The Nabob Part 30

The other insisted. It was absolutely necessary that Brisset, Jousseline, Bouchereau, all the great physicians should be called in.

"But you will frighten him."

De Monpavon expanded his chest, the one pride of the old broken-down charger.

"_Mon Cher_, if you had seen Mora and me in the trenches of Constantine--ps--ps. Never looked away. We don't know fear. Give notice to your colleagues. I undertake to inform him."

The consultation took place in the evening with great privacy, the duke having insisted on this from a singular sense of shame produced by his illness, by that suffering which discrowned him, making him the equal of other men. Like those African kings who hide themselves in the recesses of their palaces to die, he would have wished that men should believe him carried off, transfigured, become a G.o.d. Then, too, he dreaded above all things the expressions of pity, the condolences, the compa.s.sion with which he knew that his sick-bed would be surrounded; the tears because he suspected them to be hypocritical, and because, if sincere, they displeased him still more by their grimacing ugliness.

He had always detested scenes, exaggerated sentiments, everything that could move him to emotion or disturb the harmonious equilibrium of his life. Every one knew this, and the order was to keep away from him the distress, the misery, which from one end of France to the other flowed towards Mora as to one of those forest refuges lighted during the night at which all wanderers may knock. Not that he was hard to the unfortunate; perhaps he may have been too easily moved to the pity which he regarded as an inferior sentiment, a weakness unworthy of the strong, and, refusing it to others, he dreaded it for himself, for the integrity of his courage. n.o.body in the palace, then, except Monpavon and Louis the _valet de chambre_, knew of the visit of those three personages introduced mysteriously into the Minister of State's apartments. The d.u.c.h.ess herself was ignorant of it. Separated from her husband by the barriers frequently placed by the political and fas.h.i.+onable life of the great world between married people, she believed him slightly indisposed, nervous more than anything else; and had so little suspicion of a catastrophe that at the very hour when the doctors were mounting the great, dimly lit staircase at the other end of the palace, her private apartments were being lit up for a girls' dance, one of those _bals blancs_ which the ingenuity of the idle world had begun to make fas.h.i.+onable in Paris.

This consultation was like all others: solemn and sinister. Doctors no longer wear their great periwigs of the time of Moliere, but they still a.s.sume the same gravity of the priests of Isis, of astrologers bristling with cabalistic formulae p.r.o.nounced with sage noddings of the head, to which, for comical effect, there is only wanting the high pointed cap of former days. In this case the scene borrowed an imposing aspect from its setting. In the vast bed-chamber, transformed, heightened, as it were, in dignity by the immobility of the owner, these grave figures came forward round the bed on which the light was concentrated, illuminating amid the whiteness of the linen and the purple of the hangings a face worn into hollows, pale from lips to eyes, but wrapped in serenity as in a veil, as in a shroud. The consultants spoke in low tones, cast furtive glances as each other, or exchanged some barbarous word, remaining impa.s.sive, without even a frown. But this mute and reticent expression of the doctor and magistrate, this solemnity with which science and justice hedge themselves about to hide their frailty or ignorance, had no power to move the duke.

Sitting up in bed, he continued to talk quietly, with the upward glance of the eye in which it seems as if thought rises before it finally takes wing, and Monpavon coldly followed his cue, hardening himself against his own emotion, taking from his friend a last lesson in "form"; while Louis, in the background, stood leaning against the door leading to the d.u.c.h.ess's apartment, the spectre of a silent domestic in whom detached indifference is a duty.

The most agitated, nervous man present was Jenkins. Full of obsequious attentions for his "ill.u.s.trious colleagues," as he called them, with his lips pursed up, he hung round their consultation and attempted to take part in it; but the colleagues kept him at a distance and hardly answered him, as f.a.gon--the f.a.gon of Louis XIV--might have addressed some empiric summoned to the royal bedside. Old Bouchereau especially had black looks for the inventor of the Jenkins pearls. Finally, when they had thoroughly examined and questioned their patient, they retired to deliberate among themselves in a little room with lacquered ceilings and walls, filled by an a.s.sortment of _bric-a-brac_ the triviality of which contrasted strangely with the importance of the discussion.

Solemn moment! Anguish of the accused awaiting the decision of his judges--life, death, reprieve, or pardon!

With his long, white hand Mora continued to stroke his mustache with a favourite gesture, to talk with Monpavon of the club, of the foyer of the _Varietes_, asking news of the Chamber, how matters stood with regard to the Nabob's election--all this coldly, without the least affectation. Then, tired, no doubt, or fearing lest his glance, constantly drawn to that curtain opposite him, from behind which the sentence was to come presently, should betray the emotion which he must have felt in the depths of his soul, he laid his head on the pillow, closed his eyes, and did not open them again until the return of the doctors. Still the same cold and sinister faces, veritable physiognomies of judges having on their lips the terrible decree of human fate, the final word which the courts p.r.o.nounce fearlessly, but which the doctors, whose science it mocks, elude, and express in periphrases.

