He stopped instantly, dismayed by the hoarse, horribly dull and vulgar sound of his voice, which he heard for the first time in public. And in that pause, tormented by twitchings of the face, by fruitless efforts to find the intonation he sought, he must needs summon strength to make his defence. And if the poor man's agony was touching to behold, the old mother up yonder, leaning forward, breathing hard, moving her lips nervously as if to assist him to find his words, sent back to him a faithful imitation of his torture. Although he could not see her, having his face turned away from that gallery which he intentionally avoided, that maternal breath, the ardent magnetism of those black eyes gave him life at last, and the fetters suddenly dropped from his speech and his gestures.
"First of all, Messieurs, let me say that I do not come here to defend my election. If you believe that electoral morals have not always been the same in Corsica, that all the irregularities committed must be attributed to the corrupting influence of my money and not to the uncivilized and passionate nature of a people, reject me; it will be justice and I shall not murmur. But there is something else than my election involved in this matter; accusations have been made which attack my honor, which bring it directly in question, and to those alone I propose to reply." His voice gradually became stronger, still trembling and indistinct, but with now and then a thrilling note such as we sometimes hear in voices whose original harshness has undergone some changes. He sketched his life very rapidly, his early days, his departure for the Orient. You would have said that it was one of the eighteenth century tales of barbarian pirates scouring the Latin seas, of beys and fearless Provençaux, dark as crickets, who always end by marrying some sultana and "taking the turban," according to the old Marseillais expression. "For my part," said the Nabob, with his ingenuous smile, "I had no need to take the turban to enrich myself, I contented myself with importing into that land of indolence and utter heedlessness the activity, the pliability of a Frenchman from the South, and I succeeded in a few years in making one of the fortunes that are made nowhere else except in those infernally hot countries where everything is huge, hurried, out of proportion, where flowers grow in a night, where a single tree produces a whole forest. The excuse for such fortunes lies in the use that is made of them, and I undertake to say that no favorite of destiny ever tried harder than I did to earn forgiveness for his wealth. I did not succeed."—No, indeed, he had not succeeded. From all the gold he had sown with such insane lavishness he had reaped naught but hatred and contempt. Hatred! Who else could boast of having stirred up so much of that as he, as a vessel stirs up the mud when its keel touches bottom? He was too rich; that took the place in him of all sorts of vices, of all sorts of crimes, and singled him out for anonymous acts of vengeance, for cruel and persistent animosities.
"Ah! Messieurs," cried the poor Nabob, raising his clenched fists, "I have known poverty, I have struggled with it hand to hand, and it is a terrible struggle, I give you my word. But to struggle against wealth, to defend one's happiness, one's honor, one's peace of mind, feebly protected by piles of gold pieces which topple over and crush one, is a far more ghastly, more heart-sickening task. Never, in the gloomiest of my days of destitution, did I suffer the torture, the agony, the sleeplessness with which fortune has overwhelmed me, this horrible fortune which I abhor and which suffocates me! I am known as the Nabob in Paris. Nabob is not the proper name for me, but Pariah, a social pariah stretching out his arms, wide open, to a society that will have none of him."
Printed upon paper these words may seem cold; but there, before the whole Chamber, that man's defence seemed to be instinct with an eloquent and imposing serenity, which aroused astonishment at first, coming from that clown, that upstart, unread, uneducated, with his Rhone boatman's voice and his street porter's bearing, and afterward moved his auditors strangely by its unrefined, uncivilized character, utterly at variance with all parliamentary traditions. Already tokens of approval had manifested themselves among the benches, accustomed to submit to the colorless, monotonous downpour of administrative language. But at that cry of frenzy and despair hurled at wealth by the unfortunate man whom it held in its toils, whom it drenched and drowned in its floods of gold, and who struggled against it, calling for help from the depths of his Pactolus, the whole Chamber rose with fervent applause, with hands outstretched as if to give the unhappy Nabob those tokens of esteem which he seemed to covet so earnestly, and at the same time to save him from shipwreck. Jansoulet was conscious of it, and, warmed by that manifestation of sympathy, he continued, with head erect and assured glance:
"You have just been told, Messieurs, that I am not worthy to sit among you. And the man who told you that was the very last man from whom I should have expected it, for he alone knows the painful secret of my life; he alone was able to speak for me, to justify me and convince you. He did not choose to do it. Very good! I will make the attempt, whatever it may cost me. Outrageously calumniated as I have been before the whole country, I owe to myself, I owe to my children this public justification, and I have decided to make it."
With that he turned abruptly toward the gallery where he knew that the enemy was watching him, and stopped suddenly, horror-stricken. Directly in front of him, behind the baroness's pale, malicious little face, his mother, his mother whom he believed to be two hundred leagues away from the terrible storm, stood leaning against the wall, gazing at him, holding toward him her divine face streaming with tears, but proud and radiant none the less in her Bernard's great success. For it was a genuine success of sincere, eminently human emotion, which a few words more would change into a triumph.—"Go on! Go on!" men shouted from all sides of the Chamber, to reassure him, to encourage him. But Jansoulet did not speak. And yet he had very little to say to justify himself: "Calumny wilfully confused two names. My name is Bernard Jansoulet. The other's name was Jansoulet Louis." Not another word.
But that was too much in his mother's presence, as she was still ignorant of her oldest son's dishonor. It was too much for the family respect and unity.
He fancied he could hear his old father's voice: "I am dying of shame, my son."—Would not she die of shame too, if he were to speak? He met his mother's smile with a sublime glance of renunciation; then he continued in a dull voice and with a gesture of discouragement:
"Excuse me, Messieurs, this explanation is decidedly beyond my strength. Order an investigation into my life, open to all and in the broad light of day, for any one can understand my every act. I swear to you that you will find nothing therein which should debar me from sitting among the representatives of my country."
The amazement, the disappointment at that surrender, which seemed to all the sudden downfall of great effrontery when brought to bay, were beyond all bounds. There was a moment of excitement on the benches, the confusion of a standing vote, which the Nabob watched listlessly in the uncertain light from the stained glass windows, as the condemned man watches the surging crowd from the platform of the scaffold; then, after the suspense of a century which precedes a supreme moment, the president announced amid profound silence, in the simplest manner imaginable: