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

phrases are only an additional insult. The fact is that I am driven out--turned into the street like a servant."
"Oh, madame, madame! The situation is cruel enough, don't let us make it worse by hard words. In the evolution of his _modus vivendi_ M. Jenkins has to separate from you, but he does so with the greatest pain to himself; and the proposals which I am charged to make are a proof of his sentiments for you. First, as to furniture and clothes, I am authorized to let you take--"
"That will do," said she. She flew to the bell. "I am going out. Quick--my hat, my mantle, anything, never mind what. I am in a hurry."
And while they went to fetch her what she wanted she said:
"Everything here belongs to M. Jenkins. Let him dispose of it as he likes. I want nothing from him. Don't insist; it is useless."
The man did not insist. His mission fulfilled, the rest mattered little to him.
Steadily, coldly, she arranged her hat carefully before the glass, the maid fastening her veil, and arranging on her shoulders the folds of her mantle, then she looked round her and considered for a moment whether she was forgetting anything precious to her. No, nothing--her son's letters were in her pocket, she never allowed them to be away from her.
"Madame does not wish for the carriage?"
"No." And she left the house.
It was about five o'clock. At that moment Bernard Jansoulet was crossing the doorway of the legislative chamber, his mother on his arm; but poignant as was the drama enacted there, this one surpassed it--more sudden, unforeseen, and without any stage effects. A drama between four walls, improvised in Paris day by day. Perhaps it is this which gives that vibration to the air of the city, that tremor which forces the nerves into activity. The weather was magnificent. The streets of the wealthy quarter, large and straight as avenues, shone in the declining light, embellished with open windows, flowery balconies, and patches of green seen on the boulevards, light and soft among the narrow, hard prospects of stone. Mme. Jenkins hurried in this direction, walking aimlessly, in a dull stupor. What a horrible crash! Five minutes ago rich, surrounded by all the respect and comfort of easy circumstances. Now--nothing. Not even a roof to sleep under, not even a name. The street!
Where was she to go? What would become of her?
At first she had thought of her son. But, to acknowledge her fault, to blush before her own child, to weep while taking from him the right to console her, was more than she could do. No, there was nothing for her but death. To die as soon as possible, to escape shame by a complete disappearance, to unravel in this way an inextricable situation. But where to die! How? There are so many ways of departure! And she called them all up mentally while she walked. Life flowed around her, its luxury at this time of the year in full flower, round the Madeleine and its market, in a space marked off by the perfume of carnations and roses. On the wide footpath were well-dressed women whose skirts mingled their rustle with the trembling of the young leaves; there was some of the pleasure here of a meeting in a drawing-room, an air of acquaintance among the passers-by, of smiles and discreet greetings in passing. And all at once Mme. Jenkins, anxious lest her features might betray her, fearing what might be thought if any one saw her rushing on so blindly, slackened her pace to the aimless gait of an afternoon walk, stopping here and there. The light materials of the dresses spoke of summer, of the country; a thin skirt for the sandy paths of the parks, gauze-trimmed hats for the seaside, fans, sunshades. Her fixed eyes fastened on these trifles without seeing them; but in a vague and pale reflection in the clear windows she saw her image, lying motionless on the bed of some hotel, the leaden sleep of a poison in her head; or, down there, beyond the walls, among the slime of some sunken boat. Which of the two was better?
She hesitated, considered, compared; then, her decision made, started off with the resolved air of a woman tearing herself regretfully from the temptations of the window. As she moved away, the Marquis de Monpavon, proud and well-dressed, a flower in his coat, saluted her at a distance with that sweep of the hat so dear to women's vanity, the well-bred brow, with the hat lifted high above the erect head. She answered him with her pretty Parisian's greeting, expressed in an imperceptible inclination of the body and a smile; and seeing this exchange of politeness in the midst of the spring gaiety, one would never think that the same sinister idea was guiding the two, meeting by chance on the road they were traversing in opposite directions, but to the same end.
The prediction of Mora's valet had come true for the marquis: "We may die or lose power; then there will be a reckoning, and it will be terrible." It was terrible. The former receiver-general had obtained with difficulty a delay of a fortnight to make up his deficiencies, taking the last chance that Jansoulet, with his election confirmed, and with full control over his millions again, would come to the rescue once more. The decision of the Assembly had just taken from him this last hope. As soon as he knew it, he returned to the club calmly, and went up to his room, where Francis was waiting impatiently for him with an important paper just arrived. It was a notification to the Sieur Louis-Marie-Agenor de Monpavon to appear the next day in the office of the Juge d'Instruction. Was it addressed to the censor of the Territorial Bank or to the former receiver-general? In any case, the bold formula of a judicial assignation in the first instance, instead of a private invitation, spoke sufficiently of the gravity of the situation and the firm resolution of Justice.
