Chapter VI: Front Matter (6)

The guests were taking their leave. Madame Hemerlingue escorted some of the ladies to the door, bent her head beneath the benediction of the Armenian bishop, bowed smilingly to the young dandies with canes, bestowed upon every one the proper variety of salutation, with perfect self-possession; and the poor devil could not avoid a mental comparison between that Oriental slave become such a thorough Parisian, of such marked distinction in the most refined society on earth, and that other woman, the European enervated by the Orient, brutalized by Turkish tobacco and bloated by a life of sloth. His ambition, his pride as a husband were disappointed, humiliated in that union of which he now saw the peril and the emptiness, the last cruel blow of destiny which deprived him even of the refuge of domestic happiness against all his public misfortunes.

Gradually the salons became empty. The Levantines disappeared one after another, each leaving an immense void in her place. Madame Jenkins had gone, and only two or three women, strangers to Jansoulet, remained, among whom the mistress of the house seemed to be seeking refuge from him. But Hemerlingue was at liberty, and the Nabob joined him just as he was sidling furtively away in the direction of his offices, which were on the same floor opposite the state apartments. Jansoulet went out with him, forgetting in his confusion to salute the baroness; and when they were safely out on the landing, arranged as a reception-room, the corpulent Hemerlingue, who had been very cold and reserved so long as he felt his wife's eye upon him, assumed a somewhat more open expression.

"It's a great pity," he said in a low tone, as if he were afraid of being overheard, "that Madame Jansoulet would not come."

Jansoulet replied with a gesture of despair and savage helplessness.

"Too bad--too bad!" said the other, blowing his nose and feeling in his pocket for his key.

"Look here, old fellow," said the Nabob, taking his arm, "because our wives don't hit it off together, is no reason--That doesn't prevent our remaining friends. What a nice little chat we had the other day, eh?"

"To be sure," said the baron, withdrawing his hand to unlock the door, which opened noiselessly, disclosing the lofty private office with its one lamp burning in front of the capacious, empty armchair.

"Ya didon, Mouci,"[5] said the poor Nabob, trying to jest, and resorting to the _sabir_ patois to remind his old chum of all the pleasant reminiscences they had overhauled the day before. "Our visit to Le Merquier still holds. The picture we were going to offer him, you know. What day shall we go?"

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Ah! I say, Monsieur.

"Ah! yes, Le Merquier. To be sure. Well, very soon. I will write you."

"Sure? You know it's very urgent."

"Yes, yes, I'll write you. Adieu."

And the fat man closed his door hastily as if he feared that his wife might appear.

Two days later the Nabob received a note from Hemerlingue, almost undecipherable with its little fly-tracks, complicated by abbreviations more or less commercial, behind which the ex-sutler concealed his absolute lack of orthography:

"MON CH/ANC/CAM/--Je ne puis decid/t'accom/ chez Le Merq/. Trop d'aff/en ce mom/. D'aill/v/ ser/mieux seuls pour caus/. Vas-y carrem/. On t'att/. R/Cassette, tous les mat/de 8 a 10.

"A toi cor/

"HEM/."[6]

FOOTNOTES:

[6] "MY DEAR OLD COMRADE,--I cannot see my way to accompanying you to see Le Merquier. Too busy just now. Indeed, you will do better to talk with him alone. Go there openly. You are expected. Rue Cassette, every morning, 8 to 10.

"Yours cordially,

"HEMERLINGUE."

Below, by way of postscript, in a hand equally fine, but much clearer, was written very legibly:

"A religious picture, if possible."

What was he to think of that letter? Was it dictated by real friendliness or polite dissimulation? At all events, further hesitation was out of the question. The time was very short. So Jansoulet made a brave effort, for Le Merquier frightened him sadly, and went to his office one morning.

This strange Paris of ours, in its population and its varied aspects, seems like a map of the whole world. We find in the Marais narrow streets with old, carved, vermiculated doors, with overhanging gables, with balconies _en moucharabies_, which make one think of old Heidelberg. Faubourg Saint-Honore where it is broadest, near the Russian church with its white minarets and golden balls, recalls a bit of Moscow. On Montmartre there is a picturesque, crowded spot that is pure Algiers. Low, clean little houses, with their copper-plates on the doors, and their private gardens, stand in line along typical English streets between Neuilly and the Champs-Elysees; while the whole circuit of the apse of Saint-Sulpice, Rue Ferou, Rue Cassette, lying placidly in the shadow of the great towers, roughly paved, with knockers on the front doors, seems to have been transplanted from some pious provincial city,--Tours or Orleans for instance, in the neighborhood of the cathedral and the bishop's palace, where tall trees tower above the walls and sway to the music of the bells and the responses.

There, in the vicinity of the Catholic club, of which he had been chosen honorary president, lived Maitre Le Merquier, advocate, Deputy for Lyon, man of business of all the great religious communities of France, and the man whom Hemerlingue, in pursuance of an idea of great profundity for that bulky individual, had intrusted with the legal affairs of his firm.

