The Nabob by Alphonse Daudet (good english books to read TXT) 📖

bored tone which was one of the characteristics of his distinction.
"And who was your companion, doctor, last night? That huge, bronzed Tartar who was laughing so loudly in the front of your box."
"It was the Nabob, _Monsieur le Duc_. The famous Jansoulet, about whom people are talking so much just now."
"I ought to have guessed it. The whole house was watching him. The actresses played for him alone. You know him? What sort of man is he?"
"I know him. That is to say, I attend him professionally.--Thank you, my dear duke, I have finished. All is right in that region.--When he arrived in Paris a month ago, he had found the change of climate somewhat trying. He sent for me, and since then has received me upon the most friendly footing. What I know of him is that he possesses a colossal fortune, made in Tunis, in the service of the Bey, that he has a loyal heart, a generous soul, in which the ideas of humanity--"
"In Tunis?" interrupted the duke, who was by nature very little sentimental and humanitarian. "In that case, why this name of Nabob?"
"Bah! the Parisians do not look at things so closely. For them, every rich foreigner is a nabob, no matter whence he comes. Furthermore, this nabob has all the physical qualities for the part--a copper-coloured skin, eyes like burning coals, and, what is more, gigantic wealth, of which he makes, I do not fear to say it, the most noble and the most intelligent use. It is to him that I owe"--here the doctor assumed a modest air--"that I owe it that I have at last been able to found the Bethlehem Society for the suckling of infants, which a morning paper, that I was looking over just now--the _Messenger_, I think--calls 'the great philanthropic idea of the century.'"
The duke threw a listless glance over the sheet which Jenkins held out to him. He was not the man to be caught by the turn of an advertisement.
"He must be very rich, this M. Jansoulet," said he, coldly. "He finances Cardailhac's theatre; Monpavon gets him to pay his debts; Bois l'Hery starts a stable for him; old Schwalbach a picture gallery. It means money, all that."
Jenkins laughed.
"What will you have, my dear duke, this poor Nabob, you are his great occupation. Arriving here with the firm resolution to become a Parisian, a man of the world, he has taken you for his model in everything, and I do not conceal from you that he would very much like to study his model from a nearer standpoint."
"I know, I know. Monpavon has already asked my permission to bring him to see me. But I prefer to wait; I wish to see. With these great fortunes that come from so far away one has to be careful. _Mon Dieu_! I do not say that if I should meet him elsewhere than in my own house, at the theatre, in a drawing-room----"
"As it just happens, Mrs. Jenkins is proposing to give a small party next month. If you would do us the honour----"
"I shall be glad to come, my dear doctor, and if your Nabob should chance to be there I should make no objection to his being presented to me."
At this moment the usher on duty opened the door.
"Monsieur the Minister of the Interior is in the blue salon. He has only one word to say to his excellency. Monsieur the Prefect of Police is still waiting downstairs, in the gallery."
"Very well," said the duke, "I am coming. But I should like first to finish the matter of this costume. Let us see--friend, what's your name--what are we deciding upon for these ruffs? Au revoir, doctor. There is nothing to be done, is there, except to continue the pills?"
"Continue the pills," said Jenkins, bowing; and he left the room beaming with delight at the two pieces of good fortune which were befalling him at the same time--the honour of entertaining the duke and the pleasure of obliging his dear Nabob. In the antechamber, the crowd of petitioners through which he passed was still more numerous than at his entry; newcomers had joined those who had been patiently waiting from the first, others were mounting the staircase, with busy look and very pale, and in the courtyard the carriages continued to arrive, and to range themselves on ranks in a circle, gravely, solemnly, while the question of the sleeve ruffs was being discussed upstairs with not less solemnity.
"To the club," said Jenkins to his coachman.
The brougham bowled along the quays, recrossed the bridges, reached the Place de la Concorde, which already no longer wore the same aspect as an hour earlier. The fog was lifting in the direction of the Garde-Meuble and the Greek temple of the Madeleine, allowing to be dimly distinguished here and there the white plume of a jet of water, the arcade of a palace, the upper portion of a statue, the tree-clumps of the Tuileries, grouped in chilly fashion near the gates. The veil, not raised, but broken in places, disclosed fragments of horizon; and on the avenue which leads to the Arc de Triomphe could be seen brakes passing at full trot laden with coachmen and jobmasters, dragoons of the Empress, fuglemen bedizened with lace and covered with furs, going two by two in long files with a jangling of bits and spurs, and the snorting of fresh horses, the whole lighted by a sun still invisible, the light issuing from the misty atmosphere, and here and there withdrawing into it again as if offering a fleeting vision of the morning luxury of that quarter of the town.
Jenkins alighted at the corner of the Rue Royale. From top to bottom of the great gambling house the servants were passing to and fro, shaking the carpets, airing the rooms where the fume of cigars still hung about and heaps of fine glowing ashes were crumbling away at the back of the hearths, while on the green tables, still vibrant with the night's play, there stood burning a few silver candlesticks whose flames rose straight in the wan light of day. The noise, the coming and going, ceased at the third floor, where sundry members of the club had their apartments. Among them was the Marquis de Monpavon, whose abode Jenkins was now on his way to visit.
