People said many things, diverse and contradictory; but one thing was certain, that they talked of nothing else, and the report which had been circulated through the city that morning, that Mora was at death's door, had put the streets, the salons, the cafés, the studios in a ferment, revived political questions in the newspaper offices, in the clubs, and even in porters' lodges and on the omnibuses, wherever open newspapers furnished a pretext for comment on that startling item of news.
This Mora was the most brilliant incarnation of the Empire. The part of a building that we see from afar is not its foundation, be it solid or tottering, not its architectural features, but the slender, gilded arrow, fancifully carved and perforated, added for the gratification of the eye. What people saw of the Empire in France and throughout Europe was Mora. When he fell, the structure was stripped of all its elegance, marred by a long irreparable crack. And how many existences were involved in that sudden fall, how many fortunes shattered by the after effects of the catastrophe! Not one so completely as that of the stout man sitting motionless on the monkeys' bench in the reception-room below.
To the Nabob that man's death meant his own death, his ruin, the end of everything. He was so thoroughly conscious of it that when he was informed, on entering the house, of the Duke's desperate condition, he indulged in no whining or wry faces of any sort, simply the savage ejaculation of human selfishness: "I am lost!" And the words came constantly to his lips, he repeated them instinctively each time that all the horror of his position came over him in sudden flashes,—as in those dangerous mountain storms, when a sharp flash of lightning illumines the abyss to the very bottom, with the jagged projections of the walls and the clumps of bushes scattered here and there to supply the rents and bruises of the fall.
The rapid keenness of vision that accompanies cataclysms spared him no detail. He saw that he was almost certain to be unseated now that Mora would not be at hand to plead his cause; and the consequences of defeat, bankruptcy, poverty and something worse, for these incalculable fortunes, when they crumble away, always keep a little of a man's honor under the ruins. But what thorns, what brambles, what bruises, what cruel wounds before reaching the end! In a week the Schwalbach notes to be paid, that is to say eight hundred thousand francs, Moëssard's claim for damages—he demanded a hundred thousand francs or would apply to the Chamber for authority to institute criminal process against him—another more dangerous suit begun by the families of two little martyrs of Bethlehem against the founders of the establishment; and, in addition to all the rest, the complications of the Caisse Territoriale. A single ray of hope, Paul de Géry's negotiations with the bey, but so vague, so problematical, so far away!
"Ah! I am lost! I am lost!"
In the vast apartment no one noticed his trouble. That crowd of senators, deputies, councillors of state, all the leading men in the government, went and came around him without seeing him, held mysterious conferences and rested their elbows in anxious importance on the two white marble mantels that faced each other. So many disappointed, betrayed, over-hasty ambitions met in that visit in extremis, that selfish anxiety predominated over every other form of preoccupation.
The faces, strangely enough, expressed neither pity nor grief, rather a sort of wrath. All those people seemed to bear the duke a grudge for dying, as if for turning his back upon them. Such remarks as this were heard: "It's not at all strange after such a life!" And, standing at the long windows, the gentlemen called one another's attention to some dainty coupé drawing up amid the constant stream of carriages going and coming outside, while a gloved hand, its lace sleeve brushing against the door, handed a folded card to the footman who brought her information of the invalid's condition.
From time to time one of the intimates of the palace, one of those whom the dying man had sent for, appeared for a moment in the throng, gave an order, then vanished, leaving the terrified expression of his face reflected upon a score of others. Jenkins showed himself in that way for a moment, cravat untied, waistcoat open, cuffs soiled and rumpled, in all the disarray of the battle he was waging upstairs against a terrible opponent. He was at once surrounded, pressed with questions. Certainly the monkeys flattening their short noses against the bars of the cage, awed by the unusual uproar and very attentive to what was taking place, as if they were making a careful study of human expression, had a magnificent model in the Irish doctor. His grief was superb, the noble grief of a strong man, which compressed his lips and made his breast heave.
"The death-agony has begun," he said dolefully. "It is only a matter of hours now."
And, as Jansoulet drew near, he said to him in an emphatic tone: