One morning, towards five o'clock, when Jansoulet came home from his club, he found a letter on the table near his bed. At first he took it to be one of the many anonymous denunciations he received daily. It was indeed a denunciation, but it was signed and undisguised; and it breathed in every word the loyalty and the earnest youthfulness of him who wrote it. De Gery pointed out very clearly all the infamies and all the double dealing which surrounded him. With no beating about the bush he called the rogues by their names. There was not one of the usual guests whom he did not suspect, not one who came with any other object than to steal and to lie. From the top to the bottom of the house all was pillage and waste. Bois l'Hery's horses were unsound, Schwalbach's gallery was a swindle, Moessard's articles a recognised blackmail. De Gery had made a long detailed memorandum of these scandalous abuses, with proofs in support of it. But he specially recommended to Jansoulet's attention the accounts of the Territorial Bank as the real danger of the situation. Attracted by the Nabob's name, as chairman of the company, hundreds of shareholders had fallen into the infamous trap—poor seekers of gold, following the lucky miner. In the other matters it was only money he lost; here his honour was at stake. He would discover what a terrible responsibility lay upon him if he examined the papers of the business, which was only deception and cheatery from one end to the other.

"You will find the memorandum of which I speak," said Paul de Gery, at the end of his letter, "in the top drawer of my desk along with sundry receipts. I have not put them in your room, because I mistrust Noel like the rest. When I go away to-night I will give you the key. For I am going away, my dear benefactor and friend, I am going away full of gratitude for the good you have done me, and heartbroken that your blind confidence has prevented me from repaying you even in part. As things are now, my conscience as an honest man will not let me stay any longer useless at my post. I am looking on at a disaster, at the sack of a palace, which I can do nothing to prevent. My heart burns at all I see. I give handshakes which shame me. I am your friend, and I seem their accomplice. And who knows that if I went on living in such an atmosphere I might not become one?"

This letter, which he read slowly and carefully, even between the lines and through the words, made so great an impression on the Nabob that, instead of going to bed, he went at once to find his young secretary. De Gery had a study at the end of the row of public rooms where he slept on a sofa. It had been a provisional arrangement, but he had preferred not to change it.

The house was still asleep. As he was crossing the lofty rooms, filled with the vague light of a Parisian dawn (those blinds were never lowered, as no evening receptions were held there), the Nabob stopped, struck by the look of sad defilement his luxury wore. In the heavy odour of tobacco and various liqueurs which hung over everything, the furniture, the ceilings, the woodwork could be seen, already faded and still new. Spots on the crumpled satins, ashes staining the beautiful marbles, dirty footmarks on the carpets. It reminded one of a huge first-class railway carriage incrusted with all the laziness, the impatience, the boredom of a long journey, and all the wasteful, spoiling disdain of the public for a luxury for which it has paid. In the middle of this set scene, still warm from the atrocious comedy played there every day, his own image, reflected in twenty cold and staring looking-glasses, stood out before him, forbidding yet comical, in absolute contrast to his elegant clothes, his eyes swollen, his face bloated and inflamed.

What an obvious and disenchanting to-morrow to the mad life he was leading!

He lost himself for a moment in dreary thought; then he gave his shoulders a vigorous shake, a movement frequent with him—it was like a peddler shifting his pack—as though to rid himself of too cruel cares, and again took up the burden every man carried with him, which bows his back, more or less, according to his courage or his strength, and went into de Gery's room, who was already up, standing at his desk sorting papers.

"First of all, my friend," said Jansoulet, softly shutting the door for their interview, "answer me frankly. Is it really for the motives given in your letter that you have resolved to leave me? Is there not, beneath it all, one of those scandals that I know are being circulated in Paris against me? I am sure you would be loyal enough to warn me and to give me the opportunity of—of clearing myself to you."

Paul assured him that he had no other reasons for going, but that those were surely sufficient, since it was a matter of conscience.

"Then, my boy, listen to me, and I am sure of keeping you. Your letter, so eloquent of honesty and sincerity, has told me nothing that I have not been convinced of for three months. Yes, my dear Paul, you were right. Paris is more complicated than I thought. What I needed, when I arrived, was an honest and disinterested cicerone to put me on my guard against people and things. I met only swindlers. Every worthless rascal in the town has left the mud of his boots on my carpets. I was looking at them just now—my poor drawing-rooms. They need a fine sweeping out. And I swear to you they shall have it, by God, and with no light hand! But I must wait for that until I am a deputy. All these scoundrels are of use to me for the election, and this election is far too necessary now for me to risk losing the smallest chance. In a word, this is the situation: Not only does the Bey mean to keep the money I lent him three months ago, but he has replied to my summons by a counter action for eighty millions, the sum out of which he says I cheated his brother. It is a frightful theft, an audacious libel. My fortune is mine, my own. I made it by my trade as a merchant. I had Ahmed's favour; he gave me the opportunity of becoming rich. It is possible I may have put on the screw a little tightly sometimes. But one must not judge these things from a European standpoint. Over there, the enormous profits the Levantines make is an accepted fact—a known thing. It is the ransom those savages pay for the western comfort we bring them. That wretch Hemerlingue, who is suggesting all this persecution against me, has done just as much. But what is the use of talking? I am in the lion's jaws. While waiting for me to go to defend myself at his tribunals—and how I know it, justice of the Orient!—the Bey has begun by putting an embargo on all my goods, ships, and palaces, and what they contain. The affair was conducted quite regularly by a decree of the Supreme Court. Young Hemerlingue had a hand in that, you can see. If I am made a deputy, it is only a joke. The court takes back its decree and they give me back my treasure with every sort of excuse. If I am not elected I lose everything, sixty, eighty millions, even the possibility of making another fortune. It is ruin, disgrace, dishonour. Are you going to abandon me in such a crisis? Think—I have only you in the whole world. My wife—you have seen her, you know what help, what support she is to her husband. My children—I might as well not have any. I never see them; they would scarcely know me in the street. My horrible wealth has killed all affection around me and has enveloped me with shameless self-seeking. I have only my mother to love me, and she is far away, and you who came to me from my mother. No, you will not leave me alone amid all the scandals that are creeping around me. It is awful—if you only knew! At the club, at the play, wherever I go I seem to see the little viper's head of the Baroness Hemerlingue, I hear the echo of her hiss, I feel the venom of her bite. Everywhere mocking looks, conversation stopped when I appear, lying smiles, or kindness mixed with a little pity. And then the deserters, and the people who keep out of the way as at the approach of a misfortune. Look at Felicia Ruys: just as she had finished my bust she pretends that some accident, I know not what, has happened to it, in order to avoid having to send it to the Salon. I said nothing, I affected to believe her. But I understood that there again was some new evil report. And it is such a disappointment to me. In a crisis as grave as this everything has its importance. My bust in the exhibition, signed by that famous name, would have helped me greatly in Paris. But no, everything falls away, every one fails me. You see now that I cannot do without you. You must not desert me."



A DAY OF SPLEEN

Five o'clock in the afternoon. Rain since morning and a gray sky low enough to be reached with an umbrella; the close weather which sticks. Mess, mud, nothing but mud, in heavy puddles, in shining trails in the gutters, vainly chased by the street-scrapers and the scavengers, heaved into enormous carts which carry it slowly towards Montreuil—promenading it in triumph through the streets, always moving, and always springing up again, growing through the pavements, splashing the panels of the carriages, the breasts of the horses, the clothes of the passers-by, spattering the windows, the door-steps, the shop-fronts, till one feared that the whole of Paris would sink and disappear under this sorrowful, miry soil where everything dissolves and is lost in mud. And it moves one to pity to see the invasion of this dirt on the whiteness of the new houses, on the parapets of the quays, and on the colonnades of the stone balconies. There is some one, however, who rejoices at the sight, a poor, sick, weary being, lying all her length on a silk-embroidered divan, her chin on her clinched fists. She is looking out gladly through the dripping windows and delighting in all the ugliness.

"Look, my fairy! this is indeed the weather I wanted to-day. See them draggling along! Aren't they hideous? Aren't they dirty? What mire! It is everywhere—in the streets, on the quays, right down to the Seine, right up to the heavens. I tell you, mud is good when one is sad. I would like to play in it, to make sculpture with it—a statue a hundred feet high, that should be called 'My weariness.'"

"But why are you so miserable, dearest?" said the old dancer gently, amiable and pink, and sitting straight in her seat for fear of disarranging her hair, which was even more carefully dressed than usual. "Haven't you everything to make you happy?" And for the hundredth time she enumerated in her tranquil voice the reasons for her happiness: her glory, her genius, her beauty, all the men at her feet, the handsomest, the greatest—oh! yes, the very greatest, as this very day—But a terrible howl, like the heart-rending cry of the jackal exasperated by the monotony of his desert, suddenly made all the studio windows shake, and frightened the old and startled little chrysalis back into her cocoon.

A week ago, Felicia's group was finished and sent to the exhibition, leaving her in a state of nervous prostration, moral sickness, and distressful exasperation. It needs all the tireless patience of the fairy, all the magic of her memories constantly evoked, to make life supportable beside this restlessness, this wicked anger, which growls beneath the girl's long silences and suddenly bursts out in a bitter word or in an "Ugh!" of disgust at everything. All the critics are asses. The public? An immense goitre with three rows of chains. And yet, the other Sunday, when the Duc de Mora came with the superintendent of the art section to see her exhibits in the studio, she was so happy, so proud of the praise they gave her, so fully delighted with her own work, which she admired from the outside, as though the work of some one else, now that her tools no longer created between her and her work that bond which makes impartial judgment so hard for the artist.

But it is like this every year. The studio stripped of her recent work, her glorious name once again thrown to the unexpected caprice of the public, Felicia's thoughts, now without a visible object, stray in the emptiness of her heart and in the hollowness of her life—that of the woman who leaves the quiet groove—until she be engrossed in some new work. She shuts herself up and will see no one, as though she mistrusted herself. Jenkins is the only person who can help her during these attacks. He seems even to court them, as though he expected something therefrom. She is not pleasant with him, all the same, goodness knows. Yesterday, even, he stayed for hours beside this wearied beauty without her speaking to him once. If that be the welcome she is keeping for the great personage who is doing them the honour of dining with them—Here the good Crenmitz, who is quietly turning over all these thoughts as she gazes at the bows on the pointed toes of her slippers, remembers that she has promised to make a dish of Viennese cakes for the dinner of the personage in question, and goes out of the studio, silently, on the tips of her little feet.

The rain falls, the mud deepens; the beautiful sphinx lies still, her eyes lost in the dull horizon. What is she thinking of? What does she see coming there, over those filthy roads, in the falling night, that her lip should take that curve of disgust and her brow that frown? Is she waiting for her fate? A sad fate, that sets forth in such weather, fearless of the darkness and the dirt.

Some one comes into the studio with a heavier tread than the mouse-like step of Constance—the little servant, doubtless; and, without looking round, Felicia says roughly, "Go away! I don't want any one in."

"I should have liked to speak to you very much, all the same," says a friendly voice.

She starts, sits up. Mollified and almost smiling at this unexpected visitor, she says:

"What—you, young Minerva! How did you get in?"

"Very easily. All the doors are open."

"I am not surprised. Constance is crazy, since this morning, over her dinner."

"Yes, I saw. The anteroom is full of flowers. Who is coming?"

"Oh! a stupid dinner—an official dinner. I don't know how I could—Sit down here, near me. I am so glad to see you."

Paul sat down, a little disturbed. She had never seemed to him so beautiful. In the dusk of the studio, amid the shadowy brilliance of the works of art, bronzes, and tapestries, her pallor was like a soft light, her eyes shone like precious stones, and her long, close-fitting gown revealed the unrestraint of her goddess-like body. Then, she spoke so affectionately, she seemed so happy because he had come. Why had he stayed away so long? It was almost a month since they had seen him. Were they no longer friends? He excused himself as best he could—business, a journey. Besides, if he hadn't been there, he had often spoken of her—oh, very often, almost every day.

"Really? And with whom?"

"With——"

He was going to say "With Aline Joyeuse," but a feeling of restraint stopped him, an undefinable sentiment, a sense of shame at pronouncing her name in the studio which had heard so many others. There are things that do not go together, one scarcely knows why. Paul preferred to reply with a falsehood, which brought him at once to the object of his visit.

"With an excellent fellow to whom you have given very unnecessary pain. Come, why have you not finished the poor Nabob's bust? It was a great joy to him, such a very proud thing for him, to have that bust in the exhibition. He counted upon it."

At the Nabob's name she was slightly troubled.

"It is true," she said, "I broke my word. But what do you expect? I am made of caprice. See, the cover is over it; all wet, so that the clay does not harden."

"And the accident? You know, we didn't believe in it."

"Then you were wrong. I never lie. It had a fall, a most awful upset; only the clay was fresh, and I easily repaired it. Look!"

With a sweeping gesture she lifted the cover. The Nabob suddenly appeared before them, his jolly face beaming with the pleasure of being portrayed; so like, so tremendously himself, that Paul gave a cry of admiration.

"Isn't it good?" she said artlessly. "Still a few touches here and there—" She had taken the chisel and the little sponge and pushed the stand into what remained of the daylight. "It could be done in a few hours. But it couldn't go to the exhibition. To-day is the 22nd; all the exhibits have been in a long time."

"Bah! With influence——"

She frowned, and her bad expression came back, her mouth turning down.

"That's true. The protege of the Duc de Mora. Oh! you have no need to apologize. I know what people say, and I don't care that—" and she threw a little ball of clay at the wall, where it stuck, flat. "Perhaps men, by dint of supposing the thing which is not—But let us leave these infamies alone," she said, holding up her aristocratic head. "I really want to please you, Minerva. Your friend shall go to the Salon this year."

Just then a smell of caramel and warm pastry filled the studio, where the shadows were falling like a fine gray dust, and the fairy appeared, a dish of sweetmeats in her hand. She looked more fairy-like than ever, bedecked and rejuvenated; dressed in a white gown which showed her beautiful arms through sleeves of old lace; they were beautiful still, for the arm is the beauty that fades last.

"Look at my kuchen, dearie; they are such a success this time. Oh! I beg your pardon. I did not see you had friends. And it is M. Paul! How are you M. Paul? Taste one of my cakes."

And the charming old lady, whose dress seemed to lend her an extraordinary vivacity, came towards him, balancing the plate on the tips of her tiny fingers.

"Don't bother him. You can give him some at dinner," said Felicia quietly.

"At dinner?"

The dancer was so astonished that she almost upset her pretty pastries, which looked as light and airy and delicious as herself.

"Yes, he is staying to dine with us. Oh! I beg it of you," she added, with a particular insistence as she saw he was going to refuse, "I beg you to stay. Don't say no. You will be rendering me a real service by staying to-night. Come—I didn't hesitate a few minutes ago."

She had taken his hand; and in truth might have been struck by a strange disproportion between her request and the supplicating, anxious tone in which it was made. Paul still attempted to excuse himself. He was not dressed. How could she propose it!—a dinner at which she would have other guests.

"My dinner? But I will countermand it! That is the kind of person I am. We shall be alone, just the three of us, with Constance."

"But, Felicia, my child, you can't really think of such a thing. Ah, well! And the—the other who will be coming directly.

"I am going to write to him to stay at home, parbleu!"

"You unlucky being, it is too late."

"Not at all. It is striking six o'clock. The dinner was for half past seven. You must have this sent to him quickly."

She was writing hastily at a corner of the table.

"What a strange girl, mon Dieu! mon Dieu!" murmured the dancer in bewilderment, while Felicia, delighted, transfigured, was joyously sealing her letter.

"There! my excuse is made. Headaches have not been invented for Kadour."

Then, the letter having been despatched:

"Oh, how pleased I am! What a jolly evening we shall have! Do kiss me, Constance! It will not prevent us from doing honour to your kuchen, and we shall have the pleasure of seeing you in a pretty toilette which makes you look younger than I do."

This was more than was required to cause the dancer to forgive this new caprice of her dear demon, and the crime of lese-majeste in which she had just been involved against her will. To treat so great a personage so cavalierly! There was no one like her in the world—there was no one like her. As for Paul de Gery, he no longer tried to resist, under the spell once more of that attraction from which he had been able to fancy himself released by absence, but which, from the moment he crossed the threshold of the studio, had put chains on his will, delivered him over, bound and vanquished, to the sentiment which he was quite resolved to combat.

Evidently the dinner—a repast for a veritable gourmet, superintended by the Austrian lady in its least details—had been prepared for a guest of great mark. From the lofty Kabyle chandelier with its seven branches of carved wood, which cast its light over the table-cloth covered with embroidery, to the long-necked decanters holding the wines within their strange and exquisite form, the sumptuous magnificence of the service, the delicacy of the meats, to which edge was given by a certain unusualness in their selection, revealed the importance of the expected visitor, the anxiety which there had been to please him. The table was certainly that of an artist. Little silver, but superb china, much unity of effect, without the least attempt at matching. The old Rouen, the pink Sevres, the Dutch glass mounted in old filigree pewter met on this table as on a sideboard devoted to the display of rare curios collected by a connoisseur exclusively for the satisfaction of his taste. A little disorder naturally, in this household equipped at hazard, as choice things could be picked up. The wonderful cruet-stand had lost its stoppers. The chipped salt-cellar allowed its contents to escape on the table-cloth, and at every moment you would hear, "Why! what is become of the mustard-pot?" "What has happened to this fork?" This embarrassed de Gery a little on account of the young mistress of the house, who for her part took no notice of it.

But something made Paul feel still more ill at ease—his anxiety, namely, to know who the privileged guest might be whom he was replacing at this table, who could be treated at once with so much magnificence and so complete an informality. In spite of everything, he felt him present, an offence to his personal dignity, that visitor whose invitation had been cancelled. It was in vain that he tried to forget him; everything brought him back to his mind, even the fine dress of the good fairy sitting opposite him, who still maintained some of the grand airs with which she had equipped herself in advance for the solemn occasion. This thought troubled him, spoiled for him the pleasure of being there.

