M. Noel pri M.—de se randre a sa soire du 25 couran.

On soupra.[3]

[3] M. Noel requests the pleasure of M. ——'s company on the evening of the 25th instant. Supper.

I saw, notwithstanding the defective orthography, that it was a serious, authoritative function; so I arrayed myself in my newest frock coat and my finest linen, and betook myself to Place Vendome, to the address indicated by the invitation.

M. Noel had selected for his party the evening of a first performance at the Opera, which society attended en masse, so that the whole household had the bit in their teeth until midnight, and the entire house at their disposal. Nevertheless, our host had preferred to receive us in his room in the upper part of the house, and I strongly approved his judgment, being therein of the opinion of the good man who said:

Fi du plaisir Que la crainte peut corrompre![4]

[4]

A fig for the pleasure Which fear can destroy!

But talk to me about the attics on Place Vendome! A thick carpet on the floor, the bed out of sight in an alcove, Algerian curtains with red stripes, a green marble clock, the whole lighted by patent self-regulating lamps. Our dean, M. Chalmette, at Dijon had no better quarters than that. I arrived about nine o'clock with Monpavon's old Francis, and I must confess that my appearance created a sensation, preceded as I was by the fame of my academic past, by my reputation for refined manners and great learning. My fine bearing did the rest, for I must say that I know how to carry myself. M. Noel, very dark skinned, with mutton-chop whiskers, and dressed in a black coat, came forward to meet us.

"Welcome, Monsieur Passajon," he said; and taking my cap with silver ornaments, which, as I entered the room, I held in my right hand according to custom, he handed it to an enormous negro in red and gold livery.

"Here, Lakdar, take this—and this," he said, by way of jest, giving him a kick in a certain portion of the back.

There was much laughter at that sally, and we began to converse most amicably. An excellent fellow, that M. Noel, with his Southern accent, his determined bearing, the frankness and simplicity of his manners. He reminded me of the Nabob, minus his master's distinguished mien, however. Indeed, I noticed that evening that such resemblances are of common occurrence in valets de chambre, who, as they live on intimate terms with their masters, by whom they are always a little dazzled, end by adopting their peculiarities and their mannerisms. For instance, M. Francis has a certain habit of drawing himself up and displaying his linen shirtfront, a mania for raising his arms to pull down his cuffs, which is Monpavon to the life. But there is one who does not resemble his master in the least, that is Joe, Dr. Jenkins' coachman. I call him Joe, but at the party everybody called him Jenkins; for in that circle the stable folk among themselves call one another by their employers' names, plain Bois-l'Hery, Monpavon and Jenkins. Is it to debase the superiors, to exalt the servant class? Every country has its customs; nobody but a fool ought to be astonished by them. To return to Joe Jenkins—how can the doctor, who is such an amiable man, so perfect in every respect, keep in his service that gin and porter-soaked brute, who sits silent for hours at a time, and then, the instant that the liquor goes to his head, begins to roar and wants to box everybody—witness the scandalous scene that had just taken place when we arrived.

The marquis's little tiger, Tom Bois-l'Hery, as they call him here, undertook to joke with that Irish beast, who—at some Parisian gamin's jest—retorted by a terrible Belfast knock-down blow in the middle of the face.

"Come on, Humpty-Dumpty! Come on, Humpty-Dumpty!" roared the coachman, choking with rage, while they carried his innocent victim into the adjoining room, where the ladies, young and old, were engaged in bandaging his nose. The excitement was soon allayed, thanks to our arrival, thanks also to the judicious words of M. Barreau, a man of mature years, sedate and majestic, of my own type. He is the Nabob's cook, formerly chef at the Cafe Anglais, and M. Cardailhac, manager of the Nouveautes, secured him for his friend. To see him in his black coat and white cravat, with his handsome, full, clean-shaven face, you would take him for one of the great functionaries of the Empire. To be sure, a cook in a house where the table is set for thirty people every morning, in addition to Madame's table, and where everyone is fed on the best and the extra best, is no ordinary cook-shop artist. He receives a colonel's salary, with board and lodging, and then the perquisites! No one has any idea of what the perquisites amount to in a place like that. So every one addressed him with great respect, with the consideration due to a man of his importance: "Monsieur Barreau" here, "my dear Monsieur Barreau" there. You must not imagine that the servants in a house are all chums and social equals. Nowhere is the hierarchy more strictly observed than among them. For instance, I noticed at M. Noel's party that the coachmen did not fraternize with their grooms, nor the valets de chambre with the footmen and out-riders, any more than the steward and butler mingled with the scullions; and when M. Barreau cracked a little joke, no matter what it was, it was a pleasure to see how amused his underlings seemed to be. I have no fault to find with these things. Quite the contrary. As our dean used to say: "A society without a hierarchy is a house without a stairway." But the fact seemed to me worth noting in these memoirs.

The party, I need not say, lacked something of its brilliancy until the return of its fairest ornaments, the ladies who had gone to look after little Tom; ladies' maids with glossy, well-oiled hair, housekeepers in beribboned caps, negresses, governesses, among whom I at once acquired much prestige, thanks to my respectable appearance and the nickname "my uncle" which the youngest of those attractive females were pleased to bestow upon me. I tell you there was no lack of second-hand finery, silk and lace, even much faded velvet, eight-button gloves cleaned several times and perfumery picked up on Madame's toilet-table; but their faces were happy, their minds given over to gayety, and I had no difficulty in forming a very lively little party in one corner—always perfectly proper, of course—that goes without saying—and entirely befitting a person in my position. But that was the general tone of the occasion. Not until toward the close of the collation did I hear any of the unseemly remarks, any of the scandalous anecdotes that amuse the gentlemen of our council so highly; and it gives me pleasure to state that Bois-l'Hery the coachman, to cite no other instance, is very differently brought up from Bois-l'Hery the master.

M. Noel alone, by his familiar tone and the freedom of his repartees, overstepped the limit. There's a man who does not scruple to call things by their names. For instance, he said to M. Francis, so loud that he could be heard from one end of the salon to the other: "I say, Francis, your old sharper played still another trick on us last week." And as the other threw out his chest with a dignified air, M. Noel began to laugh. "No offence, old girl. The strong box is full. You'll never get to the bottom of it." And it was then that he told us about the loan of fifteen millions I mentioned above.

Meanwhile I was surprised to see no signs of preparation for the supper mentioned on the invitations, and I expressed my anxiety in an undertone to one of my lovely nieces, who replied:

"We are waiting for M. Louis."

"M. Louis?"

"What! Don't you know M. Louis, the Duc de Mora's valet de chambre?"

Thereupon I was enlightened on the subject of that influential personage, whose good offices are sought by prefects, senators, even by ministers, and who evidently makes them pay roundly for them, for, with his salary of twelve hundred francs from the duke, he has saved enough to have an income of twenty-five thousand francs, has his daughters at the boarding-school of the Sacred Heart, his son at Bourdaloue College, and a chalet in Switzerland to which the whole family go for the vacation.

At that juncture the personage in question arrived; but there was nothing in his appearance that would have led me to guess his position, which has not its like in Paris. No majesty in his bearing, a waistcoat buttoned to the chin, a mean, insolent manner, and a fashion of speaking without opening his lips, very unpleasant to those who are listening to him.

He saluted the company with a slight nod, offered a finger to M. Noel, and there we sat, staring at each other, congealed by his grand manners, when a door was thrown open at the end of the room and the supper made its appearance—all kinds of cold meats, pyramids of fruit, bottles of every shape, beneath the glare of two candelabra.

"Now, messieurs, escort the ladies."

In a moment we were in our places, the ladies seated, with the oldest or most important of us men, the others standing, passing dishes, chattering, drinking out of all the glasses, picking a mouthful from every plate. I had M. Francis for my neighbor, and I was obliged to listen to his spiteful remarks against M. Louis, of whom he is jealous because he has such a fine situation in comparison with that he himself holds in his played-out nobleman's household.

"He's a parvenu," he said to me in an undertone. "He owes his fortune to his wife, to Madame Paul."

It seems that this Madame Paul is a housekeeper who has been twenty years in the duke's service, and who understands, as no one else does, how to make a certain pomade for certain infirmities that he has. Mora cannot do without her. Remarking that fact, M. Louis paid his court to the old woman, married her, although he is much younger than she; and, in order not to lose his nurse aux pommades, His Excellency took the husband for his valet de chambre. In my heart, notwithstanding what I may have said to M. Francis, I considered that marriage perfectly proper and in conformity with the healthiest morality, as both the mayor and the cure had a hand in it. Moreover, that excellent repast, consisting of choice and very expensive dishes which I did not even know by name, had disposed my mind to indulgence and good humor. But everybody was not in the same mood, for I heard M. Barreau's baritone voice on the other side of the table, grumbling:

"Why does he meddle? Do I stick my nose into his business? In the first place, it's a matter that concerns Bompain, not him. And what does it amount to? What is it that he finds fault with me for? The butcher sends me five baskets of meat every morning. I use only two and sell the other three. Where's the chef who doesn't do that? As if he wouldn't do better to keep an eye on the big leakage above stairs, instead of coming and spying about my basement. When I think that the first-floor clique has smoked twenty-eight thousand francs' worth of cigars in three months! Twenty-eight thousand francs! Ask Noel if I lie. And on the second floor, in Madame's apartments, there's a fine mess of linen, dresses thrown aside after one wearing, jewels by the handful, and pearls so thick that you crush 'em as you walk. Oh! you just wait a bit, and I'll take a twist on that little fellow."

I understood that he was talking about M. de Gery, the Nabob's young secretary, who often comes to the Territoriale, where he does nothing but rummage among the books. Very polite certainly, but a very proud youngster who does not know how to make the most of himself. There was nothing but a chorus of maledictions against him around the table. Even M. Louis delivered himself on that subject, with his high and mighty air:

"Our cook, my dear Monsieur Barreau, has recently had an experience similar to yours with His Excellency's chief secretary, who presumed to indulge in some observations concerning the household expenses. The cook ran up to the duke's study post-haste, in his professional costume, and said, with his hand on his apron string: 'Your Excellency may choose between Monsieur and me.' The duke did not hesitate. One can find as many secretaries as one wants; whereas the good cooks are all known. There are just four in Paris. I include you, my dear Barreau. We dismissed our chief secretary, giving him a prefecture of the first class as a consolation; but we kept our chief cook."

"Ah! that's the talk," said M. Barreau, who was delighted to hear that anecdote. "That's what it is to be in a great nobleman's service. But parvenus are parvenus, what do you expect?"

"And Jansoulet is nothing more than that," added M. Francis, pulling down his cuffs. "A man who was once a porter at Marseille."

At that M. Noel bristled up.

"I say there, old Francis, you're glad enough to have the porter of La Cannebiere pay for your roastings at bouillotte all the same. You won't find many parvenus like us, who loan millions to kings, and whom great noblemen like Mora don't blush to receive at their table."

"Oh! in the country," sneered M. Francis, showing his old fangs.

The other rose, red as fire, on the point of losing his temper, but M. Louis made a sign with his hand that he had something to say, and M. Noel at once sat down, putting his hand to his ear, like the rest of us, in order to lose none of the august words.

"It is true," said the great personage, speaking with the ends of his lips and sipping his wine slowly; "it is true that we received the Nabob at Grandbois some weeks ago. Indeed, a very amusing thing happened there. We have a great many mushrooms in the second park, and His Excellency sometimes amuses himself by picking them. At dinner a great dish of mushrooms was served. There was What-d'ye-call-him—Thingamy—What's-his-name—Marigny, the Minister of the Interior, Monpavon, and your master, my dear Noel. The mushrooms made the round of the table,—they looked very inviting, and the gentlemen filled their plates, all except Monsieur le Duc, who can't digest them and thought that politeness required him to say to his guests: 'Oh! it isn't that I am afraid of them, you know. They are all right,—I picked them with my own hand.'

"'Sapristi!' said Monpavon, laughingly, 'in that case, my dear Auguste, excuse me if I don't taste them,' Marigny, being less at home, looked askance at his plate.

"'Why, Monpavon, upon my word, these mushrooms look very healthy. I am really sorry that I am no longer hungry.'

"The duke remained perfectly serious.

"'Come, Monsieur Jansoulet, I trust that you won't insult me as they have done. Mush-rooms selected by myself!'

"'Oh! your Excellency, the idea! Why, I would eat them with my eyes closed.'

"I leave it to you, if that wasn't great luck for the poor Nabob, the first time that he ate a meal with us. Duperron, who was waiting opposite him, told us about it in the butler's pantry. It seems that it was the most comical thing in the world to see Jansoulet stuff himself with mushrooms, rolling his eyes in terror, while the others watched him curiously without touching their plates. It made him sweat, poor devil! And the best part of it was that he took a second portion; he had the courage to take more. But he poured down bumpers of wine between every two mouthfuls. Well! shall I tell you what I think? That was a very shrewd move on his part, and I am no longer surprised that that fat ox-driver has been the favorite of sovereigns. He knows how to flatter them, in the little things that they don't talk about. In fact, the duke has doted on him since that day."

That little story caused much hilarity, and scattered the clouds collected by a few imprudent words. And thereupon, as the wine had loosened all our tongues, and as we all knew one another better, we rested our elbows on the table and began to talk about masters and places where we had worked, and the amusing things we had seen. Ah! I heard some fine stories and had a glimpse at some domestic scenes! Naturally, I produced my little effect with the story of my pantry at the Territoriale, of the time when I used to put my ragout in the empty safe, which did not prevent our cashier, a great stickler for routine, from changing the combination every two days, as if it contained all the treasures of the Bank of France. M. Louis seemed to enjoy my story. But the most astonishing thing was what little Bois-l'Hery, with his Parisian street-arab's accent, told us of the home life of his employers.

Marquis and Marquise de Bois-l'Hery, second floor, Boulevard Haussmann. Furniture like the Tuileries, blue satin on all the walls, pictures, mantel ornaments, curiosities, a genuine museum, I tell you! overflowing on to the landings. Service very stylish: six servants, chestnut-colored livery in winter, nankeen livery in summer. You see those people everywhere,—at the small Monday parties, at the races, at first nights, at ambassadors' balls, and their names always in the newspapers, with remarks as to Madame's fine toilets and Monsieur's amazing chic. Well! all that is nothing but flim-flam, veneer, outside show, and if the marquis needed a hundred sous, no one would loan them to him on his worldly possessions. The furniture is hired by the fortnight from Fitily, the cocottes' upholsterer. The curiosities, the pictures, belong to old Schwalbach, who sends his customers there and makes them pay double price, because a man doesn't haggle when he thinks he is buying from a marquis, an amateur. As for the marchioness's dresses, the milliner and dress-maker furnish her with them for exhibition every season, make her wear the new styles, a little ridiculous sometimes, but instantly adopted by society, because Madame is still a very beautiful woman, and of high repute in the matter of fashion; she is what is called a lanceuse. And the servants! Provisional like all the rest, changed every week at the pleasure of the intelligence office, which sends them there to give them practice before taking serious positions. They may have neither sponsors nor certificates; they may have just come from prison or elsewhere. Glanard, the great place-broker on Rue de la Paix, supplies Boulevard Haussmann. The servants stay there one week, two weeks, long enough to purchase recommendations from the marquis, who, mark you, pays nothing and barely feeds them; for in that house the kitchen ovens are cold most of the time, as Monsieur and Madame dine out almost every evening, or attend balls at which supper is served. It is a positive fact that there are people in Paris who take the buffet seriously, and eat their first meal of the day after midnight. The Bois-l'Herys are well posted as to houses where there is a buffet. They will tell you that you get a very good supper at the Austrian embassy, that the Spanish embassy is a little careless in the matter of wines, and that the Minister of Foreign Affairs gives you the best chaud-froid de volailles. Such is the life of that curious household. Nothing of all they have is sewn on; everything is basted or pinned. A gust of wind, and away it all goes. But at all events they are sure of losing nothing. That is what gives the marquis that blagueur, Pere Tranquille air, as he looks you in the face with both hands in his pockets, as much as to say: "Well, what then? What can you do to me?"

And the little tiger, in the aforesaid attitude, with his prematurely old, vicious child's face, copied his master so perfectly that it seemed to me as if I were looking at the man himself sitting in our administrative council, facing the Governor, and overwhelming him with his cynical jests. After all, we must agree that Paris is a wonderful great city, for any one to be able to live here in that way for fifteen years, twenty years of tricks and dodges and throwing dust in people's eyes, without everybody finding him out, and to go on making a triumphant entry into salons in the wake of a footman shouting his name at the top of his voice: "Monsieur le Marquis de Bois-l'Hery."

You see, you must have been to a servants' party before you can believe all that one learns there, and what a curious thing Parisian society is when you look at it thus from below, from the basement. For instance, happening to be between M. Francis and M. Louis, I caught this scrap of confidential conversation concerning Sire de Monpavon. M. Louis said:

"You are doing wrong, Francis, you are in funds just now. You ought to take advantage of it to return that money to the Treasury."

"What can you expect?" replied M. Francis, disconsolately. "Play is consuming us."

"Yes, I know. But beware. We shall not always be at hand. We may die or go out of the government. In that case you will be called to account over yonder. It will be a terrible time."

I had often heard a whisper of the marquis's forced loan of two hundred thousand francs from the State, at the time when he was receiver-general; but the testimony of his valet de chambre was the worst of all. Ah! if the masters suspected what the servants know, all that they tell in their quarters, if they could hear their names dragged about in the sweepings of the salons and the kitchen refuse, they would never again dare to say so much as: "Close the door," or "Order the carriage." There's Dr. Jenkins, for example, with the richest practice in Paris, has lived ten years with a magnificent wife, who is eagerly welcomed everywhere; he has done everything he could to conceal his real position, announced his marriage in the newspapers in the English style, and hired only foreign servants who know barely three words of French, but all to no purpose. With these few words, seasoned with faubourg oaths and blows on the table, his coachman Joe, who detests him, told us his whole history while we were at supper.

"She's going to croak, his Irishwoman, his real wife. Now we'll see if he'll marry the other one. Forty-five years old Mistress Maranne is, and not a shilling. You ought to see how afraid she is that he'll turn her out. Marry her, not marry her—kss-kss—what a laugh we'll have." And the more they gave him to drink, the more he told, speaking of his unfortunate mistress as the lowest of the low. For my part, I confess that she excited my interest, that false Madame Jenkins, who weeps in every corner, implores her husband as if he were the headsman, and is in danger of being sent about her business when all society believes her to be married, respectable, established for life. The others did nothing but laugh, especially the women. Dame! it is amusing when one is in service to see that these ladies of the upper ten have their affronts too, and tormenting cares which keep them awake.

