The Nabob Volume Ii Part 13

Almost instinctively he let his heavy hand fall into the hand the Nabob held out to him. Something of the animal nature stirred in them both, stronger than their antipathy, and those two men, who had been trying for ten years to ruin and dishonor each other, began to talk together heart to heart.

Generally, when friends meet after a long separation, the first effusive greetings at an end, they remain silent as if they had nothing to tell each other, whereas it is the very abundance of things, their precipitate struggle for utterance that prevents their coming forth. The two former partners had reached that stage; but Jansoulet held the banker's arm very tight, fearing that he might escape him, might resist the kindly impulses that he had aroused in him.

"You are in no hurry, are you? We might walk a moment or two if you choose. It has stopped raining, it will do us good--we shall be twenty years younger."

"Yes, it's a pleasant thing," said Hemerlingue; "but I can't walk long, my legs are heavy."

"True, your poor legs. See, there's a bench yonder. Let's go and sit down. Lean on me, old fellow."

And the Nabob, with brotherly solicitude, led him to one of the benches placed at intervals against the tombs, for the convenience of those inconsolable mourners who make the cemetery their usual resort. He arranged him comfortably, encompa.s.sed him with a protecting glance, sympathized with him in his infirmity, and, the conversation following a course very natural in such a place, they talked of their health, of the approach of old age. One was dropsical, the other subject to rushes of blood to the head. Both were taking the Jenkins Pearls,--a dangerous remedy, witness Mora's sudden taking off.

"Poor duke!" said Jansoulet.

"A great loss to the country," rejoined the banker, in a grief-stricken tone.

Whereupon the Nabob ingenuously exclaimed:

"To me, above all others to me, for if he had lived--Ah! you have all the luck, you have all the luck! And then, you know, you are so strong, so very strong," he added, fearing that he had wounded him.

The baron looked at him and winked, so drolly that his little black lashes disappeared in his yellow flesh.

"No," he said, "I'm not the strong one. It's Marie!"

"Marie?"

"Yes, the baroness. At the time of her baptism she dropped her old name, Yumina, for Marie. She's a real woman. She knows more about the bank than I do, and about Paris and business generally. She manages everything in the concern."

"You are very fortunate," sighed Jansoulet.

His melancholy was most eloquent touching Mademoiselle Afchin's deficiencies. After a pause the baron continued:

"Marie has a bitter grudge against you, you know. She won't like it when she knows that we have been talking together."

He contracted his heavy eyebrows as if he regretted the reconciliation at the thought of the conjugal scene it would bring upon him.

"But I have never done anything to her," stammered Jansoulet.

"Ah! but you haven't been very polite to her, you know. Think of the insult put upon her at the time of our wedding-call. Your wife sending word to us that she didn't receive former slaves! As if our friends.h.i.+p should not have been stronger than any prejudice. Women don't forget such things."

"But I had nothing to do with it, old fellow. You know how proud those Afchins are."

He was not proud, poor man. His expression was so piteous, so imploring at sight of his friend's frowning brow, that the baron took pity on him.

The cemetery had a decidedly softening effect on the baron!

"Listen, Bernard, there's only one thing that will do any good. If you wish that we should be friends as we used to be, that these handshakes that we have exchanged should not be wasted, you must induce my wife to be reconciled to you. Without that it's of no use. When Mademoiselle Afchin shut her door in our faces, you let her do it, didn't you? It's the same with me; if Marie should say to me when I go home: 'I don't want you to be friends,' all my protestations wouldn't prevent me from throwing you overboard. For there's no friends.h.i.+p that amounts to anything. The best thing in the world is to have peace in your own house."

"But what am I to do, then?" queried the Nabob, in dismay.

"That's what I'm going to tell you. The baroness is at home every Sat.u.r.day. Come with your wife and call on her day after to-morrow. You will find the best people in Paris at the house. Nothing will be said about the past. The ladies will talk dresses and bonnets, say what women say to each other. And then it will be all settled. We shall be friends again as in the old days; and if you're in the hole, why, we'll pull you out."

"Do you think so? It's a fact that I am in very deep," said the other, shaking his head.

Once more Hemerlingue's cunning eyes disappeared between his cheeks, like two flies in b.u.t.ter.

"_Dame!_ yes, I've played pretty close. You don't lack skill. That stroke of loaning fifteen millions to the bey was very shrewd. Ah!

you're a cool one; but you don't hold your cards right. Others can see your hand."

Thus far they had spoken in undertones, as if awed by the silence of the great necropolis; but gradually selfish interests raised their tones, even amid the proofs of their nothingness displayed upon all those flat stones covered with dates and figures, as if death were simply a matter of time and reckoning, the desired solution of a problem.

