Was it possible, and how much of it was he to be obliged to believe?

A glance which he threw sideways at the Nabob, whose immense person almost blocked the pavement, revealed to him suddenly in that walk oppressed by the weight of his wealth, a something low and vulgar which he had not previously remarked. Yes, he was indeed the adventurer from the south, moulded of the slimy clay that covers the quays of Marseilles, trodden down by all the nomads and wanderers of a seaport. Kind, generous, forsooth! as harlots are, or thieves. And the gold, flowing in torrents through that tainted and luxurious world, splashing the very walls, seemed to him now to be loaded with all the dross, all the filth of its impure and muddy source. There remained, then, for him, de Gery, but one thing to do, to go away, to quit with all possible speed this situation in which he risked the compromising of his good name, the one heritage from his father. Doubtless. But the two little brothers down yonder in the country. Who would pay for their board and lodging? Who would keep up the modest home miraculously brought into being once more by the handsome salary of the eldest son, the head of the family? Those words, "head of the family," plunged him immediately into one of those internal combats in which interest and conscience struggled for the mastery—the one brutal, substantial, attacking vigorously with straight thrusts, the other elusive, breaking away by subtle disengagements—while the worthy Jansoulet, unconscious cause of the conflict, walked with long strides close by his young friend, inhaling the fresh air with delight at the end of his lighted cigar.

Never had he felt it such a happiness to be alive; and this evening party at Jenkins's, which had been his own first real entry into society as well as de Gery's, had left with him an impression of porticoes erected as for a triumph, of an eagerly assembled crowd, of flowers thrown on his path. So true is it that things only exist through the eyes that observe them. What a success! the duke, as he took leave of him inviting him to come to see his picture gallery, which meant the doors of Mora House opened to him within a week. Felicia Ruys consenting to do his bust, so that at the next exhibition the son of the nail-dealer would have his portrait in marble by the same great artist who had signed that of the Minister of State. Was it not the satisfaction of all his childish vanities?

And each pondering his own thoughts, sombre or glad, they continued to walk shoulder to shoulder, absorbed and so absent in mind that the Place Vendome, silent and bathed in a blue and chilly light, rang under their steps before a word had been uttered between them.

"Already?" said the Nabob. "I should not at all have minded walking a little longer. What do you say?" And while they strolled two or three times around the square, he gave vent in spasmodic bursts to the immense joy which filled him.

"How pleasant the air is! How one can breathe! Thunder of God! I would not have missed this evening's party for a hundred thousand francs. What a worthy soul that Jenkins is! Do you like Felicia Ruys's style of beauty? For my part, I dote on it. And the duke, what a great gentleman! so simple, so kind. A fine place, Paris, is it not, my son?"

"It is too complicated for me. It frightens me," answered Paul de Gery in a hollow voice.

"Yes, yes, I understand," replied the other with an adorable fatuity. "You are not yet accustomed to it; but, never mind, one quickly becomes so. See how after a single month I find myself at my ease."

"That is because it is not your first visit to Paris. You have lived here."

"I? Never in my life. Who told you that?"

"Indeed! I thought—" answered the young man; and immediately, a host of reflections crowding into his mind:

"What, then, have you done to this Baron Hemerlingue? It is a hatred to the death between you."

For a moment the Nabob was taken aback. That name of Hemerlingue, thrown suddenly into his glee, recalled to him the one annoying episode of the evening.

"To him as to the others," said he in a saddened voice, "I have never done anything save good. We began together in poverty. We made progress and prospered side by side. Whenever he wished to try a flight on his own wings, I always aided and supported him to the best of my ability. It was I who during ten consecutive years secured for him the contracts for the fleet and the army; almost his whole fortune came from that source. Then one fine morning this slow-blooded imbecile of a Bernese goes crazy over an odalisk whom the mother of the Bey had caused to be expelled from the harem. The hussy was beautiful and ambitious, she made him marry her, and naturally, after this brilliant match, Hemerlingue was obliged to leave Tunis. Somebody had persuaded him to believe that I was urging the Bey to close the principality to him. It was not true. On the contrary, I obtained from his Highness permission for Hemerlingue's son—a child by his first wife—to remain in Tunis in order to look after their suspended interests, while the father came to Paris to found his banking-house. Moreover, I have been well rewarded for my kindness. When, at the death of my poor Ahmed, the Mouchir, his brother, ascended the throne, the Hemerlingues, restored to favour, never ceased to work for my undoing with the new master. The Bey still keeps on good terms with me; but my credit is shaken. Well, in spite of that, in spite of all the shabby tricks that Hemerlingue has played me, that he plays me still, I was ready this evening to hold out my hand to him. Not only does the blackguard refuse it, but he causes me to be insulted by his wife, a savage and evil-disposed creature, who does not pardon me for always having declined to receive her in Tunis. Do you know what she called me just now as she passed me? 'Thief and son of a dog.' As free in her language as that, the odalisk—That is to say, that if I did not know my Hemerlingue to be as cowardly as he is fat—After all, bah! let them say what they like. I snap my fingers at them. What can they do against me? Ruin me with the Bey? That is a matter of indifference to me. There is nothing any longer for me to do in Tunis, and I shall withdraw myself from the place altogether as soon as possible. There is only one town, one country in the world, and that is Paris—Paris welcoming, hospitable, not prudish, where every intelligent man may find space to do great things. And I, now, do you see, de Gery, I want to do great things. I have had enough of mercantile life. For twenty years I have worked for money; to-day I am greedy of glory, of consideration, of fame. I want to be somebody in the history of my country, and that will be easy for me. With my immense fortune, my knowledge of men and of affairs, the things I know I have here in my head, nothing is beyond my reach and I aspire to everything. Believe me, therefore, my dear boy, never leave me"—one would have said that he was replying to the secret thought of his young companion—"remain faithfully on board my ship. The masts are firm; I have my bunkers full of coal. I swear to you that we shall go far, and quickly, nom d'un sort!"

The ingenuous southerner thus poured out his projects into the night with many expressive gestures, and from time to time, as they walked rapidly to and fro in the vast and deserted square, majestically surrounded by its silent and closed palaces, he raised his head towards the man of bronze on the column, as though taking to witness that great upstart whose presence in the midst of Paris authorizes all ambitions, endows every chimera with probability.

There is in young people a warmth of heart, a need of enthusiasm which is awakened by the least touch. As the Nabob talked, de Gery felt his suspicion take wing and all his sympathy return, together with a shade of pity. No, very certainly this man was not a rascal, but a poor, illuded being whose fortune had gone to his head like a wine too heavy for a stomach long accustomed to water. Alone in the midst of Paris, surrounded by enemies and people ready to take advantage of him, Jansoulet made upon him the impression of a man on foot laden with gold passing through some evil-haunted wood, in the dark and unarmed. And he reflected that it would be well for the protege to watch, without seeming to do so, over the protector, to become the discerning Telemachus of the blind Mentor, to point out to him the quagmires, to defend him against the highwaymen, to aid him, in a word, in his combats amid all that swarm of nocturnal ambuscades which he felt were prowling ferociously around the Nabob and his millions.



THE JOYEUSE FAMILY

Every morning of the year, at exactly eight o'clock, a new and almost tenantless house in a remote quarter of Paris, echoed to cries, calls, merry laughter, ringing clear in the desert of the staircase:

"Father, don't forget my music."

"Father, my crochet wool."

"Father, bring us some rolls."

And the voice of the father calling from below:

"Yaia, bring me down my portfolio, please."

"There you are, you see! He has forgotten his portfolio."

And there would be a glad scurry from top to bottom of the house, a running of all those pretty faces confused by sleep, of all those heads with disordered hair which the owners made tidy as they ran, until the moment when, leaning over the baluster, half a dozen girls bade loud good-bye to a little, old gentleman, neat and well-groomed, whose reddish face and short profile disappeared at length in the spiral perspective of the stairs. M. Joyeuse had departed for his office. At once the whole band, escaped from their cage, would rush quickly upstairs again to the fourth floor, and, the door having been opened, group themselves at an open casement to gain one last glimpse of their father. The little man used to turn round, kisses were exchanged across the distance, then the windows were closed, the new and tenantless house became quiet again, except for the posters dancing their wild saraband in the wind of the unfinished street, as if made gay, they also, by all these proceedings. A moment later the photographer on the fifth floor would descend to hang at the door his showcase, always the same, in which was to be seen the old gentleman in a white tie surrounded by his daughters in various groups; he went upstairs again in his turn, and the calm which succeeded immediately upon this little morning uproar left one to imagine that the "father" and his young ladies had re-entered the case of photographs, where they remained smiling and motionless until evening.

