He paused to take breath. The banker, stupefied and dismayed, opened his round owl's eyes to their fullest extent in face of that suffocating emotion.
"Listen, Lazare, you are the stronger in this war we have been carrying on so long. I am on the ground at your feet. My shoulders have touched. Now be generous, spare your old chum. Have mercy on me, I say, have mercy on me."
That Southerner, subdued and softened by the pomp of the funeral ceremony, trembled in every limb. Hemerlingue, facing him, was hardly more courageous. The dismal music, the open tomb, the orations, the cannonading, and the lofty philosophy of inevitable death, all had combined to move the stout baron to the depths of his being. His former comrade's voice completed the awakening of such human qualities as still remained in that bundle of gelatine.
His old chum! It was the first time in ten years, since their falling out, that he had seen him at such close quarters. How many things those swarthy features, those powerful shoulders ill-suited to an embroidered coat, recalled to his mind! The thin woollen blanket, full of holes, in which they both rolled themselves up to sleep on the deck of the Sinai, the rations fraternally shared, the long walks through the scorched country about Marseille, where they stole great onions and ate them on the bank of a ditch, the dreams, the projects, the sous put into the common purse, and, when fortune began to smile on them, the antics they played together, the dainty little suppers at which they told each other everything, with their elbows on the table.
How can two people ever fall out when they know each other so well, when they have lived like twins clinging to a thin, strong nurse, poverty, sharing her soured milk and her rough caresses! Such thoughts, long to analyze, passed through Hemerlingue's mind like a flash of lightning. Almost instinctively he let his heavy hand fall into the hand the Nabob held out to him. Something of the animal nature stirred in them both, stronger than their antipathy, and those two men, who had been trying for ten years to ruin and dishonor each other, began to talk together heart to heart.
Generally, when friends meet after a long separation, the first effusive greetings at an end, they remain silent as if they had nothing to tell each other, whereas it is the very abundance of things, their precipitate struggle for utterance that prevents their coming forth. The two former partners had reached that stage; but Jansoulet held the banker's arm very tight, fearing that he might escape him, might resist the kindly impulses that he had aroused in him.
"You are in no hurry, are you? We might walk a moment or two if you choose. It has stopped raining, it will do us good—we shall be twenty years younger."
"Yes, it's a pleasant thing," said Hemerlingue; "but I can't walk long, my legs are heavy."
"True, your poor legs. See, there's a bench yonder. Let's go and sit down. Lean on me, old fellow."
And the Nabob, with brotherly solicitude, led him to one of the benches placed at intervals against the tombs, for the convenience of those inconsolable mourners who make the cemetery their usual resort. He arranged him comfortably, encompassed him with a protecting glance, sympathized with him in his infirmity, and, the conversation following a course very natural in such a place, they talked of their health, of the approach of old age. One was dropsical, the other subject to rushes of blood to the head. Both were taking the Jenkins Pearls,—a dangerous remedy, witness Mora's sudden taking off.