"What I promised shall be done, Madame Jenkins. Now, go in at once and close your window. The mist is cold this morning."
Yes, the mist was cold, but white as snow; and, hovering outside the windows of the comfortable coupé, it lighted up with soft reflections the newspaper in the doctor's hands. Over yonder in the dark, crowded, populous quarters, in the Paris of tradesmen and workmen, they know nothing of the pretty morning mist that loiters on the broad avenues; the bustle of the waking hours, the passing and repassing of market-gardeners' wagons, omnibuses, drays loaded with old iron, soon chop it and rend it and scatter it. Each passer-by carries away a little of it on a threadbare coat, a worn muffler, or coarse gloves rubbing against each other. It drenches the shivering blouses, the waterproofs thrown over working dresses; it blends with all the breaths, hot with insomnia or alcohol, buries itself in the depths of empty stomachs, penetrates the shops which are just opening their doors, dark courtyards, staircases, where it stands on the balusters and walls, and fireless garrets. That is why so little of it remains out-of-doors. But in that open, stately portion of Paris where Dr. Jenkins' patients lived, on those broad tree-lined boulevards, those deserted quays, the mist soared immaculate, in innumerable waves, as light and fleecy as down. It was compact, discreet, almost luxurious, because the sun, slothful in his rising, was beginning to diffuse soft, purplish tints, which gave to the mist that enveloped everything, even the roofs of the rows of mansions, the aspect of a sheet of white muslin spread over scarlet cloth. One would have said that it was a great curtain sheltering the long, untroubled sleep of wealth, a thick curtain behind which nothing could be heard save the soft closing of a porte-cochère, the rattling of the milkmen's tin cans, the bells of a herd of asses trotting by, followed by the short, panting breath of their conductor, and the rumbling of Jenkins' coupé beginning its daily round.
First of all, to the hôtel de Mora. On the Quai d'Orléans, beside the Spanish embassy, stood a superb palace with its principal entrance on Rue de Lille, and a door on the riverside, and long terraces which formed a continuation of those of the embassy. Between two high, ivy-covered walls, connected by imposing stone arches, the coupé flew like an arrow, announced by two strokes of a clanging bell, which aroused Jenkins from the trance in which the perusal of his newspaper seemed to have plunged him. Then the wheels rolled less noisily over the gravel of a vast courtyard and stopped, after a graceful sweep, at the front steps, above which was spread a circular awning. One could see indistinctly through the mist half a score of carriages in a line, and the silhouettes of English grooms leading the duke's saddle-horse up and down an avenue of acacias, all leafless at that season and standing naked in their bark. Everything revealed well-ordered, pompous, assured luxury.
"It makes no difference how early I come, others are always here before me," said Jenkins, glancing at the line in which his coupé took its place; but, certain of not being compelled to wait, with head erect and a tranquil air of authority, he went up the official steps, over which so many trembling ambitions, so many stumbling anxieties passed every day.
Even in the reception-room, high-studded, and resonant as a church, which two huge fires filled with gleaming life, notwithstanding the great stoves burning day and night, the magnificence of the establishment burst upon one in warm and heady puffs. There was a suggestion of the hot-house and the drying-room as well. Great heat and abundant light; white wainscoting, white marble statues, immense windows, nothing confined or close, and yet an equable atmosphere well fitted to encompass the existence of some delicate, over-refined, nervous mortal. Jenkins expanded in that factitious sunlight of wealth; he saluted with a "good-morning, boys," the powdered Swiss with the broad gilt baldric and the footmen in short clothes and blue and gold livery, all of whom had risen in his honor, touched lightly with his finger the great cage of monkeys capering about with shrill cries, and darted whistling up the white marble stairs covered with a carpet soft and dense as a lawn, to the duke's apartments. Although he had been coming to the hôtel de Mora for six months, the good doctor had not yet become hardened to the purely physical impression of cheerfulness and lightness of heart caused by the atmosphere of that house.
Although it was the abode of the highest functionary of the Empire, there was nothing to suggest the departments or their boxes of dusty documents. The duke had consented to accept the exalted post of Minister of State and President of the Council only on condition that he need not leave his house; that he should go to the department only an hour or two a day, long enough to affix his signatures to documents that required it, and that he should hold his audiences in his bedroom. At that moment, although it was so early, the salon was full. There were serious, anxious faces, provincial prefects with shaven lips and administrative whiskers, something less arrogant in that reception-room than in their prefectures; magistrates, stern of manner, dignified of gesture; deputies full of importance, shining lights of finance, substantial manufacturers from the country; and among them could be distinguished, here and there, the thin ambitious face of a deputy councillor to some prefecture, in the garb of a solicitor, black coat and white cravat; and one and all, standing or seated, alone or in groups, silently forced with a glance the lock of that lofty door, closed upon their destinies, from which they would come forth in a moment, triumphant or crestfallen. Jenkins walked rapidly through the crowd, and every one followed with an envious eye this new arrival, whom the usher, in his chain of office, frigid and correct in his bearing, seated at a table beside the door, greeted with a smile that was both respectful and familiar.
"Who is with him?" the doctor inquired, pointing to the duke's room.
With the end of his lips, and not without a slightly ironical twinkle of the eye, the usher murmured a name, which, if they had heard it, would have angered all those exalted personages who had been waiting an hour for the costumier of the opera to finish his audience.
A murmur of voices, a flash of light—Jenkins had entered the duke's presence; he never waited.
Standing with his back to the fire, dressed in a blue fur-trimmed jacket, which heightened by its soft reflection the strength and haughtiness of his face, the President of the Council was superintending the drawing of a Pierrette's costume for the duchess to wear at her next ball, and giving directions with as much gravity as if he were dictating the draft of a law.