The Nabob Part 33

"True, your poor legs. See, there is a bench over there. Let us go and sit down. Lean on me, old friend."

And the Nabob, with brotherly aid, led him to one of those benches dotted here and there among the tombs, on which those inconsolable mourners rest who make the cemetery their usual walk and abode. He settled him in his seat, gazed upon him tenderly, pitied him for his infirmity, and, following what was quite a natural channel in such a spot, they came to talking of their health, of the old age that was approaching. This one was dropsical, the other subject to apoplectic fits. Both were in the habit of dosing themselves with the Jenkins pearls, a dangerous remedy--witness Mora, so quickly carried off.

"My poor duke!" said Jansoulet.

"A great loss to the country," remarked the banker with an air of conviction.

And the Nabob added naively:

"For me above all, for me; for, if he had lived--Ah! what luck you have, what luck you have!"

Fearing to have wounded him, he went on quickly:

"And then, too, you are clever, so very clever."

The baron looked at him with a wink so droll, that his little black eyelashes disappeared amid his yellow fat.

"No," said he, "it is not I who am clever. It is Marie."

"Marie?"

"Yes, the baroness. Since her baptism she has given up her name of Yamina for that of Marie. She is a real sort of woman. She knows more than I do myself about banking and Paris and business. It is she who manages everything at home."

"You are very fortunate," sighed Jansoulet. His air of gloom told a long story of qualities missing in Mlle. Afchin. Then, after a silence, the baron resumed:

"She has a great grudge against you, Marie, you know. She will not be pleased when she hears that we have been talking together."

A frown pa.s.sed over his heavy brow, as though he were regretting their reconciliation, at the thought of the scene which he would have with his wife. Jansoulet stammered:

"I have done her no harm, however."

"Come, come, neither of you has been very nice to her. Think of the affront put upon her when we called after our marriage. Your wife sending word to us that she was not in the habit of receiving quondam slaves. As though our friends.h.i.+p ought not to have been stronger than a prejudice. Women don't forget things of that kind."

"But no responsibility lay with me for that, old friend. You know how proud those Afchins are."

He was not proud himself, poor man. His mien was so woebegone, so supplicating under his friend's frown, that he moved him to pity.

Decidedly, the cemetery had softened the baron.

"Listen, Bernard; there is only one thing that counts. If you want us to be friends, as formerly, and this reconciliation not to be wasted, you will have to get my wife to consent. Without her nothing can be done.

When Mlle. Afchin shut her door in our faces you let her have her way, did you not? In the same way, on my side, if Marie said to me when I go home, 'I will not let you be friends,' all my protestations now would not prevent me from throwing you overboard. For there is no such thing as friends.h.i.+p in face of such difficulties. Peace at one's fireside is better than everything else."

"But in that case, what is to be done?" asked the Nabob, frightened.

"I am going to tell you. The baroness is at home every Sat.u.r.day. Come with your wife and pay her a visit the day after to-morrow. You will find the best society in Paris at the house. The past shall not be mentioned. The ladies will gossip together of chiffons and frocks, talk of the things women do talk about. And then the whole matter will be settled. We shall become friends as we used to be; and since you are in difficulties, well, we will find some way of getting you out of them."

"Do you think so? The fact is I am in terrible straits," said the other, shaking his head.

Hemerlingue's cunning eyes disappeared again beneath the folds of his cheeks like two flies in b.u.t.ter.

"Well, yes; I have played a strong game. But you don't lack shrewdness, all the same. The loan of the fifteen millions to the Bey--it was a good stroke, that. Ah! you are bold enough; only you hold your cards badly.

One can see your game."

Till now they had been talking in low tones, impressed by the silence of the great necropolis; but little by little human interests a.s.serted themselves in a louder key even there where their nothingness lay exposed on all those flat stones covered with dates and figures, as if death was only an affair of time and calculation--the desired solution of a problem.

Hemerlingue enjoyed the sight of his friend reduced to such humility, and gave him advice on his affairs, with which he seemed to be fully acquainted. According to him the Nabob could still get out of his difficulties very well. Everything depended on the validation, on the turning up of a card. The question was to make sure that it should be a good one. But Jansoulet had no more confidence. In losing Mora, he had lost everything.

"You lose Mora, but you regain me; so things are equalized," said the banker tranquilly.

"No, do you see it is impossible. It is too late. Le Merquier has completed the report. It is a dreadful one, I believe."

"Well, if he has completed his report, he will have to prepare another."

"How is that to be done?"

The baron looked at him with surprise.

"Ah, you are losing your senses. Why, by paying him a hundred, two hundred, three hundred thousand francs, if necessary.

