The luminous warmth of a bright May afternoon made the lofty windows of the hÔtel de Mora as hot as the glass roof of a greenhouse; its transparent hangings of blue silk could be seen from without between the branches, and its broad terraces, where the exotic flowers, brought into the air for the first time, ran like a border all the length of the quay. The great rakes scraping among the shrubs in the garden left on the gravelled paths the light footprints of summer, while the soft pattering of the water from the sprinklers on the green lawn seemed like its revivifying song.

All the magnificence of the princely abode shone resplendent in the pleasant mildness of the temperature, borrowing a grandiose beauty from the silence, the repose of that noonday hour, the only hour in the day when one did not hear carriages rumbling under the arches, the great doors of the reception-room opening and closing, and the constant vibration in the ivy on the walls caused by the pulling of bells to announce somebody's coming in or going out, like the feverish throbbing of life in the house of a leader of society. It was well known that until three o'clock the duke received at the department; that the duchess, a Swede still benumbed by the snow of Stockholm, had hardly emerged from behind her somnolent bed-curtains; so that no one came, neither callers nor petitioners, and the footmen, perched like flamingoes on the steps of the deserted stoop, alone enlivened the scene with the slim shadows of their long legs and the yawning ennui of their idleness.

It happened however, on that day, that Jenkins' maroon-lined coupÉ was waiting in a corner of the courtyard. The duke, who had been feeling badly the day before, felt still worse when he left the breakfast table, and lost no time in sending for the man of the pearls in order to question him concerning his singular condition. He had no pain anywhere, slept well and had his usual appetite; but there was a most extraordinary sensation of weariness and of terrible cold, which nothing could overcome. So it was that, at that moment, notwithstanding the lovely spring sunshine which flooded his room and put to shame the flame blazing on his hearth as in the depth of winter, the duke was shivering in his blue firs, between his little screens, and as he wrote his name on divers documents for a clerk from his office, on a low lacquered table that stood so near the fire that the lacquer came off in scales, he kept holding his benumbed fingers to the blaze, which might have scorched them on the surface without restoring circulation and life to their bloodless rigidity.

Was it anxiety caused by the indisposition of his illustrious patient? At all events Jenkins seemed nervous, excited, strode up and down the room, prying and sniffing to right and left, trying to find in the air something that he believed to be there, something subtle and intangible, like the faint trace of a perfume or the invisible mark left by a passing bird. He could hear the wood snapping on the hearth, the sound of papers hastily turned, the duke's indolent voice, indicating in a word or two, always concise and clear, the answer to a letter of four pages, and the clerk's respectful monosyllables: "Yes, Monsieur le Ministre." "No, Monsieur le Ministre." Outside, the swallows whistled merrily over the water, and some one was playing a clarinet in the direction of the bridges.

"It is impossible," said the minister abruptly, rising from his chair. "Take them away, Lartigues. You can come again, to-morrow. I can't write, I am too cold. Just feel my hands, doctor, and tell me if you would not say they were just out of a pail of iced water. My whole body has been like that for two days. It's absurd enough in such weather!"

"It doesn't surprise me," growled the Irishman in a surly, short tone, very unusual in that mellifluous voice.

The door had closed behind the young clerk, who carried away his documents with a majestic stiffness of bearing, but was very happy, I fancy, to feel that he was at liberty, and to have the opportunity, before returning to the department, to saunter for an hour or two in the Tuileries, overflowing at that hour with spring dresses and pretty girls seated around the still unoccupied chairs of the musicians under the flowering chestnut trees, which quivered from top to bottom with the glad thrill of the month of nests. He was not frozen, not he.

Jenkins examined his patient without speaking, ausculted him, percussed him, then, in the same rough tone, which might possibly be ascribed to anxious affection, to the irritation of the physician who finds that his instructions have been disregarded, he said:

"In God's name, my dear Duke, what sort of a life have you been leading lately?"

He knew from ante-room gossips—the doctor did not despise them in the households of those of his patients with whom he was on intimate terms—he knew that the duke had a new one, that this caprice of recent date had taken possession of him, excited him to an unusual degree, and that information, added to other observations made in other directions, had sown in Jenkins' mind a suspicion, a mad desire to know the name of this new one. That is what he was trying to read on his patient's pale brow, seeking the subject of his thoughts rather than the cause of his illness. But he had to do with one of those faces peculiar to men who are successful with women, faces as hermetically sealed as the caskets with secret compartments which contain women's jewels and letters,—one of those reticent natures locked with a cold, limpid glance, a glance of steel against which the most perspicacious cunning is powerless.

