The Nabob Part 32

"I cannot, madame. It is the funeral procession."

She put her head out of the window and drew it back again immediately, terrified. A line of soldiers marching with reversed arms, a confusion of caps and hats raised from the forehead at the pa.s.sage of an endless cortege. It was Mora's funeral procession defiling past.

"Don't stop here. Go round," she cried to the cabman.

The vehicle turned about with difficulty, dragging itself regretfully from the superb spectacle which Paris had been awaiting for four days; it remounted the avenues, took the Rue Montaigne, and, with its slow and surly little trot, came out at the Madeleine by the Boulevard Malesherbes. Here the crowd was greater, more compact.

In the misty rain, the illuminated stained-gla.s.s windows of the church, the dull echo of the funeral chants beneath the lavishly distributed black hangings under which the very outline of the Greek temple was lost, filled the whole square with a sense of the office in course of celebration, while the greater part of the immense procession was still squeezed up in the Rue Royale, and as far even as the bridges a long black line connecting the dead man with that gate of the Legislative a.s.sembly through which he had so often pa.s.sed. Beyond the Madeleine the highway of the boulevard stretched away empty, and looking bigger between two lines of soldiers with arms reversed, confining the curious to the pavements black with people, all the shops closed, and the balconies, in spite of the rain, overflowing with human beings all leaning forward in the direction of the church, as if to see a mid-Lent festival or the home-coming of victorious troops. Paris, hungry for the spectacular, constructs it indifferently out of anything, civil war as readily as the burial of a statesman.

It was necessary for the cab to retrace its course again and to make a new circuit; and it is easy to imagine the bad temper of the driver and his beasts, all three of them Parisian in soul and pa.s.sions, at having to deprive themselves of so fine a show. Then, as all the life of Paris had been drawn into the great artery of the boulevard, there began through the deserted and silent streets--a capricious and irregular drive--the snail-like progress of a cab taken by the hour. First touching the extreme points of the Faubourg Saint-Martin and the Faubourg Saint-Denis, returning again towards the centre, and at the conclusion of circuits and dodges finding always the same obstacle in ambush, the same crowd, some fragment of the black defile perceived for a moment at the branching of a street, unfolding itself in the rain to the sound of m.u.f.fled drums--a dull and heavy sound, like that of earth falling on a coffin-lid.

What torture for Felicia! It was her weakness and her remorse crossing Paris in this solemn pomp, this funeral train, this public mourning reflected by the very clouds; and the proud girl revolted against this affront done her by fate, and tried to escape from it to the back of the carriage, where she remained exhausted with eyes closed, while old Crenmitz, believing her nervousness to be grief, did her best to comfort her, herself wept over their separation, and hiding also, left the entire window of the cab to the big Algerian hound with his finely modelled head scenting the wind, and his two paws resting in the sash with an heraldic stiffness of pose. Finally, after a thousand interminable windings, the cab suddenly came to a halt, jolted on again with difficulty amid cries and abuse, then, tossed about, the luggage on top threatening its equilibrium, it ended by coming to a full stop, held prisoner, as it were, at anchor.

"_Bon Dieu!_ what a ma.s.s of people!" murmured the Crenmitz, terrified.

Felicia came out of her stupor.

"Where are we?"

Under a colourless, smoky sky, blotted out by a fine network of rain and stretched like gauze over everything, there lay an immense s.p.a.ce filled by an ocean of humanity surging from all the streets that led to it, and motionless around a lofty column of bronze, which dominated this sea like the gigantic mast of a sunken vessel. Cavalry in squadrons, with swords drawn, guns in batteries stood at intervals along an open pa.s.sage, awaiting him who was to come by, perhaps in order to try to retake him, to carry him off by force from the formidable enemy who was bearing him away. Alas! all the cavalry charges, all the guns could be of no avail here. The prisoner was departing, firmly guarded, defended by a triple wall of hardwood, metal, and velvet, impervious to grape-shot; and it was not from those soldiers that he could hope for his deliverance.

