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

escape from it to the back of the carriage, where she remained exhausted with eyes closed, while old Crenmitz, believing her nervousness to be grief, did her best to comfort her, herself wept over their separation, and hiding also, left the entire window of the cab to the big Algerian hound with his finely modelled head scenting the wind, and his two paws resting in the sash with an heraldic stiffness of pose. Finally, after a thousand interminable windings, the cab suddenly came to a halt, jolted on again with difficulty amid cries and abuse, then, tossed about, the luggage on top threatening its equilibrium, it ended by coming to a full stop, held prisoner, as it were, at anchor.
"_Bon Dieu!_ what a mass of people!" murmured the Crenmitz, terrified.
Felicia came out of her stupor.
"Where are we?"
Under a colourless, smoky sky, blotted out by a fine network of rain and stretched like gauze over everything, there lay an immense space filled by an ocean of humanity surging from all the streets that led to it, and motionless around a lofty column of bronze, which dominated this sea like the gigantic mast of a sunken vessel. Cavalry in squadrons, with swords drawn, guns in batteries stood at intervals along an open passage, awaiting him who was to come by, perhaps in order to try to retake him, to carry him off by force from the formidable enemy who was bearing him away. Alas! all the cavalry charges, all the guns could be of no avail here. The prisoner was departing, firmly guarded, defended by a triple wall of hardwood, metal, and velvet, impervious to grape-shot; and it was not from those soldiers that he could hope for his deliverance.
"Get away from this. I will not stay here," said Felicia, furious, plucking at the wet box-coat of the driver, and seized by a wild dread at the thought of the nightmare which was pursuing her, of _that_ which she could hear coming in a frightful rumbling, still distant, but growing nearer from minute to minute. At the first movement of the wheels, however, the cries and shouts broke out anew. Thinking that he would be allowed to cross the square, the driver had penetrated with great difficulty to the front ranks of the crowd; it now closed behind him and refused to allow him to go forward. There they had to remain, to endure those odours of common people and of alcohol, those curious glances, already fired by the prospect of an exceptional spectacle. They stared rudely at the beautiful traveller who was starting off with so many trunks, and a dog of such size for her defender. Crenmitz was horribly afraid; Felicia, for her part, could think of only one thing, and that was that _he_ was about to pass before her eyes, that she would be in the front rank to see him.
Suddenly a great shout "Here it comes!" Then silence fell on the whole square at last at the end of three weary hours of waiting.
It came.
Felicia's first impulse was to lower the blind on her side, on the side past which the procession was about to pass. But at the rolling of the drums close at hand, seized by the nervous wrath at her inability to escape the obsession of the thing, perhaps also infected by the morbid curiosity around her, she suddenly let the blind fly up, and her pale and passionate little face showed itself at the window, supported by her two clinched hands.
"There! since you will have it: I am watching you."
As a funeral it was as fine a thing as can be seen, the supreme honours rendered in all their vain splendour, as sonorous, as hollow as the rhythmic accompaniment on the muffled drums. First the white surplices of the clergy, amid the mourning drapery of the first five carriages; next, drawn by six black horses, veritable horses of Erebus, there advanced the funeral car, all beplumed, fringed and embroidered in silver, with big tears, heraldic coronets surmounting gigantic M's, prophetic initials which seemed those of Death himself, _La Mort_ made a duchess decorated with the eight waving plumes. So many canopies and massive hangings hid the vulgar body of the hearse, as it trembled and quivered at each step from top to bottom as though crushed beneath the majesty of its dead burden. On the coffin, the sword, the coat, the embroidered hat, parade undress--which had never been worn--shone with gold and mother-of-pearl in the darkened little tent formed by the hangings and among the bright tints of fresh flowers telling of spring in spite of the sullenness of the sky. At a distance of ten paces came the household servants of the duke; then, behind, in majestic isolation, the cloaked officer bearing the emblems of honour--a veritable display of all the orders of the whole world--crosses, multicoloured ribbons, which covered to overflowing the cushion of black velvet with silver fringe.
The master of ceremonies came next, in front of the representatives of the Legislative Assembly--a dozen deputies chosen by lot, among them the tall figure of the Nabob, wearing the official costume for the first time, as if ironical Fortune had desired to give to the representative on probation a foretaste of all parliamentary joys. The friends of the dead man, who followed, formed a rather small group, singularly well chosen to exhibit in its crudity the superficiality and the void of that existence of a great personage reduced to the intimacy of a theatrical manager thrice bankrupt, of a picture-dealer grown wealthy through usuary, of a nobleman of tarnished reputation, and of a few men about town without distinction. Up to this point everybody was walking on foot and bareheaded; among the parliamentary representatives there were only a few black skull-caps, which had been put on timidly as they approached the populous districts. After them the carriages began.
