The Nabob. Alphonse Daudet

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СКАЧАТЬ vulgar, others hyper-civilized, worn, suggestive only of the Boulevard and as it were flaccid, one noted that the same diversity was evident also among the servants who, some apparently lads just out of an office, insolent in manner, with heads of hair like a dentist’s or a bath-attendant’s, busied themselves among Ethiopians standing motionless and shining like candelabra of black marble, and it was impossible to say exactly where one was; in any case, you would never have imagined yourself to be in the Place Vendome, right in the beating heart and very centre of the life of our modern Paris. Upon the table there was a like importation of exotic dishes, saffron or anchovy sauces, spices mixed up with Turkish delicacies, chickens with fried almonds, and all this taken together with the banality of the interior, the gilding of the panels, the shrill ringing of the new bells, gave the impression of a table d’hote in some big hotel in Smyrna or Calcutta, or of a luxurious dining-saloon on board a transatlantic liner, the “Pereire” or the “Sinai.”

      It might seem that this diversity among the guests—I was about to say among the passengers—ought to have caused the meal to be animated and noisy. Far otherwise. They all ate nervously, watching each other out of eye-corners, and even those most accustomed to society, those who appeared the most at their ease, had in their glance the wandering look and the distraction of a fixed idea, a feverish anxiety which caused them to speak without relevance and to listen without understanding a word of what was being said to them.

      Suddenly the door of the dining-room opened.

      “Ah, here comes Jenkins!” exclaimed the Nabob delightedly. “Welcome, welcome, doctor. How are you, my friend?”

      A smile to those around, a hearty shake of his host’s hand, and Jenkins sat down opposite him, next to Monpavon, before a place at the table which a servant had just prepared in all haste and without having received any order, exactly as at a table d’hote. Among those preoccupied and feverish faces, this one at any rate stood out in contrast by its good humour, its cheerfulness, and that loquacious and flattering benevolence which makes the Irish in a way the Gascons of England. And what a splendid appetite! With what heartiness, what ease of conscience he used his white teeth as he talked!

      “Well, Jansoulet, you have read it?”

      “What?”

      “How, then! you do not know? You have not read what the Messenger says about you this morning?”

      Beneath the dark tan of his cheeks the Nabob blushed like a child, and, his eyes shining with pleasure:

      “Is it possible—the Messenger has spoken of me?”

      “Through two columns. How is it that Moessard has not shown it to you?”

      “Oh,” put in Moessard modestly, “it was not worth the trouble.”

      He was a little journalist, with a fair complexion and smart in his dress, sufficiently good-looking, but with a face which presented that worn appearance noticeable as the special mark of waiters in night-restaurants, actors, and light women, and produced by conventional grimacing and the wan reflection of gaslight. He was reputed to be the paid lover of an exiled and profligate queen. The rumour was whispered around him, and, in his own world, secured him an envied and despicable position.

      Jansoulet insisted on reading the article, impatient to know what had been said of him. Unfortunately Jenkins had left his copy at the duke’s.

      “Let some one go fetch me a Messenger quickly,” said the Nabob to the servant behind him.

      Moessard intervened.

      “It is needless. I must have the thing on me somewhere.”

      And with the absence of ceremony of the tavern habitue, of the reporter who scribbles his paragraph with his glass beside him, the journalist drew out a pocket-book, crammed full of notes, stamped papers, newspaper cuttings, notes written on glazed paper with crests, which he proceeded to litter over the table, pushing away his plate in order to search for the proof of his article.

      “There you are.” He passed it over to Jansoulet; but Jenkins besought him:

      “No, no; read it aloud.”

      The company having echoed the request in chorus, Moessard took back his proof and commenced to read in a loud voice, “The Bethlehem Society and Mr. Bernard Jansoulet,” a long dithyramb in favour of artificial lactation, written from notes made by Jenkins, which were recognisable through certain fine phrases much affected by the Irishman, such as “the long martyrology of childhood,” “the sordid traffic in the breast,” “the beneficent nanny-goat as foster-mother,” and finishing, after a pompous description of the splendid establishment at Nanterre, with a eulogy of Jenkins and a glorification of Jansoulet: “O Bernard Jansoulet, benefactor of childhood!” It was a sight to see the vexed, scandalized faces of the guests. What an intriguer was this Moessard! What an impudent piece of sycophantry! And the same envious, disdainful smile quivered on every mouth. And the deuce of it was that a man had to applaud, to appear charmed, the master of the house not being weary as yet of incense, and taking everything very seriously, both the article and the applause it provoked. His big face shone during the reading. Often, down yonder, far away, had he dreamed a dream of having his praises sung like this in the newspapers of Paris, of being somebody in that society, the first among all, on which the entire world has its eyes fixed as on the bearer of a torch. Now, that dream was becoming a reality. He gazed upon all these people seated at his board, the sumptuous dessert, this panelled dining-room as high, certainly, as the church of his native village; he listened to the dull murmur of Paris rolling along in its carriages and treading the pavements beneath his windows, with the intimate conviction that he was about to become an important piece in that active and complicated machine. And then, through the atmosphere of physical well-being produced by the meal, between the lines of that triumphant vindication, by an effect of contrast, he beheld unfold itself his own existence, his youth, adventurous as it was sad, the days without bread, the nights without shelter. Then suddenly, the reading having come to an end, his joy overflowing in one of those southern effusions which force thought into speech, he cried, beaming upon his guests with that frank and thick-lipped smile of his:

      “Ah, my friends, my dear friends, if you could know how happy I am! What pride I feel!”

      Scarce six weeks had passed since he had landed in France. Excepting two or three compatriots, those whom he thus addressed as his friends were but the acquaintances of a day, and that through his having lent them money. This sudden expansion, therefore, appeared sufficiently extraordinary; but Jansoulet, too much under the sway of emotion to notice anything, continued:

      “After what I have just heard, when I behold myself here in this great Paris, surrounded by all its wealth of illustrious names, of distinguished intellects, and then call up the remembrance of my father’s booth! For I was born in a booth. My father used to sell old nails at the corner of a boundary stone in the Bourg-Saint-Andeol. If we had bread in the house every day and stew every Sunday it was the most we had to expect. Ask Cabassu whether it was not so. He knew me in those days. He can tell you whether I am not speaking the truth. Oh, yes, I have known what poverty is.” He threw back his head with an impulse of pride as he savoured the odour of truffles diffused through the suffocating atmosphere. “I have known it, and the real thing too, and for a long time. I have been cold. I have known hunger—genuine hunger, remember—the hunger that intoxicates, that wrings the stomach, sets circles dancing in your head, deprives you of sight as if the inside of your eyes was being gouged out with an oyster-knife. I have passed days in bed for want of an overcoat to go out in; fortunate at that when I had a bed, which was not always. I have sought my bread from every trade, and that bread cost me such СКАЧАТЬ