The Nabob Volume I Part 21

Suddenly he hears footsteps, hurried footsteps, at his door.

"Who's there?"

"Monsieur," says Noel, entering the room half-dressed, "a very urgent despatch sent from the telegraph office by special messenger."

"A despatch!--What is the next thing?"

He takes the blue paper and opens it with trembling hand. The G.o.d, having already been wounded twice, is beginning to feel that he is vulnerable, to lose his a.s.surance; he experiences the apprehensions, the nervous tremors of other men. The signature first. _Mora!_ Is it possible? The duke, the duke telegraph to him! Yes, there is no doubt about it. _M-o-r-a._

And above:

_Popolasca is dead. Election in Corsica soon. You are official candidate._

A deputy! That means salvation. With that he has nothing to fear. A representative of the great French nation is not to be treated like a simple _mercanti_. Down with the Hemerlingues!

"O my duke, my n.o.ble duke!"

He was so excited that he could not sign the receipt.

"Where's the man who brought this despatch?" he asked abruptly.

"Here, Monsieur Jansoulet," replied a hearty voice from the hall, in the familiar Southern dialect.

He was a lucky dog, that messenger.

"Come in," said the Nabob.

And, after handing him his receipt, he plunged his hands into his pockets, which were always full, grasped as many gold pieces as he could hold and threw them into the poor devil's cap as he stood there stammering, bewildered, dazzled by the fortune that had befallen him in the darkness of that enchanted palace.

XII.

A CORSICAN ELECTION.

"POZZONEGRO, near Sartene.

"I am able at last to write you of my movements, my dear Monsieur Joyeuse. In the five days that we have been in Corsica we have travelled about so much, talked so much, changed carriages and steeds so often, riding sometimes on mules, sometimes on a.s.ses, and sometimes even on men's backs to cross streams, have written so many letters, made notes on so many pet.i.tions, given away so many chasubles and altar-cloths, propped up so many tottering church steeples, founded so many asylums, proposed and drunk so many toasts, absorbed so much talk and Talano wine and white cheese, that I have found no time to send an affectionate word to the little family circle around the big table, from which I have been missing for two weeks. Luckily my absence will not last much longer, for we expect to leave day after to-morrow and travel straight through to Paris. So far as the election is concerned, I fancy that our trip has been successful. Corsica is a wonderful country, indolent and poor, a mixture of poverty and of pride which makes both the n.o.ble and bourgeois families keep up a certain appearance of opulence even at the price of the most painful privations. They talk here in all seriousness of the great wealth of Popolasca, the indigent deputy whom death robbed of the hundred thousand francs his resignation in the Nabob's favor would have brought him. All these people have, moreover, a frenzied longing for offices, an administrative mania, a craving to wear a uniform of some sort and a flat cap on which they can write: "Government clerk." If you should give a Corsican peasant his choice between the richest farm in Beauce and the baldric of the humblest forest-warden, he would not hesitate a moment, he would choose the baldric. Under such circ.u.mstances you can judge whether a candidate with a large fortune and governmental favors at his disposal has a good chance of being elected. Elected M. Jansoulet will be, therefore, especially if he succeeds in the move which he is making at this moment and which has brought us to the only inn of a small village called Pozzonegro (Black Well), a genuine well, all black with verdure, fifty cottages built of red stone cl.u.s.tered around a church of the Italian type, in the bottom of a ravine surrounded by steep hills, by cliffs of bright-colored sandstone, scaled by vast forests of larches and junipers. Through my open window, at which I am writing, I can see a bit of blue sky overhead, the orifice of the black well; below, on the little square, shaded by an enormous walnut tree, as if the shadows were not dense enough already, two shepherds dressed in skins are playing cards on the stone curb of a fountain. Gambling is the disease of this country of sloth, where the crops are harvested by men from Lucca. The two poor devils before me could not find a sou in their pockets; one stakes his knife, the other a cheese wrapped in vine leaves, the two stakes being placed beside them on the stone. A little cure is watching them, smoking his cigar, and apparently taking the liveliest interest in their game.

"And that is all--not a sound anywhere except the regular dropping of the water on the stone, the exclamations of one of the gamblers, who swears by the _sango del seminario_; and in the common-room of the inn, under my chamber, our friend's earnest voice, mingled with the buzzing of the ill.u.s.trious Paganetti, who acts as interpreter in his conversation with the no less ill.u.s.trious Piedigriggio.