On the other hand, by contrast, as it happens in all friendships between two people who meet very rarely, never had he seen Felicia so affectionate, in such happy temper. It was an overflowing gaiety that was almost childish, one of those warm expansions of feeling that are experienced when a danger has been passed, the reaction of a bright roaring fire after the emotion of a shipwreck. She laughed heartily, teased Paul about his accent and what she called his bourgeois ideas. "For you are a terrible bourgeois, you know. But it is that that I like in you. It is an effect of contraries, doubtless; it is because I myself was born under a bridge, in a gust of wind, that I have always liked sedate, reasonable natures."

"Oh, my child, what are you going to have M. Paul think, that you were born under a bridge?" said the good Crenmitz, who could not accustom herself to the exaggeration of certain metaphors, and always took everything literally.

"Let him think what he likes, my fairy. We are not trying to catch him for a husband. I am sure he would not want one of those monsters who are known as female artists. He would think he was marrying the devil. You are quite right, Minerva. Art is a despot. One has to give one's self entirely up to him. To toil in his service, one devotes all the ideal, all the energy, honesty, conscience, that one possesses, so that you have none of these things left for real life, and the completed labour throws you down, strengthless and without a compass, like a dismantled hulk at the mercy of every wave. A sorry acquisition, such a wife!"

"And yet," the young man hazarded timidly, "it seems to me that art, however exigent it be, cannot for all that entirely absorb a woman. What would she do with her affections, of that need to love, to devote herself, which in her, much more than in us, is the spring of all her actions?"

She mused a moment before replying.

"Perhaps you are right, wise Minerva. It is true that there are days when my life rings terribly hollow. I am conscious of abysses, profound chasms in it. Everything that I throw in to fill it up disappears. My finest enthusiasms of the artist are engulfed there and die each time in a sigh. And then I think of marriage. A husband; children—a swarm of children, who would roll about the studio; a nest to look after for them all; the satisfaction of that physical activity which is lacking in our existences of artists; regular occupations; high spirits, songs, innocent gaieties, which would oblige you to play instead of thinking in the air, in the dark—to laugh at a wound to one's self-love, to be only a contented mother on the day when the public should see you as a worn-out, exhausted artist."

And before this tender vision the girl's beauty took on an expression which Paul had never seen in it before, an expression which gripped his whole being, and gave him a mad longing to carry off in his arms that beautiful wild bird, dreaming of the home-cote, to protect and shelter it in the sure love of an honest man.

She, without looking at him, continued:

"I am not so erratic as I appear; don't think it. Ask my good godmother if, when she sent me to boarding-school, I did not observe the rules. But what a muddle in my life afterward. If you knew what sort of an early youth I had; how precocious an experience tarnished my mind, in the head of the little girl I was, what a confusion of the permitted and the forbidden, of reason and folly! Art alone, extolled and discussed, stood out boldly from among it all, and I took refuge in it. That is perhaps why I shall never be anything but an artist, a woman apart from others, a poor Amazon with heart imprisoned in her iron cuirass, launched into the conflict like a man, and as a man condemned to live and die."

Why did he not say to her, at this:

"Beauteous lady-warrior, lay down your arms, resume the flowing robe and the graces of the woman's sphere. I love you! Marry me, I implore you, and win happiness both for yourself and for me."

Ah, there it is! He was afraid lest the other—you know him, the man who was to have come to dinner that evening and who remained between them despite his absence—should hear him speak thus and be in a position to jest at or to pity him for that fine outburst.

"In any case, I firmly swear one thing," she resumed, "and it is that if ever I have a daughter, I will try to make a true woman of her, and not a poor lonely creature like myself. Oh! you know, my fairy, it is not for you that I say that. You have always been kind to your demon, full of attentions and tenderness. But just see how pretty she is, how young she looks this evening."

Animated by the meal, the bright lights, one of those white dresses the reflection from which effaces wrinkles, the Crenmitz, leaning back in her chair, held up on a level with her half-closed eyes a glass of Chateau-Yquem, come from the cellar of the neighbouring Moulin-Rouge; and her dainty little rosy face, her flowing garments, like those you might see in some pastel, reflected in the golden wine, which lent to them its own piquant fervour, recalled to mind the quondam heroine of gay little suppers after the theatre, the Crenmitz of the brave old days—not an audacious creature after the manner of the stars of our modern opera, but unconscious, and wrapped in her luxury like a fine pearl in the delicate whiteness of its shell. Felicia, who decidedly that evening was anxious to please everybody, turned her mind gently to the chapter of recollections; got her to recount once more her great triumphs in Gisella, in the Peri, and the ovations of the public; the visit of the princes to her dressing-room; the present of Queen Amelia, accompanied by such a charming little speech. The recalling of these glories intoxicated the poor fairy; her eyes shone; they heard her little feet moving impatiently under the table as though seized by a dancing frenzy. And in effect, dinner over, when they had returned to the studio, Constance began to walk backward and forward, now and then half executing a step, a pirouette, while continuing to talk, interrupting herself to hum some ballad air of which she would keep the rhythm with a movement of the head; then suddenly she bent herself double, and with a bound was at the other end of the studio.

"Now she is off!" said Felicia in a low voice to de Gery. "Watch! It is worth your while; you are going to see the Crenmitz dance."

It was charming and fairy-like. Against the background of the immense room lost in shadow and receiving almost no light save through the arched glass roof over which the moon was climbing in a pale sky of night blue, a veritable sky of the opera, the silhouette of the famous dancer stood out all white, like a droll little shadow, light and imponderable, which seemed rather to be flying in the air than springing over the floor; then, erect upon the tips of her toes, supported in the air only by her extended arms, her face lifted in an elusive pose, which left nothing visible but the smile, she advanced quickly towards the light or fled away with little rushes so rapid that you were constantly expecting to hear a slight shivering of glass and to see her thus mount backward the slope of the great moonbeam that lay aslant the studio. That which added a charm, a singular poetry, to this fantastic ballet was the absence of music, the sound alone of the rhythmical beat the force of which was accentuated by the semi-darkness, of that quick and light tapping not heavier on the parquet floor than the fall, petal by petal, of a dahlia going out of bloom.

Thus it went on for some minutes, at the end of which they knew, by hearing her shorter breathing, that she was becoming fatigued.

"Enough! enough! Sit down now," said Felicia. Thereupon the little white shadow halted beside an easy chair, and there remained posed, ready to start off again, smiling and breathless, until sleep overcame her, rocking and balancing her gently without disturbing her pretty pose, as of a dragon-fly on the branch of a willow dipping in the water and swayed by the current.

While they watched her, dozing on her easy chair:

"Poor little fairy!" said Felicia, "hers is what I have had best and most serious in my life in the way of friendship, protection, and guardianship. Can you wonder now at the zig-zags, the erratic nature of my mind? Fortunate at that, to have gone no further."

And suddenly, with a joyous effusion of feeling:

"Ah, Minerva, Minerva, I am very glad that you came this evening! But you must not leave me to myself for so long again, mind. I need to have near me an honest mind like yours, to see a true face among the masks that surround me. A fearful bourgeois, all the same," she added, laughing, "and a provincial into the bargain. But no matter! It is you, for all that, whom it gives me the most pleasure to see. And I believe that my liking for you is due especially to one thing: you remind me of some one who was the great affection of my youth, a sedate and sensible little being she also, chained to the matter-of-fact side of existence, but tempering it with that ideal element which we artists set aside exclusively for the profit of our work. Certain things which you say seem to me as though they had come from her. You have the same mouth, like an antique model's. Is it that that gives this resemblance to your words? I have no idea, but most certainly you are like each other. You shall see."

On the table laden with sketches and albums, at which she was sitting facing him, she drew, as she talked, with brow inclined and her rather wild curly hair shading her graceful little head. She was no longer the beautiful couchant monster, with the anxious and gloomy countenance, condemning her own destiny, but a woman, a true woman, in love, and eager to beguile. This time Paul forgot all his mistrusts in presence of so much sincerity and such passing grace. He was about to speak, to persuade. The minute was decisive. But the door opened and the little page appeared. M. le Duc had sent to inquire whether mademoiselle was still suffering from her headache of earlier in the evening.

"Still just as much," she said with irritation.

When the servant had gone out, a moment of silence fell between them, a glacial coldness. Paul had risen. She continued her sketch, with her head still bowed.

He took a few paces in the studio; then, having come back to the table, he asked quietly, astonished to feel himself so calm:

"It was the Duc de Mora who was to have dined here?"

"Yes. I was bored—a day of spleen. Days of that kind are bad for me."

"Was the duchess to have come?"

"The duchess? No. I don't know her."

"Well, in your place I would never receive in my house, at my table, a married man whose wife I did not meet. You complain of being deserted; why desert yourself? When one is without reproach, one should avoid the very suspicion of it. Do I vex you?"

"No, no, scold me, Minerva. I have no objection to your ethics. They are honest and frank, yours; they do not blink uncertain, like those of Jenkins. I told you, I need some one to guide me."

And tossing over to him the sketch which she had just finished:

"See, that is the friend of whom I was speaking to you. A profound and sure affection, which I was foolish enough to allow to be lost to me, like the bungler I am. She it was to whom I appealed in moments of difficulty, when a decision required to be taken, some sacrifice made. I used to say to myself, 'What will she think of this?' just as we artists may stop in the midst of a piece of work to refer it mentally to some great man, one of our masters. I must have you take her place for me. Will you?"

Paul did not answer. He was looking at the portrait of Aline. It was she, herself to the letter; her pure profile, her mocking and kindly mouth, and the long curl like a caress on the delicate neck. Felicia had ceased to exist for him.

Poor Felicia, endowed with superior talents, she was indeed like those magicians who knot and unknot the destinies of men, without possessing any power over their own happiness.

"Will you give me this sketch?" he said in a low, quivering voice.

"Most willingly. She is nice—isn't she? Ah! her indeed, if you should meet, love her, marry her. She is worth more than all the rest of womankind together. And yet, failing her—failing her——"

And the beautiful sphinx, tamed, raised to him, moist and laughing, her great eyes, in which an enigma had ceased to be indecipherable.



THE EXHIBITION

"SUPERB!"

"A tremendous success! Barye has never done anything so good before."

"And the bust of the Nabob! What a marvel. How happy Constance Crenmitz is! Look at her trotting about!"

"What! That little old lady in the ermine cape is the Crenmitz? I thought she had been dead twenty years ago."

Oh, no! Very much alive, on the contrary. Delighted, made young again by the triumph of her goddaughter, who had made what is decidedly the success of the exhibition, she passes about among the crowd of artists and fashionable people, who, wedged together and stifling themselves in order to get a look at the two points where the works sent by Felicia are exhibited, form as it were two solid masses of black backs and jumbled dresses. Constance, ordinarily so timid, edges her way into the front rank, listens to the discussions, catches, as they fly, disjointed phrases, formulas which she takes care to remember, approves with a nod, smiles, raises her shoulders when she hears a stupid remark made, inclined to murder the first person who should not admire.

Whether it be the good Crenmitz or another, you will always see it at every opening of the Salon, that furtive silhouette, prowling near wherever a conversation is going on, with an anxious manner and alert ear; sometimes a simple old fellow, some father, whose glance thanks you for any kind word said in passing, or assumes a grieved expression by reason of some epigram, flung at the work of art, that may wound some heart behind you. A figure not to be forgotten, certainly, if ever it should occur to any painter with a passion for modernity to fix on canvas that very typical manifestation of Parisian life, the opening of an exhibition in that vast conservatory of sculpture, with its paths of yellow sand, and its immense glass roof beneath which, half-way up, stand out the galleries of the first floor, lined by heads bent over to look down, and decorated with improvised flowing draperies.

In a rather cold light, made pallid by those green curtains that hang all around, in which one would fancy that the light-rays become rarefied, in order to give to the vision of the people walking about the room a certain contemplative justice, the slow crowd goes and comes, pauses, disperses itself over the seats in serried groups, and yet mixing up different sections of society more thoroughly than any other assembly, just as the weather, uncertain and changeable at this time of the year, produces a confusion in the world of clothes, causes to brush each other as they pass, the black laces, the imperious train of the great lady come to see how her portrait looks, and the Siberian furs of the actress just back from Russia and anxious that everybody should know it.

Here, no boxes, no stalls, no reserved seats, and it is this that gives to this premiere in full daylight so great a charm of curiosity. Genuine ladies of fashion are able to form an opinion of those painted beauties who receive so much commendation in an artificial light; the little hat, following a new mode of the Marquise de Bois l'Hery, confronts the more than modest toilette of some artist's wife or daughter; while the model who posed for that beautiful Andromeda at the entrance, goes by victoriously, clad in too short a skirt, in wretched garments that hide her beauty beneath all the false lines of fashion. People observe, admire, criticise each other, exchange glances contemptuous, disdainful, or curious, interrupted suddenly at the passage of a celebrity, of that illustrious critic whom we seem still to see, tranquil and majestic, his powerful head framed in its long hair, making the round of the exhibits in sculpture followed by a dozen young disciples eager to hear the verdict of his kindly authority. If the sound of voices is lost beneath that immense dome, sonorous only under the two vaults of the entrance and the exit, faces take on there an astonishing intensity, a relief of movement and animation concentrated especially in the huge, dark bay where refreshments are served, crowded to overflowing and full of gesticulation, the brightly coloured hats of the women and the white aprons of the waiters gleaming against the background of dark clothes, and in the great space in the middle where the oval swarming with visitors makes a singular contrast with the immobility of the exhibited statues, producing the insensible palpitation with which their marble whiteness and their movements as of apotheosis are surrounded.

There are wings poised in giant flight, a sphere supported by four allegorical figures whose attitude of turning suggests some vague waltz-measure—a total effect of equilibrium well conveying the illusion of the sweeping onward of the earth; and there are arms raised to give the signal, bodies heroically risen, containing an allegory, a symbol which stamps them with death and immortality, secures to them a place in history, in legend, in that ideal world of museums which is visited by the curiosity or the admiration of the nations.

Although Felicia's group in bronze had not the proportions of these large pieces, its exceptional merit had caused it to be selected to adorn one of the open spaces in the middle, from which at this moment the public was holding itself at a respectful distance, watching, over the hedge of custodians and policemen, the Bey of Tunis and his suite, an array of long bernouses falling in sculptural folds, which had the effect of placing living statues opposite the other ones.

The Bey, who had been in Paris since a few days before, and was the lion of all the premieres, had desired to see the opening of the exhibition. He was "an enlightened prince, a friend of art," who possessed at the Bardo a gallery of remarkable Turkish paintings and chromo-lithographic reproductions of all the battles of the First Empire. The moment he entered, the sight of the big Arab greyhound had struck him as he passed. It was the sleughi all over, the true sleughi, delicate and nervous, of his own country, the companion of all his hunting expeditions. He laughed in his black beard, felt the loins of the animal, stroked its muscles, seemed to want to urge it on still faster, while with nostrils open, teeth showing, all its limbs stretched out and unwearying in their vigorous elasticity, the aristocratic beast, the beast of prey, ardent in love and the chase, intoxicated with their double intoxication, its eyes fixed, was already enjoying a foretaste of its capture with a little end of its tongue which hung and seemed to sharpen the teeth with a ferocious laugh. When you only looked at the hound you said to yourself, "He has got him!" But the sight of the fox reassured you immediately. Beneath the velvet of his lustrous coat, cat-like almost lying along the ground, covering it rapidly without effort, you felt him to be a veritable fairy; and his delicate head with its pointed ears, which as he ran he turned towards the hound, had an expression of ironical security which clearly marked the gift received from the gods.

While an Inspector of Fine Arts, who had rushed up in all haste, with his official dress in disorder, and a head bald right down to his back, explained to Mohammed the apologue of "The Dog and the Fox," related in the descriptive catalogue with these words inscribed beneath, "Now it happened that they met," and the indication, "The property of the Duc de Mora," the fat Hemerlingue, perspiring and puffing by his Highness's side, had great difficulty to convince him that this masterly piece of sculpture was the work of the beautiful young lady whom they had encountered the previous evening riding in the Bois. How could a woman, with her feeble hands, thus mould the hard bronze, and give to it the very appearance of the living body? Of all the marvels of Paris, this was the one which caused the Bey the most astonishment. He inquired consequently from the functionary if there was nothing else to see by the same artist.

"Yes, indeed, monseigneur, another masterpiece. If your Highness will deign to step this way I will conduct you to it."

The Bey commenced to move on again with his suite. They were all admirable types, with chiselled features and pure lines, warm pallors of complexion of which even the reflections were absorbed by the whiteness of their haiks. Magnificently draped, they contrasted with the busts ranged on either side of the aisle they were following, which, perched on their high columns, looking slender in the open air, exiled from their own home, from the surroundings in which doubtless they would have recalled severe labours, a tender affection, a busy and courageous existence, had the sad aspect of people gone astray in their path, and very regretful to find themselves in their present situation. Excepting two or three female heads, with opulent shoulders framed in petrified lace, and hair rendered in marble with that softness of touch which gives it the lightness of a powdered wig, excepting, too, a few profiles of children with their simple lines, in which the polish of the stone seems to resemble the moistness of the living flesh, all the rest were only wrinkles, crow's-feet, shrivelled features and grimaces, our excesses in work and in movement, our nervousness and our feverishness, opposing themselves to that art of repose and of beautiful serenity.

The ugliness of the Nabob had at least energy in its favour, the vulgar side of him as an adventurer, and that expression of benevolence, so well rendered by the artist, who had taken care to underlay her plaster with a layer of ochre, which gave it almost the weather-beaten and sunburned tone of the model. The Arabs, when they saw it, uttered a stifled exclamation, "Bou-Said!" (the father of good fortune). This was the surname of the Nabob in Tunis, the label, as it were, of his luck. The Bey, for his part, thinking that some one had wished to play a trick on him in thus leading him to inspect the bust of the hated trader, regarded his guide with mistrust.