At that moment our party presented a most animated aspect, a circle of merry faces turned toward the Irishman, who carried off the palm by his anecdote. That aroused envy; every one rummaged his memory and dragged out whatever he could find there of old scandals, adventures of betrayed husbands, all the domestic secrets that are poured out on the kitchen table with the remains of dishes and the dregs of bottles. The champagne was beginning to lay hold of its victims among the guests. Joe insisted on dancing a jig on the cloth. The ladies, at the slightest suggestion that was a trifle broad, threw themselves back with the piercing laughter of a person who is being tickled, letting their embroidered skirts drag under the table, which was piled with broken victuals, and covered with grease. M. Louis had prudently withdrawn. The glasses were filled before they were emptied; a chambermaid dipped a handkerchief in hers, which was full of water, and bathed her forehead with it because her head was going round, she said. It was time that it should end; in fact, an electric bell, ringing loudly in the hall, warned us that the footman on duty at the theatre had called the coachmen. Thereupon Monpavon proposed a toast to the master of the house, thanking him for his little party. M. Noel announced that he would repeat it at Saint-Romans, during the festivities in honor of the bey, to which most of those present would probably be invited. And I was about to rise in my turn, being sufficiently familiar with banquets to know that on such occasions the oldest of the party is expected to propose a toast to the ladies, when the door was suddenly thrown open and a tall footman, all muddy, breathless and perspiring, with a dripping umbrella in his hand, roared at us, with no respect for the guests:

"Come, get out of here, you pack of cads; what are you doing here? Don't I tell you it's done!"



XI.

THE FETES IN HONOR OF THE BEY.

In the regions of the South, of the civilization of long ago, the historic chateaux still standing are very few. At rare intervals some old abbey rears its tottering and dismantled facade on a hillside, pierced with holes which once were windows, which see naught now but the sky,—monuments of dust, baked by the sun, dating from the days of the Crusades or of Courts of Love, without a trace of man among their stones, where even the ivy has ceased to climb, and the acanthus, but where the dried lavender and the ferigoule perfume the air. Amid all these ruins the chateau de Saint-Romans stands forth a glorious exception. If you have travelled in the South you have seen it, and you shall see it again in a moment. It is between Valence and Montelimart, in a neighborhood where the railroad runs straight along the Rhone, at the base of the hills of Beaume, Rancoule and Mercurol, the whole glowing vintage of the Hermitage, spread out over five leagues of vines growing in close, straight lines in the vineyards, which seem to the eye like fields of fleece, and extend to the very brink of the river, as green and full of islands at that spot as the Rhine near Bale, but with such a flood of sunshine as the Rhine never had. Saint-Romans is opposite, on the other bank; and, notwithstanding the swiftness of the vision, the headlong rush of the railway carriages, which seem determined at every curve to plunge madly into the Rhone, the chateau is so huge, extends so far along the neighboring slope, that it seems to follow the wild race of the train and fixes in your eyes forever the memory of its flights of steps, its balcony-rails, its Italian architecture, two rather low stones surmounted by a terrace with little pillars, flanked by two wings with slated roofs, and overlooking the sloping banks, where the water from the cascades rushes down to the river, the network of gravelled paths, the vista formed by hedges of great height with a white statue at the end sharply outlined against the blue sky as against the luminous background of a stained-glass window. Far up, among the vast lawns whose brilliant verdure defies the blazing climate, a gigantic cedar rears, terrace-like, its masses of green foliage, with its swaying dark shadows,—an exotic figure, which makes one think, as he stands before that sometime abode of a farmer-general of the epoch of Louis XIV., of a tall negro carrying a courtier's umbrella.

From Valence to Marseille, throughout the valley of the Rhone, Saint-Romans de Bellaigue is as famous as a fairy palace; and a genuine fairyland in those regions, scorched by the mistral, is that oasis of verdure and of lovely, gushing water.

"When I am rich, mamma," Jansoulet, when he was a mere urchin, used to say to his mother whom he adored, "I'll give you Saint-Romans de Bellaigue."

And as that man's life seemed the realization of a tale of the Thousand and One Nights, as all his wishes were gratified, even the most unconscionable, as his wildest chimeras took definite shape before him, and licked his hands like docile pet spaniels, he had purchased Saint-Romans in order to present it to his mother, newly furnished and gorgeously restored. Although ten years had passed since then, the good woman was not yet accustomed to that magnificent establishment. "Why, you have given me Queen Jeanne's palace, my dear Bernard," she wrote to her son; "I shall never dare to live in it." As a matter of fact she never had lived in it, having installed herself in the steward's house, a wing of modern construction at the end of the main buildings, conveniently situated for overlooking the servants' quarters and the farm, the sheepfolds and the oil-presses, with their rustic outlook of grain in stacks, of olive-trees and vines stretching out over the fields as far as the eye could see. In the great chateau she would have fancied herself a prisoner in one of those enchanted dwellings where sleep seizes you in the fulness of your joy and does not leave you for a hundred years. Here at all events the peasant woman, who had never been able to accustom herself to that colossal fortune, which had come too late, from too great a distance and like a thunderbolt, felt in touch with real life by virtue of the going and coming of the laborers, the departure and return of the cattle, their visits to the watering-place, all the details of pastoral life, which awakened her with the familiar crowing of the roosters, the shrill cries of the peacocks, and sent her down the winding staircase before daybreak. She deemed herself simply a trustee of that magnificent property, of which she had charge for her son's benefit, and which she proposed to turn over to him in good condition on the day when, considering himself wealthy enough and weary of living among the Turs, he should come, as he had promised, and live with her beneath the shade of Saint-Romans.

Imagine then her untiring, all-pervading watchfulness.

In the twilight of early dawn, the farm servants heard her hoarse, husky voice:

"Olivier—Peyrol—Audibert—Come! It's four o'clock." Then a dive into the huge kitchen, where the maids, heavy with sleep, were warming the soup over the bright, crackling peat fire. They gave her her little plate of red Marseille earthenware, filled with boiled chestnuts, the frugal breakfast of an earlier time which nothing could induce her to change. Off she went at once with long strides, the keys jingling on the great silver key-ring fastened to her belt, her plate in her hand, held in equilibrium by the distaff which she held under her arm as if ready for battle, for she spun all day long, and did not stop even to eat her chestnuts. A glance, as she passed, at the stable, still dark, where the horses were sluggishly moving about, at the stifling cow-shed, filled with heads impatiently stretched toward the door; and the first rays of dawn, stealing over the courses of stone that supported the embankment of the park, fell upon the old woman running through the dew with the agility of a girl, despite her seventy years, verifying exactly each morning all the treasures of the estate, anxious to ascertain whether the night had stolen the statues and urns, uprooted the centenary trees, dried up the sparkling fountains that plashed noisily in their bowls. Then the bright southern sun, humming and vibrating, outlined upon the gravel of a path, or against the white supporting wall of a terrace, that tall old woman's figure, slender and straight as her distaff, picking up pieces of dead wood, breaking off a branch from a shrub that was out of line, heedless of the scorching reflection which affected her tough skin no more than an old stone bench. About that hour another promenader appeared in the park, less active, less bustling, dragging himself along rather than walking, leaning on the walls and railings, a poor bent, palsied creature, with a lifeless face to which one could assign no age, who, when he was tired, uttered a faint, plaintive cry to call the servant, who was always at hand to assist him to sit down, to huddle himself up on some step, where he would remain for hours, motionless and silent, his mouth half-open, blinking his eyes, soothed by the strident monotony of the locusts, a human blot on the face of the superb landscape.

He was the oldest, Bernard's brother, the cherished darling of the Jansoulets, father and mother, the hope and the glory of the family of the junk-dealer, who, faithful like so many more in the South to the superstition concerning the right of primogeniture, had made every conceivable sacrifice to send that handsome, ambitious youth to Paris; and he had started with four or five marshals' batons in his trunk, the admiration of all the girls in the village; but Paris—after it had beaten and twisted and squeezed that brilliant Southern rag in its great vat for ten years, burned him in all its acids, rolled him in all its mire—relegated him at last to the state of battered flotsam and jetsam, embruted, paralyzed, which had killed his father with grief and compelled his mother to sell everything in her house and to live by domestic service in the well-to-do families of the neighborhood. Luckily, just about the time that that relic of Parisian hospitals, sent back to his home by public charity, appeared in Bourg-Saint-Andeol, Bernard,—who was called Cadet, as in all the half-Arab Southern families, where the eldest son always takes the family name and the last comer the name of Cadet,—Bernard was already in Tunis, in process of making his fortune, and sending money home regularly. But what remorse it caused the poor mother to owe everything, even life itself, and the comfort of the wretched invalid, to the brave, energetic lad, of whom his father and she had always been fond, but without genuine tenderness, and whom, from the time he was five years old, they had been accustomed to treat as a day-laborer, because he was very strong and hairy and ugly, and was already shrewder than any one else in the house in the matter of dealing in old iron. Ah! how she would have liked to have her Cadet with her, to repay him a little of all he was doing for her, to pay in one sum all the arrears of affection, of motherly cosseting that she owed him.

But, you see, these kingly fortunes have the burdens, the vexations of kingly existences. Poor Mother Jansoulet, in her dazzling surroundings, was much like a genuine queen, having undergone the long banishments, the cruel separations and trials which atone for earthly grandeur; one of her sons in a state of stupid lethargy for all time, the other far away, writing little, engrossed by his great interests, always saying, "I will come," and never coming. In twelve years she had seen him but once, in the confusion of the bey's visit at Saint-Romans: a bewildering succession of horses, carriages, fireworks, and festivities. Then he had whirled away again behind his sovereign, having had hardly time to embrace his old mother, who had retained naught of that great joy, so impatiently awaited, save a few newspaper pictures, in which Bernard Jansoulet was exhibited arriving at the chateau with Ahmed and presenting his aged mother to him,—is not that the way in which kings and queens have their family reunions illustrated in the journals?—plus a cedar of Lebanon, brought from the end of the world,—a great caramantran of a tree, which was as costly to move and as much in the way as the obelisk—being hoisted and planted by force of men and money and horses; a tree which had wrought confusion among the shrubbery as the price of setting up a souvenir commemorative of the royal visit. On his present trip to France, at least, knowing that he had come for several months, perhaps forever, she hoped to have her Bernard all to herself. And lo! he swooped down upon her one fine evening, enveloped in the same triumphant splendor, in the same official pomp, surrounded by a multitude of counts, marquises, fine gentlemen from Paris, who with their servants filled the two great breaks she had sent to meet them at the little station of Giffas, on the other side of the Rhone.