"You are mistaken, Doctor," replied His Excellency calmly, "I have not changed my habits in any respect."

"Very good! you have done wrong, Monsieur le Duc," said the Irishman bluntly, furious at his inability to discover anything.

But the next moment, realizing that he had gone too far, he tempered his ill-humor and the brutality of his diagnosis with a bolus of trite, axiomatic observations.—He must be careful. Medicine was not magic. The power of the Jenkins Pearls was limited by human strength, the necessities of advancing age, the resources of nature, which, unhappily, are not inexhaustible. The duke interrupted him nervously:

"Come, come, Jenkins, you know that I don't like fine phrases. They don't go with me. What is the matter with me? What is the cause of this coldness?"

"It's anÆmia, exhaustion—a lowering of the oil in the lamp."

"What must I do?"

"Nothing. Absolute rest. Eat and sleep, nothing more. If you could go and pass a few weeks at Grandbois—"

Mora shrugged his shoulders.

"What about the Chamber, and the Council, and—Nonsense! as if it were possible!"

"At all events, Monsieur le Duc, you must put on the drag, as someone said, you must absolutely give up—"

Jenkins was interrupted by the entrance of the usher, who glided softly into the room on tiptoe, like a dancing-master, and handed a letter and a card to the minister who was still shivering in front of the fire. When he saw that envelope, of a satiny shade of gray, and of peculiar shape, the Irishman involuntarily started, while the duke, having opened his letter and glanced over it, rose to his feet full of animation, on his cheeks the faint flush of factitious health which all the heat from the fire had failed to bring to them.

"My dear Doctor, you must at any cost—"

The usher was standing near, waiting.

"What is it?—Oh! yes, this card. Show him into the gallery, I will be there in a moment."

The Duc de Mora's gallery, which was open to visitors twice a week, was to him a sort of neutral territory, a public place where he could see anybody on earth without binding himself to anything or compromising himself. Then, when the usher had left the room:

"Jenkins, my good friend, you have already performed miracles for me. I ask you to perform another. Double my dose of the pearls, think up something, whatever you choose. But I must be in condition Sunday. You understand, in perfect condition."

And his hot, feverish fingers closed upon the little note he held with a shudder of longing.

"Beware, Monsieur le Duc," said Jenkins, very pale, his lips pressed tightly together, "I have no desire to alarm you beyond measure concerning your weak state, but it is my duty—"

Mora smiled, a charming, mischievous smile.

"Your duty and my pleasure are two, my good fellow. Let me burn my life at both ends if it amuses me. I have never had such a fine opportunity as I have now."

He started.

"The duchess!"

A door under the hangings had opened, giving passage to a dishevelled little head of fair hair, like a mass of vapor amid the laces and furbelows of a royal dÉshabillÉ.

"What is this I hear? You haven't gone out? Pray scold him, Doctor. Isn't he foolish to listen to his own fears so much? Just look at him. He looks in superb health."

"There! You see," said the duke, with a laugh, to the Irishman. "Aren't you coming in, Duchess?"

"No, I am going to take you away, on the contrary. My uncle d'Estaing has sent me a cage filled with birds from the Indies. I want to show them to you. Marvels of all colors, with little eyes like black pearls. And so cold, so cold, almost as sensitive to cold as you are."

"Let us go and see them," said the minister. "Wait for me, Jenkins; I will come back."

Then, realizing that he still had his letter in his hand, he tossed it carelessly into the drawer of the little table on which he had been signing documents, and went out behind the duchess, with the perfect sang-froid of a husband accustomed to such manoeuvres. What marvellously skilful workman, what incomparable maker of toys was able to endow the human countenance with its flexibility, its wonderful elasticity? Nothing could be prettier than that great nobleman's face, surprised with his adultery on his lips, the cheeks inflamed by the vision of promised delights, and suddenly assuming a serene expression of conjugal affection; nothing could be finer than the hypocritical humility of Jenkins, his paternal smile in the duchess's presence, giving place instantly when he was left alone, to a savage expression of wrath and hatred, a criminal pallor, the pallor of a Castaing or a Lapommerais devising his sinister schemes.