From the Rue Saint-Ferdinand to the establishment of Hemerlingue & Son, his employers, M. Joyeuse had a good three-quarters of an hour's journey. He walked with head erect and straight, as though he had feared to disarrange the smart knot of the cravat tied by his daughters, or his hat put on by them, and when the eldest, ever anxious and prudent, just as he went out raised his coat-collar to protect him against the harsh gusts of the wind that blew round the street corner, even if the temperature were that of a hothouse M. Joyeuse would not lower it again until he reached the office, like the lover who, quitting his mistress's arms, dares not to move for fear of losing the intoxicating perfume.

A widower for some years, this worthy man lived only for his children, thought only of them, went through life surrounded by those fair little heads that fluttered around him confusedly as in a picture of the Assumption. All his desires, all his projects, bore reference to "those young ladies," returned to them without ceasing, sometimes after long circuits, for M. Joyeuse—this was connected no doubt with the fact that he possessed a short neck and a small figure whereof his turbulent blood made the circuit in a moment—was a man of fecund and astonishing imagination. In his brain the ideas performed their evolutions with the rapidity of hollow straws around a sieve. At the office, figures kept his steady attention by reason of their positive quality; but, outside, his mind took its revenge upon that inexorable occupation. The activity of the walk, the habit that led him by a route where he was familiar with the least incidents, allowed full liberty to his imaginative faculties. He invented at these times extraordinary adventures, enough of them to crank out a score of the serial stories that appear in the newspapers.

If, for example, M. Joyeuse, as he went up the Faubourg Saint-Honore, on the right-hand footwalk—he always took that one—noticed a heavy laundry-cart going along at a quick pace, driven by a woman from the country with a child perched on a bundle of linen and leaning over somewhat:

"The child!" the terrified old fellow would cry. "Have a care of the child!"

His voice would be lost in the noise of the wheels and his warning among the secrets of Providence. The cart passed. He would follow it for a moment with his eye, then resume his walk; but the drama begun in his mind would continue to unfold itself there, with a thousand catastrophes. The child had fallen. The wheels were about to pass over him. M. Joyeuse dashed forward, saved the little creature on the very brink of destruction; the pole of the cart, however, struck himself full in the chest and he fell bathed in blood. Then he would see himself borne to some chemists' shop through the crowd that had collected. He was placed in an ambulance, carried to his own house, and then suddenly he would hear the piercing cry of his daughters, his well-beloved daughters, when they beheld him in this condition. And that agonized cry touched his heart so deeply, he would hear it so distinctly, so realistically: "Papa, my dear papa," that he would himself utter it aloud in the street, to the great astonishment of the passers-by, in a hoarse voice which would wake him from his fictitious nightmare.

Will you have another sample of this prodigious imagination? It is raining, freezing; wretched weather. M. Joyeuse has taken the omnibus to go to his office. Finding himself seated opposite a sort of colossus, with the head of a brute and formidable biceps, M. Joyeuse, himself very small, very puny, with his portfolio on his knees, draws in his legs in order to make room for the enormous columns which support the monumental body of his neighbour. As the vehicle moves on and as the rain beats on the windows, M. Joyeuse falls into reverie. And suddenly the colossus opposite, whose face is kind after all, is very much surprised to see the little man change colour, look at him and grind his teeth, look at him with ferocious eyes, an assassin's eyes. Yes, with the eyes of a veritable assassin, for at that moment M. Joyeuse is dreaming a terrible dream. He sees one of his daughters sitting there opposite him, by the side of this giant brute, and the wretch has put his arm round her waist under her cape.

"Remove your hand, sir!" M. Joyeuse has already said twice over. The other has only sneered. Now he wishes to kiss Elise.

"Ah, rascal!"

Too feeble to defend his daughter, M. Joyeuse, foaming with rage, draws his knife from his pocket, stabs the insolent fellow full in the breast, and with head high goes off, strong in the right of an outraged father, to make his declaration at the nearest police-station.

"I have just killed a man in an omnibus!" At the sound of his own voice actually uttering these sinister words, but not in the police-station, the poor fellow wakes us, guesses from the bewildered manner of the passengers that he must have spoken the words aloud, and very quickly takes advantage of the conductor's call, "Saint-Philippe—Pantheon—Bastille—" to alight, feeling greatly confused, amid general stupefaction.

This imagination constantly on the stretch, gave to M. Joyeuse a singular physiognomy, feverish and worn, in strong contrast with the general correct appearance of a subordinate clerk which he presented. In one day he lived so many passionate existences. The race is more numerous than one thinks of these waking dreamers, in whom a too restricted fate compresses forces unemployed and heroic faculties. Dreaming is the safety-valve through which all those expend themselves with terrible ebullitions, as of the vapour of a furnace and floating images that are forthwith dissipated into air. From these visions some return radiant, others exhausted and discouraged, as they find themselves once more on the every-day level. M. Joyeuse was of these latter, rising without ceasing to heights whence a man cannot but re-descend, somewhat bruised by the velocity of the transit.

Now, one morning that our "visionary" had left his house at his habitual hour, and under the usual circumstances, he began at the turning of the Rue Saint-Ferdinand one of his little private romances. As the end of the year was at hand, perhaps it was the hammer-strokes on a wooden hut which was being erected in the neighbouring timber-yard that caused his thoughts to turn to "presents—New Year's Day." And immediately the word bounty implanted itself in his mind as the first landmark of a marvelous story. In the month of December all persons in Hemerlingue's service received double pay, and you know that in small households there are founded on windfalls of this kind a thousand projects, ambitious or kind, presents to be made, a piece of furniture to be replaced, a little sum of money to be saved in a drawer against the unforeseen.

In simple fact, M. Joyeuse was not rich. His wife, a Mlle. de Saint-Armand, tormented with ideas of greatness and society, had set this little clerk's household on a ruinous footing, and though since her death three years had passed during which Bonne Maman had managed the housekeeping with so much wisdom, they had not yet been able to save anything, so heavy had proved the burden of the past. Suddenly it occurred to the good fellow that this year the bounty would be larger by reason of the increase of work which had been caused by the Tunisian loan. The loan constituted a very fine stroke of business for the firm, too fine even, for M. Joyeuse had permitted himself to remark in the office that this time "Hemerlingue & Son had shaved the Turk a little too close."

"Certainly, yes, the bounty will be doubled," reflected the visionary, as he walked; and already he saw himself, a month thence, mounting with his comrades, for the New Year's visit, the little staircase that led to Hemerlingue's apartment. He announced the good news to them; then he detained M. Joyeuse for a few words in private. And, behold, that master habitually so cold in his manner, sheathed in his yellow fat as in a bale of raw silk, became affectionate, paternal, communicative. He desired to know how many daughters Joyeuse had.

"I have three; no, I should say, four, M. le Baron. I always confuse them. The eldest is such a sensible girl."

Further he wished to know their ages.

"Aline is twenty, M. le Baron. She is the eldest. Then we have Elise, who is preparing for the examination which she must pass when she is eighteen. Henriette, who is fourteen, and Zara or Yaia who is only twelve."

That pet name of Yaia intensely amused M. le Baron, who inquired next what were the resources of this interesting family.

"My salary, M. le Baron; nothing else. I had a little money put aside, but my poor wife's illness, the education of the girls—"

"What you are earning is not sufficient, my dear Joyeuse. I raise your salary to a thousand francs a month."

"Oh, M. le Baron, it is too much."

But although he had uttered this last sentence aloud, in the ear of a policeman who watched with a mistrustful eye the little man pass, gesticulating and nodding his head, the poor visionary awoke not. With admiration he saw himself returning home, announcing the news to his daughters, taking them to the theatre in the evening in celebration of the happy day. Dieu! how pretty they looked in the front of their box, the Demoiselles Joyeuse, what a bouquet of rosy faces! And then, the next day, the two eldest asked in marriage by—Impossible to determine by whom, for M. Joyeuse had just suddenly found himself once more beneath the arch of the Hemerlingue establishment, before the swing-door surmounted by a "counting-house" in letters of gold.

"I shall always be the same, it seems," said he to himself, laughing a little and passing his hand over his forehead, on which the perspiration stood in drops.

In a good humour as the result of this pleasant fancy and at the sight of the fire crackling in the suite of parquet-floored offices, with their screens of iron trellis-work and their air of secrecy in the cold light of the ground floor, where one could count the pieces of gold without dazzling his eyes, M. Joyeuse gave a gay greeting to the other clerks and slipped on his working coat and his black velvet cap. Suddenly, some one whistled from upstairs, and the cashier, applying his ear to the tube, heard the oily and gelatinous voice of Hemerlingue, the sole and veritable Hemerlingue—the other, the son, was always absent—asking for M. Joyeuse.