"Jansoulet?" said he in his guttural voice.

"Yes, Highness: Bernard Jansoulet, the new deputy for Corsica."

This time the Bey turned to Hemerlingue, with a frown on his brow.

"Deputy?"

"Yes, monseigneur, since this morning; but nothing is yet settled."

And the banker, raising his voice, added with a stutter:

"No French Chamber will ever admit that adventurer."

No matter. The stroke had fallen on the blind faith of the Bey in his baron financier. The latter had so confidently affirmed to him that the other would never be elected and that their action with regard to him need not be fettered or in any way hampered by the least fear. And now, instead of a man ruined and overthrown, there rose before him a representative of the nation, a deputy whose portrait in stone the Parisians were coming to admire; for in the eyes of the Oriental, an idea of distinction being mingled in spite of everything with this public exhibition, that bust had the prestige of a statue dominating a square. Still more yellow than usual, Hemerlingue internally accused himself of clumsiness and imprudence. But how could he ever have dreamed of such a thing? He had been assured that the bust was not finished. And in fact it had been there only since morning, and seemed quite at home, quivering with satisfied pride, defying its enemies with the good-tempered smile of its curling lip. A veritable silent revenge for the disaster of Saint-Romans.

For some minutes the Bey, cold and impassible as the sculptured image, gazed at it without saying anything, his forehead divided by a straight crease wherein his courtiers alone could read his anger; then, after two quick words in Arabic, to order the carriages and to reassemble his scattered suite, he directed his steps gravely towards the door of exit, without consenting to give even a glance to anything else. Who shall say what passes in these august brains surfeited with power? Even our sovereigns of the West have incomprehensible fantasies; but they are nothing compared with Oriental caprices. Monsieur the Inspector of Fine Arts, who had made sure of taking his Highness all round the exhibition and of thus winning the pretty red-and-green ribbon of the Nicham-Iftikahr, never knew the secret of this sudden flight.

At the moment when the white haiks were disappearing under the porch, just in time to see the last wave of their folds, the Nabob made his entry by the middle door. In the morning he had received the news, "Elected by an overwhelming majority"; and after a sumptuous luncheon, at which the new deputy for Corsica had been extensively toasted, he came, with some of his guests, to show himself, to see himself also, to enjoy all his new glory.

The first person whom he saw as he arrived was Felicia Ruys, standing, leaning on the pedestal of a statue, surrounded by compliments and tributes of admiration, to which he made haste to add his own. She was simply dressed, clad in a black costume embroidered and trimmed with jet, tempering the severity of her attire with a glittering of reflected lights, and with a delightful little hat all made of downy plumes, the play of colour in which her hair, curled delicately on her forehead and drawn back to the neck in great waves, seemed to continue and to soften.

A crowd of artists and fashionable people were assiduous in their attentions to so great a genius allied to so much beauty; and Jenkins, bareheaded, and puffing with warm effusiveness, was going from one to the other, stimulating their enthusiasm but widening the circle around this young fame of which he constituted himself at once the guardian and the trumpeter. His wife during this time was talking to the young girl. Poor Mme. Jenkins! She had heard that savage voice, which she alone knew, say to her, "You must go and greet Felicia." And she had gone to do so, controlling her emotion; for she knew now what it was that hid itself at the bottom of that paternal affection, although she avoided all discussion of it with the doctor, as if she had been fearful of the issue.

After Mme. Jenkins, it is the turn of the Nabob to rush up, and taking the artist's two long, delicately-gloved hands between his fat paws, he expresses his gratitude with a cordiality which brings the tears to his own eyes.

"It is a great honour that you have done me, mademoiselle, to associate my name with yours, my humble person with your triumph, and to prove to all this vermin gnawing at my heels that you do not believe the calumnies which have been spread with regard to me. Yes, truly, I shall never forget it. In vain I may cover this magnificent bust with gold and diamonds, I shall still be your debtor."

Fortunately for the good Nabob, with more feeling than eloquence, he is obliged to make way for all the others attracted by a dazzling talent, the personality in view; extravagant enthusiasms which, for want of words to express themselves, disappear as they come; the conventional admirations of society, moved by good-will, by a lively desire to please, but of which each word is a douche of cold water; and then the hearty hand-shakes of rivals, of comrades, some very frank, others that communicate to you the weakness of their grasp; the pretentious great booby, at whose idiotic eulogy you must appear to be transported with gladness, and who, lest he should spoil you too much, accompanies it with "a few little reserves," and the other, who, while overwhelming you with compliments, demonstrates to you that you have not learned the first word of your profession; and the excellent busy fellow, who stops just long enough to whisper in your ear "that so-and-so, the famous critic, does not look very pleased." Felicia listened to it all with the greatest calm, raised by her success above the littleness of envy, and quite proud when a glorious veteran, some old comrade of her father, threw to her a "You've done very well, little one!" which took her back to the past, to the little corner reserved for her in the old days in her father's studio, when she was beginning to carve out a little glory for herself under the protection of the renown of the great Ruys. But, taken altogether, the congratulations left her rather cold, because there lacked one which she desired more than any other, and which she was surprised not to have yet received. Decidedly he was more often in her thoughts than any other man had ever been. Was it love at last, the great love which is so rare in an artist's soul, incapable as that is of giving itself entirely up to the sway of sentiment, or was it perhaps simply a dream of honest bourgeoise life, well sheltered against ennui, that spiritless ennui, the precursor of storms, which she had so much reason to dread? In any case, she was herself taken in by it, and had been living for some days past in a state of delicious trouble, for love is so strong, so beautiful a thing, that its semblances, its mirages, allure and can move us as deeply as itself.

Has it ever happened to you in the street, when you have been preoccupied with thoughts of some one dear to you, to be warned of his approach by meeting persons with a vague resemblance to him, preparatory images, sketches of the type to appear directly afterward, which stand out for you from the crowd like successive appeals to your overexcited attention? Such presentiments are magnetic and nervous impressions at which one should not be too disposed to smile, since they constitute a faculty of suffering. Already, in the moving and constantly renewed stream of visitors, Felicia had several times thought to recognise the curly head of Paul de Gery, when suddenly she uttered a cry of joy. It was not he, however, this time again, but some one who resembled him closely, whose regular and peaceful physiognomy was always now connected in her mind with that of her friend Paul through the effect of a likeness more moral than physical, and the gentle authority which both exercised over her thoughts.

"Aline!"

"Felicia!"

If nothing is more open to suspicion than the friendship of two fashionable ladies sharing the prerogatives of drawing-room royalty and lavishing on each other epithets, and the trivial graces of feminine fondness, the friendships of childhood keep in the grown woman a frankness of manner which distinguishes them, and makes them recognisable among all others, bonds woven naively and firm as the needlework of little girls in which an experienced hand had been prodigal of thread and big knots; plants reared in fresh soil, in flower, but with strong roots, full of vitality and new shoots. And what a joy, hand in hand—you glad dances of boarding-school days, where are you?—to retrace some steps of one's way with somebody who has an equal acquaintance with it and its least incidents, and the same laugh of tender retrospection. A little apart, the two girls, for whom it has been sufficient to find themselves once more face to face to forget five years of separation, carry on a rapid exchange of recollections, while the little pere Joyeuse, his ruddy face brightened by a new cravat, straightens himself in pride to see his daughter thus warmly welcomed by such an illustrious person. Proud certainly he had reason to be, for the little Parisian, even in the neighbourhood of her brilliant friend, holds her own in grace, youth, fair candour, beneath her twenty smooth and golden years, which the gladness of this meeting brings to fresh bloom.

"How happy you must be! For my part, I have seen nothing yet; but I hear everybody saying it is so beautiful."

"Happy above all to see you again, little Aline. It is so long—"

"I should think so, you naughty girl! Whose the fault?"

And from the saddest corner of her memory, Felicia recalls the date of the breaking off of their relations, coinciding for her with another date on which her youth came to its end in an unforgettable scene.

"And what have you been doing, darling, all this time?"

"Oh, I, always the same thing—or, nothing to speak of."

"Yes, yes, we know what you call doing nothing, you brave little thing! Giving your life to other people, isn't it?"

But Aline was no longer listening. She was smiling affectionately to some one straight in front of her; and Felicia, turning round to see who it was, perceived Paul de Gery replying to the shy and tender greeting of Mlle. Joyeuse.

"You know each other, then?"

"Do I know M. Paul! I should think so, indeed. We talk of you very often. He has never told you, then?"

"Never. He must be a terribly sly fellow."

She stopped short, her mind enlightened by a flash; and quickly without heed to de Gery, who was coming up to congratulate her on her triumph, she leaned over towards Aline and spoke to her in a low voice. That young lady blushed, protested with smiles and words under her breath: "How can you think of such a thing? At my age—a 'grandmamma'!" and finally seized her father's arm in order to escape some friendly teasing.