A swift glance at each of the doors, and in a twinkling he stood before the drawer filled with valuable papers, in which the little gold key was allowed to remain with an insolent negligence that seemed to say:

"No one will dare."

But Jenkins dared.

The letter was there, on top of a pile of others. The texture of the paper, the three words of the address dashed off in a plain, bold hand, and the perfume, that intoxicating, conjuring perfume, the very breath from her divine mouth. So it was true, his jealous love had not led him astray, nor her evident embarrassment in his presence for some time past, nor Constance's mysterious, youthful airs, nor the superb bouquets strewn about the studio, as in the mysterious shadow of a sin. So that indomitable pride had surrendered at last! But in that case why not to him, Jenkins? He who had loved her so long, always in fact, who was ten years younger than the other, and who certainly was no shiverer? All those thoughts rushed through his brain like arrows shot from a tireless bow. And he stood there, riddled with wounds, torn with emotion, his eyes blinded with blood, staring at the little cold, soft envelope which he dared not open for fear of removing one last doubt, when a rustling of the hangings, which made him hastily toss the letter back and close the smoothly-running drawer of the lacquer table, warned him that somebody had entered the room.

"Hallo! is it you, Jansoulet? How came you here?"

"His Excellency told me to come and wait for him in his bedroom," replied the Nabob, very proud to be thus admitted to the sanctuary of the private apartments, especially at an hour when the minister did not receive. The fact was that the duke was beginning to show a genuine, sympathetic feeling for that savage. For several reasons: in the first place he liked audacious, pushing fellows, lucky adventurers. Was he not one himself? And then the Nabob amused him; his accent, his unvarnished manners, his flattery, a trifle unblushing and impudent, gave him a respite from the everlasting conventionality of his surroundings, from that scourge of administrative and court ceremonial which he held in horror,—the conventional phrase,—in so great horror that he never finished the period he had begun. The Nabob, for his part, finished his in unforeseen ways that were sometimes full of surprises; he was a first-rate gambler too, losing games of ÉcartÉ at five thousand francs the turn, at the club on Rue Royale, without winking. And then he was so convenient when one wanted to get rid of a picture, always ready to buy, no matter at what price. These motives of condescending amiability had been reinforced latterly by a feeling of pity and indignation because of the persistent ferocity with which the poor fellow was being persecuted, because of the cowardly, merciless war upon him, which was carried on so skilfully that public opinion, always credulous, always putting out its neck to see how the wind is blowing, was beginning to be seriously influenced. We must do Mora the justice to say that he was no follower of the crowd. When he saw the Nabob's face, always good-humored, but wearing a piteous, discomfited look, in a corner of the gallery, it had occurred to him that it was cowardly to receive him there, and he had told him to go up to his room.

Jenkins and Jansoulet, being decidedly embarrassed in each other's presence, exchanged a few commonplace words. Their warm friendship had grown sensibly cooler of late, Jansoulet having flatly refused any further subsidy to the Work of Bethlehem, thereby leaving the enterprise on the Irishman's hands; he was furious at that defection, much more furious just then because he had been unable to open Felicia's letter before the intruder's arrival. The Nabob, for his part, was wondering whether the doctor was to be present at the conversation he wished to have with the duke on the subject of the infamous allusions with which the Messager was hounding him; he was anxious also to know whether those calumnies had cooled the all-powerful goodwill, which would be so necessary to him in the confirmation of his election. The welcome he had received in the gallery had partly quieted his fears; they vanished altogether when the duke returned and came toward him with outstretched hand.

"Well, well! my poor Jansoulet, I should say that Paris is making you pay dear for her welcome. What a tempest of scolding and hatred and bad temper!"

"Ah! Monsieur le Duc, if you knew—"

"I do know—I have read it all," said the minister, drawing near the fire.

"I trust that your Excellency doesn't believe those infamous stories. At all events I have here—I have brought proofs."

With his strong hairy hands trembling with emotion, he fumbled among the papers in an enormous portfolio that he had under his arm.

"Never mind—never mind. I know all about it. I know that, purposely or not, they have confused you with another person whom family reasons—"

The duke could not restrain a smile in face of the utter bewilderment of the Nabob, who was astounded to find him so well informed.