"Come, come, embrace me, my dear mamma. There's no shame in hugging your boy, whom you haven't seen for years, close to your heart. Besides, all these gentlemen are friends of ours. This is Monsieur le Marquis de Monpavon, and Monsieur le Marquis de Bois-l'Hery. Ah! the time has gone by when I used to bring you to eat bean soup with us, little Cabassu and Bompain Jean-Baptiste. You know Monsieur de Gery—he, with my old friend Cardailhac, whom I introduce to you, make up the first batch. But others are coming. Prepare for a terrible how-d'ye-do. We receive the bey in four days."

"The bey again!" said the good woman in dismay. "I thought he was dead."

Jansoulet and his guests could but laugh at her comical alarm, heightened by her Southern accent.

"But there's another, mamma. There are always beys—luckily for me, sapristi! But don't you be afraid. You won't have so much trouble on your hands. Friend Cardailhac has undertaken to look after things. We're going to have some superb fetes. Meanwhile give us some dinner quick, and show us our rooms. Our Parisian friends are tired out."

"Everything is ready, my son," said the old woman simply, standing stiffly erect in her cap of Cambrai linen, with points yellowed by age, which she never laid aside even on great occasions. Wealth had not changed her. She was the typical peasant of the Rhone valley, independent and proud, with none of the cunning humility of the rustics described by Balzac, too simple, too, to be puffed up by wealth. Her only pride was to show her son with what painstaking zeal she had acquitted herself of her duties as care-taker. Not an atom of dust, not a trace of dampness on the walls. The whole magnificent ground-floor, the salons with the silk draperies and upholstery of changing hue, taken at the last moment from their coverings; the long summer galleries, with cool, resonant inlaid floors, which the Louis XV. couches, with cane seats and backs upholstered with flowered stuffs, furnished with summer-like coquetry; the enormous dining-hall, decorated with flowers and branches; even the billiard-room, with its rows of gleaming balls, its chandeliers and cue-racks,—the whole vast extent of the chateau, seen through the long door-windows, wide open upon the broad seignorial porch, displayed its splendor to the admiration of the visitors, and reflected the beauty of that marvellous landscape, lying serene and peaceful in the setting sun, in the mirrors, the waxed or varnished wainscoting, with the same fidelity with which the poplars bowing gracefully to each other, and the swans, placidly swimming, were reproduced on the mirror-like surface of the ponds. The frame was so beautiful, the general outlook so superb, that the obtrusive, tasteless luxury melted away, disappeared even to the most sensitive eye.

"There's something to work with," said Cardailhac the manager, with his monocle at his eye, his hat on one side, already planning his stage-setting.

And the haughty mien of Monpavon, who had been somewhat offended at first by the old lady's head-dress when she received them on the porch, gave place to a condescending smile. Certainly there was something to work with, and their friend Jansoulet, under the guidance of men of taste, could give his Maugrabin Highness a very handsome reception. They talked about nothing else all the evening. Sitting in the sumptuous dining-room, with their elbows on the table, warmed by wine and with full stomachs, they planned and discussed. Cardailhac, whose views were broad, had his plan all formed.

"Carte blanche, of course, eh, Nabob?"

"Carte blanche, old fellow. And let old Hemerlingue burst with rage."

Thereupon the manager detailed his plans, the festivities to be divided by days, as at Vaux when Fouquet entertained Louis XIV.; one day a play, another day Provencal fetes, farandoles, bull-fights, local music; the third day—And, in his mania for management, he was already outlining programmes, posters, while Bois-l'Hery, with both hands in his pockets, lying back in his chair, slept peacefully with his cigar stuck in the corner of his sneering mouth, and the Marquis de Monpavon, always on parade, drew up his breastplate every moment, to keep himself awake.

De Gery had left them early. He had gone to take refuge with the old lady—who had known him, and his brothers, too, when they were children—in the modest parlor in the wing, with the white curtains and light wall-paper covered with figures, where the Nabob's mother tried to revive her past as an artisan, with the aid of some relics saved from the wreck.

Paul talked softly, sitting opposite the handsome old woman with the severe and regular features, the white hair piled on top of her head like the flax on her distaff, who sat erect upon her chair, her flat bust wrapped in a little green shawl;—never in her life had she rested her back against the back of a chair or sat in an armchair. He called her Francoise and she called him Monsieur Paul. They were old friends. And what do you suppose they were talking about? Of her grandchildren, pardi! of Bernard's three boys whom she did not know, whom she would have loved so dearly to know.

"Ah! Monsieur Paul, if you knew how I long for them! I should have been so happy if he had brought me my three little ones instead of all these fine gentlemen. Just think, I have never seen them, except in those pictures yonder. Their mother frightens me a bit, she's a great lady out-and-out, a Demoiselle Afchin. But the children, I'm sure they're not little coxcombs, but would be very fond of their old granny. It would seem to me as if it was their father a little boy again, and I'd give them what I didn't give the father—for, you see, Monsieur Paul, parents aren't always just. They have favorites. But God is just. You ought to see how He deals with the faces that you paint and fix up the best, to the injury of the others. And the favoritism of the old people often does harm to the young."

She sighed as she glanced in the direction of the great alcove, from which, through the high lambrequins and falling draperies, issued at intervals a long, shuddering breath like the moan of a sleeping child who has been whipped and has cried bitterly.

A heavy step on the stairs, an unmelodious but gentle voice, saying in a low tone: "It's I—don't move,"—and Jansoulet appeared. As everybody had gone to bed at the chateau, he, knowing his mother's habits and that hers was always the last light to be extinguished in the house, had come to see her, to talk with her a little, to exchange the real greeting of the heart which they had been unable to exchange in the presence of others. "Oh! stay, my dear Paul; we don't mind you." And, becoming a child once more in his mother's presence, he threw his whole long body on the floor at her feet, with cajoling words and gestures really touching to behold. She was very happy too to have him by her side, but she was a little embarrassed none the less, looking upon him as an all-powerful, strange being, exalting him in her artless innocence to the level of an Olympian encompassed by thunder-bolts and lightning-flashes, possessing the gift of omnipotence. She talked to him, inquired if he was still satisfied with his friends, with the condition of his affairs, but did not dare to ask the question she had asked de Gery: "Why didn't you bring me my little grandsons?"—But he broached the subject himself.

"They're at boarding-school, mamma; as soon as the vacation comes, I'll send them to you with Bompain. You remember him, don't you, Bompain Jean-Baptiste? And you shall keep them two whole months. They'll come to you to have you tell them fine stories, they'll go to sleep with their heads on your apron, like this—"

And he himself, placing his curly head, heavy as lead, on the old woman's knees, recalling the happy evenings of his childhood when he went to sleep that way if he were allowed to do so, if his older brother's head did not take up all the room—he enjoyed, for the first time since his return to France, a few moments of blissful repose, outside of his tumultuous artificial life, pressed against that old motherly heart which he could hear beating regularly, like the pendulum of the century-old clock standing in a corner of the room, in the profound silence of the night, which one can feel in the country, hovering over the boundless expanse. Suddenly the same long sigh, as of a child who has fallen asleep sobbing, was repeated at the farther end of the room.

"Is that—?"

"Yes," she said, "I have him sleep here. He might need me in the night."

"I should like to see him, to embrace him."

"Come."

The old woman rose, took her lamp, led the way gravely to the alcove, where she softly drew aside the long curtain and motioned to her son to come, without making a noise.

He was asleep. And it was certain that something lived in him that was not there the day before, for, instead of the flaccid immobility in which he was mired all day, he was shaken at that moment by violent tremors, and on his expressionless, dead face there was a wrinkle of suffering life, a contraction as of pain. Jansoulet, profoundly moved, gazed at that thin, wasted, earth-colored face, on which the beard, having appropriated all the vitality of the body, grew with surprising vigor; then he stooped, placed his lips on the forehead moist with perspiration, and, feeling that he started, he said in a low tone, gravely, respectfully, as one addresses the head of the family:

"Good-evening, Aine."

Perhaps the imprisoned mind heard him in the depths of its dark, degrading purgatory. But the lips moved and a long groan made answer; a far-off wail, a despairing appeal caused the glance Francoise and her son exchanged to overflow with impotent tears, and drew from them both a simultaneous cry in which their sorrows met: Pecaire! the local word expressive of all pity, all affection.

* * *

Early the next morning the uproar began with the arrival of the actors and actresses, an avalanche of caps, chignons, high boots, short petticoats, affected screams, veils floating over the fresh coats of rouge; the women were in a large majority, Cardailhac having reflected that, where a bey was concerned, the performance was of little consequence, that one need only emit false notes from pretty lips, show lovely arms and well-turned legs in the free-and-easy neglige of the operetta. All the plastic celebrities of his theatre were on hand, therefore, Amy Ferat at their head, a hussy who had already tried her eye-teeth on the gold of several crowns; also two or three famous comic actors, whose pallid faces produced the same effect of chalky, spectral blotches amid the bright green of the hedgerows as was produced by the plaster statuettes. All that motley crew, enlivened by the journey, the unfamiliar fresh air, and the copious hospitality, as well as by the hope of hooking something in that procession of beys, nabobs, and other purse-bearers, asked nothing better than to caper and sing and make merry, with the vulgar enthusiasm of a crowd of Seine boatmen ashore on a lark. But Cardailhac did not propose to have it so. As soon as they had arrived, made their toilets and eaten their first breakfast, out came the books; we must rehearse!—There was no time to lose. The rehearsals took place in the small salon near the summer gallery, where they were already beginning to build the stage; and the noise of the hammers, the humming of the refrains, the thin voices supported by the squeaking of the orchestra leader's violin, mingled with the loud trumpet-calls of the peacocks on their perches, were blown to shreds in the mistral, which, failing to recognize the frantic chirping of its grasshoppers, contemptuously whisked it all away on the whirling tips of its wings.