When Felicia saw the two young people going off together, when she had realized the fact, which they had not yet grasped themselves, that they were in love with each other, she felt as it were a crumbling all around her. Then upon her dream, now fallen to the ground in a thousand fragments, she set herself to stamp furiously. After all, he was quite right to prefer this little Aline to herself. Would an honest man ever dare to marry Mlle. Ruys? She, a home, a family—what nonsense! A harlot's daughter you are, my dear; you must be a harlot too if you want to become anything at all.

The day wore on. The crowd, more active now that there were empty spaces here and there, commenced to stream towards the door of exit after great eddyings round the successes of the year, satisfied, rather tired, but excited still by that air charged with the electricity of art. A great flood of sunlight, such as sometimes occurs at four o'clock in the afternoon, fell on the stained-glass rose-window, threw on the sand tracks of rainbow-coloured lights, softly bathing the bronze or the marble of the statues, imparting an iridescent hue to the nudity of a beautiful figure, giving to the vast museum something of the luminous life of a garden. Felicia, absorbed in her deep and sad reverie, did not notice the man who advanced towards her, superb, elegant, fascinating, through the respectfully opened ranks of the public, while the name of "Mora" was everywhere whispered.

"Well, mademoiselle, you have made a splendid success. I only regret one thing about it, and that is the cruel symbol which you have hidden in your masterpiece."

As she saw the duke before her, she shuddered.

"Ah, yes, the symbol," she said, lifting her face towards his with a smile of discouragement; and leaning against the pedestal of the large, voluptuous statue near which they happened to be standing, with the closed eyes of a woman who gives or abandons herself, she murmured low, very low:

"Rabelais lied, as all men lie. The truth is that the fox is utterly wearied, that he is at the end of his breath and his courage, ready to fall into the ditch, and that if the greyhound makes another effort——"

Mora started, became a shade paler, all the blood he had in his body rushing back to his heart. Two sombre flames met with their eyes, two rapid words were exchanged by lips that hardly moved; then the duke bowed profoundly, and walked away with a step gay and light, as though the gods were bearing him.

At that moment there was in the palace only one man as happy as he, and that was the Nabob. Escorted by his friends, he occupied, quite filled up, the principal bay with his own party alone, speaking loudly, gesticulating, proud to such a degree that he looked almost handsome, as though by dint of naive and long contemplation of his bust he had been touched by something of the splendid idealization with which the artist had haloed the vulgarity of his type. The head, raised to the three-quarters position, standing freely out from the wide, loose collar, drew contradictory remarks on the resemblance from the passers-by; and the name of Jansoulet, so many times repeated by the electoral ballot-boxes, was repeated over again now by the prettiest mouths, by the most authoritative voices, in Paris. Any other than the Nabob would have been embarrassed to hear uttered, as he passed, these expressions of curiosity which were not always friendly. But the platform, the springing-board, well suited that nature which became bolder under the fire of glances, like those women who are beautiful or witty only in society, and whom the least admiration transfigures and completes.

When he felt this delirious joy growing calmer, when he thought to have drunk the whole of its proud intoxication, he had only to say to himself, "Deputy! I am a Deputy!" And the triumphal cup foamed once more to the brim. It meant the embargo raised from all his possessions, the awakening from a nightmare that had lasted two months, the puff of cool wind sweeping away all his anxieties, all his inquietudes, even to the affront of Saint-Romans, very heavy though that was in his memory.

Deputy!

He laughed to himself as he thought of the baron's face when he learned the news, of the stupefaction of the Bey when he had been led up to his bust; and suddenly, upon the reflection that he was no longer merely an adventurer stuffed with gold, exciting the stupid admiration of the crowd, as might an enormous rough nugget in the window of a money-changer, but that people saw in him, as he passed, one of the men elected by the will of the nation, his simple and mobile face grew thoughtful with a deliberate gravity, there suggested themselves to him projects of a career, of reform, and the wish to profit by the lessons that had been latterly taught by destiny. Already, remembering the promise which he had given to de Gery, for the household troop that wriggled ignobly at his heels, he made exhibition of certain disdainful coldnesses, a deliberate pose of authoritative contradiction. He called the Marquis de Bois l'Hery "my good fellow," imposed silence very sharply on the governor, whose enthusiasm was becoming scandalous, and made a solemn vow to himself to get rid as soon as possible of all that mendicant and promising Bohemian set, when he should have occasion to begin the process.

Penetrating the crowd which surrounded him, Moessard—the handsome Moessard, in a sky-blue cravat, pale and bloated like a white embodiment of disease, and pinched at the waist in a fine frock-coat—seeing that the Nabob, after having gone twenty times round the hall of sculpture, was making for the door, dashed forward, and passing his arm through his, said:

"You are taking me with you, you know."

Especially of late, since the time of the election, he had assumed, in the establishment of the Place Vendome, an authority almost equal to that of Monpavon, but more impudent; for, in point of impudence, the Queen's lover was without his equal on the pavement that stretches from the Rue Drouot to the Madeleine. This time he had gone too far. The muscular arm which he pressed was shaken violently, and the Nabob answered very dryly:

"I am sorry, mon cher, but I have not a place to offer you."

No place in a carriage that was as big as a house, and which five of them had come in!

Moessard gazed at him in stupefaction.

"I had, however, a few words to say to you which are very urgent. With regard to the subject of my note—you received it, did you not?"

"Certainly; and M. de Gery should have sent you a reply this very morning. What you ask is impossible. Twenty thousand francs! Tonnerre de Dieu! You go at a fine rate!"

"Still, it seems to me that my services—" stammered the beauty-man.

"Have been amply paid for. That is how it seems to me also. Two hundred thousand francs in five months! We will draw the line there, if you please. Your teeth are long, young man; you will have to file them down a little."

They exchanged these words as they walked, pushed forward by the surging wave of the people going out. Moessard stopped:

"That is your last word?"

The Nabob hesitated for a moment, seized by a presentiment as he looked at that pale, evil mouth; then he remembered the promise which he had given to his friend:

"That is my last word."

"Very well! We shall see," said the handsome Moessard, whose switch-cane cut the air with the hiss of a viper; and, turning on his heel, he made off with great strides, like a man who is expected somewhere on very urgent business.

Jansoulet continued his triumphal progress. That day much more would have been required to upset the equilibrium of his happiness; on the contrary, he felt himself relieved by the so-quickly achieved fulfilment of his purpose.

The immense vestibule was thronged by a dense crowd of people whom the approach of the hour of closing was bringing out, but whom one of those sudden showers, which seem inseparable from the opening of the Salon, kept waiting beneath the porch, with its floor beaten down and sandy like the entrance to the circus where the young dandies strut about. The scene that met the eye was curious, and very Parisian.

Outside, great rays of sunshine traversing the rain, attaching to its limpid beads those sharp and brilliant blades which justify the proverbial saying, "It rains halberds"; the young greenery of the Champs-Elysees, the clumps of rhododendrons, rustling and wet, the carriages ranged in the avenue, the mackintosh capes of the coachmen, all the splendid harness-trappings of the horses receiving from the rain and the sunbeams an added richness and effect, and blue everywhere looming out, the blue of a sky which is about to smile in the interval between two downpours.

Within, laughter, gossip, greetings, impatience, skirts held up, satins bulging out above the delicate folds of frills, of lace, of flounces gathered up in the hands of their wearers in heavy, terribly frayed bundles. Then, to unite the two sides of the picture, these prisoners framed in by the vaulted ceiling of the porch and in the gloom of its shadow, with the immense background in brilliant light, footmen running beneath umbrellas, crying out names of coachmen or of masters, broughams coming up at walking pace, and flustered couples getting into them.

"M. Jansoulet's carriage!"

Everybody turned round, but, as one knows, that did not embarrass him. And while the good Nabob, waiting for his suite, stood posing a little amid these fashionable and famous people, this mixed tout Paris which was there, with its every face bearing a well-known name, a nervous and well-gloved hand was stretched out to him, and the Duc de Mora, on his way to his brougham, threw to him, as he passed, these words, with that effusion which happiness gives to the most reserved of men:

"My congratulations, my dear deputy."

It was said in a loud voice, and every one could hear it: "My dear deputy."

There is in the life of all men one golden hour, one luminous peak, whereon all that they can hope of prosperity, joy, triumph, waits for them and is given into their hands. The summit is more or less lofty, more or less rugged and difficult to climb, but it exists equally for all, for powerful and humble alike. Only, like that longest day of the year on which the sun has shone with its utmost brilliance, and of which the morrow seems a first step towards winter, this summum of human existences is but a moment given to be enjoyed, after which one can but redescend. This late afternoon of the first of May, streaked with rain and sunshine, thou must forget it not, poor man—must fix forever its changing brilliance in thy memory. It was the hour of thy full summer, with its flowers in bloom, its fruits bending their golden boughs, its ripe harvests of which so recklessly thou wast plucking the corn. The star will now pale, gradually growing more remote and falling, incapable ere long of piercing the mournful night wherein thy destiny shall be accomplished.