Arriving about nine o'clock at an ancient mansion, whose ground-floor was occupied by a religious publishing house sleeping peacefully in its odor of the sacristy and of coarse paper for printing miracles, and ascending the broad staircase, the walls of which were whitewashed like those of a convent, Jansoulet felt permeated with that provincial and Catholic atmosphere wherein the memories of his Southern past revived, childish impressions still fresh and intact, thanks to his long exile, impressions which the son of Francoise had had neither time nor occasion to disown since his arrival in Paris. Worldly hypocrisy had assumed all its different shapes before him, tried all its masks, except that of religious integrity. So that he refused in his own mind to believe in the venality of a man who lived in such surroundings. Ushered into the advocate's waiting-room, a large parlor with curtains of starched muslin as fine as that of which surplices are made, its only ornament a large and beautiful copy of Tintoret's _Dead Christ_ over the door, his uncertainty and anxiety changed to indignant conviction. It was not possible. He had been misled touching Le Merquier. Surely it was an impudent slander, such as Paris is so ready to spread; or perhaps they were laying another one of those wicked traps for him, against which he had done nothing but stumble for six months past. No, that timid conscience renowned at the Palais de Justice and the Chamber, that cold, austere man could not be dealt with like those coarse, pot-bellied pashas, with their loose belts and floating sleeves so convenient as receptacles for purses of sequins. He would expose himself to a shameful refusal, to the natural revolt of outraged honor, if he should attempt such methods of bribery.

The Nabob said this to himself as he sat on the oak bench that ran around the room, polished by serge gowns and the rough broadcloth of cassocks. Notwithstanding the early hour, several persons beside himself were waiting. A Dominican striding back and forth, ascetic and serene of face, two nuns buried in their hoods, telling their beads on long rosaries which measured their time of waiting, priests from the diocese of Lyon, recognizable from the shape of their hats, and other persons of stern and meditative mien seated by the great table of black wood which stood in the centre of the room, and turning the leaves of some of those edifying periodicals which are printed on the hill of Fourvieres, the _Echoes from Purgatory_, or _Marie's Rose-bush_, and which give as premiums to yearly subscribers papal indulgences, absolution for future sins. A few words in a low voice, a stifled cough, the faint murmuring of the two sisters' prayer reminded Jansoulet of the confused, faraway sensation of hours of waiting around the confessional, in a corner of his village church, when the great religious festivals were drawing near.

At last it came his turn to enter the sanctum, and if any shadow of doubt concerning Maitre Le Merquier remained in his mind, that doubt vanished when he saw that high-studded office, simple and severe in appearance,--although somewhat more decorated than the waiting-room--of which the advocate made a framework for his rigid principles and his long, thin, stooping, narrow-shouldered person, eternally squeezed into a black coat too short in the sleeves, from which protruded two flat, square, black hands, two clubs of India ink covered with swollen veins like hieroglyphics. In the clerical deputy's sallow complexion, the complexion of the Lyonnais turned mouldy between his two rivers, there was a certain animation, due to his varying expression, sometimes sparkling but impenetrable behind his spectacles, more frequently keen, suspicious and threatening over those same spectacles, and surrounded by the retreating shadow which follows the arch of the eyebrow when the eye is raised and the head low.

After a greeting that was almost cordial in comparison with the cold salutation which the two colleagues exchanged at the Chamber, an "I was expecting you," uttered with a purpose perhaps, the advocate waved the Nabob to the chair near his desk, bade the smug domestic, dressed in black from head to foot, not to "tighten the sack-cloth with the scourge," but to stay away until the bell should ring for him, arranged a few scattered papers, and then, crossing his legs, burying himself in his armchair in the crouching attitude of the man who is making ready to listen, who becomes all ears, he took his chin in his hand and sat with his eyes fixed on a long curtain of green ribbed velvet that fell from the ceiling to the floor opposite him.

It was a decisive moment, an embarrassing situation. But Jansoulet did not hesitate. It was one of the poor Nabob's boasts that he understood men as well as Mora. And the keen scent, which, he said, had never deceived him, warned him that he was at that moment in presence of a rigid, immovable honesty, a conscience of solid rock unassailable by pick-axe or powder. "My conscience!" So he suddenly changed his programme, cast aside the stratagems, the equivocal hints, in which his open, courageous nature was wallowing about, and with head erect and heart laid bare, talked to that upright man in a language which he was built to understand.

"Do not be surprised, my dear colleague,"--his voice trembled at first, but soon became firm in his conviction of the justice of his cause--"do not be surprised that I have come to see you here instead of simply asking to be heard by the third committee. The explanations that I have to put before you are of such a delicate and confidential nature that it would have been impossible for me to give them in a public place, before my assembled colleagues."

Maitre Le Merquier looked at the curtain over his spectacles with an air of dismay. Evidently the conversation was taking an unexpected turn.

"I do not touch upon the substance of the question," continued the Nabob. "I am sure that your report is impartial and just, such a report as your conscience must have dictated. But certain disgusting slanders have been set on foot concerning myself, to which I have not replied, and which may have influenced the opinion of the committee. That is the subject on which I wish to speak to you. I know the confidence which your colleagues repose in you, Monsieur Le Merquier, and that, when I have convinced you, your word will be sufficient and I shall not be obliged to parade my distress before the full committee. You know the charge. I refer to the most horrible, the most shameful one. There are so many that one might make a mistake among them. My enemies have given names, dates, addresses. Be it so! I bring you the proofs of my innocence. I lay them before you, before you only; for I have the gravest reasons for keeping this whole affair secret."

Thereupon he showed the advocate a certificate from the consulate at Tunis that in twenty years he had left the principality but twice, the first time to see his father who lay dying at Bourg-Saint-Andeol, the second time to pay a visit of three days at his Chateau of Saint-Romans with the bey.

