XVIII.
THE JENKINS PEARLS.
About a week after his adventure with Moessard,--a new complication inhis sadly muddled affairs,--Jansoulet, on leaving the Chamber oneThursday, ordered his coachman to drive him to the hotel de Mora. He hadnot been there since the fracas on Rue Royale, and the idea of appearingbefore the duke caused something of the same panicky sensation beneathhis tough epidermis that a schoolboy feels on being summoned before themaster after a scuffle in the class-room. However, it was necessary tosubmit to the embarrassment of that first interview. It was currentlyreported in the committee rooms that Le Merquier had completed hisreport, a masterpiece of logic and ferocity, recommending that Jansouletbe unseated, and that he was certain to carry his point off-hand unlessMora, whose power in the Assembly was so great, should himself issuecontrary orders. A serious crisis, as will be seen, and one that causedhis cheeks to burn with fever as he studied the expression of hisfeatures and his courtier-like smiles in the bevelled mirrors of hiscoupe, striving to prepare an adroit entry into the presence,--one ofhis masterstrokes of amiable impudence which had served him so well withAhmed and thus far with the French statesman,--the whole accompanied bya rapid beating of the heart and the shivering sensation between theshoulders which precedes decisive steps, even when taken in a carriagewith gilded panels.
When he reached the mansion on the river bank, he was greatly surprisedto see that the footman on the quay, as on the days of great receptions,ordered the carriages to turn into Rue de Lille in order to leave onegateway free for exit. He said to himself, a little disturbed in mind:"What is going on?" Perhaps a concert given by the duchess, a charitybazaar, or some festivity from which Mora had left him out because ofthe scandal caused by his last adventure. And his anxiety augmentedwhen, after crossing the court of honor amid the tumult of slammingcarriage-doors and a constant, dull rumbling on the gravel, he hadascended the steps and found himself in the vast reception-room filledto overflowing with a great throng who were allowed to pass none of theinner doors, but whose anxious steps centred about the table of theservant in attendance, where all the famous names of aristocratic Pariswere being inscribed. It seemed as if a sudden blast of disaster hadpassed through the house, swept away something of its superbtranquillity and allowed unrest and danger to creep into itswell-being.
"What a misfortune!"
"Ah! yes, it is terrible."
"And so sudden!"
The people around him exchanged such phrases as they met. A thoughtpassed swiftly through Jansoulet's mind.
"Is the duke ill?" he asked a servant.
"Ah! monsieur. He is dying. He cannot live through the night."
If the roof of the palace had fallen in upon his head, it would not havecrushed him more completely. He saw red butterflies whirling aroundbefore his eyes, then staggered and fell upon the velvet-covered benchbeside the great cage of monkeys, who, over-excited by all the turmoil,clung in a bunch to the bars, hanging by their tails or by their littlelong-thumbed hands, and in their frightened inquisitiveness assailedwith the most extravagant grimaces of their race the stout bewilderedman, who sat staring at the floor and repeating to himself aloud: "I amlost! I am lost!"
The duke was dying. He had been taken suddenly ill on Sunday whilereturning from the Bois. He had felt an intolerable burning sensationwhich seemed to outline, as with a red-hot iron, the whole internalstructure of his body, alternating with chills and numbness and longperiods of drowsiness. Jenkins, being summoned at once, prescribed somesedative remedies. The next day the pains returned, more intense thanbefore, and followed by the same icy torpor, also intensified, as iflife were leaving him by fierce leaps and bounds, uprooted. No one inthe household was at all disturbed. "The day after Saint-James," callerswhispered to one another in the reception-room, and Jenkins' handsomeface retained its serenity. He mentioned the duke's indisposition to buttwo or three persons in his morning round of visits, and so lightly thatno one thought anything of it.
Mora himself, despite his extreme weakness, and although he felt as ifhis head were absolutely empty, "not an idea behind his forehead," as heexpressed it, was very far from suspecting the gravity of his condition.Not until the third day, when, upon waking in the morning, he saw aslender thread of blood that had flowed from his mouth over his beardand reddened his pillow, did that refined dandy shudder, that fastidiouscreature who held in horror all forms of human misery, especiallydisease, and who saw it creeping upon him stealthily with itsdefilement, its weaknesses and with the self-abandonment which is thefirst concession to death. Monpavon, entering the room in Jenkins' wake,caught the suddenly perturbed expression of the great nobleman broughtface to face with the terrible truth, and was at the same time horrifiedby the ravages made in a few hours on Mora's emaciated face, where allthe wrinkles belonging to his age, appearing suddenly, mingled with thewrinkles caused by suffering, with the depression of muscles whichindicates serious internal lesions. He took Jenkins aside while the finegentleman's servants were supplying him with what he required to makehis toilet in bed, a whole outfit of silver and crystal in strikingcontrast with the yellow pallor of the invalid.
