The Nabob [24]
his voyagings over distant seas, and the perils and the great shipwrecks. There followed the story of his good luck, the prodigious chance that had placed him suddenly upon the road to fortune. "I was wandering about the quays of Marseilles with a comrade as poverty-stricken as myself, who is become rich, he also, in the service of the Bey, and, after having been my chum, my partner, is now my most cruel enemy. I may mention his name, /pardi/! It is sufficiently well known--Hemerlingue. Yes, gentlemen, the head of the great banking house. 'Hemerlingue & Co.' had not in those days even the wherewithal to buy a pennyworth of /clauvisses/ on the quay. Intoxicated by the atmosphere of travel that one breathes down there, the idea came into our minds of starting out, of going to seek our livelihood in some country where the sun shines, since the lands of mist were so inhospitable to us. But where to go? We did what sailors sometimes do in order to decide in what low hole they will squander their pay. You fix a scrap of paper on the brim of your hat. You make the hat spin on a walking-stick; when it stops spinning you follow the pointer. In our case the paper needle pointed towards Tunis. A week later I landed at Tunis with half a louis in my pocket, and I came back to-day with twenty-five millions!"
An electric shock passed round the table; there was a gleam in every eye, even in those of the servants. Cardailhac said, "Phew!" Monpavon's nose descended to common humanity.
"Yes, my boys, twenty-five millions in liquidated cash, without speaking of all that I have left in Tunis, of my two palaces at the Bardo, of my vessels in the harbour of La Goulette, of my diamonds, of my precious stones, which are worth certainly more than the double. And you know," he added, with his kindly smile and in his hoarse, plebeian voice, "when that is done there will still be more."
The whole company rose to its feet, galvanized.
"Bravo! Ah, bravo!"
"Splendid!"
"Deuced clever--deuced clever!"
"Now, that is something worth talking about."
"A man like him ought to be in the Chamber."
"He will be, /per Bacco/! I answer for it," said the governor in a piercing voice; and in the transport of admiration, not knowing how to express his enthusiasm, he seized the fat, hairy hand of the Nabob and on an unreflective impulse raised it to his lips. They are demonstrative in his country. Everybody was standing up; no one sat down again.
Jansoulet, beaming, had risen in his turn, and, throwing down his serviette: "Let us go and have some coffee," he said.
A glad tumult immediately spread through the salons, vast apartments in which light, decoration, sumptuousness, were represented by gold alone. It seemed to fall from the ceiling in blinding rays, it oozed from the walls in mouldings, sashes, framings of every kind. A little of it remained on your hands if you moved a piece of furniture or opened a window; and the very hangings, dipped in this Pactolus, kept on their straight folds the rigidity, the sparkle of a metal. But nothing bearing the least personal stamp, nothing intimate, nothing thought out. The monotonous luxury of the furnished flat. And there was a re-enforcement of this impression of a moving camp, of a merely provisory home, in the suggestion of travel which hovered like an uncertainty or a menace over this fortune derived from far-off sources.
Coffee having been served, in the Eastern manner, with all its grounds, in little cups filigreed with silver, the guests grouped themselves round, making haste to drink, scalding themselves, keeping watchful eyes on each other and especially on the Nabob as they looked out for the favourable moment to spring upon him, draw him into some corner of those immense rooms, and at length negotiate their loan. For this it was that they had been awaiting for two hours; this was the object of their visit and the fixed idea which gave them during the meal that absent, falsely attentive manner. But here no more constraint, no more pretence. In that peculiar social world of theirs
An electric shock passed round the table; there was a gleam in every eye, even in those of the servants. Cardailhac said, "Phew!" Monpavon's nose descended to common humanity.
"Yes, my boys, twenty-five millions in liquidated cash, without speaking of all that I have left in Tunis, of my two palaces at the Bardo, of my vessels in the harbour of La Goulette, of my diamonds, of my precious stones, which are worth certainly more than the double. And you know," he added, with his kindly smile and in his hoarse, plebeian voice, "when that is done there will still be more."
The whole company rose to its feet, galvanized.
"Bravo! Ah, bravo!"
"Splendid!"
"Deuced clever--deuced clever!"
"Now, that is something worth talking about."
"A man like him ought to be in the Chamber."
"He will be, /per Bacco/! I answer for it," said the governor in a piercing voice; and in the transport of admiration, not knowing how to express his enthusiasm, he seized the fat, hairy hand of the Nabob and on an unreflective impulse raised it to his lips. They are demonstrative in his country. Everybody was standing up; no one sat down again.
Jansoulet, beaming, had risen in his turn, and, throwing down his serviette: "Let us go and have some coffee," he said.
A glad tumult immediately spread through the salons, vast apartments in which light, decoration, sumptuousness, were represented by gold alone. It seemed to fall from the ceiling in blinding rays, it oozed from the walls in mouldings, sashes, framings of every kind. A little of it remained on your hands if you moved a piece of furniture or opened a window; and the very hangings, dipped in this Pactolus, kept on their straight folds the rigidity, the sparkle of a metal. But nothing bearing the least personal stamp, nothing intimate, nothing thought out. The monotonous luxury of the furnished flat. And there was a re-enforcement of this impression of a moving camp, of a merely provisory home, in the suggestion of travel which hovered like an uncertainty or a menace over this fortune derived from far-off sources.
Coffee having been served, in the Eastern manner, with all its grounds, in little cups filigreed with silver, the guests grouped themselves round, making haste to drink, scalding themselves, keeping watchful eyes on each other and especially on the Nabob as they looked out for the favourable moment to spring upon him, draw him into some corner of those immense rooms, and at length negotiate their loan. For this it was that they had been awaiting for two hours; this was the object of their visit and the fixed idea which gave them during the meal that absent, falsely attentive manner. But here no more constraint, no more pretence. In that peculiar social world of theirs