The Nabob. Alphonse Daudet

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      These little businesses perched away in corners with the air of having no communication with any outside world are one of the surprises of Paris. One asks one’s self how the people live who go into these trades, what fastidious Providence can, for example, send clients to a photographer lodged on a fifth floor in a nondescript region, well beyond the Rue Saint-Ferdinand, or books to keep to the accountant below. Jenkins, as he made this reflection, smiled in pity, then went straight in as he was invited by the following inscription, “Enter without knocking.” Alas! the permission was scarcely abused. A tall young man wearing spectacles, and writing at a small table, with his legs wrapped in a travelling-rug, rose precipitately to greet the visitor whom his short sight had prevented him from recognising.

      “Good-morning, Andre,” said the doctor, stretching out his loyal hand.

      “M. Jenkins!”

      “You see, I am good-natured as I have always been. Your conduct towards us, your obstinacy in persisting in living far away from your parents, imposed a great reserve on me, for my own dignity’s sake; but your mother has wept. And here I am.”

      While he spoke, he examined the poor little studio, with its bare walls, its scanty furniture, the brand-new photographic apparatus, the little Prussian fireplace, new also and never yet used for a fire, all forced into painfully clear evidence beneath the direct light falling from the glass roof. The drawn face, the scanty beard of the young man, to whom the bright colour of his eyes, the narrow height of his forehead, his long and fair hair thrown backward gave the air of a visionary, everything was accentuated in the crude light; and also the resolute will in that clear glance which settled upon Jenkins coldly, and in advance to all his reasonings, to all his protestations, opposed an invincible resistance.

      But the good Jenkins feigned not to perceive anything of this.

      “You know, my dear Andre, since the day when I married your mother I have regarded you as my son. I looked forward to leaving you my practice and my patients, to putting your foot in a golden stirrup, happy to see you following a career consecrated to the welfare of humanity. All at once, without giving any reason, without taking into any consideration the effect which such a rupture might well have in the eyes of the world, you have separated yourself from us, you have abandoned your studies, renounced your future, in order to launch out into I know not what eccentric life, engaging in a ridiculous trade, the refuge and the excuse of all unclassed people.”

      “I follow this occupation in order to earn a living. It is bread and butter in the meantime.”

      “In what meantime? While you are waiting for literary glory?”

      He glanced disdainfully at the scribbling scattered over the table.

      “All that is not serious, you know, and here is what I am come to tell you. An opportunity presents itself to you, a double-swing door opening into the future. The Bethlehem Society is founded. The most splendid of my philanthropic dreams has taken body. We have just purchased a superb villa at Nanterre for the housing of our first establishment. It is the care, the management of this house that I have thought of intrusting to you as to an alter ego. A princely dwelling, the salary of the commander of a division, and the satisfaction of a service rendered to the great human family. Say one word, and I take you to see the Nabob, the great-hearted man who defrays the expense of our undertaking. Do you accept?”

      “No,” said the other so curtly that Jenkins was somewhat put out of countenance.

      “Just so. I was prepared for this refusal when I came here. But I am come nevertheless. I have taken for motto, ‘To do good without hope,’ and I remain faithful to my motto. So then, it is understood you prefer to the honourable, worthy, and profitable existence which I have just proposed to you, a life of hazard without aim and without dignity?”

      Andre answered nothing, but his silence spoke for him.

      “Take care. You know what that decision will involve, a definitive estrangement, but you have always wanted that. I need not tell you,” continued Jenkins, “that to break with me is to break off relations also with your mother. She and I are one.”

      The young man turned pale, hesitated a moment, then said with effort:

      “If it please my mother to come to see me here, I shall be delighted, certainly. But my determination to quit your house, to have no longer anything in common with you, is irrevocable.”

      “And will you at least say why?”

      He made a negative sign; he would not say.

      For once the Irishman felt a genuine impulse of anger. His whole face assumed a cunning, savage expression which would have very much astonished those that only knew the good and loyal Jenkins; but he took good care not to push further an explanation which he feared perhaps as much as he desired it.

      “Adieu,” said he, half turning his head on the threshold. “And never apply to us.”

      “Never,” replied his stepson in a firm voice.

      This time, when the doctor had said to Joey, “Place Vendome,” the horse, as though he had understood that they were going to the Nabob’s, gave a proud shake to his glittering curb-chains, and the brougham set off at full speed, transforming each axle of its wheels into sunshine. “To come so far to get a reception like that! A celebrity of the time to be treated thus by that Bohemian! One may try indeed to do good!” Jenkins gave vent to his anger in a long monologue of this character, then suddenly rousing himself, exclaimed, “Ah, bah!” and what anxiety there was remaining on his brow quickly vanished on the pavement of the Place Vendome. Noon was striking everywhere in the sunshine. Issued forth from behind its curtain of mist, luxurious Paris, awake and on its feet, was commencing its whirling day. The shop-windows of the Rue de la Paix shone brightly. The mansions of the square seemed to be ranging themselves haughtily for the receptions of the afternoon; and, right at the end of the Rue Castiglione with its white arcades, the Tuileries, beneath a fine burst of winter sunshine, raised shivering statues, pink with cold, amid the stripped trees.

A LUNCHEON IN THE PLACE VENDOME

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      There were scarcely more than a score of persons that morning in the Nabob’s dining-room, a dining-room in carved oak, supplied the previous evening as it were by some great upholsterer, who at the same stroke had furnished these suites of four drawing-rooms of which you caught sight through an open doorway, the hangings on the ceiling, the objects of art, the chandeliers, even the very plate on the sideboards and the servants who were in attendance. It was obviously the kind of interior improvised the moment he was out of the railway-train by a gigantic parvenu in haste to enjoy. Although around the table there was no trace of any feminine presence, no bright frock to enliven it, its aspect was yet not monotonous, thanks to the dissimilarity, the oddness of the guests, people belonging to every section of society, specimens of humanity detached from all races, in France, in Europe, in the entire globe, from the top to the bottom of the social ladder. To begin with, the master of the house—a kind of giant, tanned, burned by the sun, saffron-coloured, with head in his shoulders. His nose, which was short and lost in the puffiness of his face, his woolly hair massed like a cap of astrakhan above a low and obstinate forehead, and his bristly eyebrows with eyes like those of an ambushed chapard gave him the ferocious aspect of a Kalmuck, СКАЧАТЬ