"How does it happen that with such a decisive document in my hands I have not cited my defamers before the courts to contradict them and put them to shame? Alas! Monsieur, there are family bonds that cut into the flesh. I had a brother, a poor weak spoiled creature, who rolled for a long while in the filth of Paris, left his intelligence and his honor here. Did he really descend to that stage of degradation at which I have been placed in his name? I have not dared to ascertain. What I can say is that my poor father, who knew more about it than any one else in the family, whispered to me when he was dying: 'Bernard, your brother is killing me. I am dying of shame, my child.'"

He paused for a moment, compelled by his suffocating emotion, then continued:

"My father died, Monsieur Le Merquier, but my mother is still alive, and it is for her sake, for her repose, that I have recoiled, that I still recoil from making public my justification. Thus far the filth that has been thrown at me has not splashed upon her. It does not extend outside a certain social circle, a special class of newspapers, from which the dear woman is a thousand leagues away. But the courts, a law-suit, means the parading of our misfortune from one end of France to the other, the _Messager_ articles printed by every newspaper, even those in the retired little place where my mother lives. The slander itself, my defence, both her children covered with shame at one blow, the family name--the old peasant woman's only pride--tarnished forever. That would be too much for her. And really it seems to me that one is enough. That is why I have had the courage to hold my peace, to tire out my enemies, if possible, by my silence. But I need some one to answer for me in the Chamber, I wish to deprive it of the right to eject me for reasons dishonoring to me, and as it selected you to report upon my election, I have come to tell everything to you, as to a confessor, a priest, begging you not to divulge a word of this conversation, even in the interest of my cause. I ask nothing but that, my dear colleague,--absolute reticence on this subject; for the rest I rely upon your justice and your loyalty."

He rose, prepared to go, and Le Merquier did not stir, still questioning the green hanging in front of him, as if seeking there an inspiration for his reply. At last,--

"It shall be as you wish, my dear colleague," he said. "This confidence shall remain between ourselves. You have told me nothing, I have heard nothing."

The Nabob, still all aflame with his eloquent outburst, which, as it seemed to him, called for a cordial response, a warm grasp of the hand, had a strangely uneasy feeling. That cold manner, that absent expression weighed so heavily upon him, that he was already walking to the door with the awkward salutation of unwelcome visitors. But the other detained him.

"Stay a moment, my dear colleague. How eager you are to leave me! A few moments more, I beg. I am too happy to converse with such a man as you. Especially as we have more than one common bond. Our friend Hemerlingue tells me that you, like myself, are much interested in pictures."

Jansoulet started. The two words "Hemerlingue" and "pictures," meeting so unexpectedly in the same sentence, brought back all his doubts, all his perplexity. He did not surrender even then, however, but left Le Merquier to put his words forward, one in front of another, feeling the ground for his stumbling advance. He had heard much of his honorable colleague's gallery. Would it be presumptuous for him to ask the favor of being admitted to--?

"Nonsense! why, I should be too highly honored," said the Nabob, tickled in the most sensitive--because it had been the most expensive--part of his vanity; and, glancing about at the walls of the study, he added in the tone of a connoisseur:

"You have some fine examples yourself."

"Oh!" said the other modestly, "a few poor canvases. Pictures are so dear in these days--it's a taste so hard to gratify, a genuinely luxurious passion. A Nabob's passion," he added with a smile and a stealthy glance over his spectacles.

They were two prudent gamblers face to face; Jansoulet, however, was somewhat at fault in that novel situation, in which he was obliged to walk warily, he who knew of no other mode of action than by bold, audacious strokes.

"When I think," murmured the advocate, "that I have spent ten years covering these walls, and that I still have this whole panel to fill!"

In truth, in the most conspicuous part of the high partition there was an empty space, a vacated space rather, for a great gilt-headed nail near the ceiling showed the visible, almost clumsy trace of the trap set for the poor innocent, who foolishly allowed himself to be taken in it.

"My dear Monsieur Le Merquier," he said, in an engaging, affable tone, "I have a _Virgin_ by Tintoret just the size of your panel."

It was impossible to read anything in the advocate's eyes, which had now taken refuge behind their gleaming shelter.

"Permit me to hang it there, opposite your desk. It will give you an excuse for thinking of me sometimes--"

"And for mitigating the strictures of my report, eh, Monsieur?" cried Le Merquier, springing to his feet, a threatening figure, with his hand on the bell. "I have seen many shameless performances in my life, but never anything equal to this. Such offers to me, in my own house!"

"But, my dear colleague, I swear--"

"Show him out," said the advocate to the surly servant who entered the room at that moment; and from the centre of his office, the door remaining open, before the whole parlor, where the prayers had ceased, he pursued Jansoulet,--who turned his back and hastened, mumbling incoherently, toward the outer door--with these crushing words:

"You have insulted the honor of the whole Chamber in my person, Monsieur. Our colleagues shall be informed of it this very day; and, this additional offence being added to the others, you will learn to your sorrow that Paris is not the Orient, and the human conscience is not shamefully traded in and bartered here as it is there."

Thereupon, having driven the money-changer from the temple, the just man closed his door, and approaching the green curtain, said in a tone which sounded sweet as honey after his pretended anger:

"Was that about right, Baronne Marie?"

XXI.

THE SITTING.

