The Nabob, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by Alphonse Daudet

That plebeian name, proudly announced by the liveried footman in a resounding voice, rang through Jenkins's salons like the clash of cymbals, like one of the gongs that announce fantastic apparitions in a fairy play. The candles paled, flames flashed from every eye, at the dazzling prospect of Oriental treasures, of showers of pearls and sequins let fall by the magic syllables of that name, but yesterday unknown.

Yes, it was he, the Nabob, the richest of the rich, the great Parisian curiosity, flavored with that spice of adventure that is so alluring to surfeited multitudes. All heads were turned, all conversation was interrupted; there was a grand rush for the door, a pushing and jostling like that of the crowds on the quay at a seaport, to watch the arrival of a felucca with a cargo of gold.

Even the hospitable Jenkins, who was standing in the first salon to receive his guests, despite his usual self-possession abruptly left the group of men with whom he was talking and bore away to meet the galleons.

"A thousand times, a thousand times too kind. Madame Jenkins will be very happy, very proud. Come and let me take you to her."

And in his haste, in his vainglorious delight, he dragged Jansoulet away so quickly that the latter had no time to present his companion, Paul de Géry, whom he was introducing into society. The young man was well pleased to be overlooked. He glided into the mass of black coats which was forced farther and farther back by every new arrival, and was swallowed up in it, a prey to the foolish terror that every young provincial feels on his first appearance in a Parisian salon, especially when he is shrewd and intelligent and does not wear the imperturbable self-assurance of the bumpkin like a coat of mail beneath his linen buckler.

You, Parisians of Paris, who, ever since you were sixteen have exhibited your youth at the receptions of all classes of society, in your first black coat with your crush-hat on your hip,—you, I say, have no conception of that anguish, compounded of vanity, timidity and recollections of romantic books, which screws our teeth together, embarrasses our movements, makes us for a whole evening a statue between two doors, a fixture in a window-recess, a poor, pitiful, wandering creature, incapable of making his existence manifest otherwise than by changing his position from time to time, preferring to die of thirst rather than go near the sideboard, and going away without having said a word, unless we may have stammered one of those incoherent absurdities which we remember for months, and which makes us, when we think of it at night, utter an ah! of frantic shame and bury our face in the pillow.

Paul de Géry was a martyr of that type. In his province he had always lived a very retired life, with a pious, melancholy old aunt, until the time when, as a student of law, originally destined for a profession in which his father had left an excellent reputation, he had been induced to frequent the salons of some of the counsellors of the court, old-fashioned, gloomy dwellings, with dingy hangings, where he made a fourth hand at whist with venerable ghosts. Jenkins' evening party was therefore a début in society for that provincial, whose very ignorance and Southern adaptability made him first of all a keen observer.

From the place where he stood he watched the interesting procession, still in progress at midnight, of Jenkins' guests, the whole body of the fashionable physician's patients; the very flower of society, a large sprinkling of politics and finance, bankers, deputies, a few artists, all the jaded ones of Parisian high life, pale and wan, with gleaming eyes, saturated with arsenic like gluttonous mice, but insatiably greedy of poison and of life. Through the open salon and the great reception-room, the doors of which had been removed, he could see the stairway and landing, profusely decorated with flowers along the sides, where the long trains were duly spread, their silky weight seeming to force back the décolleté busts of their wearers in that graceful ascending motion which caused them to appear, little by little, until they burst upon one in the full bloom of their splendor. As the couples reached the top of the stairs they seemed to make their entrance on the stage; and that was doubly true, for every one left on the last step the frowns, the wrinkles of deep thought the air of weariness and all traces of anger or depression, to display a tranquil countenance, a smile playing over the placid features. The men exchanged hearty grasps of the hand, warm fraternal greetings; the women, thinking only of themselves, with little affected shrugs, with a charming simper and abundant play of the eyes and shoulders, murmured a few meaningless words of greeting:

"Thanks! Oh! thanks—how kind you are."

Then the couples separated, for an evening party is no longer, as it used to be, an assemblage of congenial persons, in which the wit of the women compelled the force of character, the superior knowledge, the very genius of the men to bow gracefully before it, but a too numerous mob in which the women, who alone are seated, whisper together like captives in the harem, and have no other enjoyment than that of being beautiful or of seeming to be. De Géry, after wandering through the doctor's library, the conservatory and the billiard room, where there was smoking, tired of dull, serious conversation, which seemed to him to be out of keeping in such a festal scene and in the brief hour of pleasure—some one had asked him carelessly and without looking at him, what was doing at the Bourse that day—approached the door of the main salon, which was blockaded by a dense mass of black coats, a surging sea of heads packed closely together and gazing.