"Look you, Jenkins--the duke is very ill."
"I am afraid so," said the Irishman, in an undertone.
"What's the matter with him?"
"What he apparently wanted, _parbleu_!" exclaimed the other, in a sortof frenzy. "A man can't be young with impunity at his age. This passionof his will cost him dear."
Some evil thought triumphed in him for the moment, but he instantlyimposed silence upon it, and, completely transformed, puffing out hischeeks as if his head were filled with water, he sighed profoundly as hepressed the old nobleman's hands:
"Poor duke! Poor duke! Ah! my friend, I am in despair."
"Have a care, Jenkins," said Monpavon coldly, withdrawing his hands."You are assuming a terrible responsibility. What! the duke is as ill asyou say, ps--ps--ps. See no one? No consultation?"
The Irishman threw up his arms as if to say: "What's the use?"
The other insisted. It was absolutely essential that Brisset, Jousselin,Bouchereau, all the great men should be called in.
"But you will frighten him to death."
Monpavon inflated his breast, the old foundered charger's only pride.
"My dear fellow, if you had seen Mora and myself in the trenches atConstantine--ps--ps--Never lowered our eyes--Don't know what fear means.Send word to your confreres, I will undertake to prepare him."
The consultation took place that evening behind closed doors, the dukehaving demanded that it be kept secret through a curious feeling ofshame because of his illness, because of the suffering that dethronedhim and reduced him to the level of other men. Like those African kingswho conceal themselves in the depths of their palaces to die, he wouldhave liked the world to believe that he had been taken away,transfigured, had become a god. Then, too, above all, he dreaded thecompassion, the condolence, the emotion with which he knew that hispillow would be surrounded, the tears that would be shed, because hewould suspect that they were insincere, and because, if sincere, theywould offend him even more by their grimacing ugliness.
He had always detested scenes, exaggerated sentiments, whatever waslikely to move him, to disturb the harmonious equilibrium of his life.Everybody about him was aware of it and the orders were to keep at adistance all the cases of distress, all the despairing appeals that weremade to Mora from one end of France to the other, as to one of thosehouses of refuge in the forest in which a light shines at night and atwhich all those who have lost their way apply for shelter. Not that hewas hard to the unfortunate, perhaps indeed he felt that he was tooreadily susceptible to pity, which he regarded as an inferior sentiment,a weakness unworthy of the strong, and for the same reason that hedenied it to others, dreaded it for himself, lest it impair his courage.So that no one in the palace, save Monpavon and Louis the valet, knewthe purpose of the visit of those three persons who were mysteriouslyushered into the presence
of the Minister of State. Even the duchessherself was in ignorance. Separated from her husband by all the barriersthat life in the most exalted political and social circles placesbetween the husband and wife in such exceptional establishments, shesupposed that he was slightly indisposed, ill mainly in his imagination,and had so little suspicion of an impending catastrophe that, at thevery hour when the physicians were ascending the half-darkened grandstaircase, her private apartments at the other end of the palace werebrilliantly illuminated for an informal dancing-party, one of those_white balls_ which the ingenuity of idle Paris was just beginning tointroduce.
That consultation was, like all consultations, grim and solemn. Doctorsno longer wear the huge wigs of Moliere's day, but they still assume thesame portentous gravity of priests of Isis or astrologers, bristlingwith cabalistic formulae accompanied by movements of the head which lackonly the pointed cap of an earlier age to produce a laughable effect. Onthis occasion the scene borrowed an imposing aspect from thesurroundings. In the vast room, transformed, magnified as it were, bythe master's immobility, those solemn faces approached the bed uponwhich the light was concentrated, revealing amid the white linen and thepurple curtains a shrivelled face, pale from the lips to the eyes, butenveloped with serenity as with a veil, as with a winding-sheet. Theconsulting physicians talked in low tones, exchanged a furtive glance,an outlandish word or two, remained perfectly impassive without movingan eyebrow. But that mute, unmeaning expression characteristic of thedoctor and the magistrate, that solemnity with which science and justiceencompass themselves in order to conceal their weakness or theirignorance, had no power to move the duke.
