Chapter 16. A Public Man

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_ CHAPTER XVI. A PUBLIC MAN

The bright warmth of a clear May afternoon heated the lofty casement windows of the Mora mansion to the temperature of a greenhouse. The blue silk curtains were visible from outside through the branches of the trees, and the wide terraces, where exotic flowers were planted out of doors for the first time of the season, ran in borders along the whole length of the quay. The raking of the garden paths traced the light footprints of summer in the sand, while the soft fall of the water from the hoses on the lawns was its refreshing song.

All the luxury of the princely residence lay sunning itself in the soft warmth of the temperature, borrowing a beauty from the silence, the repose of this noontide hour, the only hour when the roll of carriages was not to be heard under the arches, nor the banging of the great doors of the antechamber, and that perpetual vibration which the ringing of bells upon arrivals or departures sent coursing through the very ivy on the walls; the feverish pulse of the life of a fashionable house. It was well known that up to three o'clock the duke held his reception at the Ministry, and that the duchess, a Swede still benumbed by the snows of Stockholm, had hardly issued from her drowsy curtains; consequently nobody came to call, neither visitors or petitioners, and only the footmen, perched like flamingoes on the deserted flight of steps in front of the house, gave the place a touch of animation with the slim shadows of their long legs and their yawning weariness of idlers.

As an exception, however, that day Jenkins's brougham was standing waiting in a corner of the court-yard. The duke, unwell since the previous evening, had felt worse after leaving the breakfast-table, and in all haste had sent for the man of the pearls in order to question him on his singular condition. Pain nowhere, sleep and appetite as usual; only an inconceivable lassitude, and a sense of terrible chill which nothing could dissipate. Thus at that moment, notwithstanding the brilliant spring sunshine which flooded his chamber and almost extinguished the fire flaming in the grate, the duke was shivering beneath his furs, surrounded by screens; and while signing papers for an _attache_ of his cabinet on a low table of gold lacquer, placed so near to the fire that it frizzled, he kept holding out his numb fingers every moment toward the blaze, which might have burned the skin without restoring circulation.

Was it anxiety caused by the indisposition of his illustrious client? Jenkins appeared nervous, disquieted, walked backward and forward with long strides over the carpet, hunting about right and left, seeking in the air something which he believed to be present, a subtle and intangible something like the trace of a perfume or the invisible track left by a bird in its flight. You heard the crackling of the wood in the fireplace, the rustle of papers hurriedly turned over, the indolent voice of the duke indicating in a sentence, always precise and clear, a reply to a letter of four pages, and the respectful monosyllables of the _attache_--"Yes, M. le Ministre," "No, M. le Ministre"; then the scraping of a rebellious and heavy pen. Out of doors the swallows were twittering merrily over the water, the sound of a clarinet was wafted from somewhere near the bridges.

"It is impossible," suddenly said the Minister of State, rising. "Take that away, Lartigues; you must return to-morrow. I cannot write. I am too cold. See, doctor; feel my hands--one would think that they had just come out of a pail of iced water. For the last two days my whole body has been the same. Isn't it too absurd, in this weather!"

"I am not surprised," muttered the Irishman, in a sullen, curt tone, rarely heard from that honeyed personage.

The door had closed upon the young _attache_, bearing off his papers with majestic dignity, but very happy, I imagine, to feel himself free and to be able to stroll for an hour or two, before returning to the Ministry, in the Tuileries gardens, full of spring frocks and pretty girls sitting near the still empty chairs round the band, under the chestnut-trees in flower, through which from root to summit there ran the great thrill of the month when nests are built. The _attache_ was certainly not frozen.

Jenkins, silently, examined his patient, sounded him, and tapped his chest; then, in the same rough tone which might be explained by his anxious devotion, the annoyance of the doctor who sees his orders transgressed:

"Ah, now, my dear duke, what sort of life have you been living lately?"

He knew from the gossip of the antechamber--in the case of his regular clients the doctor did not disdain this--he knew that the duke had a new favourite, that this caprice of recent date possessed him, excited him in an extraordinary measure, and the fact, taken together with other observations made elsewhere, had implanted in Jenkins's mind a suspicion, a mad desire to know the name of this new mistress. It was this that he was trying to read on the pale face of his patient, attempting to fathom the depth of his thoughts rather than the origin of his malady. But he had to deal with one of those faces which are hermetically sealed, like those little coffers with a secret spring which hold jewels and women's letters, one of those discreet natures closed by a cold, blue eye, a glance of steel by which the most astute perspicacity may be baffled.