That morning there was not, as usual, a grand breakfast-party at number 32 Place Vendome. So that about one o'clock you might have seen M. Barreau's majestic paunch arrayed in white linen displaying itself at the entrance to the porch, surrounded by four or five scullions in their paper caps and as many grooms in Scotch caps,--an imposing group, which gave the sumptuous mansion the appearance of a hostelry, where the whole staff was taking a breath of fresh air between two arrivals. The resemblance was made complete by the cab stopping in front of the door and the driver lifting down an old-fashioned leather trunk, while a tall old woman in a yellow cap, an erect figure with a little green shawl over her shoulders, leaped lightly to the sidewalk, a basket on her arm, and looked carefully at the number, then approached the group of servants and asked if that was where M. Bernard Jansoulet lived.

"This is the place," was the reply. "But he isn't in."

"That's no matter," said the old woman, very naturally.

She returned to the driver, bade him put her trunk under the porch, and paid him, at once replacing her purse in her pocket with a gesture that said much for provincial distrust.

Since Jansoulet had been Deputy for Corsica, his servants had seen so many strange, foreign-looking creatures alight at his door that they were not greatly surprised at sight of that sun-burned woman, with eyes like glowing coals, bearing much resemblance in her simple head-dress to a genuine Corsican, some old psalm-singer straight from the underbrush, but distinguished from newly-arrived islanders by the ease and tranquillity of her manners.

"What do you say, the master isn't in?" she said with an intonation which is much more frequently heard by the hands on a farm, on a _mas_ in her province, than by the impertinent lackeys of a great Parisian household.

"No, the master isn't in."

"And the children?"

"They're taking their lesson. You can't see them."

"And Madame?"

"She's asleep. No one enters her room before three o'clock."

That seemed to surprise the good woman a little, that any one could stay in bed so late; but the sure instinct which, in default of education, acts as a guide to intelligent natures, prevented her from saying so to the servants, and she at once asked to speak to Paul de Gery.

"He is travelling."

"Bompain Jean-Baptiste then?"

"He's at the Chamber with Monsieur."

Her great gray eyebrows contracted.

"No matter; take my trunk upstairs all the same."

And, with a malicious little twitching of the eye, a touch of pride, of vengeance for the insolent glances turned upon her, she added:

"I am his mother."

Scullions and grooms stood aside respectfully. M. Barreau raised his cap:

"I was saying to myself that I had seen Madame somewhere."

"That's just what I was saying to myself too, my boy," said Mere Jansoulet, shuddering at the memory of the ill-fated festivities in honor of the bey.

"My boy!"--to M. Barreau, to a man of his importance! That instantly placed her very high in the esteem of that little circle.

Ah! grandeurs and splendors did not dazzle her, the brave-hearted old woman. She was no opera-comique Mere Boby going into ecstasies over the gildings and fine trinkets; the vases of flowers on every landing of the staircase she ascended behind her trunk, the hall-lamps supported by bronze statues, did not prevent her noticing that there was a finger's depth of dust on the stair-rail and that the carpet was torn. They escorted her to the apartments on the second floor, reserved for the Levantine and the children, and there, in a room used as a linen closet, which was evidently near the school-room, for she could hear a murmur of childish voices, she waited, all alone, her basket on her knees, for her Bernard to return, for her daughter-in-law to awake, or for the great joy of embracing her grandchildren. Nothing could be better adapted than what she saw around her to give her an idea of the confusion of a household given over to servants, where the oversight of the housewife and her far-seeing activity are lacking. In huge wardrobes, all wide open, linen was heaped up pell-mell in shapeless, bulging, tottering piles,--fine sheets, Saxony table linen crumbled and torn, and the locks prevented from working by some stray piece of embroidery which nobody took the trouble to remove. And yet many servants passed through that linen closet,--negresses in yellow madras, who hastily seized a napkin or a table-cloth, heedlessly trampled on those domestic treasures scattered all about, dragged to the end of the room on their great flat feet lace flounces cut from a long skirt which a maid had cast aside, thimble here, scissors there, as a piece of work to be taken up again.

The semi-rustic artisan, which Mere Jansoulet had not ceased to be, was sadly grieved at the sight, wounded in the respect, the affection, the inoffensive mania which is inspired in the provincial housewife by the wardrobe filled with linen, piece by piece, to the very top, full of relics of the poor past, its contents increasing gradually in quantity and in quality, the first visible symptom of comfortable circumstances, of wealth in a house. Again, that woman always had the distaff in her hand from morning till night, and if the house-keeper was indignant, the spinster could have wept as at a profanation. Finally, unable to endure it longer, she rose, abandoned her patient, watchful attitude, and stooping over, her little green shawl displaced by every movement, began actively to pick up, smooth and fold with care that beautiful linen, as she did on the lawns at Saint-Romans, when she indulged in the amusement of a grand washing, employing twenty women, the baskets overflowing with snow-white folds, the sheets flapping in the morning breeze on the long drying lines. She was deeply engrossed in that occupation, which made her forget her journey, Paris, even the place where she was, when a stout, thickset man, heavily bearded, in varnished boots, and a velvet jacket covering the chest and shoulders of a bull, entered the linen closet.

"Ah! Cabassu."

"You here, Madame Francoise! This is a surprise," said the _masseur_, opening wide his great Japanese idol's eyes.

"Why, yes, good Cabassu, it's me. I've just come. And I'm at work already, as you see. It made my heart bleed to see all this mess."

"So you've come for the sitting, have you?"

"What sitting?"

"Why, the great sitting of the Corps Legislatif. This is the day."