Sitting on his bed, he continued to talk tranquilly, with that slightlyexalted expression in which the thought seems to soar upward as if toescape, and Monpavon coolly replied to him, hardening himself againsthis emotion, taking a last lesson in breeding from his friend, whileLouis, in the background, leaned against the door leading to theduchess's apartments, the type of the silent servitor, in whom heedlessindifference is a duty.
The agitated, the feverish member of the party was Jenkins.
Overflowing with obsequious respect for "his illustrious confreres," ashe unctuously called them, he prowled about their conference and triedto take part in it; but his confreres kept him at a distance, hardlyanswered him, or answered him haughtily, as Fagon--Louis theFourteenth's Fagon--might have answered some charlatan who had beensummoned to the royal bedside. Old Bouchereau especially looked askanceat the inventor of the Jenkins Pearls. At last, when they had thoroughlyexamined and questioned their patient, they withdrew for deliberation toa small salon, all in lacquer-work, with gleaming highly-colored wallsand ceiling, filled with an assortment of pretty trifles, whoseuselessness contrasted strangely with the importance of the discussion.
A solemn moment, the agony of the accused man awaiting the decision ofhis judges, life, death, reprieve or pardon!
With his long white hand Mora continued to caress his moustache, hisfavorite gesture, to talk with Monpavon about the club and thegreen-room at the Varietes, asking for news of the proceedings in theChamber and what progress had been made in the matter of the Nabob'selection--all with perfect coolness and without the slightestaffectation. Then, fatigued doubtless, or fearing that his glance, whichconstantly returned to the portiere opposite through which the decree offate was presently to come forth, should betray the emotion that lurkedat the bottom of his heart, he leaned his head back, closed his eyes,and did not open them again until the doctors returned. Still the samecold, ominous faces, veritable faces of judges with the terrible word ofhuman destiny on their lips, the Final word, which the courts pronouncewithout emotion, but which the doctors, all of whose skill and learningit baffles, evade and seek to convey by circumlocution.
"Well, messieurs, what says the Faculty?" inquired the sick man.
There were a few hypocritical, stammered words of encouragement, vaguerecommendations; then the three learned men hastily took their leave,eager to be gone, to avoid any responsibility for the impendingdisaster. Monpavon rushed after them. Jenkins remained by the bedside,overwhelmed by the brutal truths he had heard during the consultation.In vain had he put his hand upon his heart, quoted his famous motto.Bouchereau had not spared him. This was not the first of the Irishman'spatients whom he had seen fall suddenly to pieces thus; but he trustedthat Mora's death would be a salutary warning to people in society, andthat the prefect of police, as the result of this great calamity, wouldsend the "dealer in cantharides," to advertise his aphrodisiacs on theother side of the Channel.
The duke realized that neither Jenkins nor Louis would tell him the realresult of the consultation. He did not press them, therefore, butsubmitted to their assumed confidence, even pretended to share it and tobelieve all that they told him. But when Monpavon returned, he calledhim to his bedside, and, undaunted by the falsehood that was visibleeven under the paint of that wreck, he said:
"Oh! no wry faces, I beg. Between you and me, let us have the truth.What do they say?--I am in a bad way, am I not?"
Monpavon prefaced his reply by a significant pause; then roughly,cynically, for fear of showing emotion at the words:
"Damnation, my poor Auguste!"
The duke received it between the eyes without winking.
"Ah!" he said, simply.
He twisted his moustache mechanically; but his features did not change.And in an instant his resolution was formed.
That the poor wretch who dies in the hospital, without home or kindred,with no other name than the number of his bed, should accept death as adeliverance or submit to it as a last trial, that the old peasant whofalls asleep, bent double, worn out and stiff-jointed, in his dark,smoke-begrimed mole-hole, should go thence without regret, that heshould relish in anticipation the taste of the cool earth he has turnedand returned so many times, one can understand. And yet how many of themare attached to existence by their very misery, how many exclaim as theycling to their wretched furniture, to their rags: "I do not want todie," and go with their nails broken and bleeding from that last wrench!But there was nothing of the sort here.
To have everything and to lose everything. What an upheaval!