MEMOIRS OF AN OFFICE PORTER IN THE ANTCHAMBER

Great festivities last Saturday in the Place Vendome. In honour of his election, M. Bernard Jansoulet, the new deputy for Corsica, gave a magnificent evening party, with municipal guards at the door, illumination of the entire mansion, and two thousand invitations sent out to fashionable Paris.

I owed to the distinction of my manners, to the sonority of my vocal organ, which the chairman of the board had had occasion to notice at the meetings at the Territorial Bank, the opportunity of taking part in this sumptuous entertainment, at which, for three hours, standing in the vestibule, amid the flowers and hangings, clad in scarlet and gold, with that majesty peculiar to persons who are rather generously built, and with my calves exposed for the first time in my life, I launched, like a cannon-ball, through the five communicating drawing-rooms, the name of each guest, which a glittering beadle saluted every time with the "bing" of his halberd on the floor.

How many the curious observations which that evening again I was able to make; how many the pleasant sallies, the high-toned jests exchanged among the servants upon all that world as it passed by! Not with the vine-dressers of Montbars in any case should I have heard such drolleries. I should remark that the worthy M. Barreau, to begin with, had caused to be served to us all in his pantry, filled to the ceiling with iced drinks and provisions, a solid lunch well washed down, which put each of us in a good humour that was maintained during the evening by the glasses of punch and champagne pilfered from the trays when dessert was served.

The masters, indeed, seemed in less joyous mood than we. So early as nine o'clock, when I arrived at my post, I was struck by the uneasy nervousness apparent on the face of the Nabob, whom I saw walking with M. de Gery through the lighted and empty drawing-rooms, talking quickly and making large gestures.

"I will kill him!" he said; "I will kill him!"

The other endeavoured to soothe him; then madame came in, and the subject of their conversation was changed.

A mighty fine woman, this Levantine, twice as stout as I am, dazzling to look at with her tiara of diamonds, the jewels with which her huge white shoulders were laden, her back as round as her bosom, her waist compressed within a cuirass of green gold, which was continued in long braids down the whole length of her stiff skirt. I have never seen anything so imposing, so rich. She suggested one of those beautiful white elephants that carry towers on their backs, of which we read in books of travel. When she walked, supporting herself with difficulty by means of clinging to the furniture, her whole body quivered, her ornaments clattered like a lot of old iron. Added to this, a small, very piercing voice, and a fine red face which a little negro boy kept cooling for her all the time with a white feather fan as big as a peacock's tail.

It was the first time that this indolent and retiring person had showed herself to Parisian society, and M. Jansoulet seemed very happy and proud that she had been willing to preside over his party; which undertaking, for that matter, did not cost the lady much trouble, for, leaving her husband to receive the guests in the first drawing-room, she went and lay down on the divan of the small Japanese room, wedged between two piles of cushions, motionless, so that you could see her from a distance right in the background, looking like an idol, beneath the great fan which her negro waved regularly like a piece of clockwork. These foreign women possess an assurance!

All the same, the Nabob's irritation had struck me, and seeing the valet de chambre go by, descending the staircase four steps at a time, I caught him on the wing and whispered in his ear:

"What's the matter, then, with your governor, M. Noel?"

"It is the article in the Messenger," was his reply, and I had to give up the idea of learning anything further for the moment, the loud ringing of a bell announcing that the first carriage had arrived, followed soon by a crowd of others.

Wholly absorbed in my occupation, careful to utter clearly the names which were given to me, and to make them echo from salon to salon, I had no longer a thought for anything besides. It is no easy business to announce in a proper manner persons who are always under the impression that their name must be known, whisper it under their breath as they pass, and then are surprised to hear you murder it with the finest accent, and are almost angry with you on account of those entrances which, missing fire and greeted with little smiles, follow upon an ill-made announcement. At M. Jansoulet's, what made the work still more difficult for me was the number of foreigners—Turks, Egyptians, Persians, Tunisians. I say nothing of the Corsicans, who were very numerous that day, because during my four years at the Territorial I have become accustomed to the pronunciation of those high-sounding, interminable names, always followed by that of the locality: "Paganetti de Porto Vecchio, Bastelica di Bonifacio, Paianatchi de Barbicaglia."

It was always a pleasure to me to modulate these Italian syllables, to give them all their sonority, and I saw clearly, from the bewildered airs of these worthy islanders, how charmed and surprised they were to be introduced in such a manner into the high society of the Continent. But with the Turks, these pashas, beys, and effendis, I had much more trouble, and I must have happened often to fall on a wrong pronunciation; for M. Jansoulet, on two separate occasions, sent word to me to pay more attention to the names that were given to me, and especially to announce in a more natural manner. This remark, uttered aloud before the whole vestibule with a certain roughness, annoyed me greatly, and prevented me—shall I confess it?—from pitying this rich parvenu when I learned, in the course of the evening, what cruel thorns lay concealed in his bed of roses.

From half past ten until midnight the bell was constantly ringing, carriages rolling up under the portico, guests succeeding one another, deputies, senators, councillors of state, municipal councillors, who looked much rather as though they were attending a meeting of shareholders than an evening-party of society people. What could account for this? I had not succeeded in finding an explanation, but a remark of the beadle Nicklauss opened my eyes.

"Do you notice, M. Passajon," said that worthy henchman, as he stood opposite me, halberd in hand, "do you notice how few ladies we have?"

That was it, egad! Nor were we the only two to observe the fact. As each new arrival made his entry I could hear the Nabob, who was standing near the door, exclaim, with consternation in his thick voice like that of a Marseillais with a cold in his head:

"What! all alone?"

The guest would murmur his excuses. "Mn-mn-mn—his wife a trifle indisposed. Certainly very sorry." Then another would arrive, and the same question call forth the same reply.

By its constant repetition this phrase "All alone?" had eventually become a jest in the vestibule; lackeys and footmen threw it at each other whenever there entered a new guest "all alone!" And we laughed and were put in good-humour by it. But M. Nicklauss, with his great experience of the world, deemed this almost general abstention of the fair sex unnatural.

"It must be the article in the Messenger," said he.

Everybody was talking about it, this rascally article, and before the mirror garlanded with flowers, at which each guest gave a finishing touch to his attire before entering, I surprised fragments of whispered conversation such as this:

"You have read it?"

"It is horrible!"

"Do you think the thing possible?"

"I have no idea. In any case, I preferred not to bring my wife."

"I have done the same. A man can go everywhere without compromising himself."

"Certainly. While a woman——"

Then they would go in, opera hat under arm, with that conquering air of married men when they are unaccompanied by their wives.

What, then, could there be in this newspaper, this terrible article, to menace to this degree the influence of so wealthy a man? Unfortunately, my duties took up the whole of my time. I could go down neither to the pantry nor to the cloak-room to obtain information, to chat with the coachmen and valets and lackeys whom I could see standing at the foot of the staircase, amusing themselves by jests upon the people who were going up. What will you? Masters give themselves great airs also. How not laugh to see go by with an insolent manner and an empty stomach the Marquis and the Marquise de Bois l'Hery, after all that we have been told about the traffickings of Monsieur and the toilettes of Madame? And the Jenkins couple, so tender, so united, the doctor carefully putting a lace shawl over his lady's shoulders for fear she should take cold on the staircase; she herself smiling and in full dress, all in velvet, with a great long train, leaning on her husband's arm with an air that seems to say, "How happy I am!" when I happened to know that, in fact, since the death of the Irishwoman, his real, legitimate wife, the doctor is thinking of getting rid of the old woman who clings to him, in order to be able to marry a chit of a girl, and that the old woman passes her nights in lamentation, and in spoiling with tears whatever beauty she has left.

The humorous thing is that not one of these people had the least suspicion of the rich jests and jeers that were spat over their backs as they passed, not a notion of the filth which those long trains drew after them as they crossed the carpet of the antechamber, and they all would look at you so disdainfully that it was enough to make you die of laughing.

The two ladies whom I have just named, the wife of the governor, a little Corsican, to whom her bushy eyebrows, her white teeth, and her shining cheeks, dark beneath the skin, give the appearance of a woman of Auvergne with a washed face, a good sort, for the rest, and laughing all the time except when her husband is looking at other women; in addition, a few Levantines with tiaras of gold or pearls, less perfect specimens of the type than our own, but still in a similar style, wives of upholsterers, jewellers, regular tradesmen of the establishment, with shoulders as large as shop-fronts, and expensive toilettes; finally, sundry ladies, wives of officials of the Territorial, in sorry, badly creased dresses; these constituted the sole representation of the fair sex in the assembly, some thirty ladies lost among a thousand black coats—that is to say, practically none at all. From time to time Cassagne, Laporte, Grandvarlet, who were serving the refreshments in trays, stopped to inform us of what was passing in the drawing-rooms.

"Ah, my boys, if you could see it! it has a gloom, a melancholy. The men don't stir from the buffets. The ladies are all at the back, seated in a circle, fanning themselves and saying nothing. The fat old lady does not speak to a soul. I fancy she is sulking. You should see the look on Monsieur! Come, pere Passajon, a glass of Chateau-Larose; it will pick you up a bit."