"A minister of State should know everything. But never fear. Your election shall be confirmed, all the same. And when it is once confirmed—"

Jansoulet drew a long breath of relief.

"Ah! Monsieur le Duc, how much good you do me by talking to me thus. I was beginning to lose all my confidence. My enemies are so powerful! And on top of all the rest there's another piece of ill-luck. Le Merquier, of all people, is assigned to make the report concerning my election."

"Le Merquier?—the devil!"

"Yes, Le Merquier, Hemerlingue's confidential man, the vile hypocrite who converted the baroness, doubtless because his religion forbids him to have a Mohammedan for his mistress."

"Fie, fie, Jansoulet!"

"What can you expect, Monsieur le Duc? You lose your temper sometimes, too. Just think of the position those villains are putting me in. A week ago my election should have been confirmed, and they have postponed the meeting of the committee purposely, because they know the terrible plight I am in, with all my fortune paralyzed, and the bey waiting for the decision of the Chamber to know whether he can strip me clean or not. I have eighty millions over there, Monsieur le Duc, and here I am beginning to be in need of money. If this lasts a little longer—"

He wiped away the great drops of perspiration that were rolling down his cheeks.

"Very well! I will make this matter of your confirmation my business," said the minister with much animation. "I will write to What's-his-name to hurry up his report; and even if I have to be carried to the Chamber—"

"Is your Excellency ill?" queried Jansoulet in a tone of deep interest, in which there was no lack of sincerity, I promise you.

"No—a little weakness. We are a little short of blood; but Jenkins is going to give us a new supply. Eh, Jenkins?"

The Irishman, who was not listening, made a vague gesture.

"Thunder! And to think that I have too much blood!" And the Nabob loosened his cravat around his swollen neck, on the verge of apoplexy with excitement and the heat of the room. "If I could only let you have a little, Monsieur le Duc!"

"It would be fortunate for both of us," rejoined the minister with a touch of irony. "For you especially; you are such a violent fellow and at this moment need to be so calm. Look out for that, Jansoulet. Be on your guard against the traps, the fits of passion they would like to drive you into. Say to yourself now that you are a public man, standing on an elevation, and that all your gestures can be seen from a distance. The newspapers insult you; don't read them if you cannot conceal the emotion they cause you. Don't do what I did with my blind man on Pont de la Concorde, that horrible clarinet player, who has made my life a burden for ten years, whistling at me every day: De tes fils, Norma. I tried everything to make him go away, money, threats. Nothing would induce him to go. The police? Oh! yes. With our modern ideas, to turn a poor blind man off his bridge would become a momentous affair. The opposition newspapers would speak of it, the Parisians would make a fable of it. The Cobbler and the Financier; The Duke and the Clarinet. I must resign myself to it. Indeed, it's my own fault. I should not have shown the fellow that he annoyed me. I am confident that my torture is half of his life now. Every morning he leaves his hovel with his dog, his folding-stool and his horrible instrument, and says to himself: 'Now I'll go and make life a burden to the Duc de Mora.' Not a day does he miss, the villain. Look you! if I should open the window a crack, you would hear that deluge of shrill little notes above the noise of the water and the carriages. Very well! this Messager man is your clarinet; if you let him see that his music wearies you, he will never stop. By the way, my dear deputy, let me remind you that you have a committee meeting at three o'clock, and I shall see you very soon in the Chamber."

Then, turning to Jenkins, he added: "You know what I asked you for, Doctor,—pearls for day after to-morrow. And well loaded!"

Jenkins started and shook himself, as if suddenly aroused from a dream.

"I understand, my dear Duke; I'll supply you with breath—oh! breath enough to win the Derby."

He bowed, and went away, laughing, a genuine wolf's laugh, showing his white, parted teeth. The Nabob also took his leave, his heart overflowing with gratitude, but not daring to allow that sceptic to see anything of it, for any sort of demonstration aroused his distrust. And the Minister of State, left alone, crouching in front of the crackling, blazing fire, sheltered by the velvety warmth of his luxurious garments, lined on that day by the feverish caress of a lovely May sun, began to shiver anew, to shiver so violently that Felicia's letter, which he held open in his blue fingers and read with amorous zest, trembled with a rustling noise as of silk.