In the first silence of that awful moment, while he listened to themuffled music of the duchess's ball at the other end of the palace, thethings that still bound that man to life--power, honors, wealth, all themagnificence that surrounded him--must have seemed to him to be alreadyfar away in an irrevocable past. It required courage of a veryexceptional temper to resist such a blow without the slightest outburstof self-love. No one was present save the friend, the physician, theservant, three intimate acquaintances, who were familiar with all hissecrets; the lights being turned low left the bed in shadow, and thedying man could have turned his face to the wall and given vent to hisemotion unseen. But no. Not a second of weakness, of fruitlessdemonstrations. Without breaking a branch of the chestnut trees in thegarden, without withering a flower in the great hall of the palace,Death, muffling his footsteps in the heavy carpets, had opened thatgreat man's door and motioned to him: "Come!" And he replied, simply, "Iam ready." A fit exit for a man of the world, unforeseen, swift andnoiseless.
A man of the world! Mora was nothing else. Passing smoothly throughlife, arrayed in mask and gloves and breastplate, the breastplate ofwhite satin worn by fencing-masters on days of great exhibitions,keeping his fighting costume ever clean and spotless, sacrificingeverything to that irreproachable exterior which served him instead of acoat of mail, he had metamorphosed himself into a statesman, passingfrom the salon to a vaster stage, and made in truth a statesman of thefirst order simply by virtue of his qualities as a leader of society,the art of listening and smiling, knowledge of men, scepticism and_sang-froid_. That _sang-froid_ did not leave him at the supreme moment.
With his eyes upon the brief, limited time which still remained to him,for his dark-browed visitor was in haste and he could feel on his facethe wind from the door which he had not closed,
he thought of nothingbut making good use of that time and fulfilling all the obligations ofan end like his own, which should leave no devotion unrewarded, shouldcompromise no friend. He made a list of the few persons whom he wishedto see and to whom messengers were sent at once; then he asked for hischief clerk, and when Jenkins suggested that he was overtiring himself,"Will you promise me that I shall wake to-morrow morning? I have a spasmof strength at this moment. Let me make the most of it."
Louis asked if he should warn the duchess. The duke, before replying,listened to the strains from the ball that came floating in through theopened windows, prolonged in the darkness by an invisible bow; then hesaid:
"Let us wait a little. I have something to do first."
He bade them move to his bedside the little lacquer table, intendinghimself to sort out the letters to be destroyed; but, finding that hisstrength was failing, he called Monpavon: "Burn everything," he said tohim in a feeble voice, and added, when he saw him going toward thefireplace, where a bright fire was burning, notwithstanding the fineweather:
"No--not here. There are too many of them. Some one might come."
Monpavon lifted the light desk and motioned to the valet to carry alight for him. But Jenkins darted forward:
"Stay, Louis, the duke may need you."
He took possession of the lamp; and they stole cautiously along the longcorridor, exploring the reception-rooms, the galleries, where thefireplaces were filled with artificial plants with no trace of ashes,wandering like ghosts in the silence and darkness of the vast dwelling,alive only over yonder at the right where pleasure sang like a bird on aroof that is about to fall.
"There's no fire anywhere. What are we to do with all this stuff?" theyasked each other, sorely perplexed. One would have said they were twothieves dragging away a safe which they were unable to open. At lastMonpavon, out of patience, walked with an air of resolution to a certaindoor, the only one they had not yet opened.
"Faith, we'll do the best we can! As we can't burn them, we'll drownthem. Show me a light, Jenkins."
And they entered.
Where were they? Saint-Simon, describing the downfall of one of thesesovereign existences, the utter confusion of ceremonials, of dignities,of grandeurs caused by death, especially by sudden death, Saint-Simonalone could have told you. With his delicate, carefully-kept hands theMarquis de Monpavon pumped. The other passed him torn letters, bundlesof letters, soft as satin, many-hued, perfumed, adorned with ciphers,crests, banderoles with mottoes, covered with fine, close, scrawling,enlaced, persuasive chirography; and all those delicate pages whirledround and round in the eddying stream of water which crumpled and soiledthem and washed away the pale ink before allowing them to disappear witha gurgling hiccough at the bottom of the filthy sink.