"Well, gentlemen, what says the faculty?" demanded the sick man.

There were sundry murmurs of hypocritical encouragement, vague recommendations; then the three learned physicians hastened to depart, eager to escape from the responsibility of this disaster. Monpavon rushed after them. Jenkins remained at the bedside, overwhelmed by the cruel truths which he had just heard during the consultation. In vain had he laid his hand on his heart, quoted his famous motto; Bouchereau had not spared him. It was not the first of the Irishman's clients whom he had seen thus suddenly collapse; but he fervently hoped that the death of Mora would act as a salutary warning to the world of fas.h.i.+on, and that the prefect of police, after this great calamity, would send the "dealer in cantharides" to retail his drugs on the other side of the Channel.

The duke understood immediately that neither Jenkins nor Louis would tell him the true issue of the consultation. He abstained, therefore, from any insistence in his questionings of them, submitted to their pretended confidence, affected even to share it, to believe the most hopeful things they announced to him. But when Monpavon returned, he summoned him to his bedside, and, confronted by the lie visible even beneath the make-up of the decrepit old man, remarked:

"Oh, you know--no humbug! From you to me, truth. What do they say? I am in a very bad way, eh?"

Monpavon prefaced his reply with a significant silence; then brutally, cynically, for fear of breaking down as he spoke:

"Done for, my poor Augustus!"

The duke received the sentence full in the face without flinching.

"Ah!" he said simply.

He pulled his mustache with a mechanical gesture, but his features remained motionless. And immediately he made up his mind.

That the poor wretch who dies in a hospital, without home or family, without other name than the number of his bed, that he should accept death as a deliverance or bear it as his last trial; that the old peasant who pa.s.ses away, bent double, worn out, in his dark and smoky cellar, that he should depart without regret, savouring in advance the taste of that fresh earth which he has so many times dug over and over--that is intelligible. And yet how many, even among such, cling to existence despite all their misery! how many there are who cry, holding on to their sordid furniture and to their rags, "I don't want to die!"

and depart with nails broken and bleeding from that supreme wrench. But here there was nothing of the kind.

To possess all, and to lose all. What a catastrophe!

In the first silence of that dreadful moment, while he heard the sound of the music coming faintly from the d.u.c.h.ess's ball at the other end of the palace, whatever attached this man to life, power, honour, wealth, all that splendour must have seemed to him already far away and in an irrevocable past. A courage of a quite exceptional temper must have been required to bear up under such a blow without any spur of personal vanity. No one was present save the friend, the doctor, the servant, three intimates acquainted with all his secrets; the lights moved back, left the bed in shadow, and the dying man might quite well have turned his face to the wall in lamentation of his own fate without being noticed. But not an instant of weakness, nor of useless demonstration.

Without breaking a branch of the chestnut-trees in the garden, without withering a flower on the great staircase of the palace, his footsteps m.u.f.fled on the thick pile of the carpets, Death had opened the door of this man of power and signed to him "Come!" And he answered simply, "I am ready." The true exit of a man of the world, unforeseen, rapid, and discreet.

Man of the world! Mora was nothing if not that. Pa.s.sing through life masked, gloved, breast-plated--breast-plate of white satin, such as the masters of fence wear on great days; preserving his fighting dress immaculate and clean; sacrificing everything to that irreproachable exterior which with him did duty for armour; he had determined on his _role_ as statesman in the pa.s.sage from the drawing-room to a wider scene, and made, indeed, a statesman of the first rank on the strength alone of his qualities as a man about town, the art of listening and of smiling, knowledge of men, scepticism, and coolness. That coolness did not leave him at the supreme moment.

With eyes fixed on the time, so short, which still remained to him--for the dark visitor was in a hurry, and he could feel on his face the draught from the door which he had not closed behind him--his one thought now was to occupy the time well, to satisfy all the obligations of an end like his, which must leave no devotion unrecompensed nor compromise any friend. He gave a list of certain persons whom he wished to see and who were sent for immediately, summoned the head of his cabinet, and, as Jenkins ventured the opinion that it was a great fatigue for him, said:

"Can you guarantee that I shall wake to-morrow morning? I feel strong at this moment; let me take advantage of it."

Louis inquired whether the d.u.c.h.ess should be informed. The duke, before replying, listened to the sounds of music that reached his room through the open windows from the little ball, sounds that seemed prolonged in the night on an invisible bow, then answered:

"Let us wait a little. I have something to finish."

They brought to his bedside the little lacquered table that he might himself sort out the letters which were to be destroyed; but feeling his strength give way, he called Monpavon.

"Burn everything," said he to him in a faint voice; and seeing him move towards the fireplace, where a fire was burning despite the warmth of the season.

"No," he added, "not here. There are too many of them. Some one might come."

Monpavon took up the writing-table, which was not heavy, and signed to the _valet de chambre_ to go before him with a light. But Jenkins sprang forward:

"Stay here, Louis; the duke may want you."