A very peculiar situation is that of a deputy in the period which follows his election and precedes—as they say in Parliamentary parlance—the verification of his credentials. It bears some resemblance to the plight of a husband during the twenty-four hours between the marriage at the mayor's office and its consecration by the Church. Rights one cannot use, a semi-happiness, semi-privileges, the annoyance of having to hold oneself in check in one direction or another, the lack of a definite standing. You are married without being married, a deputy without being sure of it; but, in the case of the deputy, that uncertainty is prolonged for days and weeks, and the longer it lasts the more problematical the result becomes; and it is downright torture for the unfortunate representative on trial to be obliged to go to the Chamber, to occupy a seat which he may not keep, to listen to debates whose conclusion he is likely not to hear, to implant in his eyes and ears the delightful memory of parliamentary sessions, with their ocean of bald or apoplectic heads, the endless noise of crumpled paper, the shouts of the pages, the drumming of paper knives on the tables, and the hum of private conversations, above which the orator's voice soars in a timid or vociferous solo with a continuous accompaniment.

That situation, disheartening enough at best, was made worse for the Nabob by the calumnious stones, whispered at first, now printed and put in circulation by thousands of copies, which resulted in his being tacitly quarantined by his colleagues. At first he went about in the corridors, to the library, to the restaurant, to the Salle des ConfÉrences, like the others, overjoyed to leave his footprints in every corner of that majestic labyrinth; but, being a stranger to the majority, cut by some members of the club on Rue Royale, who avoided him, detested by the whole clerical coterie, of which Le Merquier was the leader, and by the financial clique, naturally hostile to that billionaire, with his power to cause a rise or fall in stocks, like the vessels of large tonnage which divert the channel in a harbor, his isolation was simply emphasized by change of locality, and the same hostility accompanied him everywhere.

His movements, his bearing were marked by a sort of constraint, of hesitating distrust. He felt that he was watched. If he entered the restaurant for a moment, that great light room looking on the gardens of the presidency, which he liked because there, at the broad white marble counter laden with food and drink, the deputies laid aside their imposing, high and mighty airs, the legislative haughtiness became more affable, recalled to naturalness by nature, he knew that a sneering, insulting item would appear in the Messager the next morning, holding him up to his constituents as "a wine-bibber emeritus."

They were another source of vexation to him,—those terrible constituents.

They came in flocks, invaded the Salle des Pas-Perdus, galloped about in all directions like excited little black kids, calling from one end to the other of the echoing hall: "O PÉ! O TchÉ!" inhaling with delight the odor of government, of administration that filled the air, making eyes at the ministers who passed, sniffing at their heels, as if some prebend were about to fall from their venerable pockets, from their swollen portfolios; but crowding around "Moussiou" Jansoulet especially, with so many urgent petitions, demands, demonstrations, that, in order to rid himself of that gesticulating mob at which everybody turned to look, and which made him seem like the delegate of a tribe of Touaregs in the midst of a civilized people, he was obliged to glance imploringly at some usher who was skilled in the art of rescue under such circumstances and would come to him in a great hurry and say, "that he was wanted immediately in the eighth committee." So that the poor Nabob, persecuted everywhere, driven from the corridors, the Pas-Perdus, the restaurant, had adopted the course of never leaving his bench, where he sat motionless and mute throughout the sitting.

He had, however, one friend in the Chamber,—a deputy newly elected for Deux-SÈvres, named M. Sarigue, a poor fellow not unlike the inoffensive, ignoble animal whose name he bore,[2] with his sparse, red hair, his frightened eyes, his hopping gait in his white gaiters. He was so shy that he could not say two words without stammering, almost tongue-tied, incessantly rolling balls of chewing-gum around in his mouth, which put the finishing touch to the viscosity of his speech; and every one wondered why such an impotent creature had cared to become a member of the Assembly, what delirious female ambition had spurred on to public office a man so unfitted for the least important private function.

By an amusing manifestation of the irony of fate, Jansoulet, who was intensely agitated by the uncertainty concerning his own confirmation, was chosen by the eighth committee to make the report on the Deux-SÈvres election, and M. Sarigue, realizing his incapacity, full of a ghastly dread of being sent back in disgrace to his own fireside, prowled humbly and beseechingly around that tall, curly-haired worthy, whose broad shoulder-blades moved back and forth like the bellows of a forge under his fine tightly fitting frock-coat, little suspecting that a poor, worried creature like himself was hidden beneath that solid envelope.