"Faith, no. What difference do you suppose that can make to me? I don't understand anything about such things. No, I came because I wanted to know my little Jansoulets, and then, I was beginning to be uneasy. I've written two or three times now without getting any answer. I was afraid there might be a child sick, or that Bernard's business was in a bad way--all sorts of uncomfortable ideas. I had an attack of great black anxiety, and I started. Everybody's well here, so they tell me?"

"Why, yes, Madame Francoise. Everybody 's exceedingly well, thank God!"

"And Bernard? His business? Is it going along to suit him?"

"Oh! you know a man always has his little crosses in this life; however, I don't think he has any reason to complain. But now I think of it, you must be hungry. I'll go and send you something to eat."

He was about to ring, much more self-assured and at home than the old mother. But she checked him.

"No, no, I don't need anything. I still have some of my luncheon left."

She placed two figs and a crust of bread, taken from her basket, on the table, and continued to talk as she ate:

"And what about your affairs, little one? It seems to me you've spruced up mightily since the last time you came to the Bourg. What linen, what clothes! What department are you in?"

"I am professor of massage," said Aristide gravely.

"You a professor!" she exclaimed, with respectful amazement; but she dared not ask him what he taught, and Cabassu, somewhat embarrassed by her questions, hastened to change the subject.

"Suppose I go and fetch the children? Hasn't any one told them their grandmother was here?"

"I didn't want to take them away from their work. But I believe the lesson is over now. Listen."

On the other side of the door they heard the impatient stamping of school children longing to be dismissed, eager for room and air; and the old woman listened with delight to the fascinating sounds that increased her maternal longing ten-fold, but prevented her from doing anything to satisfy it. At last the door opened. First the tutor appeared, an abbe with a pointed nose and prominent cheek-bones, whom we have seen at the state breakfasts of an earlier day. Having fallen out with his bishop, the ambitious ecclesiastic had left the diocese where he formerly exercised the priestly functions, and, in his precarious position as an irregular member of the clergy--for the clergy has its own Bohemia--was glad of the opportunity to teach the little Jansoulets, recently expelled from Bourdaloue. With the same solemn, arrogant mien, as of one overburdened with responsibility, which the great prelates intrusted with the education of the Dauphins of France might assume, he stalked in front of three little fellows, curled and gloved, with oblong hats and short jackets, leather bags slung over their shoulders, and long red stockings reaching to the middle of the leg, the costume of the complete velocipedist about to mount his machine.

"Children," said Cabassu, the intimate friend of the family, "this is Madame Jansoulet, your grandmother, who has come to Paris on purpose to see you."

They halted, very much astonished, arranged according to height, and examined that withered old face between the yellow barbs of the cap, that strange costume, unfamiliar in its simplicity; and their grandmother's astonishment answered theirs, increased by heart-rending disappointment and by the embarrassment she felt in presence of those little gentlemen, who were as stiff and disdainful as the marquises, the counts and the prefects on circuit whom her son used to bring to her at Saint-Romans. In obedience to their tutor's injunction, "to salute their venerable grandmother," they came up one by one and gave her one of the same little handshakes with arms close to their sides of which they had distributed so many among the garrets; indeed, that good woman with the earth-colored face, and neat but very simple clothes, reminded them of their charitable visits from College Bourdaloue. They felt between herself and them the same strangeness, the same distance, which no memory, no word from their parents had ever lessened. The abbe realized her embarrassment, and, to banish it, launched forth upon a speech delivered with the throaty voice, the violent gestures common to those men who always think that they have below them the ten steps leading to a pulpit:

"Lo, the day has come, Madame, the great day when Monsieur Jansoulet is to confound his enemies. _Confundantur hostes mei, quia injuste iniquitatem fecerunt in me_,--because they have persecuted me unjustly."

The old woman bowed devoutly to the Church Latin; but her face assumed a vague expression of uneasiness at the idea of enemies and persecutions.

"Those enemies are numerous and powerful, noble lady, but let us not be alarmed beyond measure. Let us have confidence in the decrees of heaven and the justice of our cause. God is in the midst of it and it shall not be shaken. _In medio ejus non commovebitur._"

A gigantic negro, resplendent in new gold lace, interrupted them to announce that the velocipedes were ready for the daily lesson on the terrace of the Tuileries. Before leaving the room, the children solemnly shook once more the wrinkled, calloused hand of their grandmother, who was watching them walk away, utterly bewildered and with a sore heart, when, yielding to an adorable, spontaneous impulse, the youngest of the three, having reached the door, suddenly turned, pushed the great negro aside, and plunged head foremost, like a little buffalo, into Mere Jansoulet's skirts, throwing his arms around her and holding up to her his smooth brow splashed with brown curls, with the sweet grace of the child who offers his caress like a flower. Perhaps the little fellow, being nearer the nest and its warmth, the nurse's cradling lap and _patois_ ballads, had felt the waves of maternal love of which the Levantine deprived him flowing toward his little heart. The old "Grandma" shuddered from head to foot in her surprise at that instinctive embrace.

"Oh my darling--my darling!" seizing the curly, silky little head which reminded her of another, and kissing it frantically. Then the child released himself and ran away without a word, his hair wet with hot tears.

Left alone with Cabassu, the mother, whom that kiss had consoled, asked for an explanation of the priest's words.--Had her son many enemies, pray?

"Oh!" said Cabassu, "it is not at all surprising in his position."

"But what's all this about this being a great day, and this 'sitting' you all talk about?"

"Why, yes! This is the day when we're to know whether Bernard is to be a deputy or not."

"What? Isn't he one yet? Why, I have told it everywhere in the neighborhood, and I illuminated Saint-Romans a month ago. So I was made to tell a lie!"

The _masseur_ had much difficulty in explaining to her the parliamentary formality of testing the validity of elections. She listened with only one ear, feverishly pulling over the linen.

"And that's where my Bernard is at this moment?"

"Yes, Madame."

"Are women allowed to go into this Chamber?--Then why isn't his wife there? For I can understand that it's a great affair for him. On such a day as to-day he will need to feel that all those he loves are beside him. Look you, my boy, you must take me to this sitting. Is it very far?"

"No, very near. Only it must have begun before this. And then," added the Giaour, a little embarrassed, "this is the hour when Madame needs me."

"Ah! Do you teach her this thing that you're professor of? What do you call it?"

"Massage. It comes down to us from the ancients. There, she's ringing her bell now. Some one will come to call me. Do you want me to tell her that you are here?"

"No, no, I prefer to go to the Chamber at once."

"But you have no card of admission, have you?"

"Bah! I'll say that I am Jansoulet's mother and that I have come to hear my son tried."

Poor mother! she did not know how truly she described his position.

"Wait a moment, Madame Francoise. Let me, at least, send some one to show you the way."

"Oh! do you know, I've never been able to get used to these servant people. I've a tongue in my head. There are people in the streets; I shall find my way well enough."

He made one last attempt, without disclosing the whole of his thought:

"Be careful. His enemies will speak against him in the Chamber. You will hear things that will hurt you."

Oh! the lovely smile of maternal faith and pride with which she answered:

"Don't I know better than all those people what my son is worth? Is there anything that could make me unjust to him? If so, I must be a mighty ungrateful woman. Nonsense!"

And, with a threatening shake of her cap, she departed.

Straight as a statue, with head erect, the old woman strode along under the arches she had been told to follow, somewhat disturbed by the incessant rumbling of carriages and by her slow progress, unaccompanied by the movement of her faithful distaff, which had not quitted her for fifty years. All these suggestions of enmity, of persecution, the priest's mysterious words, Cabassu's dark hints, excited and terrified her. She found therein an explanation of the presentiments which had taken possession of her so firmly as to tear her away from her habits and her duties, the superintendence of the Chateau and the care of her invalid. Strangely enough, by the way, since fortune had cast upon her son and her that cloak of gold with its heavy folds, Mere Jansoulet had never become accustomed to it, and was always expecting the sudden disappearance of their splendor. Who could say that the final crash was not really beginning now? And suddenly, amid these gloomy thoughts, the remembrance of the childish scene of a moment before, of the little one rubbing against her drugget skirt, caused her wrinkled lips to swell in a loving smile, and, in her joy, she murmured in her _patois_:

"Oh! that little fellow!"

A vast, magnificent, dazzling square, two sheaves of water flying upward in silver dust, then a great stone bridge, and at the further end a square building with statues in front of it, and an iron gateway where carriages were standing, people passing through and a knot of police officers. That was the place. She made her way bravely through the crowd as far as a high glass door.

"Your card, my good woman?"

The good woman had no card, but she said simply to one of the ushers with red lapels who were acting as doorkeepers:

"I am Bernard Jansoulet's mother; I have come to attend my boy's sitting."

It was in very truth her boy's sitting; for in that crowd besieging the doors, in the crowd that filled the corridors, the hall, the galleries, the whole palace, the same name was whispered everywhere, accompanied by smiles and muttered comments. A great scandal was expected, shocking revelations by the spokesman of the committee which would doubtless lead to some violent outburst on the part of the savage thus brought to bay; and people crowded thither as to a first performance or the argument of a famous cause. The old mother certainly could not have made herself heard in the midst of that throng, if the train of gold left by the Nabob wherever he passed, and marking his royal progress, had not made everything smooth for her. She followed an usher through that labyrinth of corridors, folding doors, empty, echoing rooms, filled with a buzzing noise which circulated through the air in the building and passed out through its walls, as if the very stones were impregnated with that verbosity and added the echoes of bygone days to those of all the voices of to-day. Passing through a corridor, she spied a little dark man shouting and gesticulating to the attendants:

"Tell Moussiou Jansoulet zat I am ze deputy-mayor of Sarlazaccio, zat I have been sentenced to five month in prison for him. Zat deserves a card for ze sitting, _Corps de Dieu_!"

Five months in prison on her son's account. How could that be? Anxious beyond words, she arrived at last, with a ringing in her ears, at a landing where there were divers little doors like those of furnished lodgings or theatre boxes, surmounted by different inscriptions: "Senators' Gallery," "Gallery of the Diplomatic Corps," "Members' Gallery." She entered, seeing nothing at first but four or five rows of benches crowded with people; then, on the opposite side of the hall, far away, other galleries equally crowded, separated from her by a vast open space; she leaned, still standing, against the wall, amazed to be there, bewildered, confused. A puff of hot air striking her in the face, the hum of voices ascending from below drew her down the sloping floor of the gallery, toward the edge of a yawning pit, so to speak, in the centre of the great vessel, where her son must be. Oh, how she would have liked to see him! Thereupon, making herself as small as possible, playing about her with her elbows, sharp and hard as her distaff, she glided, wormed herself along between the wall and the benches, heedless of the outbursts of wrath she aroused, of the contemptuous glances of the women in gorgeous array, whose laces and spring dresses she crushed. For it was a distinctly fashionable society gathering.