Sitting in the centre of the porch, as if it were the proscenium of his theatre, Cardailhac, while superintending the rehearsals, issued his commands to a multitude of workmen and gardeners, ordered trees to be felled which obstructed the view, drew sketches of the triumphal arches, sent despatches and messengers to mayors, to sub-prefects, to Arles to procure a deputation of girls of the province in the national costume, to Barbantane, where the most skilful dancers of the farandole are to be found, to Faraman renowned for its herds of wild bulls and Camarguese horses; and as Jansoulet's name blazed forth at the foot of all these despatches, as the name of the Bey of Tunis also figured in them, everybody acquiesced with the utmost eagerness, the telegraphic messages arrived in an endless stream, and that little Sardanapalus from Porte-Saint-Martin, who was called Cardailhac, was forever repeating: "There is something to work with;" delighted to throw gold about like handfuls of seed, to have a stage fifty leagues in circumference to arrange, all Provence, of which country that fanatical Parisian was a native, and thoroughly familiar with its resources in the direction of the picturesque.

Dispossessed of her functions, the old lady seldom appeared, gave her attention solely to the farm and her invalid, terrified by that crowd of visitors, those insolent servants whom one could not distinguish from their masters, those women with brazen, coquettish manners, those closely-shaven old villains who resembled wicked priests, all those mad creatures who chased one another through the halls at night with much throwing of pillows, wet sponges, and curtain tassels which they tore off to use as projectiles. She no longer had her son in the evening, for he was obliged to remain with his guests, whose number increased as the time for the fetes drew near; nor had she even the resource of talking about her grandsons with "Monsieur Paul," whom Jansoulet, always the kindest of men, being a little awed by his friend's seriousness of manner, had sent away to pass a few days with his brothers. And the careful housekeeper, to whom some one came every moment and seized her keys to get spare linen or silverware, to open another room, thinking of the throwing open of her stores of treasures, of the plundering of her wardrobes and her sideboards, remembering the condition in which the visit of the former bey had left the chateau, devastated as by a cyclone, said in her patois, feverishly moistening the thread of her distaff:

"May God's fire devour all beys and all future beys!"

At last the day arrived, the famous day of which people still talk throughout the whole province. Oh! about three o'clock in the afternoon, after a sumptuous breakfast presided over by the old mother with a new Cambrai cap on her head,—a breakfast at which, side by side with Parisian celebrities, prefects were present and deputies, all in full dress, with swords at their sides, mayors in their scarfs of office, honest cures cleanly shaven,—when Jansoulet, in black coat and white cravat, surrounded by his guests, went out upon the stoop and saw, framed in that magnificent landscape, amid flags and arches and ensigns, that swarm of heads, that sea of brilliant costumes rising tier above tier on the slopes and thronging the paths; here, grouped in a nosegay on the lawn, the prettiest girls of Arles, whose little white faces peeped sweetly forth from lace neckerchiefs; below, the farandole from Barbantane, its eight tambourines in a line, ready for the word, hand in hand, ribbons fluttering in the wind, hats over one ear, the red taillote about the loins; still lower, in the succession of terraces, the choral societies drawn up in line, all black beneath their bright-hued caps, the banner-bearer in advance, serious and resolved, with clenched teeth, holding aloft his carved staff; lower still, on an immense rond-point, black bulls in shackles, and Camargue gauchos on their little horses with long white manes, their leggings above their knees, brandishing their spears; and after them more flags and helmets and bayonets, reaching to the triumphal arch at the entrance; then, as far as the eye could see on the other side of the Rhone,—over which two gangs of workmen had just thrown a bridge of boats, so that they could drive from the station to Saint-Romans in a straight line,—was an immense crowd, whole villages pouring down from all the hills, overflowing on the Giffas road in a wilderness of noise and dust, seated on the edge of the ditches, swarming among the elms, piled upon wagons, a formidable living lane for the procession to pass through; and over it all a huge white sun whose arrows a capricious breeze sent in every direction, from the copper of a tambourine to the point of a spear and the fringe of a banner, while the mighty Rhone, high-spirited and free, bore away to the ocean the shifting tableaux of that royal fete. In presence of those marvels, in which all the gold in his coffers shone resplendent, the Nabob felt a thrill of admiration and pride.

"It is fine," he said, turning pale, and his mother, standing behind him, as pale as he, but from indescribable terror, murmured:

"It is too fine for any man. One would think that God was coming."

The feeling of the devout old peasant woman was much the same as that vaguely experienced by all those people who had assembled on the roads as if to watch the passage of a colossal procession on Corpus Christi, and who were reminded by that visit of an Oriental prince to a child of the province, of the legends of the Magian kings, the arrival of Gaspard the Moor bringing to the carpenter's son the myrrh and the crown.

Amid the heartfelt congratulations that were showered on Jansoulet, Cardailhac, who had not been seen since morning, suddenly appeared, triumphant and perspiring.

"Didn't I tell you that there was something to work with! Eh? Isn't this chic? There's a grouping for you! I fancy our Parisians would pay something handsome to attend a first performance like this."

He lowered his voice because the mother was close by:

"Have you seen our Arles girls? No, look at them more carefully—the first one, the one standing in front to offer the bouquet."

"Why, that's Amy Ferat!"

"Parbleu! you can see yourself, my dear fellow, that if the bey throws his handkerchief into that bevy of pretty girls, there must be at least one who knows enough to pick it up. Those innocent creatures wouldn't know what it meant! Oh! I have thought of everything, you'll see. It's all mounted and arranged as if it were on the stage. Farm side, garden side."

At that point, to give an idea of the perfectness of his organization, the manager raised his cane; his gesture was instantly repeated from end to end of the park, with the result that all the musical societies, all the trumpets, all the tambourines burst forth in unison in the majestic strains of the familiar song of the South: Grand Soleil de la Provence. The voices, the brazen notes ascended into the light, swelling the folds of the banners, giving the signal to the dancers of the farandole, who began to sway back and forth, to go through their first antics where they stood, while, on the other side of the river, a murmur ran through the crowd like a breeze, caused doubtless by the fear that the bey had arrived unexpectedly from another direction. A second gesture from the manager and the great orchestra subsided, more gradually, with rallentando passages and meteoric showers of notes scattered among the foliage; but nothing better could be expected from a company of three thousand persons.

Just then the carriages appeared, the state carriages which had figured in the festivities in honor of the former bey, two great pink and gold chariots a la mode de Tunis, which Mother Jansoulet had taken care of as precious relics, and which came forth from the carriage-house with their varnished panels, their hangings and gold fringe as bright and fresh as when they were new. There again Cardailhac's ingenuity had exerted itself freely, and instead of horses, which were a little heavy for those fragile-looking, daintily decorated vehicles, the white reins guided eight mules with ribbons, plumes, and silver bells upon their heads, and caparisoned from head to foot with those marvellous sparteries, of which Provence seems to have borrowed the secret from the Moors and to have perfected the cunning art of manufacturing. If the bey were not satisfied with that!

The Nabob, Monpavon, the prefect and one of their generals entered the first carriage, the others took their places in the second and following ones. The cures and mayors, all excited by the wine they had drunk, ran to place themselves at the head of the singing societies of their respective parishes, which were to go to meet the procession; and the whole multitude set forth on the Giffas road.

It was a superbly clear day, but warm and oppressive, three months in advance of the season, as often happens in those impetuous regions where everything is in a hurry, where everything arrives before its time. Although there was not a cloud to be seen, the deathlike stillness of the atmosphere, the wind having fallen suddenly as one lowers a veil, the dazzling expanse, heated white-hot, a solemn silence hovering over the landscape, all indicated that a storm was brewing in some corner of the horizon. The extraordinary torpidity of the surrounding objects gradually affected the persons. Naught could be heard save the tinkling bells of the mules as they ambled slowly along, the measured, heavy tread, through the burning dust, of the bands of singers whom Cardailhac stationed at intervals in the procession, and from time to time, in the double, swarming line of human beings that bordered the road as far as the eye could see, a call, the voices of children, the cry of a peddler of fresh water, the inevitable accompaniment of all open-air fetes in the South.

"For heaven's sake, open the window on your side, General, it's stifling," said Monpavon, with crimson face, fearing for his paint; and the lowered sashes afforded the worthy populace a view of those exalted functionaries mopping their august faces, which were terribly flushed and wore the same agonized expression of anticipation,—anticipation of the bey's arrival, of the storm, of something.

Another triumphal arch. Giffas and its long stony street strewn with green palm leaves, its old, dirty houses covered with flowers and decorations. Outside of the village the station, a square white structure, planted like a die at the side of the track, a genuine type of the little country station lost among vineyards, its only room always empty, except for an occasional old woman with a quantity of parcels, waiting in a corner, three hours too early for her train.