"You are mistaken, doctor," replied his excellency tranquilly. "I have made no changes in my habits."

"Very well, M. le Duc, you have done wrong," remarked the Irishman abruptly, furious at having made no discovery.

And then, feeling that he was going too far, he gave vent to his bad temper and to the severity of his diagnosis in words which were a tissue of banalities and axioms. One ought to take care. Medicine was not magic. The power of the Jenkins pearls was limited by human strength, by the necessities of age, by the resources of nature, which, unfortunately, are not inexhaustible. The duke interrupted him in an irritable tone:

"Come, Jenkins, you know very well that I don't like phrases. I am not all right, then? What is the matter with me? What is the reason of this chilliness?"

"It is anaemia, exhaustion--a sinking of the oil in the lamp."

"What must I do?"

"Nothing. An absolute rest. Eat, sleep, nothing besides. If you could go and spend a few weeks at Grandbois."

Mora shrugged his shoulders:

"And the Chamber--and the Council--and--? Nonsense! how is it possible?"

"In any case, M. le Duc, you must put the brake on; as somebody said, renounce absolutely--"

Jenkins was interrupted by the entry of the servant on duty, who, discreetly, on tiptoe, like a dancing-master, came in to deliver a letter and a card to the Minister of State, who was still shivering before the fire. At the sight of that satin-gray envelope of a peculiar shape the Irishman started involuntarily, while the duke, having opened and glanced over his letter, rose with new vigor, his cheeks wearing that light flush of artificial health which all the heat of the stove had not been able to bring there.

"My dear doctor, I must at any price--"

The servant still stood waiting.

"What is it? Ah, yes; this card. Take the visitor to the gallery. I shall be there directly."

The gallery of the Duke de Mora, open to visitors twice a week, was for himself, as it were, a neutral ground, a public place where he could see any one without binding or compromising himself in any way. Then, the servant having withdrawn:

"Jenkins, _mon bon_, you have already worked miracles for me. I ask you for one more. Double the dose of my pearls; find something, whatever you will. But I must be feeling young by Sunday. You understand me, altogether young."

And on the little letter in his hand, his fingers, warm once more and feverish, clinched themselves with a thrill of eager desire.

"Take care, M. le Duc," said Jenkins, very pale and with compressed lips. "I have no wish to alarm you unnecessarily with regard to the feeble state of your health, but it becomes my duty--"

Mora gave a smile of pretty arrogance:

"Your duty and my pleasure are two separate things, my worthy friend. Let me burn the candle at both ends, if it amuses me. I have never had so fine an opportunity as this time."

He started:

"The duchess!"

A door concealed behind a curtain had just opened to give passage to a merry little head with fair curls in disorder, quite fairy-like amid the laces and frills of a dressing-jacket worthy of a princess:

"What do I hear? You have not gone out? But do scold him, doctor. He is wrong, isn't he, to have so many fancies about himself? Look at him--a picture of health!"

"There--you see," said the duke, laughing, to the Irishman. "You will not come in, duchess?"

"No, I am going to carry you off, on the contrary. My uncle d'Estaing has sent me a cage full of tropical birds. I want to show them to you. Wonderful creatures, of all colours, with little eyes like black pearls. And so sensitive to cold--nearly as much so as you are."

"Let us go and have a look at them," said the minister. "Wait for me, Jenkins. I shall be back in a moment."

Then, noticing that he still had his letter in his hand, he threw it carelessly into the drawer of the little table at which he had been signing papers, and left the room behind the duchess, with the fine coolness of a husband accustomed to these changes of situation.

What prodigious mechanic, what incomparable manufacturer of toys, must it have been who succeeded in endowing the human mask with its suppleness, its marvellous elasticity! How interesting to observe the face of this great seigneur surprised in the very planning of his adultery, with cheeks flushed in the anticipation of promised delights, calming down at a moment's notice into the serenity of conjugal tenderness; how fine the devout obsequiousness, the paternal smile, after the Franklin method, of Jenkins, in the presence of the duchess, giving place suddenly, when he found himself alone, to a savage expression of anger and hatred, the pallor of a criminal, the pallor of a Castaing or of a Lapommerais hatching his sinister treasons.