Indeed, Mere Jansoulet recognized by his inflexible shirtfront and aristocratic nose the dandified marquis who had visited at Saint-Romans, and who bore so felicitously the name of a gorgeous bird; but he did not look at her. Having thus advanced a few rows, she was checked by the back of a man sitting, an enormous back which completely blocked her path, prevented her from going farther. Luckily, however, by leaning forward a little, she could see almost the whole hall; and those semi-circular rows of desks where the deputies stood in groups, the green hangings on the walls, that pulpit at the rear occupied by a man with a bald head and stern features, all in the quiet gray light falling from above, made her think of a recitation about to commence, preceded by the moving about and chattering of restless pupils.

One thing attracted her attention, the persistence with which all eyes seemed to be turned in the same direction, to be fixed upon the same point of attraction; and as she followed that current of curiosity which magnetized the whole assemblage, the floor as well as the galleries, she saw what everybody was staring at so earnestly; it was her son.

In the Jansoulets' province there still exists in some old churches, at the back of the choir, half-way up from the crypt, a little stone box, to which lepers were admitted to listen to the services, exhibiting to the curious and fearful throng their pitiable brute-like figures cowering against the holes cut in the wall. Francoise well remembered having seen, in the village in which she was brought up, the leper, the terror of her childhood, listening to the mass in his stone cage, lost in the shadow and in reprobation. When she saw her son sitting alone, far back, with his face in his hands, that picture came to her mind. "One would say he was a leper," muttered the peasant woman. And in very truth the poor Nabob was a moral leper, upon whom his millions brought from the Orient were at that moment imposing the torments of a terrible and mysterious exotic disease. As it happened, the bench upon which he had chosen his seat showed several gaps due to leaves of absence or recent deaths; and while the other deputies talked and laughed together, making signs to one another, he sat silent, apart, the object of the earnest scrutiny of the whole Chamber,--a scrutiny which Mere Jansoulet felt to be ironical, ill-disposed, and which burned her as it passed. How could she let him know that she was there, close at hand, that one faithful heart was beating not far from his? for he avoided turning toward that gallery. One would have said that he felt that it was hostile, that he was afraid of seeing discouraging things there. Suddenly, at the ringing of a bell on the president's desk, a thrill ran through the assemblage, every head was bent forward in the attentive attitude that immobilizes the features, and a thin man with spectacles, suddenly rising to his feet amid that multitude of seated men--a position which gave him at once the authority of attitude--said, as he opened the pile of papers which he held in his hand:

"Messieurs, I rise in the name of your third committee, to recommend to you that the election in the second district of the department of Corsica be declared void."

In the profound silence following that sentence, which Mere Jansoulet did not understand, the stout creature sitting in front of her began to wheeze violently, and suddenly a lovely woman's face, in the front row of the gallery, turned to make him a rapid sign of intelligence and satisfaction. Her pale brow, thin lips and eyebrows that seemed too black in the white frame of the hat, produced in the good old woman's eyes, although she could not tell why, the painful impression of the first lightning flash when the storm is beginning and the apprehension of the thunderbolt follows the rapid meeting of the fluids.

Le Merquier read his report. The slow, lifeless, monotonous voice, the Lyonnais accent, soft and drawling, with which the advocate kept time by a movement of the head and shoulders almost like an animal, presented a striking contrast to the savage conciseness of the conclusions. First, a rapid sketch of the electoral irregularities. Never had universal suffrage been treated with such primitive, uncivilized disrespect. At Sarlazaccio, where Jansoulet's opponent seemed likely to carry the day, the ballot-box was destroyed during the night preceding the counting. The same thing, or almost the same, happened at Levie, at Saint-Andre, at Avabessa. And these offences were committed by the mayors themselves, who carried the boxes to their houses, broke the seals and tore up the ballots, under cover of their municipal authority. On all sides fraud, intrigue, even violence. At Calcatoggio an armed man, blunderbuss in hand, stood at the window of an inn just opposite the mayor's office throughout the election; and whenever a supporter of Sebastiani, Jansoulet's opponent, appeared on the square, the man pointed his weapon at him: "If you go in, I'll blow out your brains!" Moreover, when we see police commissioners, justices of the peace, sealers of weights and measures daring to transform themselves into electoral agents, intimidating and seducing a people notorious for their subjection to all these tyrannical little local influences, have we not proof positive of unbridled license? Why, even the priests, consecrated pastors, led astray by their zealous interest in the poor-box and the maintenance of their impoverished churches, preached a veritable crusade in favor of Jansoulet's election. But an even more powerful, although less respectable, influence was set at work for the good cause,--the influence of bandits. "Yes, bandits, Messieurs, I am not jesting."--And thereupon followed a sketch in bold colors of Corsican banditti in general and the Piedigriggio family in particular.

The Chamber listened with close attention and with considerable uneasiness. The fact was that it was an official candidate whose actions were being thus described, and those strange electoral morals were indigenous in that privileged island, the cradle of the imperial family, and so intimately connected with the destiny of the dynasty that an attack on Corsica seemed to react upon the sovereign. But when it was observed that the new minister of State, Mora's successor and bitter enemy, sitting on the government benches, seemed overjoyed at the rebuke administered to a creature of the defunct statesman, and smiled complacently at Le Merquier's stinging persiflage, all embarrassment instantly disappeared and the ministerial smile, repeated on three hundred mouths, soon increased to scarce-restrained laughter, the laughter of crowds dominated by any rod, by whomsoever held, which the slightest sign of approbation from the master causes to burst forth. In the galleries, which were as a general rule but little indulged with picturesque incidents, and were entertained by these stories of bandits as by a genuine novel, there was general gayety, a radiant animation enlivened the faces of all the women, overjoyed to be able to appear pretty without jarring upon the solemnity of the place. Little light hats quivered in all their bright-hued plumes, round arms encircled with gold leaned on the rail in order to listen more at their ease. The solemn Le Merquier had imparted to the sitting the entertainment of a play, had introduced the little comical note permitted at charitable concerts as a lure to the profane.