"Get away from this. I will not stay here," said Felicia, furious, plucking at the wet box-coat of the driver, and seized by a wild dread at the thought of the nightmare which was pursuing her, of _that_ which she could hear coming in a frightful rumbling, still distant, but growing nearer from minute to minute. At the first movement of the wheels, however, the cries and shouts broke out anew. Thinking that he would be allowed to cross the square, the driver had penetrated with great difficulty to the front ranks of the crowd; it now closed behind him and refused to allow him to go forward. There they had to remain, to endure those odours of common people and of alcohol, those curious glances, already fired by the prospect of an exceptional spectacle. They stared rudely at the beautiful traveller who was starting off with so many trunks, and a dog of such size for her defender. Crenmitz was horribly afraid; Felicia, for her part, could think of only one thing, and that was that _he_ was about to pa.s.s before her eyes, that she would be in the front rank to see him.

Suddenly a great shout "Here it comes!" Then silence fell on the whole square at last at the end of three weary hours of waiting.

It came.

Felicia's first impulse was to lower the blind on her side, on the side past which the procession was about to pa.s.s. But at the rolling of the drums close at hand, seized by the nervous wrath at her inability to escape the obsession of the thing, perhaps also infected by the morbid curiosity around her, she suddenly let the blind fly up, and her pale and pa.s.sionate little face showed itself at the window, supported by her two clinched hands.

"There! since you will have it: I am watching you."

As a funeral it was as fine a thing as can be seen, the supreme honours rendered in all their vain splendour, as sonorous, as hollow as the rhythmic accompaniment on the m.u.f.fled drums. First the white surplices of the clergy, amid the mourning drapery of the first five carriages; next, drawn by six black horses, veritable horses of Erebus, there advanced the funeral car, all beplumed, fringed and embroidered in silver, with big tears, heraldic coronets surmounting gigantic M's, prophetic initials which seemed those of Death himself, _La Mort_ made a d.u.c.h.ess decorated with the eight waving plumes. So many canopies and ma.s.sive hangings hid the vulgar body of the hea.r.s.e, as it trembled and quivered at each step from top to bottom as though crushed beneath the majesty of its dead burden. On the coffin, the sword, the coat, the embroidered hat, parade undress--which had never been worn--shone with gold and mother-of-pearl in the darkened little tent formed by the hangings and among the bright tints of fresh flowers telling of spring in spite of the sullenness of the sky. At a distance of ten paces came the household servants of the duke; then, behind, in majestic isolation, the cloaked officer bearing the emblems of honour--a veritable display of all the orders of the whole world--crosses, multicoloured ribbons, which covered to overflowing the cus.h.i.+on of black velvet with silver fringe.

The master of ceremonies came next, in front of the representatives of the Legislative a.s.sembly--a dozen deputies chosen by lot, among them the tall figure of the Nabob, wearing the official costume for the first time, as if ironical Fortune had desired to give to the representative on probation a foretaste of all parliamentary joys. The friends of the dead man, who followed, formed a rather small group, singularly well chosen to exhibit in its crudity the superficiality and the void of that existence of a great personage reduced to the intimacy of a theatrical manager thrice bankrupt, of a picture-dealer grown wealthy through usuary, of a n.o.bleman of tarnished reputation, and of a few men about town without distinction. Up to this point everybody was walking on foot and bareheaded; among the parliamentary representatives there were only a few black skull-caps, which had been put on timidly as they approached the populous districts. After them the carriages began.

At the death of a great warrior it is the custom for the funeral convoy to be followed by the favourite horse of the hero, his battle charger, regulating to the slow step of the procession that dancing step excited by the smell of powder and the pageantry of standards. In this case, Mora's great brougham, that "C-spring" which used to bear him to fas.h.i.+onable or political gatherings, took the place of that companion in victory, its panels draped with black, its lamps veiled in long streamers of light c.r.a.pe, floating to the ground with undulating feminine grace. These veiled lamps const.i.tuted a new fas.h.i.+on for funerals--the supreme "chic" of mourning; and it well became this dandy to give a last lesson in elegance to the Parisians, who flocked to his obsequies as to a "Longchamps" of death.