What! Could the dream be continuing?

He was conscious of a great agitation; took the little inside staircase which he had seen himself ascending just before so bravely, and found himself in the banker's private room, a narrow apartment, with a very high ceiling, furnished only with green curtains and enormous leather easy chairs of a size proportioned to the terrific bulk of the head of the house. He was there, seated at his desk which his belly prevented him from approaching very closely, obese, ill-shaped, and so yellow that his round face with its hooked nose, the head of a fat and sick owl, suggested as it were a light at the end of the solemn and gloomy room. A rich Moorish merchant grown mouldy in the damp of his little court-yard. Beneath his heavy eyelids, raised with an effort, his glance glittered for a second when the accountant entered; he signed to him to approach, and slowly, coldly, pausing to take breath between his sentences, instead of "M. Joyeuse, how many daughters have you?" he said this:

"Joyeuse, you have allowed yourself to criticise in the office our last operations in the Tunis market. Useless to defend yourself. Your remarks have been reported to me word for word. And as I am unable to admit them from the mouth of one in my service, I give you notice that dating from the end of this month you cease to be a member of my establishment."

A wave of blood mounted to the accountant's face, fell back, returned again, bringing each time a confused whizzing into his ears, into his brain a tumult of thoughts and images.

His daughters!

What was to become of them?

Employment is so hard to find at that period of the year.

Poverty appeared before his eyes and also the vision of an unfortunate man falling at Hemerlingue's feet, supplicating him, threatening him, springing at his throat in an access of despairing rage. All this agitation passed over his features like a gust of wind which throws the surface of a lake into ripples, fashioning there all manner of mobile whirlpools; but he remained mute, standing in the same place, and upon the master's intimation that he could withdraw, went down with tottering step to resume his work in the counting-house.

In the evening when he went home to the Rue Saint-Ferdinand, M. Joyeuse told his daughters nothing. He did not dare. The idea of darkening that radiant gaiety which was the life of the house, of making dull with heavy tears those pretty bright eyes, was insupportable to him. Timorous, too, and weak, he was of those who always say, "Let us wait till to-morrow." He waited therefore before speaking, at first until the month of November should be ended, deluding himself with the vague hope that Hemerlingue might change his mind, as though he did not know that will as of some mollusk flabby and tenacious upon its ingot of gold. Then when his salary had been paid up and another accountant had taken his place before the high desk at which he had stood for so long, he hoped to find something else quickly and repair his misfortune before being obliged to confess it.

Every morning he feigned to start for the office, allowed himself to be equipped and accompanied to the door as usual, his huge leather portfolio all ready for the evening's numerous commissions. Although he would forget some of them on purpose because of the approaching and so problematical end of the month, he did not lack time now to execute them. He had his day to himself, the whole of an interminable day which he spent in rushing about Paris in search for an employment. People gave him addresses, excellent recommendations. But in that terrible month of December, so cold and with such short hours of daylight, bringing with it so many expenses and preoccupations, employees need to take patience and employers also. Each man tries to end the year in peace, postponing to the month of January, to that great leap of time towards a fresh halting-place, any changes, ameliorations, attempts at a new life.

In every house where M. Joyeuse presented himself, he beheld faces suddenly grow cold as soon as he explained the object of his visit.

"What! You are no longer with Hemerlingue & Son? How is that?"

He would explain the matter as best he could through a caprice of the head of the firm, the ferocious Hemerlingue whom Paris knew; but he was conscious of a coldness, a mistrust in the uniform reply which he received: "Call on us again after the holidays." And, timid as he was to begin with, he reached a point at which he could no longer bring himself to call on any one, a point at which he could walk past the same door a score of times and never have crossed its threshold at all had it not been for the thought of his daughters. This alone pushed him along by the shoulders, put heart in his legs, despatched him in the course of the same day to the opposite extremities of Paris, to very vague addresses given to him by comrades, to a great manufactory of animal black at Aubervilliers, where he was made to return for nothing three days in succession.

Oh, the journeys in the rain, in the frost, the closed doors, the master who is out or engaged, the promises given and immediately withdrawn, the hopes deceived, the enervation of hours of waiting, the humiliations reserved for every man who asks for work, as though it were a shameful thing to lack it. M. Joyeuse knew all these melancholy things and, too, the good will that tires and grows discouraged before the persistence of evil fortune. And you may imagine how the hard martyrdom of "the man who seeks a place" was rendered tenfold more bitter by the mirages of his imagination, by those chimeras which rose before him from the Paris pavements as over them he journeyed along on foot in every direction.

For a month he was one of those woeful puppets, talking in monologue, gesticulating on the footways, from whom every chance collision with the crowd wrests an exclamation as of one walking in his sleep. "I told you so," or "I have no doubt of it, sir." One passes by, almost one would laugh, but one is seized with pity before the unconsciousness of those unhappy men possessed by a fixed idea, blind whom the dream leads, drawn along by an invisible leash. The terrible thing was that after those long, cruel days of inaction and fatigue, when M. Joyeuse returned home, he had perforce to play the comedy of the man returning from his work, to recount the incidents of the day, the things he had heard, the gossip of the office with which he had been always wont to entertain his girls.

In humble homes there is always a name which comes up more often than all others, which is invoked in days of stress, which is mingled with every wish, with every hope, even with the games of the children, penetrated as they are with its importance, a name which sustains in the dwelling the part of a sub-Providence, or rather of a household divinity, familiar and supernatural. In the Joyeuse family, it was Hemerlingue, always Hemerlingue, returning ten times, twenty times a day in the conversation of the girls, who associated it with all their plans, with the most intimate details of their feminine ambitions. "If Hemerlingue would only——" "All that depends on Hemerlingue." And nothing could be more charming than the familiarity with which these young people spoke of that enormously wealthy man whom they had never seen.

They would ask for news of him. Had their father spoken to him? Was he in a good temper? And to think that we all of us, whatever our position, however humble we be, however weighed down by fate, we have always beneath us unfortunate beings more humble, yet more weighed down, for whom we are great, for whom we are as gods, and in our quality of gods, indifferent, disdainful, or cruel.

One imagines the torture of M. Joyeuse, obliged to invent stories and anecdotes about the wretch who had so ruthlessly discharged him after ten years of good service. He played his little comedy, however, so well as completely to deceive everybody. Only one thing had been remarked, and that was that father when he came home in the evening always sat down to table with a great appetite. I believe it! Since he lost his place the poor man had gone without his luncheon.

The days passed. M. Joyeuse found nothing. Yes, one place as accountant in the Territorial Bank, which he refused, however, knowing too much about banking operations, about all the corners and innermost recesses of the financial Bohemia in general, and of the Territorial bank in particular, to set foot in that den.

"But," said Passajon to him—for it was Passajon who, meeting the honest fellow and hearing that he was out of employment, had suggested to him that he should come to Paganetti's—"but since I repeat that it is serious. We have lots of money. They pay one. I have been paid. See how prosperous I look."

In effect, the old office porter had a new livery, and beneath his tunic with its buttons of silver-gilt his paunch protruded, majestic. All the same M. Joyeuse had not allowed himself to be tempted, even after Passajon, opening wide his shallow-set blue eyes, had whispered into his ear with emphasis these words rich in promises:

"The Nabob is in the concern."

Even after that, M. Joyeuse had had the courage to say No. Was it not better to die of hunger than to enter a fraudulent house of which he might perhaps one day be summoned to report upon the books in the courts?

So he continued to wander; but, discouraged, he no longer sought employ. As it was necessary that he should absent himself from home, he used to linger over the stalls on the quays, lean for hours on the parapets, watch the water flow and the unladening of the vessels. He became one of those idlers whom one sees in the first rank whenever a crowd collects in the street, taking shelter from the rain under the porches, warming himself at the stoves where, in the open air, the tar of the asphalters reeks, sinking on a bench of some boulevard when his legs could no longer carry him.

To do nothing! What a fine way of making life seem longer!

On certain days, however, when M. Joyeuse was too weary or the sky too unkind, he would wait at the end of the street until his daughters should have closed their window again and, returning to the house, keeping close to the walls, would mount the staircase very quickly, pass before his own door holding his breath, and take refuge in the apartment of the photographer Andre Maranne, who, aware of his ill-fortune, always gave him that kindly welcome which the poor have for each other. Clients are rare so near the outskirts of the town. He used to remain long hours in the studio, talking in a very low voice, reading at his friend's side, listening to the rain on the window-panes or the wind that blew as it does on the open sea, shaking the old doors and the window-sashes below in the wood-sheds. Beneath him he could hear sounds well known and full of charm, songs that escaped in the satisfaction of work accomplished, assembled laughter, the pianoforte lesson being given by Bonne Maman, the tic-tac of the metronome, all the delicious household stir that pleased his heart. He lived with his darlings, who certainly never could have guessed that they had him so near them.