One rapid glance towards each of the two doors, and he stood before the drawer full of precious papers, the little gold key still remaining in the lock with an arrogant carelessness, which seemed to say, "No one will dare."

Jenkins dared.

The letter lay there, the first on a pile of others. The grain of the paper, an address of three words dashed off in a simple, bold handwriting, and then the perfume, that intoxicating, suggestive perfume, the very breath of her divine lips--It was true, then, his jealous love had not deceived him, nor the embarrassment she had shown in his presence for some time past, nor the secretive and rejuvenated airs of Constance, nor those bouquets magnificently blooming in the studio as in the shadow of an intrigue. That indomitable pride had surrendered, then, at last? But in that case, why not to him, Jenkins? To him who had loved her for so long--always; who was ten years younger than the other man, and who certainly was troubled with no cold shiverings! All these thoughts passed through his head like arrows shot from a tireless bow. And, stabbed through and through, torn to pieces, his eyes blinded, he stood there looking at the little satiny and cold envelope which he did not dare open for fear of dismissing a final doubt, when the rustling of a curtain warned him that some one had just come in. He threw the letter back quickly, and closed the wonderfully adjusted drawer of the lacquered table.

"Ah! it is you, Jansoulet. How is it you are here?"

"His excellency told me to come and wait for him in his room," replied the Nabob, very proud of being thus introduced into the privacy of the apartments, at an hour, especially, when visitors were not generally received. As a fact, the duke was beginning to show a real liking for this savage, for several reasons: to begin with, he liked audacious people, adventurers who followed their lucky star. Was he not one of them himself? Then, the Nabob amused him; his accent, his frank manners, his rather coarse and impudent flattery, were a change for him from the eternal conventionality of his surroundings, from that scourge of administrative and court life which he held in horror--the set speech--in such great horror that he never finished a sentence which he had begun. The Nabob had an unforeseen way of finishing his which was sometimes full of surprises. A fine gambler as well, losing games of _ecarte_ at five thousand francs the fish without flinching. And so convenient when one wanted to get rid of a picture, always ready to buy, no matter at what price. To these motives of condescending kindness there had come to be joined of late a sentiment of pity and indignation in the face of the tenacity with which the unfortunate man was being persecuted, the cowardly and merciless war so ably managed, that public opinion, always credulous and with neck outstretched to see which way the wind is blowing, was beginning to be seriously influenced. One must do to Mora the justice of admitting that he was no follower of the crowd. When he had seen in a corner of the gallery the simple but rather piteous and discomfited face of the Nabob, he had thought it cowardly to receive him there, and had sent him up to his private room.

Jenkins and Jansoulet, sufficiently embarrassed by each other's presence, exchanged a few commonplace words. Their great friendship had recently cooled, Jansoulet having refused point-blank all further subsidies to the Bethlehem Society, leaving the business on the Irishman's hands, who was furious at this defection, and much more furious still at this moment because he had not been able to open Felicia's letter before the arrival of the intruder. The Nabob, on his side, was asking himself whether the doctor was going to be present at the conversation which he wished to have with the duke on the subject of the infamous insinuations with which the _Messenger_ was pursuing him; anxious also to know whether these calumnies might not have produced a coolness in that sovereign good-will which was so necessary to him at the moment of the verification of his election. The greeting which he had received in the gallery had half reassured him on this point; he was entirely satisfied when the duke entered and came towards him with outstretched hand:

"Well, my poor Jansoulet, I hope Paris is making you pay dearly enough for your welcome. What brawling and hate and spite one finds!"

"Ah, M. le Duc, if you knew--"

"I know. I have read it," said the minister, moving closer to the fire.

"I sincerely hope that your excellency does not believe these infamies. Besides, I have here--I bring the proof."

With his strong hairy hands, trembling with emotion, he hunted among the papers in an enormous shagreen portfolio which he had under his arm.

"Never mind that--never mind. I am acquainted with the whole affair. I know that, wilfully or not, they have mixed you up with another person, whom family considerations--"

The duke could not restrain a smile at the bewilderment of the Nabob, stupefied to find him so well informed.

"A Minister of State has to know everything. But don't worry. Your election will be declared valid all the same. And once declared valid--"

Jansoulet heaved a sigh of relief.