Impassive and cold as ice, despite his triumph, he continued to read in a voice as dismal and penetrating as a Lyonnais shower.

"Now, Messieurs, we ask ourselves how it was that a stranger, a Provencal recently returned from the Orient, entirely ignorant of the interests and needs of that island where he had never been seen before the elections, the true type of what the Corsicans contemptuously call 'a continental'--how did this man succeed in arousing such enthusiasm, devotion so great as to lead to crime, to profanation? His wealth will answer the question, his vile gold thrown into the faces of the electors, stuffed by force into their pockets with a shameless cynicism of which we have innumerable proofs."--Then came the endless series of affidavits: "I, the undersigned, Croce (Antoine), do testify, in the interest of truth, that Nardi, commissioner of police, came to our house one evening and said to me, 'Hark ye, Croce (Antoine), I swear to you by the flame of yonder lamp that, if you vote for Jansoulet, you shall have fifty francs to-morrow morning,'"--And this: "I, the undersigned, Lavezzi (Jacques-Alphonse), declare that I refused with scorn seventeen francs offered me by the mayor of Pozzo-Negro to vote against my cousin Sebastiani."--It is probable that for three francs more Lavezzi (Jacques-Alphonse) would have devoured his scorn in silence. But the Chamber did not go so deep as that.

It was moved to indignation, was that incorruptible Chamber. It muttered, it moved about restlessly on its soft benches of red velvet, it uttered noisy exclamations. There were "Ohs!" of stupefaction, eyes like circumflex accents, sudden backward movements, or appalled, discouraged gestures, such as the spectacle of human degradation sometimes calls forth. And observe that the majority of those deputies had used the identical electoral methods, that there were on those benches heroes of the famous "rastels," of those open-air banquets at which begarlanded and beribboned calves were borne aloft in triumph as at Gargantua's kermesses. They naturally cried out louder than the others, turned in righteous wrath toward the high, solitary bench where the poor leper sat motionless, listening, his head in his hands. But amid the general hue and cry, a single voice arose in his favor, a low, unpractised voice, rather a sympathetic buzzing than speech, in which could be vaguely distinguished the words: "Great services rendered to Corsica. Extensive enterprises. _Caisse Territoriale._"

The man who spoke thus falteringly was a little fellow in white gaiters, with an albino's face and scanty hair that stood erect in bunches. But that tactless friend's interruption simply furnished Le Merquier with a pretext for an immediate and natural transition. A hideous smile parted his flabby lips. "The honorable Monsieur Sarigue refers to the _Caisse Territoriale_; we proceed to answer him." The Paganetti den of thieves seemed to be, in truth, very familiar to him. In a few concise, keen words he threw light into the inmost depths of that dark lair, pointed out all the snares, all the pitfalls, the windings, the trap-doors, like a guide waving his torch above the underground dungeons of some hideous _in pace_. He spoke of the pretended quarries, the railroads on paper, the imaginary steamboats, vanished in their own smoke. The ghastly desert of Taverna was not forgotten, nor the old Genoese tower that served as an office for the Maritime Agency. But the detail that rejoiced the heart of the Chamber above all else was the description of a burlesque ceremonial organized by the Governor for driving a tunnel through Monte-Rotondo,--a gigantic undertaking still in the air, postponed from year to year, requiring millions of money and thousands of arms, which had been inaugurated with great pomp a week before the election. The report described the affair comically, the blow of the pick delivered by the candidate on the flank of the great mountain covered with primeval forests, the prefect's speech, the blessing of the standards amid shouts of "Vive Bernard Jansoulet!" and two hundred workmen going to work at once, working day and night for a week, and then--as soon as the election was over--abandoning the piles of broken rock heaped around an absurd excavation, an additional place of refuge for the redoubtable prowlers in the thickets. The trick was played. After extorting money so long from the shareholders, the _Caisse Territoriale_ had been made to serve as a means of capturing the votes of the electors,--"And now, Messieurs, here is one last detail with which I might well have begun, in order to spare you the distressing story of this electoral burlesque. I learn that a judicial inquiry into the Corsican concern has been opened this very day, and that a searching expert examination of its books will very probably lead to one of those financial scandals, too frequent, alas! in our day, in which you will not, for the honor of this Chamber, permit one of your members to be involved."

Upon that unexpected disclosure the reporter paused a moment to draw breath, like an actor emphasizing the effect of his words; and in the dramatic silence which suddenly settled down upon the whole assemblage, the sound of a closing door was heard. It was Paganetti, the governor, who had hastily left his seat in one of the galleries, with pale face, round eyes, and mouth puckered for a whistle, like Mr. Punch when he has detected in the air the near approach of a violent blow. Monpavon, unmoved, puffed out his breastplate. The stout man wheezed violently into the flowers on his wife's little white hat.

Mere Jansoulet gazed at her son.

"I spoke of the honor of the Chamber, Messieurs,--I have something more to say on that subject."