Once, when Maranne was out, M. Joyeuse keeping faithful watch over the studio and its new apparatus, heard two little strokes given on the ceiling of the apartment below, two separate, very distinct strokes, then a cautious pattering of fingers, like the scamper of mice. The friendliness of the photographer with his neighbours sufficiently authorized these communications like those of prisoners. But what did they mean? How reply to what seemed a call? Quite at hazard, he repeated the two strokes, the light tapping, and the conversation ended there. On the return of Andre Maranne he learned the explanation of the incident. It was very simple. Sometimes, in the course of the day, the young ladies below, who only saw their neighbour in the evening, would inquire how things were going with him, whether any clients were coming in. The signal he had heard meant, "Is business good to-day?" And M. Joyeuse had replied, obeying only an instinct without any knowledge, "Fairly well for the season." Although young Maranne was very red as he made this affirmation, M. Joyeuse accepted his word at once. Only this idea of frequent communications between the two households made him afraid for the secrecy of his position, and from that time forward he cut himself off from what he used to call his "artistic days." Moreover, the moment was approaching when he would no longer be able to conceal his misfortune, the end of the month arriving, complicated by the ending of the year.

Paris was already assuming the holiday appearance which it wears during the last weeks of December. In the way of national or popular rejoicing it had little left but that. The follies of the Carnival died with Gavarni, the religious festivals with their peals of bells which one scarcely hears amid the noise of the streets confine themselves within their heavy church-doors, the 15th of August has never been anything but the Saint Charles-the-Great of the barracks; but Paris has maintained its observance of New Year's Day.

From the beginning of December an immense childishness begins to permeate the town. You see hand-carts pass laden with gilded drums, wooden horses, playthings by the dozen. In the industrial quarters, from top to bottom of the five-storied houses, the old private residences still standing in that low-lying district, where the warehouses have such lofty ceilings and majestic double doors, the nights are passed in the making up of gauze flowers and spangles, in the gumming of labels upon satin-lined boxes, in sorting, marking, packing, the thousand details of the toy, that great branch of commerce on which Paris places the seal of its elegance. There is a smell about of new wood, of fresh paint, glossy varnish, and, in the dust of garrets, on the wretched stairways where the poor leave behind them all the dirt through which they have passed, there lie shavings of rosewood, scraps of satin and velvet, bits of tinsel, all the debris of the luxury whose end is to dazzle the eyes of children. Then the shop-windows are decorated. Behind the panes of clear glass the gilt of presentation-books rises like a glittering wave under the gaslight, the stuffs of various and tempting colours display their brittle and heavy folds, while the young ladies behind the counter, with their hair dressed tapering to a point and with a ribbon beneath their collar, tie up the article, little finger in the air, or fill bags of moire into which the sweets fall like a rain of pearls.

But, over against this kind of well-to-do business, established in its own house, warmed, withdrawn behind its rich shop-front, there is installed the improvised commerce of those wooden huts, open to the wind of the streets, of which the double row gives to the boulevards the aspect of some foreign mall. It is in these that you find the true interest and the poetry of New Year's gifts. Sumptuous in the district of the Madeleine, well-to-do towards the Boulevard Saint-Denis, of more "popular" order as you ascend to the Bastille, these little sheds adapt themselves according to their public, calculate their chances of success by the more or less well-lined purses of the passers-by. Among these, there are set up portable tables, laden with trifling objects, miracles of the Parisian trade that deals in such small things, constructed out of nothing, frail and delicate, and which the wind of fashion sometimes sweeps forward in its great rush by reason of their very triviality. Finally, along the curbs of the footways, lost in the defile of the carriage traffic which grazes their wandering path, the orange-girls complete this peripatetic commerce, heaping up the sun-coloured fruit beneath their lanterns of red paper, crying "La Valence" amid the fog, the tumult, the excessive haste which Paris displays at the ending of its year.

Ordinarily, M. Joyeuse was accustomed to make one of the busy crowd which goes and comes with the jingle of money in its pocket and parcels in every hand. He would wander about with Bonne Maman at his side on the lookout for New Year's presents for his girls, stop before the booths of the small dealers, who are accustomed to do much business and excited by the appearance of the least important customer, have based upon this short season hopes of extraordinary profits. And there would be colloquies, reflections, an interminable perplexity to know what to select in that little complex brain of his, always ahead of the present instant and of the occupation of the moment.

This year, alas! nothing of that kind. He wandered sadly through the town in its rejoicing, time seeming to hang all the heavier for the activity around him, jostled, hustled, as all are who stand obstructing the way of active folk, his heart beating with a perpetual fear, for Bonne Maman for some days past, in conversation with him at table, had been making significant allusions with regard to the New Year's presents. Consequently he avoided finding himself alone with her and had forbidden her to come to meet him at the office at closing-time. But in spite of all his efforts he knew the moment was drawing near when concealment would be impossible and his grievous secret be unveiled. Was, then, a very formidable person, Bonne Maman, that M. Joyeuse should stand in such fear of her? By no means. A little stern, that was all, with a pretty smile that instantly forgave one. But M. Joyeuse was a coward, timid from his birth; twenty years of housekeeping with a masterful wife, "a member of the nobility," having made him a slave for ever, like those convicts who, after their imprisonment is over, have to undergo a period of surveillance. And for him this meant all his life.

One evening the Joyeuse family was gathered in the little drawing-room, last relic of its splendour, still containing two upholstered chairs, many crochet decorations, a piano, two lamps crowned with little green shades, and a what-not covered with bric-a-brac.

True family life exists in humble homes.

For the sake of economy, there was lighted for the whole household but one fire and a single lamp, around which the occupations and amusements of all were grouped. A fine big family lamp, whose old painted shade—night scenes pierced with shining dots—had been the astonishment and the joy of every one of those young girls in her early childhood. Issuing softly from the shadow of the room, four young heads were bent forward, fair or dark, smiling or intent, into that intimate and warm circle of light which illumined them as far as the eyes, seemed to feed the fire of their glance, to shelter them, protect them, preserve them from the black cold blowing outside, from phantoms, from snares, from miseries and terrors, from all the sinister things that a winter night in Paris brings forth in the remoteness of its quiet suburbs.

Thus, drawn close together in a small room at the top of the lonely house, in the warmth, the security of their comfortable home, the Joyeuse household seems like a nest right at the top of a lofty tree. The girls sew, read, chat a little. A leap of the lamp-flame, a crackling of fire, is what you may hear, with from time to time an exclamation from M. Joyeuse, a little removed from his small circle, lost in the shadow where he hides his anxious brow and all the extravagance of his imagination. Just now he is imagining that in the distress into which he finds himself driven beyond possibility of escape, in that absolute necessity of confessing everything to his children, this evening, at latest to-morrow, an unhoped-for succour may come to him. Hemerlingue, seized with remorse, sends to him, as to all those who took part in the work connected with the Tunis loan, his December gratuity. A tall footman brings it: "On behalf of M. le Baron." The visionary says those words aloud. The pretty faces turn towards him; the girls laugh, move their chairs, and the poor fellow awakes suddenly to reality.

Oh, how angry he is with himself now for his delay in confessing all, for that false security which he has maintained around him and which he will have to destroy at a blow. What need had he, too, to criticise that Tunis loan? At this moment he even reproaches himself for not having accepted a place in the Territorial Bank. Had he the right to refuse? Ah, the sorry head of a family, without strength to keep or to defend the happiness of his own! And, glancing at the pretty group within the circle of the lamp-shade, whose reposeful aspect forms so great a contrast with his own internal agitation, he is seized by a remorse so violent for the weakness of his soul that his secret rises to his lips, is about to escape him in a burst of sobs, when the ring of a bell—no chimera, that—gives them all a start and arrests him at the very moment when he was about to speak.

Whoever could it be, coming at this hour? They had lived in retirement since the mother's death and saw almost nobody. Andre Maranne, when he came down to spend a few minutes with them, tapped like a familiar friend. Profound silence in the drawing-room, long colloquy on the landing. Finally, the old servant—she had been in the family as long as the lamp—showed in a young man, complete stranger, who stopped, struck with admiration at the charming picture of the four darlings gathered round the table. This made his entrance timid, rather awkward. However, he explained clearly the object of his visit. He had been referred to M. Joyeuse by an honest fellow of his acquaintance, old Passajon, to take lessons in bookkeeping. One of his friends happened to be engaged in large financial transactions in connection with an important joint-stock company. He wished to be of service to him in keeping an eye on the employment of the capital, the straightforwardness of the operations; but he was a lawyer, little familiar with financial methods, with the terms employed in banking. Could not M. Joyeuse in the course of a few months, with three or four lessons a week—

"Yes, indeed, sir, yes, indeed," stammered the father, quite overcome by this unlooked-for piece of good luck. "Assuredly I can undertake, in a few months, to qualify you for such auditing work. Where shall we have our lessons?"