They were charmingly kind to me, all these young people, and took a mischievous pleasure in doing me the honours of the cellar so often and so copiously, that my tongue commenced to become heavy, uncertain, and as the young folk said to me, in their somewhat free language. "Uncle, you are babbling." Happily the last of the effendis had just arrived, and there was nobody else to announce; for it was in vain that I sought to shake off the impression, every time I advanced between the curtains to send a name hurtling through the air at random, I saw the chandeliers of the drawing-rooms revolving with hundreds of dazzling lights, and the floors slipping away with sharp and perpendicular slopes like Russian mountains. I was bound to get my speech mixed, it is certain.

The cool night-air, sundry ablutions at the pump in the court-yard, quickly got the better of this small discomfort, and when I entered the cloak-room nothing of it was any longer apparent. I found a numerous and gay company collected round a marquise au champagne, of which all my nieces, wearing their best dresses, with their hair puffed out and cravats of pink ribbon, took their full share notwithstanding exclamations and bewitching little grimaces that deceived nobody. Naturally, the conversation turned on the famous article, an article by Moessard, it appears, full of frightful occupations which the Nabob was alleged to have followed fifteen or twenty years ago, at the time of his first sojourn in Paris.

It was the third attack of the kind which the Messenger had published in the course of the last week, and that rogue of a Moessard had the spite to send the number each time done up in a packet to the Place Vendome.

M. Jansoulet received it in the morning with his chocolate; and at the same hour his friends and his enemies—for a man like the Nabob could be regarded with indifference by none—would be reading, commenting, tracing for themselves the relation to him a line of conduct designed to save them from becoming compromised. Today's article must be supposed to have struck hard all the same; for Jansoulet, the coachman, recounted to us a few hours ago, in the Bois, his master had not exchanged ten greetings in the course of ten drives round the lake, while ordinarily his hat is as rarely on his head as a sovereign's when he takes the air. Then, when they got back, there was another trouble. The three boys had just arrived at the house, all in tears and dismay, brought home from the College Bourdaloue by a worthy father in the interest of the poor little fellows themselves, who had received a temporary leave of absence in order to spare them from hearing in the parlour or the playground any unkind story or painful allusion. Thereupon the Nabob flew into a terrible passion, which caused him to destroy a service of porcelain, and it appears that, had it not been for M. de Gery, he would have rushed off at once to punch Moessard's head.

"And he would have done very well," remarked M. Noel, entering at these last words, very much excited. "There is not a line of truth in that rascal's article. My master had never been in Paris before last year. From Tunis to Marseilles, from Marseilles to Tunis, those were his only journeys. But this knave of a journalist is taking his revenge because we refused him twenty thousand francs."

"There you acted very unwisely," observed M. Francis upon this—Monpavon's Francis, Monpavon the old beau whose solitary tooth shakes about in the centre of his mouth at every word he says, but whom the young ladies regard with a favourable eye all the same on account of his fine manners. "Yes, you were unwise. One must know how to conciliate people, so long as they are in a position to be useful to us or to injure us. Your Nabob has turned his back too quickly upon his friends after his success; and between you and me, mon cher, he is not sufficiently firmly established to be able to disregard attacks of this kind."

I thought myself able here to put in a word in my turn:

"That is true enough, M. Noel, your governor is no longer the same since his election. He has adopted a tone and manners which I can hardly but describe as reprehensible. The day before yesterday, at the Territorial, he raised a commotion which you can hardly imagine. He was heard to exclaim before the whole board: 'You have lied to me; you have robbed me, and made me a robber as much as yourselves. Show me your books, you set of rogues!' If he has treated Moessard in the same sort of fashion, I am not surprised any longer that the latter should be taking his revenge in his newspaper."

"But what does this article say?" asked M. Barreau. "Who is present that has read it?"

Nobody answered. Several had tried to buy it, but in Paris scandal sells like bread. At ten o'clock in the morning there was not a single copy of the Messenger left in the office. Then it occurred to one of my nieces—a sharp girl, if ever there was one—to look in the pocket of one of the numerous overcoats in the cloak-room, folded carefully in large pigeon-holes. At the first which she examined:

"Here it is!" exclaimed the charming child with an air of triumph, as she drew out a Messenger crumpled in the folding like a paper that has just been read.

"Here is another!" cried Tom Bois l'Hery, who was making a search on his own account. A third overcoat, a third Messenger. And in every one the same thing: pushed down to the bottom of a pocket, or with its titlepage protruding, the newspaper was everywhere, just as its article must have been in every memory; and one could imagine the Nabob up above exchanging polite phrases with his guests, while they could have reeled off by heart the atrocious things that had been printed about him. We all laughed much at this idea; but we were anxious to make acquaintance in our own turn with this curious article.

"Come, pere Passajon, read it aloud to us."

It was the general desire, and I assented.

I don't know if you are like me, but when I read aloud I gargle my throat with my voice; I introduce modulations and flourishes to such an extent that I understand nothing of what I am saying, like those singers to whom the sense of the words matters little, provided the notes be true. The thing was entitled "The Boat of Flowers"—a sufficiently complicated story, with Chinese names, about a very rich mandarin, who had at one time in the past kept a "boat of flowers" moored quite at the far end of the town near a barrier frequented by the soldiers. At the end of the article we were not farther on than at the beginning. We tried certainly to wink at each other, to pretend to be clever; but, frankly, we had no reason. A veritable puzzle without solution; and we should still be stuck fast at it if old Francis, a regular rascal who knows everything, had not explained to us that this meeting place of the soldiers must stand for the Military School, and that the "boat of flowers" did not bear so pretty a name as that in good French. And this name, he said it aloud notwithstanding the presence of the ladies. There was an explosion of cries, of "Ah's!" and "Oh's!" some saying, "I suspected it!" others, "It is impossible!"

"Pardon me," added Francis, formerly a trumpeter in the Ninth Lancers—the regiment of Mora and of Monpavon—"pardon me. Twenty years ago, during the last half year of my service, I was in barracks in the Military School, and I remember very well that near the fortifications there was a dirty dancing-hall known as the Jansoulet Rooms, with a little furnished flat above and bedrooms at twopence-halfpenny the hour, to which one could retire between two quadrilles."

"You are an infamous liar!" said M. Noel, beside himself with rage—"a thief and a liar like your master. Jansoulet has never been in Paris before now."

Francis was seated a little outside our circle engaged in sipping something sweet, because champagne has a bad effect on his nerves and because, too, it is not a sufficiently distinguished beverage for him. He rose gravely, without putting down his glass, and, advancing towards M. Noel, said to him very quietly:

"You are wanting in manners, mon cher. The other evening I found your tone coarse and unseemly. To insult people serves no good purpose, especially in this case, since I happen to have been an assistant to a fencing-master, and, if matters were carried further between us, could put a couple of inches of steel into whatever part of your body I might choose. But I am good-natured. Instead of a sword-thrust, I prefer to give you a piece of advice, which your master will do well to follow. This is what I should do in your place: I should go and find Moessard, and I should buy him, without quibbling about price. Hemerlingue has given him twenty thousand francs to speak; I would offer him thirty thousand to hold his tongue."

"Never! never!" vociferated M. Noel. "I should rather go and knock the rascally brigand's head off."

"You will do nothing of the kind. Whether the calumny be true or false, you have seen the effect of it this evening. This is a sample of the pleasures in store for you. What can you expect, mon cher? You have thrown away your crutches too soon, and thought to walk by yourselves. That is all very well when one is well set up and firm on the legs; but when one had not a very solid footing, and has also the misfortune to feel Hemerlingue at his heels, it is a bad business. Besides, your master is beginning to be short of money; he has given notes of hand to old Schwalbach—and don't talk to me of a Nabob who gives notes of hand. I know well that you have millions over yonder, but your election must be declared valid before you can touch them; a few more articles like to-day's, and I answer for it that you will not secure that declaration. You set yourselves up to struggle against Paris, mon bon, but you are not big enough for such a match; you know nothing about it. Here we are not in the East, and if we do not wring the necks of people who displease us, if we do not throw them into the water in a sack, we have other methods of effecting their disappearance. Noel, let your master take care. One of these mornings Paris will swallow him as I swallow this plum, without spitting out either the stone or skin."

He was terrible, this old man, and notwithstanding the paint on his face, I felt a certain respect for him. While he was speaking, we could hear the music upstairs, and the horses of the municipal guards shaking their curb-chains in the square. From without, our festivities must have seemed very brilliant, all lighted up by their thousands of candles, and with the great portico illuminated. And when one reflected that ruin perhaps lay beneath it all! We sat there in the vestibule like rats that hold counsel with each other at the bottom of a ship's hold, when the vessel is beginning to leak and before the crew has found it out, and I saw clearly that all the lackeys and chambermaids would not be long in decamping at the first note of alarm. Could such a catastrophe indeed be possible? And in that case what would become of me, and the Territorial, and the money I had advanced, and the arrears due to me?

That Francis has left me with a cold shudder down my back.



A PUBLIC MAN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What must I do?"

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

Mora shrugged his shoulders:

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

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

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