The Nabob. Alphonse Daudet
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Название: The Nabob

Автор: Alphonse Daudet

Издательство: Bookwire

Жанр: Языкознание

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isbn: 4064066225698

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СКАЧАТЬ in 1872, in “The Prodigious Feats of Tartarin of Tarascon,” one of the most purely delightful works of humour in the French language. Alphonse Daudet now, armed with his cahiers, his little green-backed books of notes, set out to be a great historian of French manners in the second half of the nineteenth century. His first important novel, “Fromont Jeune et Risler Aine,” 1874, enjoyed a notable success; it was followed in 1876 by “Jack,” in 1878 by “Le Nabob,” in 1879 by “Les Rois en Exil,” in 1881 by “Numa Roumestan,” in 1883 by “L’Evangeliste,” and in 1884 by “Sapho.” These are the seven great romances of modern French life on which the reputation of Alphonse Daudet as a novelist is mainly built. They placed him, for the moment at all events, near the head of contemporary European literature. By this time, however, a physical malady, which Charcot was the first to locate in the spinal cord, had begun to exhaust the novelist’s powers. This disease, which took the form of what was supposed to be neuralgia in 1881, racked him with pain during the sixteen remaining years of his life, and gradually destroyed his powers of locomotion. It spared the functions of the brain, but it cannot be denied that after 1884 something of force and spontaneous charm was lacking in Daudet’s books. He continued, however, the adventures of Tartarin, first with unabated gusto in the Alps, then less happily as a colonist in the South Seas. He wrote, in the form of a novel, a bitter satire on the French Academy, of which he was never a member; this was “L’Immortel” of 1888. He wrote romances, of little power, the best being “Rose et Ninette” of 1892, but his imaginative work steadily declined in value. He published in 1887 his reminiscences, “Trente Ans de Paris,” and later on his “Souvenirs d’un Homme de Lettres.” He suffered more and more from his complaint, from the insomnia it caused, and from the abuse of chloral. He was able, however, to the last, to enjoy the summer at his country-house, at Champrosay, and even to travel in an invalid’s chair; in 1896 he visited for the first time London and Oxford, and saw Mr. George Meredith. In Paris he had long occupied rooms in the Rue de Bellechasse, where Madame Alphonse Daudet was accustomed to entertain a brilliant company. But in 1897 it became impossible for him to mount five flights of stairs any longer, and he moved to the first floor of No. 41 Rue de l’Universite. Here on the 16th of December, 1897, as he was chatting gaily at the dinner-table, he uttered a cry, fell back in his chair, and was dead. The personal appearance of Alphonse Daudet, in his prime, was very striking; he had clearly cut features, large brilliant eyes, and an amazing exuberance of curled hair and forked beard.

      EDMUND GOSSE, LL.D.

       Table of Contents

      by Alphonse Daudet

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

      Standing on the steps of his little town-house in the Rue de Lisbonne, freshly shaven, with sparkling eyes, and lips parted in easy enjoyment, his long hair slightly gray flowing over a huge coat collar, square shouldered, strong as an oak, the famous Irish doctor, Robert Jenkins, Knight of the Medjidjieh and of the distinguished order of Charles III of Spain, President and Founder of the Bethlehem Society. Jenkins in a word, the Jenkins of the Jenkins Pills with an arsenical base—that is to say, the fashionable doctor of the year 1864, the busiest man in Paris, was preparing to step into his carriage when a casement opened on the first floor looking over the inner court-yard of the house, and a woman’s voice asked timidly:

      “Shall you be home for luncheon, Robert?”

      Oh, how good and loyal was the smile that suddenly illumined the fine apostle-like head with its air of learning, and in the tender “good-morning” which his eyes threw up towards the warm, white dressing-gown visible behind the raised curtains; how easy it was to divine one of those conjugal passions, tranquil and sure, which habit re-enforces and with supple and stable bonds binds closer.

      “No, Mrs. Jenkins.” He was fond of thus bestowing upon her publicly her title as his lawful wife, as if he found in it an intimate gratification, a sort of acquittal of conscience towards the woman who made life so bright for him. “No, do not expect me this morning. I lunch in the Place Vendome.”

      “Ah! yes, the Nabob,” said the handsome Mrs. Jenkins with a very marked note of respect for this personage out of the Thousand and One Nights of whom all Paris had been talking for the last month; then, after a little hesitation, very tenderly, in a quite low voice, from between the heavy tapestries, she whispered for the ears of the doctor only:

      “Be sure you do not forget what you promised me.”

      Apparently it was something very difficult to fulfil, for at the reminder of this promise the eyebrows of the apostle contracted into a frown, his smile became petrified, his whole visage assumed an expression of incredible hardness; but it was only for an instant. At the bedside of their patients the physiognomies of these fashionable doctors become expert in lying. In his most tender, most cordial manner, he replied, disclosing a row of dazzling white teeth:

      “What I promised shall be done, Mrs. Jenkins. And now, go in quickly and shut your window. The fog is cold this morning.”

      Yes, the fog was cold, but white as snow mist; and, filling the air outside the glasses of the large brougham, it brightened with soft gleams the unfolded newspaper in the doctor’s hands. Over yonder, in the populous quarters, confined and gloomy, in the Paris of tradesman and mechanic, that charming morning haze which lingers in the great thoroughfares is not known. The bustle of awakening, the going and coming of the market-carts, of the omnibuses, of the heavy trucks rattling their old iron, have early and quickly cut it up, unravelled and scattered it. Every passer-by carries away a little of it in a threadbare overcoat, a muffler which shows the woof, and coarse gloves rubbed one against the other. It soaks through the thin blouses, and the mackintoshes thrown over the working skirts; it melts away at every breath that is drawn, warm from sleeplessness or alcohol; it is engulfed in the depths of empty stomachs, dispersed in the shops as they are opened, and the dark courts, or even to the fireless attics. That is the reason why there remains so little of it out of doors. But in that spacious and grandiose region of Paris, which was inhabited by Jenkins’s clients, on those wide boulevards planted with trees, and those deserted quays, the fog hovered without a stain, like so many sheets, with waverings and cotton wool-like flakes. The effect was of a place inclosed, secret, almost sumptuous, as the sun after his slothful rising began to diffuse softly crimsoned tints, which gave to the mist enshrouding the rows of houses to their summits the appearance of white muslin thrown over some scarlet material. One might have fancied it a great curtain beneath which nothing could be heard save the cautious closing of some court-yard gate, the tin measuring-cans of the milkmen, the little bells of a herd of she-asses passing at a quick trot followed by the short and panting breath of their shepherd, and the dull rumble of Jenkins’s brougham commencing its daily round.

      First, to Mora House. This was a magnificent palace on the Quai d’Orsay, next door to the Spanish embassy, whose long terraces succeeded its own, having its principal entrance in the Rue de Lille, and a door upon the side next the river. Between two lofty walls overgrown with ivy, and united by imposing vaulted arches, the brougham shot in, announced by two strokes of a sonorous bell which roused Jenkins from the reverie into which the reading of his newspaper seemed to have plunged him. Then the noise of the wheels became deadened on the sand of a vast court-yard, and they drew up, after describing an elegant curve, before the steps СКАЧАТЬ