"Here, at your own house, if you are agreeable," said the young man, "for I am anxious that no one should know that I am working at the subject. But I shall be grieved if I always frighten everybody away as I have this evening."

For, at the first words of the visitor, the four curly heads had disappeared, with little whisperings, and with rustlings of skirts, and the drawing-room looked very bare now that the big circle of white light was empty.

Always quick to take offence, where his daughters were concerned, M. Joyeuse replied that "the young girls were accustomed to retire early every evening," and the words were spoken in a brief, dry tone which very clearly signified: "Let us talk of our lessons, young man, if you please." Days were then fixed, free hours in the evening.

As for the terms, they would be whatever monsieur desired.

Monsieur mentioned a sum.

The accountant became quite red. It was the amount he used to earn at Hemerlingue's.

"Oh, no, that is too much."

But the other was no longer listening. He was seeking for words, as though he had something very difficult to say, and suddenly, making up his mind to it:

"Here is your first month's salary."

"But, monsieur—"

The young man insisted. He was a stranger. It was only fair that he should pay in advance. Evidently, Passajon has told his secret.

M. Joyeuse understood, and in a low voice said, "Thank you, oh, thank you," so deeply moved that words failed him. Life! it meant life, several months of life, the time to turn round, to find another place. His darlings would want for nothing. They would have their New Year's presents. Oh, the mercy of Providence!

"Till Wednesday, then, M. Joyeuse."

"Till Wednesday, monsieur—"

"De Gery—Paul de Gery."

And they separated, both delighted, fascinated, the one by the apparition of this unexpected saviour, the other by the adorable picture of which he had only a glimpse, all those young girls grouped round the table covered with books, exercise-books, and skeins of wool, with an air of purity, of industrious honesty. This was a new Paris for Paul de Gery, a courageous, home-like Paris, very different from that which he already knew, a Paris of which the writers of stories in the newspapers and the reporters never speak, and which recalled to him his own country home, with an additional charm, that charm which the struggle and tumult around lend to the tranquil, secured refuge.



FELICIA RUYS

"And your son, Jenkins. What are you doing with him? Why does one never see him now at your house? He seemed a nice fellow."

As she spoke in that tone of disdainful bluntness which she almost always used when speaking to the Irishman, Felicia was at work on the bust of the Nabob which she had just commenced, posing her model, laying down and taking up the boasting-tool, quickly wiping her fingers with the little sponge, while the light and peace of a fine Sunday afternoon fell on the top-light of the studio. Felicia "received" every Sunday, if to receive were to leave her door open to allow people to come in, go out, sit down for a moment, without stirring from her work or even interrupting the course of a discussion to welcome the new arrivals. They were artists, with refined heads and luxuriant beards; here and there you might see among them white-haired friends of Ruys, her father; then there were society men, bankers, stock-brokers, and a few young men about town, come to see the handsome girl rather than her sculpture, in order to be able to say at the club in the evening, "I was at Felicia's to-day." Among them was Paul de Gery, silent, absorbed in an admiration which each day sunk into his heart a little more deeply, trying to understand the beautiful sphinx draped in purple cashmere and ecru lace, who worked away bravely amid her clay, a burnisher's apron reaching nearly to her neck, allowing her small, proud head to emerge with those transparent tones, those gleams of veiled radiance of which the sense, the inspiration bring the blood to the cheek as they pass. Paul always remembered what had been said of her in his presence, endeavoured to form an opinion for himself, doubted, worried himself, and was charmed, vowing to himself each time that he would come no more and never missing a Sunday. A little woman with gray, powdered hair was always there in the same place, her pink face like a pastel somewhat worn by years, who, in the discrete light of a recess, smiled sweetly, with her hands lying idly on her knees, motionless as a fakir. Jenkins, amiable, with his open face, his black eyes, and his apostolical manner, moved on from one group to another, liked and known by all. He did not miss, either, one of Felicia's days; and, indeed, he showed his patience in this, all the snubs of his hostess both as artist and pretty woman being reserved for him alone. Without appearing to notice them, with ever the same smiling, indulgent serenity, he continued to pay his visits to the daughter of his old Ruys, of the man whom he had so loved and tended to his last moments.

This time, however, the question which Felicia had just addressed to him respecting his son appeared extremely disagreeable to him, and it was with a frown and a real expression of annoyance that he replied: "Ma foi! I know no more than yourself what he is doing. He has quite deserted us. He was bored at home. He cares only for his Bohemia."

Felicia gave a jump that made them all start, and with flashing eyes and nostrils that quivered, said:

"That is too absurd. Ah, now, come, Jenkins. What do you mean by Bohemia? A charming word, by-the-bye, and one that ought to recall long days of wandering in the sun, halts in woody nooks, all the freshness of fruits gathered by the open road. But since you have made a reproach of the name, to whom do you apply it? To a few poor devils with long hair, in love with liberty in rags, who starve to death in a fifth-floor garret, or seek rhymes under tiles through which the rain filters; to those madmen, growing more and more rare, who, from horror of the customary, the traditional, the stupidity of life, have put their feet together and made a jump into freedom? Come, that is too old a story. It is the Bohemia of Murger, with the workhouse at the end, terror of children, boon of parents, Red Riding-Hood eaten by the wolf. It was worn out a long time ago, that story. Nowadays, you know well that artists are the most regular people in their habits on earth, that they earn money, pay their debts, and contrive to look like the first man you may meet on the street. The true Bohemians exist, however; they are the backbone of our society; but it is in your own world especially that they are to be found. Parbleu! They bear no external stamp and nobody distrusts them; but, so far as uncertainty, want of substantial foundation in their lives is concerned, they have nothing to wish for from those whom they call so disdainfully 'irregulars.' Ah! if we knew how much turpitude, what fantastic or abominable stories, a black evening-coat, the most correct of your hideous modern garments, can mask. Why, see, Jenkins, the other evening at your house I was amusing myself by counting them—all these society adventurers—"

The little old lady, pink and powdered, put in gently from her place:

"Felicia, take care!"

But she continued, without listening:

"What do you call Monpavon, doctor? And Bois l'Hery? And de Mora himself? And—" She was going to say "and the Nabob?" but stopped herself.

"And how many others! Oh, truly, you may well speak of Bohemia with contempt. But your fashionable doctor's clientele, oh sublime Jenkins, consists of that very thing alone. The Bohemia of commerce, of finance, of politics; unclassed people, shady people of all castes, and the higher one ascends the more you find of them, because rank gives impunity and wealth can pay for rude silence."

She spoke with a hard tone, greatly excited, with lip curled by a savage disdain. The doctor forced a laugh and assumed a light, condescending tone, repeating: "Ah, feather-brain, feather-brain!" And his glance, anxious and beseeching, sought the Nabob, as though to demand his pardon for all these paradoxical impertinences.

But Jansoulet, far from appearing vexed, was so proud of posing to this handsome artist, so appreciative of the honour that was being done him, that he nodded his head approvingly.

"She is right, Jenkins," said he at last, "she is right. It is we who are the true Bohemia. Take me, for example; take Hemerlingue, two of the men who handle the most money in Paris. When I think of the point from which we started, of all the trades through which we have made our way. Hemerlingue, once keeper of a regimental canteen. I, who have carried sacks of wheat in the docks of Marseilles for my living. And the strokes of luck by which our fortunes have been built up—as all fortunes, moreover, in these times are built up. Go to the Bourse between three and five. But, pardon, mademoiselle, see, through my absurd habit of gesticulating when I speak, I have lost the pose. Come, is this right?"

"It is useless," said Felicia. A true daughter of an artist, of a genial and dissolute artist, thoroughly in the romantic tradition, as was Sebastien Ruys. She had never known her mother. She was the fruit of one of those transient loves which used to enter suddenly into the bachelor life of the sculptor like swallows into a dovecote of which the door is always open, and who leave it again because no nest can be built there.