There were love-letters and love-letters of all sorts, from the note ofthe adventuress--"I saw you pass at the Bois yesterday, Monsieur leDuc,"--to the aristocratic reproaches of the mistress before the last,the wailing of the abandoned, and the page still fresh with recentconfidences. Monpavon was familiar with all these mysteries, gave a nameto each of them: "That's from Madame Moor"--"Ah! Madame d'Athis." Aconfused mass of coronets and initials, passing whims and old habits,sullied at that moment by being thrown together promiscuously, allswallowed up in that ghastly place, by lamplight, with a noise as of anintermittent deluge, going to oblivion by a shameful road. SuddenlyJenkins paused in his work of destruction. Two letters on pearl-graysatin paper trembled in his fingers.
"Who's that?" queried Monpavon, at sight of the unfamiliar hand and theIrishman's nervous excitement. "Ah! doctor, if you mean to readeverything we shall never finish."
Jenkins, with burning cheeks, his two letters in his hand, was consumedby a fierce longing to carry them away in order to gloat over them athis leisure, to torture himself with delicious pain by reading them,perhaps also to use that correspondence as a weapon against theimprudent creature who had signed it. But the marquis's rigid demeanorfrightened him. How could he divert his attention, get rid of him? Anopportunity presented itself unsought. A tiny sheet, written in asenile, tremulous hand, had found its way between those same letters,and attracted the attention of the charlatan, who said with an artlessexpression:
"Oho! here's something that doesn't look like a billet-doux. 'My dearduke, help, I am drowning! The Cour des Comptes has stuck its nose intomy affairs again'--"
"What the devil's that you're reading?" exclaimed Monpavon abruptly,snatching the letter from his hands. And in an instant, thanks to Mora'snegligence in allowing such private letters to lie around, the terribleplight in which he would be left by his protector's death came to hismind. In his grief he had not as yet thought of it. He said to himselfthat, amid his preparations for leaving the world, the duke might verywell forget him; and, leaving Jenkins to finish alone the drowning ofDon Juan's casket, he returned hurriedly to the bedroom. As he was aboutto enter, the sound of voices detained him behind the lowered portiere.It was Louis's voice, as whining as that of a pauper under a porch,trying to move the duke to pity for his distress and asking hispermission to take a few rolls of gold that were lying in a drawer. Oh!what a hoarse, wearied, hardly audible reply, in which one could feelthe effort of the sick man compelled to turn in his bed, to remove hiseyes from a distant point already clearly distinguished:
"Yes, yes--take them. But for God's sake let me sleep! let me sleep!"
Drawers opened and closed, a hurried, panting breath. Monpavon heard nomore, but retraced his steps without entering the room. The servant'sferocious greed had given his pride the alarm. Anything rather thandegrade himself to that point.
The slumber for which Mora begged so persistently, the lethargy, tospeak more accurately, lasted a whole night and morning, with partialawakenings caused by excruciating pain which yielded each time tosoporifics. They did nothing for him except to try to make his lastmoments comfortable, to help him over that last step which it requiressuch a painful effort to pass. His eyes had opened during that time, butthey were already dim, staring into emptiness at wavering shadows,indistinct forms, like those which a diver sees quivering in the vaguedepths of the water. On Thursday afternoon, about three o'clock, herecovered consciousness completely, and, recognizing Monpavon,Cardailhac and two or three other close friends, smiled at them andbetrayed in a word his sole preoccupation:
"What do people say of this in Paris?"
People said many things, diverse and contradictory; but one thing wascertain, that they talked of nothing else, and the report which had beencirculated through the city that morning, that Mora was at death'sdoor, had put the streets, the salons, the cafes, the studios in aferment, revived political questions in the newspaper offices, in theclubs, and even in porters' lodges and on the omnibuses, wherever opennewspapers furnished a pretext for comment on that startling item ofnews.
This Mora was the most brilliant incarnation of the Empire. The part ofa building that we see from afar is not its foundation, be it solid ortottering, not its architectural features, but the slender, gildedarrow, fancifully carved and perforated, added for the gratification ofthe eye. What people saw of the Empire in France and throughout Europewas Mora. When he fell, the structure was stripped of all its elegance,marred by a long irreparable crack. And how many existences wereinvolved in that sudden fall, how many fortunes shattered by the aftereffects of the catastrophe! Not one so completely as that of the stoutman sitting motionless on the monkeys' bench in the reception-roombelow.