As he worked at the report of the election at Deux-SÈvres, going over the numerous protests, the charges of electoral trickery, banquets given, money squandered, casks of wine broached in front of the mayor's office, the usual manoeuvres of an election in those days, Jansoulet shuddered on his own account. "Why, I did all that!" he said to himself in dismay. Ah! M. Sarigue need have no fear, he could never have put his hand upon a more kindly-disposed judge or a more indulgent one, for the Nabob, moved to pity for his patient, knowing by experience how painful the agony of suspense is, did his work with all possible haste, and the huge portfolio that he had under his arm when he left the hÔtel de Mora, contained his report, all ready to be read to the Committee.

Whether it was the thought of that first essay as a public officer, or the duke's kind words, or the magnificent weather, which was keenly enjoyed by that Southerner whose impressions were wholly physical, and who was accustomed to transact business in the warm sunlight and beneath the blue sky,—certain it is that the ushers of the Corps LÉgislatif beheld that day a superb and haughty Jansoulet whom they had not known before. Old Hemerlingue's carriage, recognizable by the unusual width of its doors, of which he caught a glimpse through the iron railing, was all that was needed to put him in full possession of his natural assurance and audacity.

"The enemy is at hand. Attention!" As he walked through the Salle des Pas-Perdus, he saw the financier talking in a corner with Le Merquier, the judge of his election, passed close by them and stared at them with a triumphant air which made them wonder: "What in God's name has happened to him?"

Then, enchanted by his own sang-froid, he walked toward the committee-rooms, vast, high apartments, opening from both sides of a long corridor, furnished with huge tables covered with green cloths and heavy chairs of uniform pattern which bore the stamp of wearisome solemnity. He reached his destination. Men were standing about in groups, discussing, gesticulating, exchanging salutations and grasps of the hand, throwing back their heads, like Chinese shadows, against the bright background of the windows. There were some who walked alone, with backs bent, as if crushed by the weight of thoughts that furrowed their brows. Others whispered in one another's ears, imparting excessively mysterious information of the utmost importance, putting a finger to their lips, screwing up their eyes to enjoin secrecy. A provincial flavor distinguished them all, with differences of inflection, Southern excitability, the drawling accent of the Centre, Breton sing-song, all blended in the same idiotic, strutting self-sufficiency; frock-coats after the style of Landerneau, mountain shoes, and home-spun linen; the monumental assurance of village clubs, local expressions, provincialisms abruptly imported into political and administrative language, the limp, colorless phraseology which invented "the burning questions returning to the surface," and "individualities without a commission."

To see those worthies, excited or pensive as the case might be, you would have said that they were the greatest breeders of ideas on earth; unluckily, on the days when the Chamber was in session they were transformed, they clung coyly to their benches, as frightened as school-boys under the master's ferule, laughing obsequiously at the jests of the man of wit who presided over them, or taking the floor to put forward the most amazing propositions, or for interruptions of the sort that make one think that it was not a type simply, but a whole race that Henri Monnier stigmatized in his immortal sketch. Two or three orators in the whole Chamber, the rest well skilled in the art of planting themselves before the fire in a provincial salon, after an excellent repast at the prefect's table, and saying in a nasal tone: "The administration, Messieurs," or "The Emperor's government,"—but incapable of going farther.

On ordinary occasions the good-natured Nabob allowed himself to be dazzled by those attitudes, that clattering noise as of an empty spinning-wheel; but to-day he found himself on a level with the others. As he sat at the centre of the green table, his portfolio before him, his two elbows firmly planted upon it, reading the report drawn by de GÉry, the members of the committee stared at him in mute amazement.

It was a clear, concise, rapid summary of their labors of the past fortnight, in which they found their ideas so well expressed that they had great difficulty in recognizing them. Then, when two or three among them suggested that the report was too favorable, that he glided too lightly over certain protests that had reached the committee, the maker of the report spoke with surprising assurance, with the prolixity and exuberance of men of his province, proved that a deputy should not be held responsible beyond a certain point for the imprudence of his electoral agents, that otherwise no election would stand against an investigation that was at all minute; and as, in reality, he was pleading his own cause, he displayed an irresistible warmth and conviction, taking care to let fly from time to time one of the long meaningless substantives with a thousand claws, of the sort that the committee liked.