"Ah, M. le Duc, how it cheers me to hear you speak thus! I was beginning to lose all confidence. My enemies are so powerful. And a piece of bad luck into the bargain. Do you know that it is Le Merquier himself who is charged with the report on my election?"

"Le Merquier? The devil!"

"Yes, Le Merquier, Hemerlingue's agent, the dirty hypocrite who converted the baroness, no doubt because his religion forbade him to have a Mohammedan for a mistress."

"Come, come, Jansoulet."

"Well, M. le Duc? One can't help being angry. Think of the situation in which these wretches are placing me. Here I ought to have had my election made valid a week ago, and they arrange the postponement of the sitting expressly because they know the terrible position in which I am placed--my whole fortune paralyzed, the Bey waiting for the decision of the Chamber to decide whether or not he can plunder me. I have eighty millions over there, M. le Duc, and here I begin to be short of money. If the thing goes on only a little longer--"

He wiped away the big drops of sweat that trickled down his cheeks.

"Ah, well, I will look after this validation myself," said the minister sharply. "I will write to what's-his-name to hurry up with his report; and even if I have to be carried to the Chamber--"

"Your excellency is unwell?" asked Jansoulet, in a tone of interest which, I swear to you, had no affectation about it.

"No--a little weakness. I am rather anaemic--wanting blood; but Jenkins is going to put me right. Aren't you, Jenkins?"

The Irishman, who had not been listening, made a vague gesture.

"_Tonnerre!_ And here am I with only too much of it."

And the Nabob loosened his cravat about his neck, swollen like an apoplexy by his emotion and the heat of the room. "If I could only transfer a little to you, M. le Duc!"

"It would be an excellent thing for both," said the Minister of State with pale irony. "For you, especially, who are a violent fellow, and who at this moment need so much self-control. Take care on that point, Jansoulet. Beware of the hot retorts, the steps taken in a fit of temper to which they would like to drive you. Repeat to yourself now that you are a public man, on a platform, all of whose actions are observed from far. The newspapers are abusing you; don't read them, if you cannot conceal the emotion which they cause you. Don't do what I did, with my blind man of the Pont de la Concorde, that frightful clarinet-player, who for the last ten years has been blighting my life by playing all day 'De tes fils, Norma.' I have tried everything to get him away from there--money, threats. Nothing has succeeded in inducing him to go. The police? Ah, yes, indeed. With modern ideas, it becomes quite a business to clear off a blind man from a bridge. The Opposition newspapers would talk of it, the Parisians would make a story out of it--'_The Cobbler and the Financier_.' 'The Duke and the Clarinet.' No, I must resign myself. It is, besides, my own fault. I never ought to have let this man see that he annoyed me. I am sure that my torture makes half the pleasure of his life now. Every morning he comes forth from his wretched lodging with his dog, his folding-stool, his frightful music, and says to himself, 'Come, let us go and worry the Duc de Mora.' Not a day does he miss, the wretch! Why, see, if I were but to open the window a trifle, you would hear his deluge of little sharp notes above the noise of the water and the traffic. Well, this journalist of the _Messenger_, he is your clarinet; if you allow him to see that his music wearies you, he will never finish. And with this, my dear deputy, I will remind you that you have a meeting at three o'clock at the office, and I must send you back to the Chamber."

Then turning to Jenkins:

"You know what I asked of you, doctor--pearls for the day after to-morrow; and let them be extra strong!"

Jenkins started, shook himself as at the sudden awakening from a dream:

"Certainly, my dear duke. You shall be given some stamina--oh, yes; stamina, breath enough to win the great Derby stakes."

He bowed, and left the room laughing, the veritable laugh of a wolf showing its gleaming white teeth. The Nabob took leave in his turn, his heart filled with gratitude, but not daring to let anything of it appear in the presence of this sceptic in whom all demonstrativeness aroused distrust. And the Minister of State, left alone, rolled up in his wraps before the crackling and blazing fire, sheltered in the padded warmth of his luxury, doubled that day by the feverish caress of the May sunshine, began to shiver with cold again, to shiver so violently that Felicia's letter which he had reopened and was reading rapturously shook in his hands.