To the Nabob that man's death meant his own death, his ruin, the end ofeverything. He was so thoroughly conscious of it that when he wasinformed, on entering the house, of the Duke's desperate condition, heindulged in no whining or wry faces of any sort, simply the savageejaculation of human selfishness: "I am lost!" And the words cameconstantly to his lips, he repeated them instinctively each time thatall the horror of his position came over him in sudden flashes,--as inthose dangerous mountain storms, when a sharp flash of lightningillumines the abyss to
the very bottom, with the jagged projections ofthe walls and the clumps of bushes scattered here and there to supplythe rents and bruises of the fall.
The rapid keenness of vision that accompanies cataclysms spared him nodetail. He saw that he was almost certain to be unseated now that Morawould not be at hand to plead his cause; and the consequences of defeat,bankruptcy, poverty and something worse, for these incalculablefortunes, when they crumble away, always keep a little of a man's honorunder the ruins. But what thorns, what brambles, what bruises, whatcruel wounds before reaching the end! In a week the Schwalbach notes tobe paid, that is to say eight hundred thousand francs, Moessard's claimfor damages--he demanded a hundred thousand francs or would apply to theChamber for authority to institute criminal process against him--anothermore dangerous suit begun by the families of two little martyrs ofBethlehem against the founders of the establishment; and, in addition toall the rest, the complications of the _Caisse Territoriale_. A singleray of hope, Paul de Gery's negotiations with the bey, but so vague, soproblematical, so far away!
"Ah! I am lost! I am lost!"
In the vast apartment no one noticed his trouble. That crowd ofsenators, deputies, councillors of state, all the leading men in thegovernment, went and came around him without seeing him, held mysteriousconferences and rested their elbows in anxious importance on the twowhite marble mantels that faced each other. So many disappointed,betrayed, over-hasty ambitions met in that visit _in extremis_, thatselfish anxiety predominated over every other form of preoccupation.
The faces, strangely enough, expressed neither pity nor grief, rather asort of wrath. All those people seemed to bear the duke a grudge fordying, as if for turning his back upon them. Such remarks as this wereheard: "It's not at all strange after such a life!" And, standing at thelong windows, the gentlemen called one another's attention to somedainty coupe drawing up amid the constant stream of carriages going andcoming outside, while a gloved hand, its lace sleeve brushing againstthe door, handed a folded card to the footman who brought herinformation of the invalid's condition.
From time to time one of the intimates of the palace, one of those whomthe dying man had sent for, appeared for a moment in the throng, gave anorder, then vanished, leaving the terrified expression of his facereflected upon a score of others. Jenkins showed himself in that way fora moment, cravat untied, waistcoat open, cuffs soiled and rumpled, inall the disarray of the battle he was waging upstairs against a terribleopponent. He was at once surrounded, pressed with questions. Certainlythe monkeys flattening their short noses against the bars of the cage,awed by the unusual uproar and very attentive to what was taking place,as if they were making a careful study of human expression, had amagnificent model in the Irish doctor. His grief was superb, the noblegrief of a strong man, which compressed his lips and made his breastheave.
"The death-agony has begun," he said dolefully. "It is only a matter ofhours now."
And, as Jansoulet drew near, he said to him in an emphatic tone:
"Ah! my friend, what a man! What courage! He has forgotten nobody. Onlya little while ago he spoke to me about you."
"Really?"
"'Poor Nabob!'" he said, "'how is his election coming on?'"
And that was all. He had said nothing more.
Jansoulet hung his head. What had he expected, in heaven's name? Was itnot enough that a man like Mora should have thought of him at such amoment? He returned to his seat on the bench, relapsed into his formerstate of prostration, galvanized by a moment of wild hope, sat thereheedless of the fact that the vast apartment was becoming almostentirely deserted, and did not notice that he was the last and onlyvisitor remaining until he heard the servants talking aloud in thefading light.
"I have had enough--my service here is done."
"For my part I shall stay with the duchess."
And those plans, those decisions anticipating the master's death by somehours, doomed the noble duke even more surely than the Faculty had done.
The Nabob realized then that it was time for him to withdraw, but hedetermined first to write his name on the register. He went to thetable and leaned far over in order to see clearly. The page was full. Ablank space was pointed out to him, below a name written in small,threadlike characters, as if by fingers too stout for the pen, and, whenhe had signed, Hemerlingue's name overshadowed his, crushed it,entangled it in an insidious flourish. Superstitious like the true Latinthat he was, he was impressed by the omen and carried the terror of itaway with him.