"What! It is you, doctor? The devil take it! What is the time then? I'm not visible."
"Not even for the doctor?"
"Oh, for nobody. Question of etiquette, _mon cher_. No matter, come in all the same. You'll warm your feet for a moment while Francis finishes doing my hair."
Jenkins entered the bed-chamber, a banal place like all furnished apartments, and moved towards the fire on which there were set to heat curling-tongs of all sizes, while in the contiguous laboratory, separated from the room by a curtain of Algerian tapestry, the Marquis de Monpavon gave himself up to the manipulations of his valet. Odours of patchouli, of cold-cream, of hartshorn, and of singed hair escaped from the part of the room which was shut off, and from time to time, when Francis came to fetch a curling-iron, Jenkins caught sight of a huge dressing-table laden with a thousand little instruments of ivory, and mother-of-pearl, with steel files, scissors, puffs, and brushes, with bottles, with little trays, with cosmetics, labelled and arranged methodically in groups and lines; and amid all this display, awkward and already shaky, an old man's hand, shrunken and long, delicately trimmed and polished about the nails like that of a Japanese painter, which faltered about among this fine hardware and doll's china.
While continuing the process of making up his face, the longest, the most complicated of his morning occupations, Monpavon chatted with the doctor, told of his little ailments, and the good effect of the _pills_. They made him young again, he said. And at a distance, thus, without seeing him, one would have taken him for the Duc de Mora, to such a degree had he usurped his manner of speech. There were the same unfinished phrases, ended by "ps, ps, ps," muttered between the teeth, expressions like "What's its name?" "Who was it?" constantly thrown into what he was saying, a kind of aristocratic stutter, fatigued, listless, wherein you might perceive a profound contempt for the vulgar art of speech. In the society of which the duke was the centre, every one sought to imitate that accent, those disdainful intonations with an affectation of simplicity.
Jenkins, finding the sitting rather long, had risen to take his departure.
"Adieu, I must be off. We shall see you at the Nabob's?"
"Yes, I intend to be there for luncheon. Promised to bring him--what's his name. Who was it? What? You know, for our big affair--ps, ps, ps. Were it not for that, should gladly stay away. Real menagerie, that house."
The Irishman, despite his benevolence, agreed that the society was rather mixed at his friend's. But then! One could hardly blame him for it. The poor fellow, he knew no better.
"Neither knows nor is willing to learn," remarked Monpavon with bitterness. "Instead of consulting people of experience--ps, ps, ps--first sponger that comes along. Have you seen the horses that Bois l'Hery has persuaded him to buy? Absolute rubbish those animals. And he paid twenty thousand francs for them. We may wager that Bois l'Hery got them for six thousand."
"Oh, for shame--a nobleman!" said Jenkins, with the indignation of a lofty soul refusing to believe in baseness.
Monpavon continued, without seeming to hear:
"All that because the horses came from Mora's stable."
"It is true that the dear Nabob's heart is very full of the duke. I am about to make him very happy, therefore, when I inform him----"
The doctor paused, embarrassed.
"When you inform him of what, Jenkins?"
Somewhat abashed, Jenkins had to confess that he had obtained permission from his excellency to present to him his friend Jansoulet. Scarcely had he finished his sentence before a tall spectre, with flabby face and hair and whiskers diversely coloured, bounded from the dressing-room into the chamber, with his two hands folding round a fleshless but very erect neck a dressing-gown of flimsy silk with violet spots, in which he was wrapped like a sweetmeat in its paper. The most striking thing about this mock-heroic physiognomy was a large curved nose all shiny with cold cream, and an eye alive, keen, too young, too bright, for the heavy and wrinkled eyelid which covered it. Jenkins's patients all had that eye.
Monpavon must indeed have been deeply moved to show himself thus devoid of all prestige. In point of fact, with white lips and a changed voice he addressed the doctor quickly, without the lisp this time, and in a single outburst:
"Come now, _mon cher_, no tomfoolery between us, eh? We are both met before the same dish, but I leave you your share. I intend that you shall leave me mine."
And Jenkins's air of astonishment did not make him pause. "Let this be said once for all. I have promised the Nabob to present him to the duke, just as, formerly, I presented you. Do not mix yourself up, therefore, with what concerns me alone."
Jenkins laid his hand on his heart, protested his innocence. He had never had any intention. Certainly Monpavon was too intimate a friend of the duke, for any other--How could he have supposed?
"I suppose nothing," said the old nobleman, calmer but still cold. "I merely desired to have a very clear explanation with you on this subject."
The Irishman extended a widely opened hand.
"My dear marquis, explanations are always clear between men of honour."
"Honour is a big word, Jenkins. Let us say people of deportment--that suffices."
And that