"M. Piedigriggio (Grayfoot) is a local celebrity. He is a tall old man of seventy-five, still very erect in his short cloak over which his long white beard falls, his brown woollen Catalan cap on his hair, which is also white, a pair of scissors in his belt, which he uses to cut the great leaves of green tobacco in the hollow of his hand; a venerable old fellow in fact, and when he crossed the square and shook hands with the cure, with a patronizing smile at the two gamblers, I never would have believed that I had before me the famous brigand Piedigriggio, who, from 1840 to 1860, _held the thickets_ in Monte-Rotondo, tired out gendarmes and troops of the line, and who to-day, his seven or eight murders with the rifle or the knife being outlawed by lapse of time, goes his way in peace throughout the region that saw his crimes, and is a man of considerable importance. This is the explanation: Piedigriggio has two sons, who, following n.o.bly in his footsteps, have toyed with the rifle and now hold the thickets in their turn. Impossible to lay hands upon or to find, as their father was for twenty years, informed by the shepherds of the movements of the gendarmerie, as soon as the gendarmes leave a village, the brigands appear there.

The older of the two, Scipion, came last Sunday to Pozzonegro to hear ma.s.s. To say that people are fond of them, and that the grasp of the bloodstained hand of these villains is agreeable to all those who receive it, would be to calumniate the pacific inhabitants of this commune; but they fear them, and their will is law.

"Now it appears that the Piedigriggios have taken it into their heads to espouse the cause of our rival in the election, a formidable alliance, which may cause two whole cantons to vote against us, for the knaves have legs as long, in proportion, as the range of their guns. Naturally we have the gendarmes with us, but the brigands are much more powerful. As our host said to us this morning: 'The gendarmes, they go, but the banditti, they stay.' In the face of that very logical reasoning, we realized that there was but one thing to do, to treat with the Piedigriggios, and make a bargain with them. The mayor said a word to the old man, who consulted his sons, and they are discussing the terms of the treaty downstairs. I can hear the Governor's voice from here: 'Nonsense, my dear fellow, I'm an old Corsican myself, you know.' And then the other's tranquil reply, cut simultaneously with his tobacco by the grating noise of the great scissors. The 'dear fellow' does not seem to have faith; and I am inclined to think that matters will not progress until the gold pieces ring on the table.

"The trouble is that Paganetti is well known in his native country.

The value of his word is written on the public square at Corte which still awaits the monument to Paoli, in the vast crop of humb.u.g.g.e.ry that he has succeeded in planting in this sterile Ithacan island, and in the flabby, empty pocket-books of all the wretched village cures, petty bourgeois, petty n.o.blemen, whose slender savings he has filched by dangling chimerical _combin.a.z.ioni_ before their eyes. Upon my word, he needed all his phenomenal a.s.surance, together with the financial resources he now has at his command to satisfy all demands, to venture to show his face here again.

"After all, how much truth is there in these fabulous works undertaken by the _Caisse Territoriale_?

"None at all.

"Mines which do not yield, which will never yield, as they exist only on paper; quarries which as yet know not pickaxe or powder; untilled, sandy moors, which they survey with a gesture, saying, 'We begin here, and we go way over yonder, to the devil.' It's the same with the forests,--one whole densely wooded slope of Monte-Rotondo, which belongs to us, it seems, but which it is not practicable to cut unless aeronauts should do duty as woodcutters.

So as to the mineral baths, of which this wretched hamlet of Pozzonegro is one of the most important, with its fountain, whose amazing ferruginous properties Paganetti is constantly vaunting. Of packet-boats, not a trace. Yes, there is an old, half-ruined Genoese tower, on the sh.o.r.e of the Bay of Ajaccio, with this inscription on a tarnished panel over its hermetically closed door: 'Paganetti Agency, Maritime Company, Bureau of Information.' The bureau is kept by fat gray lizards in company with a screech-owl.

As for the railroads, I noticed that all the excellent Corsicans to whom I mentioned them, replied with cunning smiles, disconnected phrases, full of mystery; and not until this morning did I obtain the exceedingly farcical explanation of all this reticence.