Where should he dine? At the club? On Place Vendome? And hear nothingtalked of but this death which engrossed his thoughts! He preferred totrust to chance, to go straight ahead like all those who are beset by apersistent idea which they try to escape by walking. It was a warm,balmy evening. He walked on and on along the quays till he reached thetree-lined paths of the Cours-la-Reine, then returned to the combinationof freshly-watered streets and odor of fine dust which characterizesfine evenings in Paris. At that uncertain hour everything was deserted.Here and there girandoles were lighted for concerts, gas-jets flaredamong the foliage. The rattle of plates and glasses from a restaurantsuggested to him the idea of entering.
The robust creature was hungry notwithstanding his anxiety. His dinnerwas served under a verandah with walls of glass, lined with foliage andfacing the great porch of the Palais de l'Industrie, where the duke, inpresence of a thousand persons, had saluted him as deputy. The refinedand aristocratic face appeared to his mind's eye in the dark archway,while at the same time he saw him lying yonder on his white pillow; and,suddenly, as he stared at the bill of fare the waiter handed him, henoticed with a sort of stupefaction that it was dated May 20th. So not amonth had passed since the opening of the Salon. It seemed to him as ifit were ten years since that day. Gradually, however, the excellentrepast warmed and comforted his heart. In the passage he heard some ofthe waiters talking:
"Is there any news of Mora? It seems he's very sick."
"Nonsense! He'll pull through. Such fellows as he are the only ones whohave any luck."
Hope is anchored so firmly to the human entrails that, despite whatJansoulet had seen and heard, those few words, assisted by two bottlesof burgundy and divers _petits verres_ sufficed to restore his courage.After all, people had been known to recover when they were as far gone.Doctors often exaggerate the danger in order to gain more credit foraverting it. "Suppose I go and see?" He returned to the hotel de Mora,full of illusions, appealing to the luck that had stood him in goodstead so many times in his life. And in truth there was something in theappearance of the princely abode to justify his hope. It wore thetranquil, reassuring aspect of ordinary evenings, from the avenue withlights burning at equal intervals, to the main doorway, at which anenormous carriage of antique shape was waiting.
In the reception-room, where there were no signs of excitement, twogreat lamps were burning. A footman was asleep in a corner, the usherwas reading in front of the fire. He glanced at the new arrival over hisspectacles, but said nothing to him, and Jansoulet dared ask noquestions. Piles of newspapers lay on the table in wrappers addressed tothe duke, apparently tossed there as useless. The Nabob opened one andtried to read; but a rapid, gliding step, a sing-song murmuring made himraise his eyes, and he saw a white-haired, stooping old man, decked outwith finery like an altar, who was praying as he walked with longpriest-like strides, his red cassock spread out like a train over thecarpet. It was the Archbishop of Paris, accompanied by two assistants.The vision with its murmur as of an icy wind passed swiftly beforeJansoulet, was engulfed by the great chariot and disappeared, carryingaway his last hope.
"A question of propriety, my dear fellow," said Monpavon, suddenlyappearing at his side. "Mora is an epicurean, brought up in the ideas ofWhat's-his-name--Thingamy--you know whom I mean! Eighteenth century. Butit's very bad for the masses, if a man in his position--ps--ps--ps--Ah!he was head and shoulders above all of us--ps--ps--irreproachablebreeding."
"So, it's all over, is it?" said Jansoulet
desperately. "There's no morehope?"
Monpavon motioned to him to listen. A carriage rumbled heavily along theavenue on the quay. The bell rang several times in quick succession.The marquis counted aloud: "One, two, three, four--" At the fifth herose.
"There's no hope now. There comes the other," he said, alluding to theParisian superstition to the effect that a visit from the sovereign wasalways fatal to the dying. The servants hurried from all directions,threw the folding-doors wide open and formed a lane, while the usher,his hat _en bataille_ announced with a resounding blow of his pike uponthe floor the passage of two august personages, of whom Jansoulet caughtonly a confused glimpse behind the servants, but whom he saw through along vista of open doors ascending the grand staircase, preceded by avalet carrying a candelabrum. The woman was erect and haughty, envelopedin her black Spanish mantilla; the man clung to the stair-rail, walkedmore slowly and as if fatigued, the collar of his light top-coatstanding up from a back slightly bent, which was shaken by convulsivesobs.