This time, the lady, ere she flew away, had left to the great artist, then about forty years of age, a beautiful child whom he had brought up, and who became the joy and the passion of his life. Until she was thirteen, Felicia had lived in her father's house, introducing a childish and tender note into that studio full of idlers, models, and huge greyhounds lying at full length on the couches. There was a corner reserved for her, for her attempts at sculpture, a whole miniature equipment, a tripod, wax, etc., and old Ruys would cry to those who entered:

"Don't go there. Don't move anything. That is the little one's corner."

So it came about that at ten years old she scarcely knew how to read and could handle the boasting-tool with marvellous skill. Ruys would have liked to keep always with him this child whom he never felt to be in the way, a member of the great brotherhood from her earliest years. But it was pitiful to see the little girl amid the free behaviour of the frequenters of the house, the constant going and coming of the models, the discussions of an art, so to speak, entirely physical, and even at the noisy Sunday dinner-parties, sitting among five or six women, to all of whom her father spoke familiarly. There were actresses, dancers or singers, who, after dinner, would settle themselves down to smoke with their elbows on the table absorbed in the indecent stories so keenly relished by their host. Fortunately, childhood is protected by a resisting candour, by an enamel over which all impurities glide. Felicia became noisy, turbulent, ill-behaved, but without being touched by all that passed over her little soul so near to earth.

Every year, in the summer, she used to go to stay for a few days with her godmother, Constance Crenmitz, the elder Crenmitz, whom all Europe had called for so long "the famous dancer," and who lived in peaceful retirement at Fontainebleau.

The arrival of the "little demon" used to bring into the life of the old dancer an element of disturbance from which she had afterward all the year to recover. The frights which the child caused her by her daring in climbing, in jumping, in riding, all the passionate transports of her wild nature made this visit for her at once delicious and terrible; delicious for she adored Felicia, the one family tie that remained to this poor old salamander in retirement after thirty years of fluttering in the glare of the footlights; terrible, for the demon used to upset without pity the dancer's house, decorated, carefully ordered, perfumed, like her dressing-room at the opera, and adorned with a museum of souvenirs dated from every stage in the world.

Constance Crenmitz was the one feminine element in Felicia's childhood. Futile, limited in mind, she had at least a coquettish taste, agile fingers that knew how to sew, to embroider, to arrange things, to leave in every corner of the room their dainty and individual trace. She alone undertook to train up the wild young plant, and to awaken with discretion the woman in this strange being on whom cloaks, furs, everything elegant devised by fashion, seemed to take odd folds or look curiously awkward.

It was the dancer again—in what neglect must she not have lived, this little Ruys—who, triumphing over the paternal selfishness, insisted upon a necessary separation, when Felicia was twelve or thirteen years old; and she took also the responsibility of finding a suitable school, a school which she selected of deliberate purpose, very comfortable and very respectable, right at the upper end of an airy road, occupying a roomy, old-world building surrounded by high walls, big trees, a sort of convent without its constraint and contempt of serious studies.

Much work, on the contrary, was done in Mme. Belin's institution, where the pupils went out only on the principal holidays and had no communication with outside except the visits of relatives on Thursdays, in a little garden planted with flowering shrubs or in the immense parlour with carved and gilded work over its doors. The first entry of Felicia into this almost monastic house caused indeed a certain sensation; her dresses chosen by the Austrian dancer, her hair curling to her waist, her gait free and easy like a boy's, aroused some hostility, but she was a Parisian and could adapt herself quickly to every situation and to all surroundings. A few days later, she looked better than any one in the little black apron, to which the more coquettish were wont to hang their watches, the straight skirt—a severe and hard prescription at that period when fashion expanded women's figures with an infinity of flounces—the regulation coiffure, two plaits tied rather low, at the neck, after the manner of the Roman peasants.

Strange to say, the regularity of the classes, their calm exactitude, suited Felicia's nature, intelligent and quick, in which the taste for study was relieved by a juvenile expansion at ease in the noisy good-humour of playtime. She was popular. Among those daughters of wealthy businessmen, of Parisian lawyers or of gentlemen-farmers, a respectable and rather affectedly serious world, the well-known name of old Ruys, the respect with which at Paris an artist's reputation is surrounded, created for Felicia a greatly envied position, rendered more brilliant still by her successes in the school-work, a genuine talent for drawing, and her beauty, that superiority which asserts its power even among young girls. In the wholesale atmosphere of the boarding-school, she was conscious of an extreme pleasure as she grew feminized, in resuming her sex, in learning to know order, regularity, otherwise than these were taught by that amiable dancer whose kisses seemed always to keep the taste of paint and her embraces somewhat artificial in the curving of her arms. Ruys, her father, was enraptured each time that he came to see his daughter, to find her more grown, womanly, knowing how to enter, to walk, and to leave a room with that pretty courtesy which caused all Mme. Belin's pupils to long for the trailing rustle of a long skirt.

At first he came often, then, as he had not time enough for all his commissions, accepted and undertaken, the advances on which went to pay for the scrapes, the pleasures of his existence, he was seen more seldom in the parlour. Finally, sickness intervened. Stricken by an incurable anaemia, he would remain for weeks without leaving his house, without doing any work. Thereupon he wished to have his daughter with him again; and from the boarding-school, sheltered by so healthy a tranquility, Felicia returned once more to her father's studio, haunted still by the same boon companions, the parasites which swarm around every celebrity, into the midst of which sickness had introduced a new personage, Dr. Jenkins.

His fine open countenance, the air of candour, of serenity that seemed to dwell about the person of this physician, already famous, who was wont to speak of his art so carelessly and yet seemed to work miraculous cures, the care with which he surrounded her father, these things made a great impression on the young girl. Jenkins became immediately her friend, confidant, a vigilant and kind guardian. Occasionally, when, in the studio, somebody—her father most likely of all—uttered a risky jest, the Irishman would contract his eyebrows, give a little click of the tongue, or perhaps distract Felicia's attention.

He often used to take her to pass the day with Mme. Jenkins, endeavouring to prevent her from becoming again the wild young thing she was before going to school, or even something worse, as she threatened to do in the moral neglect, sadder than all other, in which she was left.

But the young girl had as a protection something even better than the irreproachable and worldly example of the handsome Mme. Jenkins: the art that she adored, the enthusiasm which it implanted in her nature wholly occupied with outside things, the sentiment of beauty, of truth, which, from her thoughtful brain, full of ideas, passed into her fingers with a little quivering of the nerves, a desire of the idea accomplished, of the realized image. All day long she would work at her sculpture, giving shape to her dreams with that happiness of instinctive youth which lends so much charm to early work; this prevented her from any excessive regret for the austerity of the Belin institution, sheltering and light as the veil of a novice before her vows, and preserved her also from dangerous conversations, unheard amid her unique preoccupation.

Ruys was proud of this talent growing up at his side. Growing every day feebler, already at that stage in which the artist regrets himself, he found in following Felicia's progress a certain consolation for his own ended career. He saw the boasting-tool, which trembled in his hand, taken up again under his eye with a virile firmness and assurance, tempered by all those delicacies of her being which a woman can apply to the realization of an art. A strange sensation, this double paternity, this survival of genius as it abandons the man whose day is over to pass into him who is at his dawn, like those beautiful, familiar birds which, on the eve of a death, will desert the menaced roof to fly away to a less mournful lodging.

During the last period of her father's life, Felicia—a great artist and still a mere child—used to execute half of his works; and nothing was more touching than this collaboration of father and daughter, in the same studio, around the same group. The operation did not always proceed peaceably; although her father's pupil, Felicia already felt her own personality rebel against any despotic direction. She had those audacities of the beginner, those intuitions of the future which are the heritage of young talents, and, in opposition to the romantic traditions of Sebastien Ruys, a tendency to modern realism, a need to plant that glorious old flag upon some new monument.

These things were the occasion of terrible arguments, of discussions from which the father came out beaten, conquered by his daughter's logic, astonished at the progress made by the young, while the old, who have opened the way for them, remain motionless at the point from which they started. When she was working for him, Felicia would yield more easily; but, where her own sculpture was concerned she was found to be intractable. Thus the Joueur de Boules, her first exhibited work, which obtained so great a success at the Salon of 1862, was the subject of violent scenes between the two artists, of contradictions so strong, that Jenkins had to intervene and help to secure the safety of the plaster-cast which Ruys had threatened to destroy.

Apart from such little dramas, which in no way affected the tenderness of their hearts, these two beings adored each other with the presentiment and, gradually, the cruel certitude of an approaching separation, when suddenly there occurred in Felicia's life a horrible event. One day, Jenkins had taken her to dine at his house, as often happened. Mme. Jenkins was away on a couple of days' visit, as also her son; but the doctor's age, his semi-paternal intimacy, allowed him to have with him, even in his wife's absence, this young girl whose fifteen years, the fifteen years of an Eastern Jewess glorious in her precocious beauty, left her still near childhood.