"I had read among the doc.u.ments which the Governor waves before our eyes from time to time, like a fan to inflate his _blague_, a deed of a marble quarry at a place called Taverna, two hours from Pozzonegro. Availing myself of our visit to this place, I jumped on a mule this morning, without a word to any one, and, guided by a tall rascal, with the legs of a deer,--a perfect specimen of the Corsican poacher or smuggler, with his great red pipe between his teeth,--I betook myself to Taverna. After a horrible journey among cliffs intersected by creva.s.ses, bogs, and abysses of immeasurable depth, where my mule maliciously amused himself by walking close to the edge, as if he were measuring it with his shoes, we descended an almost perpendicular surface to our destination,--a vast desert of rocks, absolutely bare, all white with the droppings of gulls and mews; for the sea is just below, very near, and the silence of the place was broken only by the beating of the waves and the shrill cries of flocks of birds flying in circles. My guide, who has a holy horror of customs officers and gendarmes, remained at the top of the cliff, because of a small custom-house station on the sh.o.r.e, while I bent my steps toward a tall red building which reared its three stories aloft in that blazing solitude, the windows broken, the roof-tiles in confusion, and over the rotting door an immense sign: '_Caisse Territoriale. Carr--bre--54._' The wind and sun and rain have destroyed the rest.

"Certainly there has been at some time an attempt made to work the mine, for there is a large, square, yawning hole, with cleanly-cut edges and patches of red streaked with brown, like leprous spots, along its sterile walls; and among the nettles at the bottom enormous blocks of marble of the variety known in commerce as _griotte_, condemned blocks of which no use can be made for lack of a proper road leading to the quarry, or a harbor which would enable boats to approach the hill; and, more than all else, for lack of sufficient funds to supply either of those needs. So the quarry, although within a few cable-lengths of the sh.o.r.e, is abandoned, useless, and a nuisance, like Robinson Crusoe's boat, with the same drawbacks as to availability. These details of the distressing history of our only territorial possession were furnished me by an unhappy survivor, s.h.i.+vering with fever, whom I found in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the yellow house trying to cook a piece of kid over the acrid smoke of a fire of mastic branches.

"That man, who comprises the whole staff of the _Caisse Territoriale_ in Corsica, is Paganetti's foster-father, an ex-lighthouse-keeper who does not mind loneliness. The Governor leaves him there partly from charity, and also because an occasional letter from the Taverna quarry produces a good effect at meetings of shareholders. I had great difficulty in extorting any information from that three-fourths wild man, who gazed at me suspiciously, in ambush behind his goat-skin _pelone_; he did tell me, however, unintentionally, what the Corsicans understand by the term railroad, and why they a.s.sume this mysterious manner when they mention it. While I was trying to find out whether he knew anything of the scheme for an iron road in the island, the old fellow did not put on the cunning smile I had observed in his compatriots, but said to me quite naturally, in very good French, but in a voice as rusty and stiff as an old lock that is seldom used:

"'Oh! moussiou, no need of railroads here--'

"'But they are very valuable, very useful to make communication easier.'

"'I don't say that ain't true; but with the gendarmes we don't need anything more.'

"'The gendarmes?'

"'To be sure.'

"The misunderstanding lasted fully five minutes, before I finally comprehended that the secret police are known here as the 'railroads.' As there are many Corsican police officials on the Continent, they make use of an honest euphemism to describe their degrading occupation in their family circle. You ask the kinsmen of one of them, 'Where's your brother Ambrosini?' 'What is your Uncle Barbicaglia doing?' They will answer, with a little wink: 'He has a place on the railroad;' and everybody knows what that means. Among the lower cla.s.ses, the peasants, who have never seen a railroad and have no idea what it is, there is a perfectly serious belief that the great department of the secret imperial police has no other name than that. Our princ.i.p.al agent in the island shares that touching innocence; this will give you an idea of the condition of the _Line from Ajaccio to Bastia via Bonifacio, Porto Vecchio, etc._, which figures on the great books with green backs in the Paganetti establishment. In a word, all the a.s.sets of the territorial bank are comprised in a few desks and two old hovels--the whole hardly worthy of a place in the rubbish-yard on Rue Saint-Ferdinand, where I hear the weatherc.o.c.ks creaking and the old doors slamming every night as I fall asleep.