"Let us be off, Nabob. Nothing more to be done here," said the old beau,taking Jansoulet by the arm and leading him out. He stopped on thethreshold, raised his hand, and waved a little salute with the tips ofhis gloves toward him who lay dying above. "_Bojou_, dea' boy." The toneand gesture were worldly, irreproachable; but the voice trembled alittle.
The club on Rue Royale, renowned for its card-playing, had rarely seenso terrible a game as it saw that night. It began at eleven o'clock andwas still in progress at five in the morning. Enormous sums lay on thegreen cloth, changed hands and direction, heaped up, scattered,reunited; fortunes were swallowed up in that colossal game, and at itsclose the Nabob, who had started it to forget his fears in the capricesof luck, after extraordinary alternations, somersaults of fortunecalculated to make a neophyte's hair turn white, withdrew with winningsof five hundred thousand francs. They said five millions on theboulevard the next day, and every one cried shame, especially the_Messager_, which gave up three-quarters of its space to an articleagainst certain adventurers who are tolerated in clubs, and who causethe ruin of the most respectable families.
Alas! Jansoulet's winnings hardly represented the amount of the firstSchwalbach notes.
During that insane game, although Mora was its involuntary cause, and,as it were, its soul, his name was not once mentioned. NeitherCardailhac nor Jenkins appeared. Monpavon had taken to his bed, moreaffected than he chose to have people think. They were without news fromthe sick-room.
"Is he dead?" Jansoulet wondered as he left the club, and he wasconscious of an impulse to go and see before returning home. It was nolonger hope that impelled him, but that unhealthy, nervous sort ofcuriosity which attracts the poor, ruined, shelterless victims of aconflagration to the debris of their home.
Although it was still very early, the pink flush of dawn still lingeringin the air, the whole mansion was open as if for a solemn departure. Thelamps were still smoking on the mantels, the air was filled with dust.The Nabob walked on through inexplicable solitude as far as the firstfloor, where he at last heard a familiar voice, Cardailhac's, dictatingnames, and the scratching of pens on paper. The skilful organizer of thefetes for the bey was arranging with the same zeal the funeralceremonial of the Duc de Mora. Such activity! His Excellency had diedduring the evening; in the morning ten thousand letters were alreadyprinted, and everybody in the house who knew how to hold a pen was busywith the addresses. Without passing through those extemporized offices,Jansoulet made his way to the reception-room, usually so thronged,to-day all the chairs empty. In the centre of the room, on a table, layMonsieur le Duc's hat and gloves and cane, always ready in the event ofhis going out unexpectedly, to save him the trouble of an order. Thearticles that we wear retain something of ourselves. The curve of thehat-rim recalled the curl of the moustaches, the light gloves were readyto grasp the flexible, strong Chinese bamboo, everything seemed toquiver and live, as if the duke were about to appear, to put out hishand as he talked, take them up and go out.
Oh! no, Monsieur le Duc was not going out. Jansoulet had only to walk tothe bedroom door, which stood ajar, to see lying on the bed, three stepsabove the floor--the same platform even after death--a rigid, haughtyform, a motionless, aged profile, transformed by the gray beard that hadgrown in a night; kneeling against the sloping pillow, her face buriedin the white sheets, was a woman whose fair hair fell neglected abouther shoulders, ready to fall under the shears of eternal widowhood; apriest, too, and a nun stood absorbed in meditation in that atmosphereof the death vigil, wherein the weariness of sleepless nights is blendedwith the mumbling of prayers and whispering in the shadow.
That room, in which so many ambitions had felt their wings expand, inwhich so many hopes and disappointments had had their day, was givenover to the tranquillity of death. Not a sound, not a sigh. But, earlyas it was, over in the direction of Pont de la Concorde, a shrill,piercing little clarinet soared above the rumbling of the firstcarriages; but its vigorous mockery was wasted thenceforth upon the manwho lay sleeping there, revealing to the terrified Nabob the image ofhis own destiny, cold, discolored, ready for the grave.
Others than Jansoulet saw that death-chamber under even more dismalcircumstances. The windows thrown wide open. The night air from thegarden entering freely in a brisk current. A form upon trestles; thatform, the body just embalmed. The head hollowed out, filled with asponge, the brain in a bucket. The weight of that statesman's brain wasreally extraordinary. It weighed--it weighed--The newspapers of the daygave the figures. But who remembers them to-day?