Hemerlingue enjoyed seeing his friend so humble, he gave him advice concerning his business affairs, with which he seemed to be thoroughly acquainted. According to his view, the Nabob could still get out of his difficulties in very good shape. Everything depended on the confirmation of his election, on having another card to play. Then it must be played judiciously. But Jansoulet had no confidence. In losing Mora he had lost everything.

"You have lost Mora, but you have found me. One's worth as much as the other," said the baron, calmly.

"But no, you see yourself it's impossible. It's too late. Le Merquier has finished his report. It's a terrible report, so it seems."

"Very well! if he's finished his report, he must draw another, not so unfavorable."

"How can that be?"

The baron stared at him in amazement.

"Come, come, you're losing your hold! Why, by giving him one, two, three hundred thousand francs, if necessary."

"What do you mean? Le Merquier, that upright man--'My conscience,' as he is called."

At that, Hemerlingue fairly roared with laughter, which echoed among the recesses of the neighboring mausoleums, little wonted to such lack of respect.

"'My conscience,' 'an upright man,' Ah! you amuse me. Can it be that you don't know that that conscience belongs to me, and that--"

He checked himself and looked behind, a little disturbed by a noise he heard.

"Listen."

It was the echo of his laughter, tossed back from the depths of a tomb, as if that idea of Le Merquier's conscience amused even the dead.

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

Thereupon, as they walked among the tombs, he explained to him with a certain pedantic conceit that in France bribes played as important a part as in the Orient. Only more ceremony was used here. "Take Le Merquier for instance. Instead of giving him your money outright in a big purse as you would do with a _seraskier_, you beat around the bush.

The fellow likes pictures. He is always trading with Schwalbach, who uses him as a bait to catch Catholic customers. Very good! you offer him a picture, a souvenir to hang on a panel in his cabinet. It all depends on getting your money's worth. However, you shall see. I'll take you to him myself. I'll show you how the thing is done."

And, delighted to observe the wonderment of the Nabob, who exaggerated his surprise in order to flatter him, and opened his eyes admiringly, the banker elaborated his lesson, delivering a veritable lecture upon Parisian and worldly philosophy.

"You see, old fellow, the thing that you must be more careful about than anything else in Paris, is keeping up appearances! You have never given enough attention to that. You go about with your waistcoat unb.u.t.toned, hail fellow well met, telling your business to everybody, showing yourself just as you are. You act as if you were in Tunis, among the bazaars or the _souks_. That's how you got yourself into trouble, my good Bernard."

He stopped to take breath, unable to go any farther. He had expended more steps and more words in an hour than he usually did in a year. They noticed then that chance had led them back, while they talked, towards the place of sepulture of the Moras, on the summit of an open plateau from which they could see, above myriads of crowded roofs, Montmartre and Les b.u.t.tes Chaumont in the distance like vague white billows. These, with the hill of Pere-Lachaise, accurately represented the three undulations, following one another at equal intervals, of which each forward impulse of the sea consists at flood tide. In the hollows between, lights were already twinkling, like s.h.i.+p's lanterns, through the ascending purple haze; chimneys towered aloft like masts or funnels of steamers belching forth smoke; and whirling it all about in its undulating motion, the Parisian ocean seemed to be bringing it nearer to the dark sh.o.r.e in successive series of three bounds, each time less energetic than the last. The sky had become much brighter, as it often does toward the close of rainy days, a boundless sky, tinged with the hues of dawn, against which, upon the family tomb of the Moras, four allegorical figures stood forth, imploring, contemplative, pensive, the dying day exaggerating the sublimity of their att.i.tudes. Naught remained of the orations, the perfunctory official condolences. The trampled gra.s.s all around, masons occupied in was.h.i.+ng the spots of plaster from the threshold, were all that recalled the recent interment.

Suddenly the door of the ducal cavern closed in all its metallic ponderosity. Thenceforth the former minister of State was alone, quite alone, in the darkness of his night, more dense than that just creeping up from the garden below, invading the winding avenues, the stairways surrounding the bases of columns, pyramids, crypts of every kind, whose summits died more slowly. Gravediggers, all white with the chalky whiteness of dried bones, pa.s.sed with their tools and their baskets.

Stealthy mourners, tearing themselves away regretfully from tears and prayer, crept along the hedges, brus.h.i.+ng them in their silent flight, like the flight of night-birds, while on the outskirts of Pere-Lachaise voices arose, melancholy voices announcing the hour for closing. The cemetery day was done. The city of the dead, given back to nature, became an immense forest with cross-roads marked by crosses. In the heart of a valley lights shone in the windows of a keeper's house. A s.h.i.+ver ran through the air and lost itself in whisperings at the end of interlaced paths.