In the bey's honor the little building was decked with flags and banners, furnished with rugs and divans and a splendid buffet, on which was a light lunch and water ices all ready for his Highness. When he had arrived and alighted from his carriage, the Nabob shook off the species of haunting disquiet which had oppressed him for a moment past, without his knowing why. Prefects, generals, deputies, black coats and embroidered military coats stood on the broad inner platform, in impressive, solemn groups, with the pursed lips, the shifting from one foot to the other, the self-conscious starts of a public functionary who feels that he is being stared at. And you can imagine whether noses were flattened against window-panes in order to obtain a glimpse of those hierarchic embroideries, of Monpavon's breastplate, which expanded and rose like an omelette soufflee, of Cardailhac gasping for breath as he issued his final orders, and of the beaming face of Jansoulet, their Jansoulet, whose eyes, sparkling between the bloated, sunburned cheeks, resembled two great gilt nails in a piece of Cordova leather. Suddenly the electric bells began to ring. The station-agent rushed frantically out to the track: "The train is signalled, messieurs. It will be here in eight minutes." Everybody started. Then a general instinctive impulse caused every watch to be drawn from its fob. Only six minutes more. Thereupon, in the profound silence, some one exclaimed: "Look there!" On the right, in the direction from which the train was to come, two high vine-covered hills formed a tunnel into which the track plunged and disappeared, as if swallowed up. At that moment the whole sky in that direction was as black as ink, obscured by an enormous cloud, a threatening wall cutting the blue as with a knife, rearing palisades, lofty cliffs of basalt on which the light broke like white foam with the pallid gleam of moonlight. In the solemn silence of the deserted track, along that line of rails where one felt that everything, so far as the eye could see, stood aside for the passage of his Highness, that aerial cliff was a terrifying spectacle as it advanced, casting its shadow before it with that illusion of perspective which gave to the cloud a slow, majestic movement and to its shadow the rapid pace of a galloping horse. "What a storm we are going to have directly!" That was the thought that came to them all; but they had not time to express it, for an ear-piercing whistle was heard and the train appeared in the depths of the dark tunnel. A typical royal train, short and travelling fast, decorated with French and Tunisian flags, its groaning, puffing locomotive, with an enormous bouquet of roses on its breast, representing the maid of honor at a wedding of Leviathans.

It came rushing on at full speed, but slackened its pace as it drew near. The functionaries formed a group, drawing themselves up, arranging their swords, adjusting their false collars, while Jansoulet walked along the track toward the train, the obsequious smile on his lips and his back already bent for the "Salem alek!" The train continued to move, very slowly. Jansoulet thought that it had stopped, and placed his hand on the door of the royal carriage glittering with gold under the black sky; but the headway was too great, doubtless, for the train still went forward, the Nabob walking beside it, trying to open that infernal door which resisted all his efforts, and with the other hand making a sign of command to the machine. But the machine did not obey. "Stop, I tell you!" It did not stop. Impatient at the delay, he sprang upon the velvet-covered step, and with the somewhat presumptuous impetuosity, which used to please the former bey so much, he cried out, thrusting his great curly head in at the window:

"Station for Saint-Romans, your Highness!"

You know that sort of vague light peculiar to dreams, that colorless, empty atmosphere, in which everything assumes a ghostly aspect? well, Jansoulet was suddenly enveloped, made prisoner, paralyzed by it. He tried to speak, but the words would not come; his nerveless fingers clung so feebly to their support that he nearly fell backward. In heaven's name, what had he seen? Half reclining on a divan which extended across one end of the car, his fine head with its dead-white complexion and its long, silky black beard resting on his hand, the bey, buttoned to the chin in his Oriental frock-coat, without other ornament than the broad ribbon of the Legion of Honor across his breast and the diamond clasp in his cap, was fanning himself impassively with a little fan of spartum, embroidered with gold. Two aides-de-camp were standing near him and an engineer of the French company. Opposite him, upon another divan, in a respectful attitude, but one indicating high favor, as they alone remained seated in presence of the bey, both as yellow as saffron, their long whiskers falling over their white cravats, sat two owls, one fat, the other thin. They were the Hemerlingues, father and son, who had reconquered his Highness and were carrying him in triumph to Paris. A ghastly dream! All those people, although they knew Jansoulet well, stared coolly at him as if his face conveyed no idea to them. Pitiably pale, with the perspiration standing on his brow, he stammered: "But, your Highness, do you not mean to leave—" A livid flash, like that of a sabre stroke, followed by a frightful peal of thunder, cut him short. But the flash that shot from the monarch's eyes seemed far more terrible to him. Rising to his feet and stretching out his arm, the bey crushed him with these words, prepared in advance and uttered slowly in a rather guttural voice accustomed to the harsh Arabic syllables, but in very pure French:

"You may return home, Mercanti. The foot goes where the heart leads it, mine shall never enter the door of the man who has robbed my country."

Jansoulet tried to say a word. The bey waved his hand: "Begone!" And the engineer having pressed the button of an electric bell, to which a whistle replied, the train, which had not come to a full stop, stretched and strained its iron muscles and started ahead under full steam, waving its flags in the wind of the storm amid whirling clouds of dense smoke and sinister flashes.

He stood by the track, dazed, staggering, crushed, watching his fortune recede and disappear, heedless of the great drops of rain that began to fall upon his bare head. Then, when the others rushed toward him, surrounded him and overwhelmed him with questions: "Isn't the Bey going to stop?" he stammered a few incoherent words: "Court intrigues—infamous machinations." And suddenly, shaking his fist at the train which had already disappeared, with bloodshot eyes and the foam of fierce wrath on his lips, he cried with the roar of a wild beast:

"Vile curs!"

"Courage, Jansoulet, courage."

You can guess who said that, and who, passing his arm through the Nabob's, tried to straighten him up, to make him throw out his breast as he did, led him to the carriages amid the stupefied silence of the braided coats, and helped him to enter, crushed and bewildered, as a relative of the deceased is hoisted into a mourning carriage at the close of the lugubrious ceremony. The rain was beginning to fall, the peals of thunder followed one another rapidly. They crowded into the carriages, which started hurriedly homeward. Thereupon a heart-rending, yet comical thing took place, one of those cruel tricks which cowardly destiny plays upon its victims when they are down. In the fading light, the increasing obscurity caused by the squall, the crowd that filled all the approaches to the station believed that it could distinguish a Royal Highness amid such a profusion of gold lace, and as soon as the wheels began to revolve, a tremendous uproar, an appalling outcry which had been brewing in all those throats for an hour past, arose and filled the air, rebounded from hill to hill and echoed through the valley: "Vive le Bey!" Warned by that signal, the first flourishes rang out, the singing societies struck up in their turn, and as the noise increased from point to point, the road from Giffas to Saint-Romans was naught but one long, unbroken wave of sound. In vain did Cardailhac, all the gentlemen, Jansoulet himself, lean out of the windows and make desperate signs: "Enough! enough!" Their gestures were lost in the confusion, in the darkness; what was seen of them seemed an encouragement to shout louder. And I give you my word that it was in no wise needed. All those Southerners, whose enthusiasm had been kept at fever heat since morning, excited still more by the tedium of the long wait and by the storm, gave all that they had of voice, of breath, of noisy energy, blending with the national hymn of Provence that oft-repeated cry, which broke in upon it like a refrain: "Vive le Bey!" The majority had no sort of idea what a bey might be, did not even picture him to themselves, and gave a most extraordinary pronunciation to the unfamiliar title, as if it had three b's and ten y's. But no matter, they worked themselves into a frenzy over it, threw up their hands, waved their hats, and waxed excited over their own antics. Women, deeply affected, wiped their eyes; and suddenly the piercing cry of a child came from the topmost branches of an elm: "Mamma, mamma, I see him!" He saw him! They all saw him for that matter; to this day they would all take their oath that they saw him.

Confronted with such delirious excitement, finding it impossible to impose silence and tranquillity upon that mob, there was but one course for the people in the carriages to pursue: to let them alone, raise the windows and drive at full speed in order to abridge that unpleasant martyrdom as much as possible. Then it was terrible. Seeing the cortege quicken its pace, the whole road began to run with it. The farandoleurs of Barbantane, hand-in-hand, bounded from side to side, to the muffled wheezing of their tambourines, forming a human garland around the carriage doors. The singing societies, unable to sing at that breathless pace, but howling none the less, dragged their banner-bearers along, the banners thrown over their shoulders; and the stout, red-faced cures, panting, pushing their huge overburdened paunches before them, still found strength to shout in the mules' ears, in sympathetic, effusive tones: "Vive notre bon Bey!" And with it all, the rain, the rain falling in bucketfuls, in sheets, soiling the pink carriages, increasing the confusion, giving to that triumphal return the aspect of a rout, but a laughable rout, compounded of songs, laughter, blasphemy, frantic embraces and infernal oaths, something like the return from a Corpus Christi procession in the storm, with cassocks tucked up, surplices thrown over the head, and the good Lord hastily housed under a porch.

A dull rumbling announced to the poor Nabob, sitting silent and motionless in a corner of his carriage, that they were crossing the bridge of boats. They had arrived.

"At last!" he said, looking out through the dripping windows at the foam-tipped waves of the Rhone, where the storm seemed to him like repose after that through which he had passed. But, when the first carriage reached the triumphal arch at the end of the bridge, bombs were exploded, the drums beat, saluting the monarch's arrival upon his faithful subject's domain, and the climax of irony was reached when, in the half light, a blaze of gas suddenly illuminated the roof of the chateau with letters of fire, over which the rain and wind caused great shadows to run to and fro, but which still displayed very legibly the legend: "Viv' L' B'Y M'H'MED."