The others listened, deep in thought, exchanging their impressions by nods of the head, drawing flourishes and faces on their blotting-pads the better to fix their attention; a detail that harmonized with the schoolboy-like noise in the corridors, a muttering as of lessons being recited, and the flocks of sparrows chirping under the windows in a flagged courtyard surrounded by arches, a veritable school-yard. The report adopted, they sent for M. Sarigue to make some supplementary explanations. He appeared, pale-faced, abashed, stammering like a criminal before conviction, and you would have laughed to see the patronizing, authoritative air with which Jansoulet encouraged and reassured him: "Be calm, my dear colleague." But the members of the eighth committee did not laugh. They were all, or almost all, of the Sarigue species, two or three being absolutely nerveless, afflicted with partial loss of the power of speech. Such self-assurance, such eloquence had aroused their enthusiasm.

When Jansoulet left the Corps LÉgislatif, escorted to his carriage by his grateful colleague, it was about six o'clock. The superb weather, a gorgeous sunset over by the TrocadÉro, across the Seine, which shone like burnished gold, tempted that robust plebeian, whom the conventional proprieties of his position compelled to ride in a carriage and to wear gloves, but who dispensed with them as often as possible, to return on foot. He sent away his servants, and started across Pont de la Concorde, his leather satchel under his arm. He had known no such feeling of contentment since the first of May. Throwing back his shoulders, with his hat tipped slightly back in the attitude he had noticed in men who were worried, overdone with business, allowing all the toil-born fever of their brain to evaporate in the fresh air, as a factory discharges its vapor into the gutter at the close of a day of labor, he walked on among other figures like his own, evidently just from the pillared temple that faces the Madeleine beyond the monumental fountains of the square. As they passed, people turned and said: "They are deputies." And Jansoulet felt a childlike joy, a vulgar joy compounded of ignorance and ingenuous vanity.

"Buy the Messager evening edition."

The words came from the newspaper booth at the end of the bridge, filled at that hour with piles of freshly printed sheets which two women were hastily folding and which smelt of the damp press, of the latest news, the triumph of the day or its scandal. Almost all the deputies purchased a copy as they passed, and ran through it rapidly, hoping to find their names. Jansoulet, for his part, dreaded to see his and did not stop. But suddenly he thought: "Ought not a public man to be above such weaknesses as this? I am strong enough to read anything now." He retraced his steps and took a paper like his colleagues. He opened it very calmly at the place usually occupied by MoËssard's articles. There was one there. Still the same title: Chinoiseries, and an M. for signature.

"Aha!" said the public man, as unmoved and cold as marble, with a fine, scornful smile. Mora's lesson was still ringing in his ears, and even if he had forgotten it, the air from Norma in jerky, ironical little notes not far away would have sufficed to remind him of it. But, however carefully we may make our calculations in the rush of events in our lives, we must still reckon with the unforeseen; and that is why the Nabob suddenly found himself blinded by a rush of blood to his eyes, while a cry of rage was stifled by the sudden contraction of his throat. His mother, his old FranÇoise, was dragged into the infamous jest of the "flower boat" at last. How well that MoËssard aimed, how well he knew the really sensitive spots in that heart, so innocently laid bare!

"Be calm, Jansoulet, be calm."

In vain did he repeat the injunction in every tone,—anger, furious anger, the drunkenness of blood demanding blood enveloped him. His first impulse was to stop a cab and hurl himself into it, in order to escape the irritating street, to rid his body of the necessity of walking and choosing a path—to stop a cab as for a wounded man. But at that hour of general home-coming the square was crowded with hundreds of victorias, calÈches, coupÉs, descending from the resplendent glory of the Arc-de-Triomphe toward the purple freshness of the Tuileries, crowding closely upon one another down the inclined surface of the avenue to the great cross-roads where the motionless statues, standing firmly on their pedestals with their wreath-encircled brows, watched them diverge toward Faubourg Saint-Germain, Rue Royale and Rue de Rivoli.