Three more masters of ceremony; then came the impa.s.sive official procession, always the same for marriages, deaths, baptisms, openings of Parliament, or receptions of sovereigns, the interminable cortege of glittering carriages, with large windows and showy liveries bedizened with gilt, which pa.s.sed through the midst of the dazzled people, to whom they recalled fairy-tales, Cinderella chariots, while evoking those "Oh's!" of admiration that mount and die away with the rockets on the evenings of firework displays. And in the crowd there was always to be found some good-natured policeman, some learned little grocer sauntering round on the lookout for public ceremonies, ready to name in a loud voice all the people in the carriages, as they defiled past, with their regulation escorts of dragoons, cuira.s.siers, or Paris guards.

First the representatives of the Emperor, the Empress and all the Imperial family; after these, in the hierarchic order, cunningly elaborated, and the least infraction of which might have been the cause of grave conflicts between the various departments of the State--the members of the Privy Council, the Marshals, the Admirals, the High Chancellor of the Legion of Honour; then the Senate, the Legislative a.s.sembly, the Council of State, the whole organization of the law and of the university, the costumes, the ermine, the headgear of which took you back to the days of old Paris--an air of something stately and antiquated, out of date in our sceptical epoch of the workman's blouse and the dress-coat.

Felicia, to avoid her thoughts, voluntarily fixed her eyes upon this monotonous defile, exasperating in its length; and little by little a torpor stole over her, as if on a rainy day she had been turning over the leaves of an alb.u.m of engravings, a history of official costumes from the most remote times down to our own day. All these people, seen in profile, still and upright, behind the large gla.s.s panes of the carriage windows, had indeed the appearance of personages in coloured plates, sitting well forward on the edge of the seats in order that the spectators should miss nothing of their golden embroideries, their palm-leaves, their galloons, their braids--puppets given over to the curiosity of the crowd--and exposing themselves to it with an air of indifference and detachment.

Indifference! That was the most special characteristic of this funeral.

It was to be felt everywhere, on people's faces and in their hearts, as well among these functionaries of whom the greater part had only known the duke by sight, as in the ranks on foot between his hea.r.s.e and his brougham, his closest friends, or those who had been in daily attendance upon him. The fat minister, Vice-President of the Council, seemed indifferent, and even glad, as he held in his powerful fist the strings of the pall and seemed to draw it forward, in more haste than the horses and the hea.r.s.e to conduct to his six feet of earth the enemy of twenty years' standing, the eternal rival, the obstacle to all his ambitions.

The other three dignitaries did not advance with the same vigour, and the long cords floated loosely in their weary or careless hands with significant slackness. The priests were indifferent by profession.

Indifferent were the servants of his household, whom he never called anything but "_chose_," and whom he treated really like "things."

Indifferent was M. Louis, for whom it was the last day of servitude, a slave become emanc.i.p.ated, rich enough to enjoy his ransom. Even among the intimate friends of the dead man this glacial cold had penetrated.

Yet some of them had been deeply attached to him. But Cardailhac was too busy superintending the order and the progress of the procession to give way to the least emotion, which would, besides, have been foreign to his nature. Old Monpavon, stricken to the heart, would have considered the least bending of his linen cuira.s.s and of his tall figure a piece of deplorably bad taste, totally unworthy of his ill.u.s.trious friend. His eyes remained as dry and glittering as ever, since the undertakers provide the tears for great mournings, embroidered in silver on black cloth. Some one was weeping, however, away yonder among the members of the committee; but he was expending his compa.s.sion very naively upon himself. Poor Nabob! softened by that music and splendour, it seemed to him that he was burying all his ambitions of glory and dignity. And his was but one more variety of indifference.

Among the public, the enjoyment of a fine spectacle, the pleasure of turning a week-day into a Sunday, dominated every other sentiment.