At the death of a great warrior it is the custom for the funeral convoy to be followed by the favourite horse of the hero, his battle charger, regulating to the slow step of the procession that dancing step excited by the smell of powder and the pageantry of standards. In this case, Mora's great brougham, that "C-spring" which used to bear him to fashionable or political gatherings, took the place of that companion in victory, its panels draped with black, its lamps veiled in long streamers of light crape, floating to the ground with undulating feminine grace. These veiled lamps constituted a new fashion for funerals--the supreme "chic" of mourning; and it well became this dandy to give a last lesson in elegance to the Parisians, who flocked to his obsequies as to a "Longchamps" of death.
Three more masters of ceremony; then came the impassive official procession, always the same for marriages, deaths, baptisms, openings of Parliament, or receptions of sovereigns, the interminable cortege of glittering carriages, with large windows and showy liveries bedizened with gilt, which passed through the midst of the dazzled people, to whom they recalled fairy-tales, Cinderella chariots, while evoking those "Oh's!" of admiration that mount and die away with the rockets on the evenings of firework displays. And in the crowd there was always to be found some good-natured policeman, some learned little grocer sauntering round on the lookout for public ceremonies, ready to name in a loud voice all the people in the carriages, as they defiled past, with their regulation escorts of dragoons, cuirassiers, or Paris guards.
First the representatives of the Emperor, the Empress and all the Imperial family; after these, in the hierarchic order, cunningly elaborated, and the least infraction of which might have been the cause of grave conflicts between the various departments of the State--the members of the Privy Council, the Marshals, the Admirals, the High Chancellor of the Legion of Honour; then the Senate, the Legislative Assembly, the Council of State, the whole organization of the law and of the university, the costumes, the ermine, the headgear of which took you back to the days of old Paris--an air of something stately and antiquated, out of date in our sceptical epoch of the workman's blouse and the dress-coat.
Felicia, to avoid her thoughts, voluntarily fixed her eyes upon this monotonous defile, exasperating in its length; and little by little a torpor stole over her, as if on a rainy day she had been turning over the leaves of an album of engravings, a history of official costumes from the most remote times down to our own day. All these people, seen in profile, still and upright, behind the large glass panes of the carriage windows, had indeed the appearance of personages in coloured plates, sitting well forward on the edge of the seats in order that the spectators should miss nothing of their golden embroideries, their palm-leaves, their galloons, their braids--puppets given over to the curiosity of the crowd--and exposing themselves to it with an air of indifference and detachment.
Indifference! That was the most special characteristic of this funeral. It was to be felt everywhere, on people's faces and in their hearts, as well among these functionaries of whom the greater part had only known the duke by sight, as in the ranks on foot between his hearse and his brougham, his closest friends, or those who had been in daily attendance upon him. The fat minister, Vice-President of the Council, seemed indifferent, and even glad, as he held in his powerful fist the strings of the pall and seemed to draw it forward, in more haste than the horses and the hearse to conduct to his six feet of earth the enemy of twenty years' standing, the eternal rival, the obstacle to all his ambitions. The other three dignitaries did not advance with the same vigour, and the long cords floated loosely in their weary or careless hands with significant slackness. The priests were indifferent by profession. Indifferent were the servants of his household, whom he never called anything but "_chose_," and whom he treated really like "things." Indifferent was M. Louis, for whom it was the last day of servitude, a slave become emancipated, rich enough to enjoy his ransom. Even among the intimate friends of the dead man this glacial cold had penetrated. Yet some of them had been deeply attached to him. But Cardailhac was too busy superintending the order and the progress of the procession to give way to the least emotion, which would, besides, have been foreign to his nature. Old Monpavon, stricken to the heart, would have considered the least bending of his linen cuirass and of his tall figure a piece of deplorably bad taste, totally unworthy of his illustrious friend. His eyes remained as dry and glittering as ever, since the undertakers provide the tears for great mournings, embroidered in silver on black cloth. Some one was weeping, however, away yonder among the members of the committee; but he was expending his compassion very naively upon himself. Poor Nabob! softened by that music and splendour, it seemed to him that he was burying all his ambitions of glory and dignity. And his was but one more variety of indifference.
Among the public, the enjoyment of a fine spectacle, the pleasure of turning a week-day into a Sunday, dominated every other sentiment. Along the line of the boulevards, the spectators on the balconies almost seemed disposed to applaud; here, in the populous districts, irreverence was still more frankly manifest. Jests, blackguardly wit at the expense of the dead man and his doings, known to all Paris, laughter raised by the tall hats of the rabbis, the pass-word of the council experts, all were heard in the air between two rolls of the drum. Poverty, forced labour, with its feet in the wet, wearing its blouse, its apron, its cap raised from habit, with sneering chuckle watched this inhabitant of another