A deputy is in a very singular situation during the period which follows his election and precedes--as they say in parliamentary jargon--the verification of its validity. It is a little like the position of the newly married man during the twenty-four hours separating the civil marriage from its consecration by the Church. Rights of which he cannot avail himself, a half-happiness, a semi-authority, the embarrassment of keeping the balance a little on this side or on that, the lack of a defined footing. One is married and yet not married, a deputy and yet not perfectly sure of being it; only, for the deputy, this uncertainty is prolonged over days and weeks, and since the longer it lasts the more problematical does the validation become, it is like torture for the unfortunate representative on probation to be obliged to attend the Chamber, to occupy a place which he will perhaps not keep, to listen to discussions of which it is possible that he will never hear the end, to fix in his eyes and ears the delicious memory of parliamentary sittings with their sea of bald or apoplectic foreheads, their confused noise of rustling papers, the cries of attendants, wooden knives beating a tattoo on the tables, private conversations from amid which the voice of the orator issues, a thundering or timid solo with a continuous accompaniment.

This situation, at best so trying to the nerves, was complicated in the Nabob's case by these calumnies, at first whispered, now printed, circulated in thousands of copies by the newspapers, with the consequence that he found himself tacitly put in quarantine by his colleagues.

The first days he went and came in the corridors, the library, the dining-room, the lecture-hall, like the rest, delighted to roam through all the corners of that majestic labyrinth; but he was unknown to most of his associates, unacknowledged by a few members of the Rue Royale Club, who avoided him, detested by all the clerical party of which Le Merquier was the head. The financial set was hostile to this multi-millionaire, powerful in both "bull" and "bear" market, like those vessels of heavy tonnage which displace the water of a harbour, and thus his isolation only became the more marked by the change in his circumstances and the same enmity followed him everywhere.

His gestures, his manner, showed trace of it in a certain constraint, a sort of hesitating distrust. He felt he was watched. If he went for a minute into the _buffet_, that large bright room opening on the gardens of the president's house, which he liked because there, at the broad counter of white marble laden with bottles and provisions, the deputies lost their big, imposing airs, the legislative haughtiness allowed itself to become more familiar, even there he knew that the next day there would appear in the _Messenger_ a mocking, offensive paragraph exhibiting him to his electors as a wine-bibber of the most notorious order.

Those terrible electors added to his embarrassments.

They arrived in crowds, invaded the Salle des Pas-Perdus, galloped all over the place like little fiery black kids, shouting to each other from one end to the other of the echoing room, "O Pe! O Tche!" inhaling with delight the odour of government, of administration, pervading the air, watching admiringly the ministers as they passed, following in their trail with keen nose, as though from their respected pockets, from their swollen portfolios, there might fall some appointment; but especially surrounding "Moussiou" Jansoulet with so many exacting petitions, reclamations, demonstrations, that, in order to free himself from the gesticulating uproar which made everybody turn round, and turned him as it were into the delegate of a tribe of Tuaregs in the midst of civilized folk, he was obliged to implore with a look the help of some attendant on duty familiar with such acts of rescue, who would come to him with an air of urgency to say "that he was wanted immediately in Bureau No. 8." So at last, embarrassed everywhere, driven from the corridors, from the Pas-Perdus, from the refreshment-room, the poor Nabob had adopted the course of never leaving his seat, where he remained motionless and without speaking during the whole time of the sitting.

He had, however, one friend in the Chamber, a deputy newly elected for the Deux-Sevres, called M. Sarigue, a poor man sufficiently resembling the inoffensive and ill-favoured animal whose name he bore, with his red and scanty hair, his timorous eyes, his hopping walk, his white gaiters; he was so timid that he could not utter two words without stuttering, almost voiceless, continually sucking jujubes, which completed the confusion of his speech. One asked what such a weakling as he had come to do in the Assembly, what feminine ambition run mad had urged into public life this being useless for no matter what private activity.

By an amusing irony of fate, Jansoulet, himself agitated by all the anxieties of his own validation, was chosen in Bureau no. 8 to draw up the report on the election in the Deux-Sevres; and M. Sarigue, humble and supplicating, conscious of his incapacity and filled by a horrible dread of being sent back to his home in disgrace, used to follow about this great jovial fellow with the curly hair and big shoulder blades that moved like the bellows of a forge beneath a light and tightly fitting frock-coat, without any suspicion that a poor anxious being like himself lay concealed within that solid envelope.