"How can you think of such a thing? Le Merquier, that man of integrity!

'My conscience,' as they call him."

This time Hemerlingue's laugh burst forth with an extraordinary heartiness, and must have reached the inmost recesses of the neighbouring mausoleums, little accustomed to such disrespect.

"'My conscience' a man of integrity! Ah! you amuse me. You don't know, then, that he is in my pay, conscience and all, and that--" He paused, and looked behind him, somewhat startled by a sound which he had heard.

"Listen."

It was the echo of his laughter sent back to them from the depths of a vault, as if the idea of Le Merquier having a conscience moved even the dead to mirth.

"Suppose we walk a little," said he, "it begins to be chilly on this bench."

Then, as they walked among the tombs, he went on to explain to him with a certain pedantic fatuity, that in France bribes played as important a part as in the East. Only one had to be a little more delicate about it here. You veiled your bribes. "Thus, take this Le Merquier, for instance. Instead of offering him your money openly, in a big purse, as you would to a local pasha, you go about it indirectly. The man is fond of pictures. He is constantly having dealings with Schwalbach, who employs him as a decoy for his Catholic clients. Well, you offer him some picture--a souvenir to hang on a panel in his study. The whole point is to make the price quite clear. But you will see. I will take you round to call on him myself. I will show you how the thing is worked."

And delighted at the amazement of the Nabob, who, to flatter him, exaggerated his surprise still further, and opened his eyes wide with an air of admiration, the banker enlarged the scope of his lesson--made of it a veritable course of Parisian and worldly philosophy.

"See, old comrade, what one has to look after in Paris, above everything else, is the keeping up of appearances. They are the only things that count--appearances! Now you have not sufficient care for them. You go about town, your waistcoat unb.u.t.toned, a good-humoured fellow, talking of your affairs, just what you are by nature. You stroll around just as you would in the bazaars of Tunis. That is how you have come to get bowled over, my good Bernard."

He paused to take breath, feeling quite exhausted. In an hour he had walked farther and spoken more than he was accustomed to do in the course of a whole year. They noticed, as they stopped, that their walk and conversation had led them back in the direction of Mora's grave, which was situated just above a little exposed plateau, whence looking over a thousand closely packed roofs, they could see Montmartre, the b.u.t.tes Chaumont, their rounded outline in the distance looking like high waves. In the hollows lights were already beginning to twinkle, like s.h.i.+ps' lanterns, through the violet mists that were rising; chimneys seemed to leap upward like masts, or steamer funnels discharging their smoke. Those three undulations, with the tide of Pere Lachaise, were clearly suggestive of waves of the sea, following each other at equal intervals. The sky was bright, as often happens in the evening of a rainy day, an immense sky, shaded with tints of dawn, against which the family tomb of Mora exhibited in relief four allegorical figures, imploring, meditative, thoughtful, whose att.i.tudes were made more imposing by the dying light. Of the speeches, of the official condolences, nothing remained. The soil trodden down all around, masons at work was.h.i.+ng the dirt from the plaster threshold, were all that was left to recall the recent burial.

Suddenly the door of the ducal tomb shut with a clash of all its metallic weight. Thenceforth the late Minister of State was to remain alone, utterly alone, in the shadow of its night, deeper than that which then was creeping up from the bottom of the garden, invading the winding paths, the stone stairways, the bases of the columns, pyramids and tombs of every kind, whose summits were reached more slowly by the shroud.

Navvies, all white with that chalky whiteness of dried bones, were pa.s.sing by, carrying their tools and wallets. Furtive mourners, dragging themselves away regretfully from tears and prayer, glided along the margins of the clumps of trees, seeming to skirt them as with the silent flight of night-birds, while from the extremities of Pere Lachaise voices rose--melancholy calls announcing the closing time. The day of the cemetery was at its end. The city of the dead, handed over once more to Nature, was becoming an immense wood with open s.p.a.ces marked by crosses. Down in a valley, the window-panes of a custodian's house were lighted up. A shudder seemed to run through the air, losing itself in murmurings along the dim paths.

"Let us go," the two old comrades said to each other, gradually coming to feel the impression of that twilight, which seemed colder than elsewhere; but before moving off, Hemerlingue, pursuing his train of thought, pointed to the monument winged at the four corners by the draperies and the outstretched hands of its sculptured figures.

"Look here," said he. "That was the man who understood the art of keeping up appearances."

Jansoulet took his arm to aid him in the descent.

"Ah, yes, he was clever. But you are the most clever of all," he answered with his terrible Gascon intonation.