide with anair of admiration, the banker enlarged the scope of his lesson--made ofit a veritable course of Parisian and worldly philosophy.
"See, old comrade, what one has to look after in Paris, above everythingelse, is the keeping up of appearances. They are the only things thatcount--appearances! Now you have not sufficient care for them. You goabout town, your waistcoat unbuttoned, a good-humoured fellow, talkingof your affairs, just what you are by nature. You stroll around justas you would in the bazaars of Tunis. That is how you have come to getbowled over, my good Bernard."
He paused to take breath, feeling quite exhausted. In an hour he hadwalked farther and spoken more than he was accustomed to do in thecourse of a whole year. They noticed, as they stopped, that their walkand conversation had led them back in the direction of Mora's grave,which was situated just above a little exposed plateau, whence lookingover a thousand closely packed roofs, they could see Montmartre, theButtes Chaumont, their rounded outline in the distance looking like highwaves. In the hollows lights were already beginning to twinkle, likeships' lanterns, through the violet mists that were rising; chimneysseemed to leap upward like masts, or steamer funnels discharging theirsmoke. Those three undulations, with the tide of Pere Lachaise, wereclearly suggestive of waves of the sea, following each other at equalintervals. The sky was bright, as often happens in the evening of arainy day, an immense sky, shaded with tints of dawn, against whichthe family tomb of Mora exhibited in relief four allegorical figures,imploring, meditative, thoughtful, whose attitudes were made moreimposing by the dying light. Of the speeches, of the officialcondolences, nothing remained. The soil trodden down all around, masonsat work washing the dirt from the plaster threshold, were all that wasleft to recall the recent burial.
Suddenly the door of the ducal tomb shut with a clash of all itsmetallic weight. Thenceforth the late Minister of State was to remainalone, utterly alone, in the shadow of its night, deeper than that whichthen was creeping up from the bottom of the garden, invading the windingpaths, the stone stairways, the bases of the columns, pyramids and tombsof every kind, whose summits were reached more slowly by the shroud.Navvies, all white with that chalky whiteness of dried bones, werepassing by, carrying their tools and wallets. Furtive mourners, draggingthemselves away regretfully from tears and prayer, glided along themargins of the clumps of trees, seeming to skirt them as with the silentflight of night-birds, while from the extremities of Pere Lachaisevoices rose--melancholy calls announcing the closing time. The day ofthe cemetery was at its end. The city of the dead, handed over oncemore to Nature, was becoming an immense wood with open spaces marked bycrosses. Down in a valley, the window-panes of a custodian's house werelighted up. A shudder seemed to run through the air, losing itself inmurmurings along the dim paths.
"Let us go," the two old comrades said to each other, gradually comingto feel the impression of that twilight, which seemed colder thanelsewhere; but before moving off, Hemerlingue, pursuing his train ofthought, pointed to the monument winged at the four corners by thedraperies and the outstretched hands of its sculptured figures.
"Look here," said he. "That was the man who understood the art ofkeeping up appearances."
Jansoulet took his arm to aid him in the descent.
"Ah, yes, he was clever. But you are the most clever of all," heanswered with his terrible Gascon intonation.
Hemerlingue made no protest.
"It is to my wife that I owe it. So I strongly recommend you to makeyour peace with her, because unless you do----"
"Oh, don't be afraid. We shall come on Saturday. But you will take me tosee Le Merquier."
And while the two silhouettes, the one tall and square, the othermassive and short, were passing out of sight among the twinings of thegreat labyrinth, while the voice of Jansoulet guiding his friend, "Thisway, old fellow--lean hard on my arm," died away by insensible degrees,a stray beam of the setting sun fell upon and illuminated behind themin the little plateau, an expressive and colossal bust, with great browbeneath long swept-back hair, and powerful and ironic lip--the bust ofBalzac watching them.