As he worked at the report on the Deux-Sevres election, as he examined the numerous protests, the accusations of electioneering trickery, meals given, money spent, casks of wine broached at the doors of the mayors' houses, the usual accompaniments of an election in those days, Jansoulet used to shudder on his own account. "Why, I did all that myself," he would say to himself, terrified. Ah! M. Sarigue need not be afraid; never could he have put his hand on an examiner with kinder intentions or more indulgent, for the Nabob, taking pity on the sufferer, knowing by experience how painful is the anguish of waiting, had made haste through his labour; and the enormous portfolio which he carried under his arm, as he left the Mora mansion, contained his report ready to be sent in to the bureau.

Whether it were this first essay in a public function, the kind words of the duke, or the magnificent weather out of doors, keenly enjoyed by this southerner, with his susceptibility to wholly physical impressions and accustomed to life under a blue sky and the warmth of the sunshine--however that may have been, certain it is that the attendants of the legislative body beheld that day a proud and haughty Jansoulet whom they had not previously known. The fat Hemerlingue's carriage, caught sight of at the gate, recognisable by the unusual width of its doors, completed his reinstatement in the possession of his true nature of assurance and bold audacity. "The enemy is there. Attention!" As he crossed the Salle des Pas-Perdus, he caught sight of the financier chatting in a corner with Le Merquier, the examiner; he passed quite near them, and looked at them with a triumphant air which made people wonder:

"What is the meaning of this?"

Then, highly pleased at his own coolness, he passed on towards the committee-rooms, big and lofty apartments opening right and left on a long corridor, and having large tables covered with green baize, and heavy chairs all of a similar pattern and bearing the impress of a dull solemnity. People were beginning to come in. Groups were taking up their positions, discussing matters, gesticulating, with bows, shakings of hands, inclinations of the head, like Chinese shadows against the luminous background of the windows.

Men were there who walked about with bent back, solitary, as it were crushed down beneath the weight of the thoughts which knitted their brow. Others whispering in their neighbour's ears, confiding to each other exceedingly mysterious and terribly important pieces of news, finger on lip, eyes opened wide in silent recommendation to discretion. A provincial flavour characterized it all, varieties of intonation, the violence of southern speech, drawling accents of the central districts, the sing-song of Brittany, fused into one and the same imbecile self-conceit, frock-coats as they cut them at Landerneau, mountain shoes, home-spun linen, and a self-assurance begotten in a village or in the club of some insignificant town, local expressions, provincialisms abruptly introduced into the speech of the political and administrative world, that flabby and colourless phraseology which has invented such expressions as "burning questions that come again to the surface" and "individualities without mandate."

To see these excited or thoughtful people, you might have supposed them the greatest apostles of ideas in the world; unfortunately, on the days of the sittings they underwent a transformation, sat in hushed silence in their places, laughing in servile fashion at the jests of the clever man who presided over them, or only rising to make ridiculous propositions, the kind of interruption which would tempt one to believe that it is not a type only, but a whole race, that Henri Monnier has satirized in his immortal sketch. Two or three orators in all the Chamber, the rest well qualified to plant themselves before the fireplace of a provincial drawing-room, after an excellent meal at the Prefect's, and to say in nasal voice, "The administration, gentlemen," or "The Government of the Emperor," but incapable of anything further.

Ordinarily the good Nabob had been dazzled by these poses, that buzzing as of an empty spinning-wheel which is made by would-be important people; but to-day he found his own place, and fell in with the general note. Seated at the centre of the green table, his portfolio open before him, his elbows planted well forward upon it, he read the report drawn up by de Gery, and the members of the committee looked at him in amazement.

It was a concise, clear, and rapid summary of their fortnight's proceedings, in which they found their ideas so well expressed that they had great difficulty in recognising them. Then, as two or three among them considered the report too favourable, that it passed too lightly over certain protests that had reached the committee, the examiner addressed the meeting with an astonishing assurance, with the prolixity, the verbosity of his own people, demonstrated that a deputy ought not to be held responsible beyond a certain point for the imprudence of his election agents, that no election, otherwise, would bear a minute examination, and since in reality it was his own cause that he was pleading, he brought to the task a conviction, an irresistible enthusiasm, taking care to let out now and then one of those long, dull substantives with a thousand feet, such as the committee loved.