"But in that case what has been done, what is being done with the enormous sums that M. Jansoulet has poured into the treasury in the last five months, to say nothing of what has come from other sources attracted by that magic name? I fully agreed with you that all these soundings and borings and purchases of land, which appear on the books in a fine round hand, were immeasurably exaggerated.

But how could any one suspect such infernal impudence? That is why M. le Gouverneur was so disgusted at the idea of taking me on this electoral trip. I have not thought it best to have an explanation on the spot. My poor Nabob has enough on his mind with his election. But, as soon as we have returned, I shall place all the details of my long investigation before his eyes; and I will extricate him from this den of thieves by persuasion or by force.

They have finished their negotiations downstairs. Old Piedigriggio is crossing the square, playing with his long peasant's purse, which looks to me to be well-filled. The bargain is concluded, I suppose. A hasty adieu, my dear Monsieur Joyeuse; remember me to the young ladies, and bid them keep a tiny place for me at the work-table.

"PAUL DE GeRY."

The electoral cyclone in which they had been enveloped in Corsica crossed the sea in their wake like the blast of a sirocco, followed them to Paris and blew madly through the apartments on Place Vendome, which were thronged from morning till night by the usual crowd, increased by the constant arrival of little men as dark as carob-beans, with regular, bearded faces, some noisy, buzzing and chattering, others silent, self-contained and dogmatic, the two types of the race in which the same climate produces different results. All those famished islanders made appointments, in the wilds of their uncivilized fatherland, to meet one another at the Nabob's table, and his house had become a tavern, a restaurant, a market-place. In the dining-room, where the table was always set, there was always some Corsican, newly arrived, in the act of taking a bite, with the bewildered and greedy expression of a relation from the country.

The noisy, blatant breed of election agents is the same everywhere; but these men were distinguished by something more of ardor, a more impa.s.sioned zeal, a turkey-c.o.c.k vanity heated white-hot. The most insignificant clerk, inspector, mayor's secretary, or village schoolmaster talked as if he had a whole canton behind him and the pockets of his threadbare coat stuffed full of ballots. And it is a fact, which Jansoulet had had abundant opportunity to verify, that in the Corsican villages the families are so ancient, of such humble origin, with so many ramifications, that a poor devil who breaks stones on the high road finds some way to work out his relations.h.i.+p to the greatest personages on the island, and in that way wields a serious influence. As the national temperament, proud, cunning, intriguing, revengeful, intensifies these complications, the result is that great care must be taken as to where one puts his foot among the snares that are spread from one end of the island to the other.

The most dangerous part of it was that all those people were jealous of one another, detested one another, quarrelled openly at the table on the subject of the election, exchanging black glances, grasping the hilts of their knives at the slightest dispute, talking very loud and all together, some in the harsh, resonant Genoese patois, others in the most comical French, choking with restrained insults, throwing at one another's heads the names of unknown villages, dates of local history which suddenly placed two centuries of family feuds upon the table between two covers. The Nabob was afraid that his breakfasts would end tragically, and tried to calm all those violent natures with his kindly, conciliatory smile. But Paganetti rea.s.sured him. According to him, the vendetta, although still kept alive in Corsica, very rarely employs the stiletto and the firearm in these days. The anonymous letter has taken their place. Indeed, unsigned letters were received every day at Place Vendome, after the style of this one:--

"You are so generous, Monsieur Jansoulet, that I can do no less than point out to you Sieur Bornalinco (Ange-Marie) as a traitor who has gone over to your enemies; I have a very different story to tell of his cousin Bornalinco (Louis-Thomas), who is devoted to the good cause," etc.

Or else:

"Monsieur Jansoulet, I fear that your election will be badly managed and will come to nothing if you continue to employ Castirla (Josue) of the canton of Odessa, while his kinsman, Luciani, is the very man you need."

Although he finally gave up reading such missives, the poor candidate was shaken by all those doubts, by all those pa.s.sions, being caught in a network of petty intrigues, his mind full of terror and distrust, anxious, excited, nervous, feeling keenly the truth of the Corsican proverb:

"If you are very ill-disposed to your enemy, pray that he may have an election in his family."