Along the line of the boulevards, the spectators on the balconies almost seemed disposed to applaud; here, in the populous districts, irreverence was still more frankly manifest. Jests, blackguardly wit at the expense of the dead man and his doings, known to all Paris, laughter raised by the tall hats of the rabbis, the pa.s.s-word of the council experts, all were heard in the air between two rolls of the drum. Poverty, forced labour, with its feet in the wet, wearing its blouse, its ap.r.o.n, its cap raised from habit, with sneering chuckle watched this inhabitant of another sphere pa.s.s by, this brilliant duke, severed now from all his honours, who perhaps while living had never paid a visit to that end of the town. But there it is. To arrive up yonder, where everybody has to go, the common route must be taken, the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, the Rue de la Roquette as far as that great gate where the _octroi_ is collected and the infinite begins. And well! it does one good to see that lordly persons like Mora, dukes, ministers, follow the same road towards the same destination. This equality in death consoles for many of the injustices of life. To-morrow bread will seem less dear, wine better, the workman's tool less heavy, when he will be able to say to himself as he rises in the morning, "That old Mora, he has come to it like the rest!"

The procession still went on, more fatiguing even than lugubrious. Now it consisted of choral societies, deputations from the army and the navy, officers of all descriptions, pressing on in a troop in advance of a long file of empty vehicles--mourning-coaches, private carriages--present for reasons of etiquette. Then the troops followed in their turn, and into the sordid suburb, that long Rue de la Roquette, already swarming with people as far as eye could reach, there plunged a whole army, foot-soldiers, dragoons, lancers, carabineers, heavy guns with their great mouths in the air, ready to bark, making pavement and windows tremble, but not able to drown the rolling of the drums--a sinister and savage rolling which suggested to Felicia's imagination some funeral of an African chief, at which thousands of sacrificed victims accompany the soul of a prince so that it shall not pa.s.s alone into the kingdom of spirits, and made her fancy that perhaps this pompous and interminable retinue was about to descend and disappear in the superhuman grave large enough to receive the whole of it.

"_Now and in the hour of our death. Amen_," Crenmitz murmured, while the cab swayed from side to side in the lighted square, and high in s.p.a.ce the golden statue of Liberty seemed to be taking a magic flight; and the old dancer's prayer was perhaps the one note of sincere feeling called forth on the immense line of the funeral procession.

All the speeches are over; three long speeches as icy as the vault into which the dead man has just descended, three official declamations which, above all, have provided the orators with an opportunity of giving loud voice to their own devotion to the interests of the dynasty.

Fifteen times the guns have roused the many echoes of the cemetery, shaken the wreaths of jet and everlasting flowers--the light _ex-voto_ offerings suspended at the corners of the monuments--and while a reddish mist floats and rolls with a smell of gunpowder across the city of the dead, ascends and mingles slowly with the smoke of factories in the plebeian district, the innumerable a.s.sembly disperses also, scattered through the steep streets, down the lofty steps all white among the foliage, with a confused murmur, a rippling as of waves over rocks.

Purple robes, black robes, blue and green coats, shoulder-knots of gold, slender swords, of whose safety the wearers a.s.sure themselves with their hands as they walk, all hasten to regain their carriages. People exchange low bows, discreet smiles, while the mourning-coaches tear down the carriage-ways at a gallop, revealing long lines of black coachmen, with backs bent, hats tilted forward, the box-coats flying in the wind made by their rapid motion.

The general impression is one of thankfulness to have reached the end of a long and fatiguing performance, a legitimate eagerness to quit the administrative harness and ceremonial costumes, to unbuckle sashes, to loosen stand-up collars and neckbands, to slacken the tension of facial muscles, which had been subject to long restraint.

Heavy and short, dragging along his swollen legs with difficulty, Hemerlingue was hastening towards the exit, declining the offers which were made to him of a seat in this or that carriage, since he knew well that his own alone was of size adequate to cope with his proportions.

"Baron, Baron, this way. There is room for you."

"No, thank you. I want to walk to straighten my legs."