Jansoulet, newspaper in hand, made his way through the uproar, without thinking of it, bending his steps instinctively toward the club, where he went every day to play cards from six to seven. He was a public man still; but intensely excited, talking aloud, stammering oaths and threats in a voice that suddenly became soft once more as he thought of the dear old woman.—To think of rolling her in the mire too! Oh! if she should read it, if she could understand! What punishment could he invent for such an infamous outrage? He reached Rue Royale, where equipages of all sorts returning from the Bois bowled swiftly homeward, with whirling axles, visions of veiled women and children's curly heads, bringing a little vegetable mould to the pavements of Paris and whiffs of spring mingled with the perfume of rice-powder. In front of the Ministry of Marine, a phaeton perched very high upon slender wheels, bearing a strong resemblance to a huge field-spider, the little groom clinging behind and the two persons on the box-seat forming its body, came very near colliding with the sidewalk as it turned.

The Nabob raised his head, and restrained an exclamation.

Beside a painted hussy with red hair, wearing a tiny little hat with broad ribbons, who, from her perch on her leather cushion, was driving the horse with her hands, her eyes, her whole made-up person, stiffly erect, yet leaning forward, sat MoËssard, MoËssard the dandy, pink-cheeked and painted like his companion, raised on the same dung-heap, fattened on the same vices. The strumpet and the journalist, and she was not the one of the two who sold herself most shamelessly! Towering above the women lolling in their calÈches, the men who sat opposite them buried under flounces, all the attitudes of fatigue and ennui which they whose appetites are sated display in public as if in scorn of pleasure and wealth, they insolently exhibited themselves, she very proud to drive the queen's lover, and he without the slightest shame beside that creature who flicked her whip at men in passage-ways, safe on her lofty perch from the salutary drag-nets of the police. Perhaps he found it necessary to quicken his royal mistress's pulses by thus parading under her windows with Suzanne Bloch, alias Suze la Rousse.

"Hi! hi there!"

The horse, a tall trotter with slender legs, a genuine cocotte's horse, was returning from his digression, toward the middle of the street, with dancing steps, prancing gracefully up and down without going forward. Jansoulet dropped his satchel, and as if he had cast aside at the same time all his gravity, his prestige as a public man, he gave a mighty leap and grasped the animal's bit, holding him fast with his strong hairy hands.

An arrest on Rue Royale and in broad daylight; no one but that Tartar would have dared do such a thing!

"Get down," he said to MoËssard, whose face turned green and yellow in spots when he recognized him. "Get down at once."

"Will you let go my horse, you fat beast!—Lash him, Suzanne, it's the Nabob."

She tried to gather up the reins, but the animal, held in a powerful grasp, reared so suddenly that in another second the fragile vehicle would have shot out all that it contained, like a sling. Thereupon, carried away by one of the furious fits of rage peculiar to the faubourg, which in such girls as she scale off the varnish of their luxury and their false skin, she struck the Nabob two blows with her whip, which glided off the hard, tanned face, but gave it a ferocious expression, accentuated by the short nose, slit at the end like a hunting terrier's, which had turned white.

"Get down, or, by God, I will overturn the whole thing!"

In a confused mass of carriages, standing still because movement was impossible or slowly skirting the obstacle, with thousands of curious eyes, amid the shouts of drivers and clashing of bits, two iron wrists shook the whole phaeton.

"Jump down—jump, I say—don't you see he's going to tip us over? What a grip!"

And the girl gazed at the Hercules with interest.

MoËssard had hardly put his foot to the ground, when, before he could take refuge on the sidewalk, where black kÉpis were hastening to the scene, Jansoulet threw himself upon him, lifted him by the nape of the neck like a rabbit, and exclaimed, heedless of his protestations, his terrified, stammering entreaties:

"Yes, yes, I'll give you satisfaction, you miserable scoundrel. But first I propose to do to you what we do to dirty beasts so that they sha'n't come back again."

And he began to rub him, to scrub his face mercilessly with his newspaper, which he held like a tampon and with which he choked and blinded him and made great raw spots where the paint bled. They dragged him from his hands, purple and breathless. If he had worked himself up a little more, he would have killed him.

The scuffle at an end, the Nabob pulled down his sleeves, which had risen to his elbows, smoothed his rumpled linen, picked up his satchel from which the papers relating to the Sarigue election had scattered as far as the gutter, and replied to the police officers, who asked him his name in order to prepare their report: "Bernard Jansoulet, Deputy for Corsica."

A public man!

Not until then did he remember that he was one. Who would have suspected it, to see him thus, out of breath and bareheaded, like a porter after a street fight, under the inquisitive, coldly contemptuous glances of the slowly dispersing crowd?