"That's the bouquet," said the unhappy Nabob, unable to restrain a smile, a very pitiful, very bitter smile. But no, he was mistaken. The bouquet awaited him at the door of the chateau; and it was Amy Ferat who came forward to present it to him, stepping out of the group of maidens from Arles, who were sheltering their watered silk skirts and figured velvet caps under the marquee, awaiting the first carriage. Her bunch of flowers in her hand, modestly, with downcast eyes and roguish ankle, the pretty actress darted to the door and stood almost kneeling in an attitude of salutation, which she had been rehearsing for a week. Instead of the bey, Jansoulet stepped out, excited, stiffly erect, and passed her by without even looking at her. And as she stood there, her nosegay in her hand, with the stupid expression of a balked fairy, Cardailhac said to her with the blague of a Parisian who speedily makes the best of things:

"Take away your flowers, my dear, your affair has fallen through. The Bey isn't coming—he forgot his handkerchief, and as that's what he uses to talk to ladies, why, you understand—"

* * *

Now, it is night. Everybody is asleep at Saint-Romans after the tremendous hurly-burly of the day. The rain is still falling in torrents, the banners feebly wave their drenched carcasses, one can hear the water rushing down the stone steps, transformed into cascades. Everything is streaming and dripping. A sound of water, a deafening sound of water. Alone in his magnificently furnished chamber with its seignorial bed and its curtains of Chinese silk with purple stripes, the Nabob is still stirring, striding back and forth, revolving bitter thoughts. His mind is no longer intent upon the affront to himself, the public affront in the presence of thirty thousand persons, nor upon the murderous insult that the Bey addressed to him in presence of his mortal enemies. No, that Southerner with his wholly physical sensations, swift as the action of new weapons, has already cast away all the venom of his spleen. Moreover court favorites are always prepared, by many celebrated precedents, for such overwhelming falls from grace. What terrifies him is what he can see behind that insult. He reflects that all his property is over yonder, houses, counting-rooms, vessels, at the mercy of the bey, in that lawless Orient, the land of arbitrary power. And, pressing his burning brow against the streaming glass, with the perspiration standing on his back, and hands cold as ice, he stares vacantly out into the night, no darker, no more impenetrable than his own destiny.

Suddenly he hears footsteps, hurried footsteps, at his door.

"Who's there?"

"Monsieur," says Noel, entering the room half-dressed, "a very urgent despatch sent from the telegraph office by special messenger."

"A despatch!—What is the next thing?"

He takes the blue paper and opens it with trembling hand. The god, having already been wounded twice, is beginning to feel that he is vulnerable, to lose his assurance; he experiences the apprehensions, the nervous tremors of other men. The signature first. Mora! Is it possible? The duke, the duke telegraph to him! Yes, there is no doubt about it. M-o-r-a.

And above:

Popolasca is dead. Election in Corsica soon. You are official candidate.

A deputy! That means salvation. With that he has nothing to fear. A representative of the great French nation is not to be treated like a simple mercanti. Down with the Hemerlingues!

"O my duke, my noble duke!"

He was so excited that he could not sign the receipt.

"Where's the man who brought this despatch?" he asked abruptly.

"Here, Monsieur Jansoulet," replied a hearty voice from the hall, in the familiar Southern dialect.

He was a lucky dog, that messenger.

"Come in," said the Nabob.

And, after handing him his receipt, he plunged his hands into his pockets, which were always full, grasped as many gold pieces as he could hold and threw them into the poor devil's cap as he stood there stammering, bewildered, dazzled by the fortune that had befallen him in the darkness of that enchanted palace.



XII.

A CORSICAN ELECTION.

"POZZONEGRO, near Sartene.

"I am able at last to write you of my movements, my dear Monsieur Joyeuse. In the five days that we have been in Corsica we have travelled about so much, talked so much, changed carriages and steeds so often, riding sometimes on mules, sometimes on asses, and sometimes even on men's backs to cross streams, have written so many letters, made notes on so many petitions, given away so many chasubles and altar-cloths, propped up so many tottering church steeples, founded so many asylums, proposed and drunk so many toasts, absorbed so much talk and Talano wine and white cheese, that I have found no time to send an affectionate word to the little family circle around the big table, from which I have been missing for two weeks. Luckily my absence will not last much longer, for we expect to leave day after to-morrow and travel straight through to Paris. So far as the election is concerned, I fancy that our trip has been successful. Corsica is a wonderful country, indolent and poor, a mixture of poverty and of pride which makes both the noble and bourgeois families keep up a certain appearance of opulence even at the price of the most painful privations. They talk here in all seriousness of the great wealth of Popolasca, the indigent deputy whom death robbed of the hundred thousand francs his resignation in the Nabob's favor would have brought him. All these people have, moreover, a frenzied longing for offices, an administrative mania, a craving to wear a uniform of some sort and a flat cap on which they can write: "Government clerk." If you should give a Corsican peasant his choice between the richest farm in Beauce and the baldric of the humblest forest-warden, he would not hesitate a moment, he would choose the baldric. Under such circumstances you can judge whether a candidate with a large fortune and governmental favors at his disposal has a good chance of being elected. Elected M. Jansoulet will be, therefore, especially if he succeeds in the move which he is making at this moment and which has brought us to the only inn of a small village called Pozzonegro (Black Well), a genuine well, all black with verdure, fifty cottages built of red stone clustered around a church of the Italian type, in the bottom of a ravine surrounded by steep hills, by cliffs of bright-colored sandstone, scaled by vast forests of larches and junipers. Through my open window, at which I am writing, I can see a bit of blue sky overhead, the orifice of the black well; below, on the little square, shaded by an enormous walnut tree, as if the shadows were not dense enough already, two shepherds dressed in skins are playing cards on the stone curb of a fountain. Gambling is the disease of this country of sloth, where the crops are harvested by men from Lucca. The two poor devils before me could not find a sou in their pockets; one stakes his knife, the other a cheese wrapped in vine leaves, the two stakes being placed beside them on the stone. A little cure is watching them, smoking his cigar, and apparently taking the liveliest interest in their game.

"And that is all—not a sound anywhere except the regular dropping of the water on the stone, the exclamations of one of the gamblers, who swears by the sango del seminario; and in the common-room of the inn, under my chamber, our friend's earnest voice, mingled with the buzzing of the illustrious Paganetti, who acts as interpreter in his conversation with the no less illustrious Piedigriggio.

"M. Piedigriggio (Grayfoot) is a local celebrity. He is a tall old man of seventy-five, still very erect in his short cloak over which his long white beard falls, his brown woollen Catalan cap on his hair, which is also white, a pair of scissors in his belt, which he uses to cut the great leaves of green tobacco in the hollow of his hand; a venerable old fellow in fact, and when he crossed the square and shook hands with the cure, with a patronizing smile at the two gamblers, I never would have believed that I had before me the famous brigand Piedigriggio, who, from 1840 to 1860, held the thickets in Monte-Rotondo, tired out gendarmes and troops of the line, and who to-day, his seven or eight murders with the rifle or the knife being outlawed by lapse of time, goes his way in peace throughout the region that saw his crimes, and is a man of considerable importance. This is the explanation: Piedigriggio has two sons, who, following nobly in his footsteps, have toyed with the rifle and now hold the thickets in their turn. Impossible to lay hands upon or to find, as their father was for twenty years, informed by the shepherds of the movements of the gendarmerie, as soon as the gendarmes leave a village, the brigands appear there. The older of the two, Scipion, came last Sunday to Pozzonegro to hear mass. To say that people are fond of them, and that the grasp of the bloodstained hand of these villains is agreeable to all those who receive it, would be to calumniate the pacific inhabitants of this commune; but they fear them, and their will is law.

"Now it appears that the Piedigriggios have taken it into their heads to espouse the cause of our rival in the election, a formidable alliance, which may cause two whole cantons to vote against us, for the knaves have legs as long, in proportion, as the range of their guns. Naturally we have the gendarmes with us, but the brigands are much more powerful. As our host said to us this morning: 'The gendarmes, they go, but the banditti, they stay.' In the face of that very logical reasoning, we realized that there was but one thing to do, to treat with the Piedigriggios, and make a bargain with them. The mayor said a word to the old man, who consulted his sons, and they are discussing the terms of the treaty downstairs. I can hear the Governor's voice from here: 'Nonsense, my dear fellow, I'm an old Corsican myself, you know.' And then the other's tranquil reply, cut simultaneously with his tobacco by the grating noise of the great scissors. The 'dear fellow' does not seem to have faith; and I am inclined to think that matters will not progress until the gold pieces ring on the table.

"The trouble is that Paganetti is well known in his native country. The value of his word is written on the public square at Corte which still awaits the monument to Paoli, in the vast crop of humbuggery that he has succeeded in planting in this sterile Ithacan island, and in the flabby, empty pocket-books of all the wretched village cures, petty bourgeois, petty noblemen, whose slender savings he has filched by dangling chimerical combinazioni before their eyes. Upon my word, he needed all his phenomenal assurance, together with the financial resources he now has at his command to satisfy all demands, to venture to show his face here again.

"After all, how much truth is there in these fabulous works undertaken by the Caisse Territoriale?

"None at all.

"Mines which do not yield, which will never yield, as they exist only on paper; quarries which as yet know not pickaxe or powder; untilled, sandy moors, which they survey with a gesture, saying, 'We begin here, and we go way over yonder, to the devil.' It's the same with the forests,—one whole densely wooded slope of Monte-Rotondo, which belongs to us, it seems, but which it is not practicable to cut unless aeronauts should do duty as woodcutters. So as to the mineral baths, of which this wretched hamlet of Pozzonegro is one of the most important, with its fountain, whose amazing ferruginous properties Paganetti is constantly vaunting. Of packet-boats, not a trace. Yes, there is an old, half-ruined Genoese tower, on the shore of the Bay of Ajaccio, with this inscription on a tarnished panel over its hermetically closed door: 'Paganetti Agency, Maritime Company, Bureau of Information.' The bureau is kept by fat gray lizards in company with a screech-owl. As for the railroads, I noticed that all the excellent Corsicans to whom I mentioned them, replied with cunning smiles, disconnected phrases, full of mystery; and not until this morning did I obtain the exceedingly farcical explanation of all this reticence.