And to avoid these invitations, which were beginning to embarra.s.s him, he took an almost deserted pathway, one that proved too deserted indeed, for hardly had he taken a step along it before he regretted it. Ever since entering the cemetery he had had but one preoccupation--the fear of finding himself face to face with Jansoulet, whose violence of temper he knew, and who might well forget the sacredness of the place, and even in Pere Lachaise renew the scandal of the Rue Royale. Two or three times during the ceremony he had seen the great head of his old chum emerge from among the crowd of insignificant types which largely composed the company and move in his direction, as though seeking him and desiring a meeting. Down there, in the main road, there would, at any rate, have been people about in case of trouble, while here--Brr--It was this anxiety that made him quicken his short step, his panting breaths, but in vain. As he looked round, in his fear of being followed, the strong, erect shoulders of the Nabob appeared at the entrance to the path.

Impossible for the big man to slip away through one of the narrow pa.s.sages left between the tombs, which are placed so close together that there is not even s.p.a.ce to kneel. The damp, rich soil slipped and gave way beneath his feet. He decided to walk on with an air of indifference, hoping that perhaps the other might not recognise him. But a hoa.r.s.e and powerful voice cried behind him:

"Lazarus!"

His name--the name of this rich man--was Lazarus. He made no reply, but tried to catch up a group of officers who were moving on, very far in front of him.

"Lazarus! Oh, Lazarus!"

Just as in old times on the quay of Ma.r.s.eilles. Under the influence of old habit he was tempted to stop; then the remembrance of his infamies, of all the ill he had done the Nabob, that he was still occupied in doing him, came back to him suddenly with a horrible fear so strong that it amounted to a paroxysm, when an iron hand laid hold of him unceremoniously. A sweat of terror broke out over all his flabby limbs, his face became still more yellow, his eyes blinked in antic.i.p.ation of the formidable blow which he expected to come, while his fat arms were instinctively raised to ward it off.

"Oh, don't be afraid. I wish you no harm," said Jansoulet sadly. "Only I have come to beg you to do no more to me."

He stooped to breathe. The banker, bewildered and frightened, opened wide his round owl's eyes in presence of this suffocating emotion.

"Listen, Lazarus; it is you who are the stronger in this war we have been waging on each other for so long. I am down; yes, down. My shoulders have touched the ground. Now, be generous; spare your old chum. Give me quarter; come, give me quarter."

This southerner was trembling, defeated and softened by the emotional display of the funeral ceremony. Hemerlingue, as he stood facing him, was hardly more courageous. The gloomy music, the open grave, the speeches, the cannonade of that lofty philosophy of inevitable death, all these things had worked on the feelings of this fat baron. The voice of his old comrade completed the awakening of whatever there remained of human in that packet of gelatine.

His old chum! It was the first time for ten years--since their quarrel--that he had seen him so near. How many things were recalled to him by those sun-tanned features, those broad shoulders, so ill adapted for the wearing of embroidered coats! The thin woollen rug full of holes, in which they used to wrap themselves both to sleep on the bridge of the _Sinai_, the food shared in brotherly fas.h.i.+on, the wanderings through the burned-up country round Ma.r.s.eilles, where they used to steal big onions and eat them raw by the side of some ditch, the dreams, the schemings, the pence put into a common fund, and, when fortune had begun to smile on them, the fun they had had together, those excellent quiet little suppers over which they would tell each other everything, with their elbows on the table.

How can one ever reach the point of seriously quarrelling when one knows the other so well, when they have lived together like two twins at the breast of the lean and strong nurse, Poverty, sharing her sour milk and her rough caresses! These thoughts pa.s.sed through Hemerlingue's mind like a flash of lightning. Almost instinctively he let his heavy hand fall into the one which the Nabob was holding out to him. Something of the primitive animal was roused in them, something stronger than their enmity, and these two men, each of whom for ten years had been trying to bring the other to ruin and disgrace, fell to talking without any reserve.

Generally, between friends newly met, after the first effusions are over, a silence comes as if they had no more to tell each other, while it is in reality the abundance of things, their precipitate rush, that prevents them from finding utterance. The two chums had touched that condition; but Jansoulet kept a tight grasp on the banker's arm, fearing to see him escape and resist the kindly impulse he had just roused.

"You are not in a hurry, are you? We can take a little walk, if you like. It has stopped raining, the air is pleasant; one feels twenty years younger."

"Yes, it is pleasant," said Hemerlingue; "only I cannot walk for long; my legs are heavy."