The dinner was very gay, and Jenkins pleasant and cordial as usual. Afterwards they went into the doctor's study, and suddenly, on the couch, in the middle of an intimate and quite friendly conversation about her father, his health, their work together, Felicia felt as it were the chill of a gulf between herself and this man, then the brutal grasp of a faun. She beheld an unknown Jenkins, wild-looking, stammering with a besotted laugh and outraging hands. In the surprise, the unexpectedness of this bestial attack, any other than Felicia—a child of her own age, really innocent, would have been lost. As for her, poor little thing! what saved her was her knowledge. She had heard so many stories of this kind of thing at her father's table! and then art, and the life of the studio—She was not an ingenue. In a moment she understood the object of this grasp, struggled, sprang up, then, not being strong enough, cried out. He was afraid, released his hold, and suddenly she found herself standing up, free, with the man on his knees weeping and begging forgiveness. He had yielded to a fit of madness. She was so beautiful; he loved her so much. For months he had been struggling. But now it was over, never again, oh, never again! Not even would he so much as touch the hem of her dress. She made no reply, trembled, put her hair and her clothes straight again with the fingers of a woman demented. To go home—she wished to go home instantly, quite alone. He sent a servant with her; and, quite low, as she was getting into the carriage, whispered:

"Above all, not a word. It would kill your father."

He knew her so well, he was so sure of his power over her through that suggestion, the blackguard! that he returned on the morrow looking bright as ever and with loyal face as though nothing had happened. In fact, she never spoke of the matter to her father, nor to any one. But, dating from that day, a change came over her, a sudden development, as it were, of her haughty ways. She was subject to caprices, wearinesses, a curl of disgust in her smile, and sometimes quick fits of anger against her father, a glance of contempt which reproached him for not having known how to watch over her.

"What is the matter with her?" Ruys, her father, used to say; and Jenkins, with the authority of a doctor, would put it down to her age and some physical disturbance. He avoided speaking to the girl herself, counting on time to efface the sinister impression, and not despairing of attaining his end, for he desired it still, more than ever, prey to the exasperated love of a man of forty-seven to one of those incurable passions of maturity; and that was this hypocrite's punishment. This unusual condition of his daughter was a real grief to the sculptor; but this grief was of short duration. Without warning, Ruys flickered out of life, fell to pieces in a moment, as was the way with all the Irishman's patients. His last words were:

"Jenkins, I beg you to look after my daughter."

They were so ironically mournful that Jenkins could not prevent himself from turning pale.

Felicia was even more stupefied than grief-stricken. To the amazement caused by death, which she had never seen and which now came before her wearing features so dear, there was joined the sense of a vast solitude surrounded by darkness and perils.

A few of the sculptor's friends gathered together as a family council to consider the future of this unfortunate child without relatives or fortune. Fifty francs had been discovered in the box where Sebastien used to put his money, on a piece of the studio furniture well known to its needy frequenters and visited by them without scruple. There was no other inheritance, at least in cash; only a quantity of artistic and curious furniture of the most sumptuous description, a few valuable pictures, and a certain amount of money owing but scarcely sufficing to cover numberless debts. It was proposed to organize a sale. Felicia, when she was consulted, replied that she would not care if everything were sold, but, for God's sake, let them leave her in peace.

The sale did not take place, however, thanks to the godmother, the excellent Crenmitz, who suddenly made her appearance, calm and gentle as usual.

"Don't listen to them, my child. Sell nothing. Your old Constance has an income of fifteen thousand francs, which was destined to come to you later on. You will take advantage of it at once, that is all. We will live here together. You will see, I shall not be in the way. You will work at your sculpture, I shall manage the house. Does that suit you?"

It was said so tenderly, with that childishness of accent which foreigners have when expressing themselves in French, that the girl was deeply moved. Her heart that had seemed turned to stone opened, a burning flood came pouring from her eyes, and she rushed, flung herself into the arms of the dancer. "Ah, godmother, how good you are to me! Yes, yes, don't leave me any more. Stay with me always. Life frightens and disgusts me. I see so much hypocrisy in it, so much falsehood." And the old woman arranged for herself a silken and embroidered nest in this house so like a traveller's camp laden with treasures from every land, and the suggested dual life began for these two different natures.

It was no small sacrifice that Constance had made for the dear demon in quitting her Fontainebleau retreat for Paris, which inspired her with terror. Ever since the day when this dancer, with her extravagant caprices, who made princely fortunes flow and disappear through her five open fingers, had descended from her triumphant position, a little of its dazzling glitter still in her eyes, and had attempted to resume an ordinary existence, to manage her little income and her modest household, she had been the object of a thousand impudent exploitations, of frauds that were easy in view of the ignorance of this poor butterfly that was frightened by reality and came into collision with all its unknown difficulties. Living in Felicia's house, the responsibility became still more serious by reason of the wastefulness introduced long ago by the father and continued by the daughter, two artists knowing nothing of economy. She had, moreover, other difficulties to conquer. She found the studio insupportable with its permanent atmosphere of tobacco smoke, an impenetrable cloud for her, in which the discussions on art, the analysis of ideas, were lost and which infallibly gave her a headache. "Chaff," above all, frightened her. As a foreigner, as at one time a divinity of the green-room, brought up on out-of-date compliments, on gallantries a la Dorat, she did not understand it, and would feel terrified in the presence of the wild exaggerations, the paradoxes of these Parisians refined by the liberty of the studio.

That kind of thing was intimidating to her who had never possessed wit save in the vivacity of her feet, and reduced her simply to the rank of a lady-companion; and, seeing this amiable old dame sitting, silent and smiling, her knitting in her lap, like one of Chardin's bourgeoises, or hastening by the side of her cook up the long Rue de Chaillot, where the nearest market happened to be, one would never have guessed that that simple old body had ruled kings, princes, the whole class of amorous nobles and financiers, at the caprice of her step and pirouettings.

Paris is full of such fallen stars, extinguished by the crowd.

Some of these famous ones, these conquerors of a former day, cherish a rage in their heart; others, on the contrary, enjoy the past blissfully, digest in an ineffable content all their glorious and ended joys, asking only repose, silence, shadow, good enough for memory and contemplations, so that when they die people are quite astonished to learn that they had been still living.

Constance Crenmitz was among these fortunate ones. The household of these two women was a curious one. Both were childlike, placing side by side in a common domain, inexperience and ambition, the tranquility of an accomplished destiny and the fever of a life plunged in struggle, all the different qualities manifest even in the serene style of dress affected by this blonde who seemed all white like a faded rose, with something beneath her bright colours that vaguely suggested the footlights, and that brunette with the regular features, who almost always clothed her beauty in dark materials, simple in fold, a semblance, as it were, of virility.

Things unforeseen, caprices, ignorance of even the least important details, led to an extreme disorder in the finances of the household, disorder which was only rectified by dint of privations, by the dismissal of servants, by reforms that were laughable in their exaggeration. During one of these crises, Jenkins had made veiled delicate offers, which, however, were repulsed with contempt by Felicia.

"It is not nice of you," Constance would remark to her, "to be so hard on the poor doctor. After all, there was nothing offensive in his suggestion. An old friend of your father."

"He, any one's friend! Ah, the hypocrite!"

And Felicia, hardly able to contain herself, would give an ironical turn to her wrath, imitating Jenkins with his oily manner and his hand on his heart; then, puffing out her cheeks, she would say in a loud, deep voice full of lying unction:

"Let us be humane, let us be kind. To do good without hope of reward! That is the whole point."

Constance used to laugh till the tears came, in spite of herself. The resemblance was so perfect.

"All the same, you are too hard. You will end by driving him away altogether."

"Little fear of that," a shake of the girl's head would reply.

In effect he always came back, pleasant, amiable, dissimulating his passion, which was visible only when it grew jealous of newcomers, paying assiduous attention to the old dancer, who, in spite of everything, found his good-nature pleasing and recognised in him a man of her own time, of the time when one accosted a woman with a kiss on her hand, with a compliment on her appearance.

One morning, Jenkins having called in the course of his round, found Constance alone and doing nothing in the antechamber.

"You see, doctor, I am on guard," she remarked tranquilly.

"How is that?"

"Felicia is at work. She wishes not to be disturbed; and the servants are so stupid, I am myself seeing that her orders are obeyed."

Then, seeing that the Irishman made a step towards the studio:

"No, no, don't go in. She told me very particularly not to let any one go in."

"But I?"

"I beg you not. You would get me a scolding."

Jenkins was about to take his leave when a burst of laughter from Felicia, coming through the curtains, made him prick up his ears.