"I had read among the documents which the Governor waves before our eyes from time to time, like a fan to inflate his blague, a deed of a marble quarry at a place called Taverna, two hours from Pozzonegro. Availing myself of our visit to this place, I jumped on a mule this morning, without a word to any one, and, guided by a tall rascal, with the legs of a deer,—a perfect specimen of the Corsican poacher or smuggler, with his great red pipe between his teeth,—I betook myself to Taverna. After a horrible journey among cliffs intersected by crevasses, bogs, and abysses of immeasurable depth, where my mule maliciously amused himself by walking close to the edge, as if he were measuring it with his shoes, we descended an almost perpendicular surface to our destination,—a vast desert of rocks, absolutely bare, all white with the droppings of gulls and mews; for the sea is just below, very near, and the silence of the place was broken only by the beating of the waves and the shrill cries of flocks of birds flying in circles. My guide, who has a holy horror of customs officers and gendarmes, remained at the top of the cliff, because of a small custom-house station on the shore, while I bent my steps toward a tall red building which reared its three stories aloft in that blazing solitude, the windows broken, the roof-tiles in confusion, and over the rotting door an immense sign: 'Caisse Territoriale. Carr—bre—54.' The wind and sun and rain have destroyed the rest.

"Certainly there has been at some time an attempt made to work the mine, for there is a large, square, yawning hole, with cleanly-cut edges and patches of red streaked with brown, like leprous spots, along its sterile walls; and among the nettles at the bottom enormous blocks of marble of the variety known in commerce as griotte, condemned blocks of which no use can be made for lack of a proper road leading to the quarry, or a harbor which would enable boats to approach the hill; and, more than all else, for lack of sufficient funds to supply either of those needs. So the quarry, although within a few cable-lengths of the shore, is abandoned, useless, and a nuisance, like Robinson Crusoe's boat, with the same drawbacks as to availability. These details of the distressing history of our only territorial possession were furnished me by an unhappy survivor, shivering with fever, whom I found in the basement of the yellow house trying to cook a piece of kid over the acrid smoke of a fire of mastic branches.

"That man, who comprises the whole staff of the Caisse Territoriale in Corsica, is Paganetti's foster-father, an ex-lighthouse-keeper who does not mind loneliness. The Governor leaves him there partly from charity, and also because an occasional letter from the Taverna quarry produces a good effect at meetings of shareholders. I had great difficulty in extorting any information from that three-fourths wild man, who gazed at me suspiciously, in ambush behind his goat-skin pelone; he did tell me, however, unintentionally, what the Corsicans understand by the term railroad, and why they assume this mysterious manner when they mention it. While I was trying to find out whether he knew anything of the scheme for an iron road in the island, the old fellow did not put on the cunning smile I had observed in his compatriots, but said to me quite naturally, in very good French, but in a voice as rusty and stiff as an old lock that is seldom used:

"'Oh! moussiou, no need of railroads here—'

"'But they are very valuable, very useful to make communication easier.'

"'I don't say that ain't true; but with the gendarmes we don't need anything more.'

"'The gendarmes?'

"'To be sure.'

"The misunderstanding lasted fully five minutes, before I finally comprehended that the secret police are known here as the 'railroads.' As there are many Corsican police officials on the Continent, they make use of an honest euphemism to describe their degrading occupation in their family circle. You ask the kinsmen of one of them, 'Where's your brother Ambrosini?' 'What is your Uncle Barbicaglia doing?' They will answer, with a little wink: 'He has a place on the railroad;' and everybody knows what that means. Among the lower classes, the peasants, who have never seen a railroad and have no idea what it is, there is a perfectly serious belief that the great department of the secret imperial police has no other name than that. Our principal agent in the island shares that touching innocence; this will give you an idea of the condition of the Line from Ajaccio to Bastia via Bonifacio, Porto Vecchio, etc., which figures on the great books with green backs in the Paganetti establishment. In a word, all the assets of the territorial bank are comprised in a few desks and two old hovels—the whole hardly worthy of a place in the rubbish-yard on Rue Saint-Ferdinand, where I hear the weathercocks creaking and the old doors slamming every night as I fall asleep.

"But in that case what has been done, what is being done with the enormous sums that M. Jansoulet has poured into the treasury in the last five months, to say nothing of what has come from other sources attracted by that magic name? I fully agreed with you that all these soundings and borings and purchases of land, which appear on the books in a fine round hand, were immeasurably exaggerated. But how could any one suspect such infernal impudence? That is why M. le Gouverneur was so disgusted at the idea of taking me on this electoral trip. I have not thought it best to have an explanation on the spot. My poor Nabob has enough on his mind with his election. But, as soon as we have returned, I shall place all the details of my long investigation before his eyes; and I will extricate him from this den of thieves by persuasion or by force. They have finished their negotiations downstairs. Old Piedigriggio is crossing the square, playing with his long peasant's purse, which looks to me to be well-filled. The bargain is concluded, I suppose. A hasty adieu, my dear Monsieur Joyeuse; remember me to the young ladies, and bid them keep a tiny place for me at the work-table.

"PAUL DE GERY."

The electoral cyclone in which they had been enveloped in Corsica crossed the sea in their wake like the blast of a sirocco, followed them to Paris and blew madly through the apartments on Place Vendome, which were thronged from morning till night by the usual crowd, increased by the constant arrival of little men as dark as carob-beans, with regular, bearded faces, some noisy, buzzing and chattering, others silent, self-contained and dogmatic, the two types of the race in which the same climate produces different results. All those famished islanders made appointments, in the wilds of their uncivilized fatherland, to meet one another at the Nabob's table, and his house had become a tavern, a restaurant, a market-place. In the dining-room, where the table was always set, there was always some Corsican, newly arrived, in the act of taking a bite, with the bewildered and greedy expression of a relation from the country.

The noisy, blatant breed of election agents is the same everywhere; but these men were distinguished by something more of ardor, a more impassioned zeal, a turkey-cock vanity heated white-hot. The most insignificant clerk, inspector, mayor's secretary, or village schoolmaster talked as if he had a whole canton behind him and the pockets of his threadbare coat stuffed full of ballots. And it is a fact, which Jansoulet had had abundant opportunity to verify, that in the Corsican villages the families are so ancient, of such humble origin, with so many ramifications, that a poor devil who breaks stones on the high road finds some way to work out his relationship to the greatest personages on the island, and in that way wields a serious influence. As the national temperament, proud, cunning, intriguing, revengeful, intensifies these complications, the result is that great care must be taken as to where one puts his foot among the snares that are spread from one end of the island to the other.

The most dangerous part of it was that all those people were jealous of one another, detested one another, quarrelled openly at the table on the subject of the election, exchanging black glances, grasping the hilts of their knives at the slightest dispute, talking very loud and all together, some in the harsh, resonant Genoese patois, others in the most comical French, choking with restrained insults, throwing at one another's heads the names of unknown villages, dates of local history which suddenly placed two centuries of family feuds upon the table between two covers. The Nabob was afraid that his breakfasts would end tragically, and tried to calm all those violent natures with his kindly, conciliatory smile. But Paganetti reassured him. According to him, the vendetta, although still kept alive in Corsica, very rarely employs the stiletto and the firearm in these days. The anonymous letter has taken their place. Indeed, unsigned letters were received every day at Place Vendome, after the style of this one:—

"You are so generous, Monsieur Jansoulet, that I can do no less than point out to you Sieur Bornalinco (Ange-Marie) as a traitor who has gone over to your enemies; I have a very different story to tell of his cousin Bornalinco (Louis-Thomas), who is devoted to the good cause," etc.

Or else:

"Monsieur Jansoulet, I fear that your election will be badly managed and will come to nothing if you continue to employ Castirla (Josue) of the canton of Odessa, while his kinsman, Luciani, is the very man you need."

Although he finally gave up reading such missives, the poor candidate was shaken by all those doubts, by all those passions, being caught in a network of petty intrigues, his mind full of terror and distrust, anxious, excited, nervous, feeling keenly the truth of the Corsican proverb:

"If you are very ill-disposed to your enemy, pray that he may have an election in his family."

We can imagine that the check-book and the three great drawers in the mahogany commode were not spared by that cloud of devouring locusts that swooped down upon "Moussiou Jansoulet's" salons. Nothing could be more comical than the overbearing way in which those worthy islanders negotiated their loans, abruptly and with an air of defiance. And yet they were not the most terrible, except in the matter of boxes of cigars, which vanished in their pockets so rapidly as to make one think they proposed to open a Civette on their return to the island. But just as wounds grow red and inflamed on very hot days, so the election had caused an amazing recrudescence in the systematic pillage that reigned in the house. The expenses of advertising were considerable: Moessard's articles, sent to Corsica in packages of twenty thousand, thirty thousand copies, with portraits, biographies, pamphlets, all the printed clamor that it is possible to raise around a name. And then there was no diminution in the ordinary consumption of the panting pumps established around the reservoir of millions. On one side the Work of Bethlehem, a powerful machine, pumping at regular intervals, with tremendous energy; the Caisse Territoriale, with marvellous power of suction, indefatigable in its operation, with triple and quadruple action, of several thousand horse-power; and the Schwalbach pump, and the Bois-l'Hery pump, and how many more; some of enormous size, making a great noise, with audacious pistons, others more quiet and reserved, with tiny valves, bearings skilfully oiled—toy-pumps as delicately constructed as the probosces of insects whose thirst causes stings, and which deposit poison on the spot from which they suck their life; but all working with the same unanimity, and fatally certain to cause, if not an absolute drought, at all events a serious lowering of the level.