He took hold of the lamp; and moving carefully down the whole length of the great corridor, exploring the waiting-rooms, the galleries, in which the fireplaces proved to be filled with artificial plants and quite emptied of ashes, they wandered like spectres in the silence and darkness of the vast house, alive only over yonder on the right, were pleasure was singing like a bird on a roof which is about to fall in ruins.

"There is no fire anywhere. What is to be done with all this?" they asked each other in great embarra.s.sment. They might have been two thieves dragging away a chest which they did not know how to open. At last Monpavon, out of patience, walked straight to a door, the only one which they had not yet opened.

"_Ma foi_, so much the worse! Since we cannot burn them, we will drown them. Hold the light, Jenkins."

And they entered.

Where were they? Saint-Simon relating the downfall of one of those sovereign existences, the disarray of ceremonies, of dignities, of grandeurs, caused by death and especially by sudden death, only Saint-Simon might have found words to tell you. With his delicate, carefully kept hands, the Marquis de Monpavon did the pumping. The other pa.s.sed to him the letters after tearing them into small pieces, packets of letters, on satin paper, tinted, perfumed, adorned with crests, coats of arms, small flags with devices, covered with handwritings, fine, hurried, scrawling, entwining, persuasive; and all those flimsy pages went whirling one over the other in eddying streams of water which crumpled them, soiled them, washed out their tender links before allowing them to disappear with a gurgle down the drain.

They were love-letters and of every kind, from the note of the adventuress, "_I saw you pa.s.s yesterday in the Bois, M. le Duc_," to the aristocratic reproaches of the last mistress but one, and the complaints of ladies deserted, and the page, still fresh, of recent confidences.

Monpavon was in the secret of all these mysteries--put a name on each of them: "That is Mme. Moor. Hallo! Mme. d'Athis!" A confusion of coronets and initials, of caprices and old habits, sullied by the promiscuity of this moment, all engulfed in the horrid closet by the light of a lamp, with the noise of an intermittent gush of water, departing into oblivion by a shameful road. Suddenly Jenkins paused in his work of destruction.

Two satin-gray letters trembled as he held them in his fingers.

"Who is that?" asked Monpavon, noticing the unfamiliar handwriting and the Irishman's nervous excitement. "Ah, doctor, if you want to read them all, we shall never have finished."

Jenkins, his cheeks flushed, the two letters in his hand, was consumed by a desire to carry them away, to pore over them at his ease, to martyrize himself with delight by reading them, perhaps also to forge out of this correspondence a weapon for himself against the imprudent woman who had signed her name. But the rigorous correctness of the marquis made him afraid. How could he distract his attention--get him away? The opportunity occurred of its own accord. Among the letters, a tiny page written in a senile and shaky hand, caught the attention of the charlatan, who said with an ingenuous air: "Oh, oh! here is something that does not look much like a _billet-doux. 'Mon Duc, to the rescue--I am sinking! The Court of Exchequer has once more stuck its nose into my affairs.'_"

"What are you reading there?" exclaimed Monpavon abruptly, s.n.a.t.c.hing the letter from his hands. And immediately, thanks to Mora's negligence in thus allowing such private letters to lie about, the terrible situation in which he would be left by the death of his protector returned to his mind. In his grief, he had not yet given it a thought. He told himself that in the midst of all his preparations for his departure, the duke might quite possibly overlook him; and, leaving Jenkins to complete the drowning of Don Juan's casket by himself, he returned precipitately in the direction of the bed-chamber. Just as he was on the point of entering, the sound of a discussion held him back behind the lowered door-curtain. It was Louis's voice, tearful like that of a beggar in a church-porch, trying to move the duke to pity for his distress, and asking permission to take certain bundles of bank-notes that lay in a drawer. Oh, how hoa.r.s.e, utterly wearied, hardly intelligible the answer, in which there could be detected the effort of the sick man to turn over in his bed, to bring back his vision from a far-off distance already half in sight:

"Yes, yes; take them. But for G.o.d's sake, let me sleep--let me sleep!"

Drawers opened, closed again, a short and panting breath. Monpavon heard no more of what was going on, and retraced his steps without entering.

The ferocious rapacity of his servant had set his pride upon its guard.

Anything rather than degradation to such a point as that.

The sleep which Mora craved for so insistently--the lethargy, to be more accurate--lasted a whole night, and through the next morning also, with uncertain wakings disturbed by terrible sufferings relieved each time by soporifics. No further attempt was made to nurse him to recovery; they tried only to soothe his last moments, to help him to slip painlessly over that terrible last step. His eyes had opened again during this time, but were already dimmed, fixed in the void on floating shadows, vague forms like those a diver sees quivering in the uncertain light under water.

In the afternoon of the Thursday, towards three o'clock, he regained complete consciousness, and recognising Monpavon, Cardailhac, and two or three other intimate friends, he smiled to them, and betrayed in a sentence his only anxiety:

"What do they say about it in Paris?"