"She is not alone, then?"

"No, the Nabob is with her. They are having a sitting for the portrait."

"And why this mystery? It is a very singular thing." He commenced to walk backward and forward, evidently very angry, but containing his wrath.

At last he burst forth.

It was an unheard-of impropriety to let a girl thus shut herself in with a man.

He was surprised that one so serious, so devoted as Constance—What did it look like?

The old lady looked at him with stupefaction. As though Felicia were like other girls! And then what danger was there with the Nabob, so staid a man and so ugly? Besides, Jenkins ought to know quite well that Felicia never consulted anybody, that she always had her own way.

"No, no, it is impossible! I cannot tolerate this," exclaimed the Irishman.

And, without paying any further heed to the dancer, who raised her arms to heaven as a call upon it to witness what was about to happen, he moved towards the studio; but, instead of entering immediately, he softly half-opened the door and raised a corner of the hangings, whereby the portion of the room in which the Nabob was posing became visible to him, although at a considerable distance.

Jansoulet, seated without cravat and with his waist-coat open, was talking apparently in some agitation and in a low voice. Felicia was replying in a similar tone, in laughing whispers. The sitting was very animated. Then a silence, a silken rustle of skirts, and the artist, going up to her model, turned down his linen collar all round with familiar gesture, allowing her light hand to run over the sun-tanned skin.

That Ethiopian face on which the muscles stood out in the very intoxication of health, with its long drooping eyelashes as of some deer being gently stroked in its sleep; the bold profile of the girl as she leaned over those strange features in order to verify their proportions; then a violent, irresistible gesture, clutching the delicate hand as it passed and pressing it to two thick, passionate lips. Jenkins saw all that in one red flash.

The noise that he made in entering caused the two personages instantly to resume their respective positions, and, in the strong light which dazzled his prying eyes, he saw the young girl standing before him, indignant, stupefied.

"Who is that? Who has taken the liberty?" and the Nabob, on his platform, with his collar turned down, petrified, monumental.

Jenkins, a little abashed, frightened by his own audacity, murmured some excuses. He had something very urgent to say to M. Jansoulet, a piece of news which was most important and would suffer no delay. "He knew upon the best authority that certain decorations were to be bestowed on the 16th of March."

Immediately the face of the Nabob, that for a moment had been frowning, relaxed.

"Ah! can it be true?"

He abandoned his pose. The thing was worth the trouble, que diable! M. de la Perriere, a secretary of the department involved had been commissioned by the Empress to visit the Bethlehem Refuge. Jenkins had come in search of the Nabob to take him to see the secretary at the Tuileries and to appoint a day. This visit to Bethlehem, it meant the cross for him.

"Quick, let us start, my dear doctor. I follow you."

He was no longer angry with Jenkins for having disturbed him, and he knotted his cravat feverishly, forgetting in his new emotions how he had been upset a moment earlier, for ambition with him came before all else.

While the two men were talking in a half-whisper, Felicia, standing motionless before them, with quivering nostrils and her lip curled in contempt, watched them with an air of saying, "Well, I am waiting."

Jansoulet apologized for being obliged to interrupt the sitting; but a visit of the most extreme importance—She smiled in pity.

"Don't mention it, don't mention it. At the point which we have reached I can work without you."

"Oh, yes," said the doctor, "the work is almost completed."

He added with the air of a connoisseur:

"It is a fine piece of work."

And, counting upon covering his retreat with this compliment, he made for the door with shoulders drooped; but Felicia detained him abruptly.

"Stay, you. I have something to say to you."

He saw clearly from her look that he would have to yield, on pain of an explosion.

"You will excuse me, cher ami? Mademoiselle has a word for me. My brougham is at the door. Get in. I will be with you immediately."

As soon as the door of the studio had closed on that heavy, retreating foot, each of them looked at the other full in the face.

"You must be either drunk or mad to have allowed yourself to behave in this way. What! you dare to enter my house when I am not at home? What does this violence mean? By what right—"

"By the right of a despairing and incurable passion."

"Be silent, Jenkins, you are saying words that I will not hear. I allow you to come here out of pity, from habit, because my father was fond of you. But never speak to me again of your—love"—she uttered the word in a very low voice, as though it were shameful—"or you shall never see me again, even though I should have to kill myself in order to escape you once and for all."

A child caught in mischief could not bend its head more humbly than did Jenkins, as he replied:

"It is true. I was in the wrong. A moment of madness, of blindness—But why do you amuse yourself by torturing my heart as you do?"

"I think of you often, however."

"Whether you think of me or not, I am there, I see what goes on, and your coquetry hurts me terribly."

A touch of red mounted to her cheeks at this reproach.

"A coquette, I? And with whom?"

"With that," said the Irishman, indicating the ape-like and powerful bust.

She tried to laugh.

"The Nabob? What folly!"

"Don't tell an untruth about it now. Do you think I am blind, that I do not notice all your little manoeuvres? You remain alone with him for very long at a time. Just now, I was there. I saw you." He dropped his voice as though breath had failed him. "What do you want, strange and cruel child? I have seen you repulse the most handsome, the most noble, the greatest. That little de Gery devours you with his eyes; you take no notice. The Duc de Mora himself has not been able to reach your heart. And it is that man there who is ugly, vulgar, who had no thought of you, whose head is full of quite other matters than love. You saw how he went off just now. What can you mean? What do you expect from him?"

"I want—I want him to marry me. There!"

Coldly, in a softened tone, as though this avowal had brought her nearer the level of the man whom she so much despised, she explained her motives. The life which she led was pushing her into a situation from which there was no way out. She had luxurious and expensive tastes, habits of disorder which nothing could conquer and which would bring her inevitably to poverty, both her and that good Crenmitz, who was allowing herself to be ruined without saying a word. In three years, four years at the outside, all would be over with them. And then the wretched expedients, the debts, the tatters and old shoes of poor artists' households. Or, indeed, the lover, the man who keeps a mistress—that is to say, slavery and infamy.

"Come, come," said Jenkins. "And what of me, am I not here?"

"Anything rather than you," she exclaimed, stiffening. "No, what I require, what I want, is a husband who will protect me from others and from myself, who will save me from many terrible things of which I am afraid in my moments of ennui, from the gulfs in which I feel that I may perish, some one who will love me while I am at work and relieve my poor old wearied fairy of her sentry duty. This man here suits my purpose, and I thought of him from the first time I met him. He is ugly, but he has a kind manner; then, too, he is ridiculously rich, and wealth, upon that scale, must be amusing. Oh, I know well enough. No doubt there is in his life some blemish that has brought him luck. All that money cannot be made honestly. But come, truly now, Jenkins, with your hand on that heart you so often invoke, do you think me a wife who should be very attractive to an honest man? See: among all these young men who ask permission as a favour to be allowed to come here, which one has dreamed of offering me marriage? Never a single one. De Gery no more than the rest. I am attractive, but I make men afraid. It is intelligible enough. What can one imagine of a girl brought up as I have been, without a mother, among my father's models and mistresses? What mistresses, mon Dieu! And Jenkins for sole guardian. Oh, when I think, when I think!"

And from that far-off memory things surged up that stirred her to a deeper wrath.

"Ah, yes, parbleu! I am a daughter of adventure, and this adventurer is, of a truth, the fit husband for me."

"You must wait at least till he is a widower," replied Jenkins calmly. "And, in that case, you run the risk of having a long time to wait, for his Levantine seems to enjoy excellent health."

Felicia Ruys turned pale.

"He is married?"

"Married? certainly, and father of a bevy of children. The whole camp of them landed a couple of days ago."

For a minute she remained overwhelmed, looking into space, her cheeks quivering. Opposite her, the Nabob's large face, with its flattened nose, its sensual and weak mouth, spoke insistently of life and reality in the gloss of its clay. She looked at it for an instant, then made a step forward and, with a gesture of disgust, overturned, with the high wooden stool on which it stood, the glistening and greasy block, which fell on the floor shattered to a heap of mud.



JANSOULET AT HOME

Married he was and had been so for twelve years, but he had mentioned the fact to no one among his Parisian acquaintances, through Eastern habit, that silence which the people of those countries preserve upon affairs of the harem. Suddenly it was reported that madame was coming, that apartments were to be prepared for herself, her children, and her female attendants. The Nabob took the whole second floor of the house on the Place Vendome, the tenant of which was turned out at an expense worthy of a Nabob. The stables also were extended, the staff doubled; then, one day, coachmen and carriages went to the Gare de Lyon to meet madame, who arrived by train heated expressly for her during the journey from Marseilles and filled by a suite of negresses, serving-maids, and little negro boys.