In view of such an extremity, foreseen and expected for long, he had made his plans. A Monpavon in the criminal courts!--a Monpavon, librarian in a convict prison! Never! He put all his affairs in order, tore up his papers, emptied his pockets carefully, and took something from his toilet-table, so calmly and naturally, that when he said to Francis, as he was going out, "Am going to the baths--That dirty Chamber--Filthy dust"--the servant took him at his word. And the marquis was not lying. His exciting post up there in the dust of the tribune had tired him as much as two nights in the train; and his decision to die associated itself with his desire to take a bath, the old Sybarite thought of going to sleep in the bath, like what's his name, and other famous personages of antiquity. And in justice, it must be said that not one of these Stoics went to his death more quietly than he.
With a white camellia in his buttonhole, above his rosette of the Legion of Honour, he was going up the Boulevard des Capucines with a light step, when the sight of Mme. Jenkins troubled his serenity for a moment. She had a youthful air, a light in her eyes, something so piquant that he stopped to look at her. Tall and beautiful, with her long dress of black gauze, her shoulders wrapped in a lace mantle, her hat trimmed with a garland of autumn leaves, she disappeared in the midst of other elegant women in the balmy atmosphere; and the thought that his eyes were going to close forever on this delightful sight, whose pleasures he knew so well, saddened Monpavon a little, and took the spring from his step. But a few paces farther on, a meeting of another kind gave him back all his courage.
Some one, threadbare, shamefaced, dazzled by the light, was coming down the Boulevard. It was old Marestang, former senator, former minister, so deeply compromised in the affairs of the "Malta Biscuits," that, in spite of his age, his services, and the great scandal of such a proceeding, he had been condemned to two years of prison, struck off the roll of the Legion of Honour, of which he had been one of the dignitaries. The affair was long ago; the poor wretch had just been let out of prison before his sentence had expired, lost, ruined, not having even the means to gild his trouble, for he had had to pay what he owed. Standing on the curb, he was waiting with bent head till the crowds of carriages should allow him to pass, embarrassed by this stoppage at the fullest spot of the boulevards between the passers-by and the sea of open carriages filled with familiar figures. Monpavon walking near him, caught his timid, uneasy look, imploring a recognition and hiding from it at the same time. The idea that one day he could humiliate himself thus, gave him a shudder of revolt. "Oh! that is not possible!" And straightening himself up and throwing out his chest, he kept on his way, firmer and more resolute than before.
M. de Monpavon walks to his death! He goes there by the long line of the boulevards, all on fire in the direction of the Madeleine, where he treads the elastic asphalt once more as a lounger, nose in the air, hands crossed behind. He has time; there is no hurry; he is master of the rendezvous. At each instant he smiles before him, waves a greeting from the ends of his fingers or makes the more formal bow we have just seen. Everything revives him, charms him, the noise of the watering-carts, the awnings of the _cafes_, pulled down to the middle of the foot-paths. The approach of death gives him the feelings of a convalescent accessible to all the delicacy, the hidden poesy of an exquisite hour of summer in the midst of Parisian life--of an exquisite hour--his last, and which he will prolong till night. No doubt it is for that reason that he passes the sumptuous establishment where he ordinarily takes his bath. He does not stop either at the Chinese Baths. He is too well known here. All Paris would know of it the same evening. There would be a scandal of bad taste, much coarse rumour about his death in the clubs and drawing-rooms. And the old sensualist, the well-bred man, wishes to spare himself this shame, to plunge and be swallowed up in the vague anonymity of suicide, like those soldiers who, after great battles, neither wounded, dead, or living, are simply put down as "missing." That is why he has nothing on him which can be recognised, or furnish a hint to the inquiries of the police, why he seeks in this immense Paris the distant quarter where will open for him the terrible but oblivious confusion of the pauper's grave. Already, since Monpavon has been walking, the aspect of the boulevard has changed. The crowd has become more compact, more active, and preoccupied, the houses smaller, marked with signs of commerce. When the gates of Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin are passed, with their overflow from the faubourgs, the provincial physiognomy of the town accentuates itself. The old beau no longer knows any one, and can congratulate himself on being unknown.
The shopkeepers looking curiously after him, with his fine linen, his well-cut coat, and good figure, take him for some famous actor strolling on the boulevard--witness of his first triumphs--before the play begins. The wind freshens, the twilight softens the distances, and while the long road behind him still glitters, it grows darker now at every step--like the past, with its retrospections to him who looks back and regrets. It seems to