The others listened to him thoughtfully, communicating their sentiments to each other by nods of the head, making flourishes, in order the better to concentrate their attention, and drawing heads on their blotting-pads--a proceeding which harmonized well with the schoolboyish noises in the corridors, a murmur of lessons in course of repetition, and those droves of sparrows which you could hear chirping under the casements in a flagged court-yard, just like the court-yard of a school. The report having been adopted, M. Sarigue was summoned in order that he might offer some supplementary explanations. He arrived, pale, emaciated, stuttering like a criminal before conviction, and you would have laughed to see with what an air of authority and protection Jansoulet encouraged and reassured him. "Calm yourself, my dear colleague." But the members of Committee No. 8 did not laugh. They were all, or nearly all, Sarigues in their way, two or three of them being absolutely broken down, stricken by partial paralysis. So much assurance, such great eloquence, had moved them to enthusiasm.

When Jansoulet issued from the legislative assembly, reconducted to his carriage by his grateful colleague, it was about six o'clock. The splendid weather--a beautiful sunset over the Seine, which lay stretching away like molten gold on the Trocadero side--was a temptation to a walk for this robust plebeian, on whom it was imposed by the conventions that he should ride in a carriage and wear gloves, but who escaped such encumbrances as often as he possibly could. He dismissed his servants, and, with his portfolio under his arm, set forth across the Pont de la Concorde.

Since the first of May he had not experienced such a sense of well-being. With rolling gait, hat a little to the back of his head, in the position in which he had seen it worn by overworked politicians harassed by pressure of business, allowing all the laborious fever of their brain to evaporate in the coolness of the air, as a factory discharges its steam into the gutter at the end of a day's work, he moved forward among other figures like his own, evidently coming too from that colonnaded temple which faces the Madeleine above the fountains of the _Place_. As they passed, people turned to look after them, saying, "Those are deputies." And Jansoulet felt the delight of a child, a plebeian joy, compounded of ignorance and naive vanity.

"Ask for the _Messenger_, evening edition."

The words came from a newspaper kiosk at the corner of the bridge, full at that hour of fresh printed sheets in heaps, which two women were quickly folding, and which smelt of the damp press--late news, the success of the day or its scandal.

Nearly all the deputies bought a copy as they passed, and glanced over it quickly in the hope of finding their name. Jansoulet, for his part, feared to see his in it and did not stop. Then suddenly he reflected: "Must not a public man be above these weaknesses? I am strong enough now to read everything." He retraced his steps and took a newspaper like his colleagues. He opened it, very calmly, right at the place usually occupied by Moessard's articles. As it happened, there was one. Still the same title: "_Chinoiseries_," and an _M._ for signature.

"Ah! ah!" said the public man, firm and cold as marble, with a fine smile of disdain. Mora's lesson still rung in his ears, and, had he forgotten it, the air from _Norma_ which was being slowly played in little ironical notes not far off would have sufficed to recall it to him. Only, after all calculations have been made amid the fleeting happenings of our existence, there is always the unforeseen to be reckoned with; and that is how it came that the poor Nabob suddenly felt a wave of blood blind him, a cry of rage strangle itself in the sudden contraction of his throat. This time his mother, his old Frances, had been dragged into the infamous joke of the "Bateau de fleurs." How well he aimed his blows, this Moessard, how well he knew the really sensitive spots in that heart, so frankly exposed!

"Be quiet, Jansoulet; be quiet."

It was in vain that he repeated the words to himself again and again: anger, a wild anger, that intoxication of the blood that demands blood, took possession of him. His first impulse was to hail a cab, that he might escape from the irritating street, free his body from the preoccupation of walking and maintaining a physical composure--to hail a cab as for a wounded man. But the carriages which thronged the square at that hour of general home-going were victorias, landaus, private broughams, hundreds of them, passing down from the lurid splendour of the Arc de Triomphe towards the violet shadows of the Tuileries, rushing, it seemed, one over another, in the sloping perspective of the avenue, down to the great square where the motionless statues, with their circular crowns on their brows, watched them as they separated towards the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the Rue Royale and the Rue de Rivoli.

Jansoulet, his newspaper in his hand, traversed this tumult without giving it a thought, carried by force of habit towards the club where he went every day for his game of cards from six to seven. A public man, he was that still; but excited, speaking aloud, muttering oaths and threats in a voice that had suddenly grown tender again at the memory of the dear old woman. To have dragged her into that--her also! Oh, if she should read it, if she should understand! What punishment could he invent for such an infamy? He had reached the Rue Royale, up which were disappearing with the speed of horses that knew they were going home and with glancings of shining axles, visions of veiled women, heads of fair-haired children, equipages of all kinds returning from the Bois, depositing a little genuine earth upon the Paris pavement, and bringing odours of spring mingled with the scent of _poudre de riz_.

Opposite the Ministry of Marine, a very high phaeton on light wheels, rather like a great spider, its body represented by the little groom hanging on to the box and the two persons occupying the front seat, just missed a collision with the curb as it turned the corner.

The Nabob raised his head and stifled a cry.

Beside a painted woman, with red hair and wearing a tiny hat with wide strings, who, perched on her leathern cushion, sat leaning stiffly forward, hands, eyes, her whole factitious person intent on driving the horse, there sat, pink and made-up also, grown fat with the same vices, Moessard, the handsome Moessard--the harlot and the journalist; and of the two, it was not the woman who had sold herself the most. High above those women reclining in their open carriages, those men opposite them half buried beneath the flounces of their gowns, all those poses of fatigue and weariness which the overfed exhibit in public as in contempt of pleasure and riches, they lorded it insolently, she very proud to be seen driving with the lover of the Queen, and he without the least shame in sitting beside a creature who hooked men in the drives of the Bois with the lash of her whip, removed on her high-perched seat from all fear of the salutary raids of the police. Perhaps, in order to whet the appetite of his royal mistress, he chose to parade beneath her windows in company of Suzanne Bloch, known as Suze the Red.

"Hep! hep, then!"

The horse, a high trotter with slim legs, just such a horse as a _cocotte_ would care to own, recovered from its swerve and resumed its proper place with dancing steps, graceful pawings executed on the same spot without advancing. Jansoulet let fall his portfolio, and as though he had dropped with it all his gravity, his prestige as a public man, he made a terrible spring, and dashed to the bit of the animal, which he held firm with his strong, hairy hands.

A carriage forcibly stopped in the Rue Royale, and in broad daylight--only this Tartar would have dared such a stroke as that!

"Get down!" said he to Moessard, whose face had turned green and yellow when he saw him. "Get down immediately!"

"Will you let go my horse, you bloated idiot! Whip up Suzanne; it is the Nabob."

She tried to gather up the reins, but the animal, held firmly, reared so sharply that a little more and like a sling the fragile vehicle would have sent everybody in it flying far away. At this, furious with one of those plebeian rages which in women of her kind shatter all the veneer of their luxury, she dealt the Nabob two stinging lashes with her whip, which left little trace on his tanned and hardened face, but which brought there a ferocious expression, accentuated by the short nose which had turned white and was slit at the end like that of a sporting terrier.

"Come down, or, by God, I will upset the whole thing!"

Amid an eddy of carriages arrested by the block in the traffic, or that passed slowly round the obstacle, with thousands of curious eyes, amid cries of coachmen and clinking of bits, two wrists of iron shook the entire vehicle.

"Jump--but jump, I tell you! Don't you see he will have us over? What a grip!"

And the woman looked at the Hercules with interest.

Hardly had Moessard set foot to the ground, and before he could take refuge on the pavement, whither the black military caps of policemen could be seen hastening, Jansoulet threw himself upon him, lifted him by the back of the neck like a rabbit, and, careless of his protestations and his terrified stammerings:

"Yes, yes, I will give you satisfaction, you blackguard! But, first, I intend to do to you what is done to dirty beasts to prevent them from repeating the same offence."

And roughly he set to work rubbing his nose and face all over with his newspaper, which he had rolled into a ball, stifling him, blinding him with it, and making scratches from which the blood trickled over his skin. The man was dragged from his hands, crimson, suffocated. A little more and he would have killed him.

The struggle over, pulling down his sleeves, adjusting his crumpled linen, picking up his portfolio out of which the papers of the Sarigue election were flying scattered even to the gutter, the Nabob answered the policemen who were asking him for his name in order to draw up a summons:

"Bernard Jansoulet, Deputy for Corsica."

A public man!

Only then did he remember that he was one. Who would have suspected it, seeing him breathless and bare-headed, like a porter after a street fight, under the eager, coldly mocking glances of the crowd? _

Read next: Chapter 17. The Apparition

Read previous: Chapter 15. Memoirs Of An Office Porter In The Antchamber

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